Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-61). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Previous studies done on the correlation between specific curiosity and intelligence have been inconclusive. In the present study, a test of state specific curiosity and a test of intelligence were administered to 76 Ss from two introductory psychology courses. Three hypotheses were tested. These were, (a) that a significant specific curiosity-intelligence correlation would exist, (b) that the specific curiosity-verbal subscale correlation would be higher than the specific curiosity-abstraction sub-scale correlation, and (c) that there would be a sex difference in the specific curiosity-intelligence correlations. The data did not support hypothesis (a) or (b). However, they did support hypothesis (c). An inconsistent pattern of trends was discovered in the results which call the correlations into question. The suggestion was made that the study should be replicated.

People perceive the world in their own terms: our use of language reflects our perceptions. The way in which we perceive the world and the words we use to reflect that perception Grinder and Bandler (1976) call a "representational system." The authors isolate three types of representational systems, visual, kinesthetic, and auditory, and they present a technique for mapping these systems. These authors state that a sensory preference profile can be mapped accurately and reliably via an individual's use of language. For example, words such as "clear," "see" and expressions of the kind "I get a picture" would connote a visual modality. Words such as "feel," "hard" and expressions of the kind "I can't grasp it" would connote a kinesthetic modality. An individual's profile is the frequency of words used in each sensory modality.

An extensive review of the literature of the phenomenon of mental rehearsal (MR), or the act of imagining oneself performing a behavior in anticipation of eventually doing so, indicated that MR could facilitate improved performance on varied motor skills. An experiment which drew from previous studies in MR, incorporated suggestions from.the literature, and used a novel measurement task was conducted. The present study compared MR to physical practice (PP), no practice (NP), mental rehearsal/physical practice combined (MR/PP), and interference mental rehearsal (I). Five groups of twenty subjects (N=100) played a hand-held video computer game in a pre- and post-test design. The present study hypothesized that MR would improve performance scores in the video game task. A second hypothesis based on more recent trends in MR literature predicted that an MR/PP group might demonstrate more improvement than the PP group. A final hypothesis was that should MR/PP not exceed PP in improved performance, the rank order outcome from greatest to least improvement would be: PP, MR/PP, MR, NP, and I. The results of the present study were in conflict with reports in the literature and the pilot study, and did not support the three hypotheses. Subjects in all five treatment groups improved performance significantly between the pre- and post-test periods, however, none of the five treatment strategies demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in performance. The I group improved more based on mean percent improvement than either the MR/PP or PP groups. The rank order prediction was not supported in that the results of greatest to least mean percent improvement were as follows: I, MR/PP, MR, NP-, and PP. It is concluded that lack of significant improvement in performance using MR is most probably due to task related variables of complexity, unpredictability, difficulty, and the external pacing of performance that the video game task demands. The data are most consistent with literature reports which used complex and difficult tasks and ones which were paced by external task demands (i.e., the subject had to respond according to task demands rather than pacing his or her own performance). Further, the data are consistent with reports that suggest MR is less effective in unpredictable, difficult, and externally paced tasks than in ones which are predictable, leas difficult, and self-paced.

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of college speech classes upon developing improved listening skills. More specifically it sought to determine the extent to which the students who took Speech 100 or 111 have acquired listening skills. There has been considerable theorizing concerning listening and auding [sic] with only a scattering of experimentation. According to existing data, listening would appear to be a complex human behavior that is only partially understood. There are, however definite listener functions, listening conditions and variables that affect listening. Aspects of attention are also important when considering the occurrence on unoccurrence [sic] of listening. Initially, the Listening Attitude Test (LAT) was developed in order to measure conceptual changes in listening skills. The LAT was statistically analyzed to determine it validity. This test was then presented to three different student populations: 1) students who had just completed Speech 100 or 111; 2) students who were at least one academic year removed from Speech 100 or 111; and 3) students who never had Speech 100 or 111. All of the students from these three populations were selected from Speech 100, Speech 111 or English Composition classes at Portland State University. The performance of the three populations were statistically compared using the t test to determine the significance of differences between means. The following is a summary of the findings. The LAT was correlated with the Brown-Carlsen Listening Comprehension Test Parts A, E and A and E combined. The results indicated that the LAT was testing what it purported to test, i.e., listening attitude. The t test was applied to the data from three different student populations that took the LAT. The results indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between students who have not had Speech 100 or 111 and those who have just completed Speech 100 or 111. There was a significant difference between students who have just completed Speech 100 or 111 and those who have completed Speech 100 or 111 but are at least one academic year removed from it. In addition, a significant difference was revealed between students who have not had Speech 100 or 111 and those who completed Speech 100 or 111 but are at least one academic year removed from it. It is clear that the findings support those contending that exposure to speech improve listening skills. The claim made by Nichols and Lewis (1954) that instruction in listening skills would improve listening was not supported by the “just completed group” data and no single overriding hypothesis seems to account for this discrepancy. Nichols and Lewis (1954), however, were dealing with college speech courses which were heavily loaded with training techniques for improving listening ability, which was not the case in Speech 100 or 111 courses at Portland State University.

Common experience suggests that most people can tell whether they are being looked at by another person who is about 8 m away. However, the results of past experiments, which used distances of no more than about 3 m, have implied that this cannot be done if the person looked at (Receiver) judges only by the iris-sclera configuration of the person looking (Sender). This is true even if eye contact is defined simply as identifying on-face gazes (FGs). It has been suggested that in everyday experience eye contact is accompanied by cues other than iris position, and that these non-iris-position (NIP) cues to Receiver account for recognition at longer distances. The hypotheses of the present experiment are that FGs can be identified at considerably more than 3 m, without NIP cues: and that this happens because as features of Sender's lower face fall within Receiver's central vision at longer distances, Receiver is able to use them for triangulating the position of Sender's irises.

Current explanations for the Ames Trapezoid Illusion are based upon the the absence of cues: the illusion is said to occur at chance. A review of recent literature showed that: (a) the illusion varies in frequency as a function of target shape (b) that the dominant cue to reduce the frequency of the illusion is the variant in retinal height. Based upon the dominance of this cue a new model was presented. Following this model it was hypothesized that observers viewing partial rotation when the target produces the greatest difference in the retinal height of the ends would determine the true direction more accurately than observers viewing the same target when the differences in the retinal height was least. The results confirmed the hypothesis.

It has been suggested in the literature that Synaesthesia, as an expression of syncretic thought, would be more common in non-Western than in Western cultures. Given the lack of availability of widely divergent cultural groups and the general lack of knowledge about the phenomenon, it was decided to study the possibility that synaesthesia in our society might be related to socio-economic class. A group of high school students from a broad range of socio-economic backgrounds was studied, and the results suggest that the occurrence of synaesthesia is not related to class. In addition, it was found that 50% of the sample tested were synaesthetic to some degree, an incidence higher than any reported previously for adults. The various types of synaesthesia are discussed in conjunction with a hypothetical neurophysiological basis for the phenomenon. It was found that about 60% of the synaesthetic subjects showed evidence of incomplete cerebral dominance. However' no definite conclusions as to the causes of synaesthesia in adults could be determined from the observations made, and the questions raised by this study offer suggestions for future research into the problem.

In this study, we examine the relationship between having a support system and the stigma individuals face with depression and anxiety symptoms. The aim of this study was to examine if having a support system acts as a buffer between perceived stigma and mental health symptoms. For this study, I conducted an online survey to measure symptoms of depression and anxiety, experiences with both perceived and internalized stigma, and social support. While 93 total participants engaged in the survey, only 52 fully completed the survey and passed two attention-check questions to ensure no invalid participation (e.g., BOTS) were present. In order to test the study hypothesis, two moderated regression analyses were conducted. Results revealed that both perceived stigma and internalized stigma were significantly and positively related to anxiety and depressive mental health symptoms. However, social support was significantly and negatively related to mental health symptoms only in the model with perceived but not internalized stigma. Finally, no significant interactions between either stigma and social support were found, indicating that social support did not buffer the negative impact of either forms of stigma. Importantly, this study was limited by a small sample size that could have prohibited finding significant results.

Past research has supported a representational-hierarchical theory of memory and perception that extends the ventral visual stream into the medial temporal lobe. In this account, representations are organized in a hierarchical manner, such that structures located further anterior in the brain contain complex representations of whole objects and areas further posterior in the visual cortex contain representations of simple features. When conjunctive representations are compromised, an individual must rely on simple-feature representations to complete mnemonic and perceptual tasks. However, these simple-feature representations are susceptible to feature-level interference, which can cause false recognition of novel objects. The goal of the present study was to explore the account’s third assumption: the effect of interference. Experiment 1 examined the effect of interference on neural representations during fMRI. Experiment 2 investigated the effect of different types of interference on a behavioral memory task with older adults thought to have impaired conjunctive representations. Although the results of the first experiment were inconclusive, the second experiment revealed that older adults’ recognition memory performance was shielded from semantic, but not perceptual, interference. The implications of this finding are discussed.