Suggestibility occurs when inaccurate information is incorporated into currently existing memories. The present study examined the effect of forewarning on suggestibility, including the influence of working memory capacity (WMC). The main hypotheses are that forewarnings will reduce suggestibility compared to the control group and that high-WMC will yield lower suggestibility compared to medium- and low-WMC. The final hypothesis is that WMC and forewarning will interact such that low-WMC individuals will benefit more than high-WMC individuals from the forewarning. A sample of 123 college students was recruited. Participants watched a clip of the TV-show 24. WMC was then assessed followed by the presentation of a misleading narrative. Prior to listening to the narrative, they read a set of instructions that sometimes contained the forewarning. After listening to the misleading narrative, participants took a test over their memories of the film. A 2 X 3 ANOVA was conducted and found a main effect for forewarning. No other effect was significant. The current results only support the first main hypothesis that forewarning reduces suggestibility. These results could be used to help prepare eyewitnesses to resist misinformation in the period between witnessing an event and reporting the event during a later trial.

Laboratory work is considered to be a vital part of the entire learning experience in physics and work in the laboratory has the potential to help make physics more real and tangible for the students while they can develop experimental design skills as well as developing observational and problem-solving skills. Sometimes, difficult concepts can be illustrated while laboratory work also offers opportunities for learners to develop skills in thinking, questioning, planning, and interpreting data as well as an opportunity to develop group working skills. Above all, physics, like all other sciences, gains its insights by means of experimentation and learners need experience of this. In addition, laboratory work has an important role in understanding a subject like physics in that it can make physics more real for the students. More importantly, there is great scope for developing laboratory learning which will enhance understanding as well as give the students an experience of how experimental evidence is used to develop the insights in physics. The question here is: does laboratory courses in higher education actually achieve these goals in a developing country such as Libya where the laboratories are not highly equipped while the staff and the teachers are not trained adequately? Studies have shown that, in laboratory learning, students follow instruction sheets like recipes with little understanding what they are doing, tending to generate negative attitudes. Some key studies have shown clearly that cognitive overload is the source of the problem: the learner’s has to cope with too many ideas at the same time. This study explored this idea and considered how the cognitive load can be reduced, enabling cognitive capacity to be available for greater understanding.The entire work was carried out on three stages with the students in the Faculty of Science at Sebha University, a typical university in Libya. The first experimental study (N = 150) aimed to gain an overall picture of the problems in Libya, look at how learners saw their school and their university experiences in laboratory work in physics. Questionnaires were designed to establish a picture of what was going on and where the problems lay. The survey showed the learners’ need for the security of instruction sheets but they were following these like recipes and not understanding what they were doing. In the light of these findings, pre-laboratory exercises were designed and post-laboratory exercises were constructed, for each experiment. The pre-laboratory exercise involved a set of simple tasks for the students to complete allowing them to revise underpinning ideas, grasp the key point of the experiment and how it was to be done. The overall aim was to reduce the pressure on limited working memory capacity as they undertook the experiment. The post-laboratory exercises were also short and were designed to allow the students to apply the ideas they had learned. The post-laboratory exercises were marked and the scores were used as a measure of understanding. When used with a sample of students (N = 95), the changes brought about by the use of pre-laboratory exercises were explored by considering their performance in the post-laboratory exercises while student perceptions of the experience were considered using a questionnaire. It was found that the pre-laboratory exercises improved understanding quite markedly with the students at Sebha University and their attitudes towards the whole pre-laboratory experience was very positive. In the third and final stage, pre-laboratory and post-laboratory were also employed with a sample of students (N = 106)but the post-lab exercises were extended considerably. The laboratory instructions sheets were re-written completely to make the whole learning experience a more cohesive whole. The outcomes were considered using performance in the post-laboratory exercises while student opinions were surveyed again. In both stages two and three, performance in the post-lab exercises offered insight into how well the students understood what they had done. In addition, at the end of stage three, semi-structured interviews were carried out with university teachers to explore the views of university teachers relating to physics laboratories in Libya. The findings of the third stage and second stage were compared to see what is new in students’ perceptions (N = 106). The question being explored here was whether the key to the greater success lay in the pre-laboratory exercises on their own or whether the re-written instruction sheets made further major improvements. It was found that there were only very small further improvements, thus confirming that the pre-learning from the pre-laboratory exercises was the key. The overall conclusions, this study has demonstrated the power and effectiveness of simple pre-laboratory exercises in a typical Libyan university physics course in enhancing understanding in physics. In almost all the survey items, the responses of the students who worked with pre-lab (with pre-laboratory group) were significantly more positive than the responses from the students who worked without pre-lab (without pre-laboratory group). Comparing the second stage and the third stage revealed little change, suggesting that the key to the performance improvement as well as the changes in student perceptions was largely due to the pre-laboratory exercises. Implications of the findings are discussed, especially in the context of education in Libya.

<p>The objectives of the present study were 1) to examine the effects of noise exposure on recall and recognition of orally presented text and 2) to examine the relation between working memory capacity and the performance of recall and recognition of orally presented text in noisy conditions. A total of 32 subjects, age 20-33, with no known hearing impairment, were paid to participate in the experiment. The hearing ability of all subjects was tested using recorded sentences with and without background noise. Their working memory capacity was tested using listening span, reading span and operation span tests measuring a) correctly recalled words of all three tests, b) the response latency in the reading span test and c) the processing time of the arithmetical operations in the operation span test. Finally all subjects took recall and recognition tests on texts presented orally with and without broadband background noise (white noise). The test results showed that 1) noise had no significant main effect on recall or recognition of the spoken texts, 2) ) the capacity of the central executive component of working memory, measured as the processing time of the arithmetical operations of the operation span test, correlated significantly with recall and recognition of the orally presented text in the noise condition, but not in the control condition, 3) noise exposure had a negative effect on the recognition performance of subjects with lower capacity of the central executive component of working memory.</p>

The objectives of the present study were 1) to examine the effects of noise exposure on recall and recognition of orally presented text and 2) to examine the relation between working memory capacity and the performance of recall and recognition of orally presented text in noisy conditions. A total of 32 subjects, age 20-33, with no known hearing impairment, were paid to participate in the experiment. The hearing ability of all subjects was tested using recorded sentences with and without background noise. Their working memory capacity was tested using listening span, reading span and operation span tests measuring a) correctly recalled words of all three tests, b) the response latency in the reading span test and c) the processing time of the arithmetical operations in the operation span test. Finally all subjects took recall and recognition tests on texts presented orally with and without broadband background noise (white noise). The test results showed that 1) noise had no significant main effect on recall or recognition of the spoken texts, 2) ) the capacity of the central executive component of working memory, measured as the processing time of the arithmetical operations of the operation span test, correlated significantly with recall and recognition of the orally presented text in the noise condition, but not in the control condition, 3) noise exposure had a negative effect on the recognition performance of subjects with lower capacity of the central executive component of working memory.

This study investigated cognitive factors that might influence Chinese EFL learners’ argumentative essay writing in English. The factors that were explored included English (L2) language proficiency, Chinese (L1) writing ability, genre knowledge, use of writing strategies, and working memory capacity in L1 and L2. Data were collected from 136 university students who received a battery of tests in two sessions. The tests consisted of timed essay writing tasks in L1 and L2, post-writing questionnaires for genre knowledge and use of strategies in the writing process, a timed grammaticality judgment task for L2 grammar knowledge, a receptive vocabulary test and a controlled-production vocabulary test for L2 vocabulary knowledge, and working memory span tasks in L1 and L2. Quantitative analyses using correlations, paired-samples t-test, analysis of variance and multiple regression revealed that L2 language proficiency is the most important predictor of L2 writing, followed by genre knowledge and L2 writing strategies. L1 writing ability and working memory capacity have slight impact as explanatory variables for L2 writing performance in the timed essay writing task.

Individual differences on complex memory spans predict a variety of higher-order cognitive tasks (e.g. reading comprehension, reasoning, following direction) as well as low-level attention tasks (e.g. Stroop, dichotic listening, antisaccade). The current study attempted to better determine the role of individual differences in complex memory span and episodic retrieval. Specifically, two experiments explored the possibility that individual differences in complex memory span reflect differences in the ability to successfully retrieve items from secondary memory via a cue-dependent search process. High and low complex span participants were tested in delayed (Experiment 1) and continuous distractor (Experiment 2) free recall with varying list-lengths. Across both experiments low spans recalled fewer items than high spans, recalled more previous list intrusions than high spans, and recalled at a slower rate than high spans. It is argued that low spans search through a larger set of items than high spans and, thus low spans episodic retrieval deficits are associated with an inability to use cues to guide a search and retrieval process of secondary memory. Implications for dual-component models of memory are discussed.

ABSTRACT THE EFFECTS OF COGNITIVE LOAD IN LEARNING FROM GOAL BASED SCENARIO DESIGNED MULTIMEDIA LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR LEARNERS HAVING DIFFERENT WORKING MEMORY CAPACITIES Kili&ccedil / , Eylem Ph.D., Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zahide Yildirim December 2009, 201 pages The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of principles aiming to reduce extraneous cognitive load in learning from goal based scenario designed multimedia learning environment for learners having different working memory capacities. In addition, the effects of goal based scenario and the principles of cognitive load theory on students&rsquo / perception, motivation and satisfaction has been explored. Two versions of the multimedia were developed for this study. In the first version (+CLT), the principles such as split attention, multimedia, modality, redundancy, coherence and signaling was applied. In the second version (-CLT), these principles were violated. Mixed method was used and two studies were conducted for this study. The first study was conducted with 82 ninth grade students from one of the Anatolian High School in Ankara. However, the participants&rsquo / working memory capacities were found very close to each other. Therefore, the second study was conducted with 54 11th grade students having different working memory capacity from the same school. The result of the first study showed that the cognitive load principles aim at reducing extraneous cognitive load increased learning gains, decreased invested mental effort and affected students&rsquo / motivation and satisfaction in positive ways. On the other hand, when cognitive load principles were not considered, this decreased learning gains, increased invested mental effort and affected students&rsquo / motivation and satisfaction in negative ways. The result of the second study showed that the only difference between high and low WMC students found on the number of errors made in sequencing meiosis sub phases in favor of the first version (+CLT). This might be explained by the task characteristics in that the difference between high and low WMC individuals can be observed when task demanded attention. It can be concluded that students benefited from the cognitive load principles reducing extraneous cognitive based on the findings of both studies.

Dėmesio mirksėjimo efektas – tai plačiai žinomas reiškinys dėmesio tyrimuose. Jis atspindi dėmesingo informacijos apdorojimo ribas, kadangi greitai (10 stimulų per sekundę dažniu) toje pačioje regos lauko vietoje pateikus stimulų seką dažniausiai žmonės nepastebi ir/ arba neatsimena antrojo reikšminio stimulo. Tai įvyksta tuo atveju, kai šis pasirodo 200-500 ms intervale nuo pirmojo reikšminio stimulo pateikimo. Neseniai Martens ir kolegos (2006) nustatė, jog kai kuriems žmonėms dėmesio mirksėjimo efektas nepasireiškia, jie buvo pavadinti „nemirksinčiais“. Manoma, kad individualius skirtumus lemia nevienodai efektyvus gebėjimas iš nereikšmingos informacijos srauto išsirinkti reikšmingą. Šiame darbe siekta patikrinti, ar individuali darbinės atminties talpa, tiriamojo emocinė būsena ir tiriamojo asmenybės bruožai turi įtakos dėmesio efekto išreikštumui. Naudojant parametrizuotą dėmesio mirksėjimo efekto analizės būdą, nustatyta, kad didesnė darbinės atminties talpa sąlygoja mažesnį dėmesio mirksėjimo efektą. Šie rezultatai patvirtina nuomonę, kad dėmesio mirksėjimo efektas yra darbinės atminties talpos ribotumo pasekmė. Taip pat nustatyta, kad tiriamojo emocinio sužadinamumo būsena yra susijusi su dėmesio mirksėjimo efekto stiprumu, o asmenybės bruožai – su trukme. / The attentional blink is a well-known phenomenon in the study of attention. It reflects the impaired ability to identify the second of two targets presented in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of events if it appears between 200 and 500 ms after the first target. Recently Martens et al. (2006) reported that about 5% of the population (referred to as “non-blinkers”) shows little or no attentional blink under conditions in which most people (“blinkers”) do show. It is proposed that aforementioned differences are determined by individual differences in efficiency of ignoring irrelevant information. Thus, the aims of this master’s thesis were to investigate the impact of working memory capacity, emotional state and personality traits on attentional blink effect. Using parameterized attentional blink analysis method, based on curve fitting, the negative correlation between the size of attentional blink and working memory capacity was revealed. These findings support the idea that individual processing limitations and working memory play a key role in attentional blink. Also it was demonstrated that emotional arousal has impact on the strength of attentional blink and personality traits have effect on the span of attentional blink.

Individuals with high working memory capacity (WMC) appear to be particularly good at focusing their attention (McCabe, Roediger, McDaniel, Balota, &amp; Hambrick, 2010). Therefore, we studied the correlation between WMC and the ability to suppress neurological activity from a task-irrelevant stimulus. The research question tests the foundations of Lavie’s perceptual load theory; that early selection occurs, by testing if higher WMC enhances people’s ability to inhibit processing of task-irrelevant stimuli from low versus high load (i.e. the difference from low to high load should be smaller for high WMC than for low WMC). This was operationalised by measuring the correlation of WMC and auditory processing under low versus high visual load. Auditory processing was measured with auditory steady state responses (ASSR), and WMC was measured with an operation-letter span task. The results showed no significant correlation between WMC and ability to suppress task-irrelevant stimuli. Based on the data, it is not possible to conclude with certainty that effects of load on auditory processing are unaffected by WMC, because confidence intervals were large.

abstract: Retrieving an item from memory can cause subsequent suppression of related items. This phenomenon, involving a procedure where participants retrieve category-exemplar pairs (e.g. FRUIT-orange), is known as Retrieval Induced Forgetting (RIF). Individuals who demonstrate greater amounts of RIF also exhibit greater working memory capacity (WMC). Reasoning ability is highly related to WMC, which may suggest that a similar relation exists between RIF and Reasoning ability. The goal of the present investigation was to examine this possibility. Rotation Span and a Letter Number task were used as indicators of WMC and a Cognitive Reflection Test was used to measure Reasoning ability. A significant RIF effect was found, but it did not significantly correlate with WMC or Reasoning ability. These results demonstrate the importance of designing a RIF task appropriately, selecting measures of Reasoning ability, and the theoretical accounts of the RIF effect. One possibility is that by not controlling for output interference, the obtained RIF effect cannot be reasoned to come from the executive control process as suggested by the inhibition account. Although this account is the chief explanation of the RIF effect, it has been challenged by alternative accounts and it remains unclear how the underlying mechanism of RIF is related to higher cognitive abilities. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2016