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Two interesting properties of the distribution of spatially selective attention have been noted in the behavioral and electrophysiological literature. First, there is a graded field of attention that expands from the center of the attended area. Second, the size of the attended area can be adjusted to be either larger or smaller in order to match the demands of the current task. Five event-related potential (ERP) studies are presented that extend these findings in several important ways; 1) The time frame of these two distribution properties is different. Results are consistent with a two stage model of spatial attention in which visual processing is initially enhanced for all stimuli presented near the center of the attended area as indexed by the amplitude of the first negative peak in the waveform (N1). Subsequently, the effects of narrowing or expanding the attentional field to the relevant size affects visual processing as indexed by the amplitude of the second negative peak (N2). 2) Object boundaries had limited impact on either the spread of the initial gradient of spatial selection or the scale of attention. 3) When selecting visual stimuli for attentive processing based on features such as color and size there is also a gradient of facilitation, but the impact of this graded selection on visual processing is not observed until later in processing, and is indexed by the amplitude of the selection negativity (SN). Furthermore, similar to the lack of interaction between object boundaries and the range of cued locations, the gradients of feature-based selection are not affected by the range of cued features.

Existing research suggests that there is a relation between academic and cognitive ability and externalizing behavior in young children, but the direction of this relation is unclear. The present study tested competing models of the relation between academic and cognitive functioning and behavior problems during early childhood. Participants were 223 children (120 boys, 103 girls) who participated in a longitudinal study from age 3 to 6. A reciprocal model was supported in which early academic and cognitive problems and externalizing behavior predict one another over time, controlling for mothers' education and family stress. When hyperactivity, inattention, and aggression were examined separately with controls, there was evidence that the reciprocal relation was driven primarily by inattention and hyperactivity. No significant gender differences were found. These results suggest that the reciprocal relation between academic and cognitive ability and inattention/hyperactivity is evident early in development, highlighting the need for early assessment and intervention.

The literature on age-related cognitive changes suggests that some older adults may begin to experience cognitive declines resulting in difficulty engaging in adaptive behavior necessary for functional independent living. Understanding the relationship between these cognitive and functional changes will be important for guiding researchers and clinicians in addressing this issue. Many theories regarding the underlying causes of cognitive aging have been proposed. Most causes appear to be related to changes in the efficiency and accuracy with which information is processed. Two current, competing hypotheses of cognitive aging include the processing speed theory of aging and the frontal lobe theory of aging; however, these theories propose two different mechanisms of cognitive change. Processing speed theory suggests that cognitive aging is a bottom-up process in which diffuse declines in a foundational cognitive process impact higher order cognitive functions. In contrast, frontal lobe theory suggests a top down process in that frontal lobe functions decline first and influence other processes in the brain. The current project examined data collected from a large multi-site sample during the Staying Keen in Later Life (SKILL) study. Specifically, the current study investigated both processing speed and frontal lobe theories of aging in an effort to determine which hypothesis best fit the data. It was observed that each model fit the data equally well, thus suggesting that both processes play a critical role in daily functioning. Additionally, the constructs overlapped substantially suggesting that the cognitive constructs may not be as separable as traditionally thought. Finally, the model was invariant across age groups and no differences were observed between young-old, middle-old, and old-old groups.

Social facilitation is characterized by improved performance on simple, or well-known, tasks and impaired performance on complex, or unfamiliar, tasks. Previous research has demonstrated that the use of social presence may improve performance on cognitive-based tasks that are relevant to many organizational contexts, such as vigilance. However, to date, there has not been consolidation of the research regarding the different implementations of social facilitation, or any analysis indicating which types of social presence are best under varying conditions. The present dissertation describes three experiments that seek to contribute to a taxonomic framework of social facilitation. Experiment One statistically established a difference in task difficulty between two versions of a cognitive-based vigilance task by utilizing increasing increments of event rate in order to examine the first factor of the taxonomy (i.e., level of difficulty). Experiment Two explored the effects of two novel manipulations of social presence, electronic performance monitoring (i.e., EPM) and co-acting, in order to demonstrate that both novel forms of social presence could improve performance, and were worth examining further. Finally, Experiment Three replicated and extended the results of Experiments One and Two by examining the interaction effects of levels of task difficulty and social presence through the use of ten conditions. Overall the results indicates that multiple forms of social presence can improve cognitive performance, however, this effect was not moderated by the level of task difficulty, as suggested by the predominant theories of social facilitation. This suggests that future work should seek to replicate and extend this finding in order to determine if the level of task difficult is indeed a moderating variable of social facilitation. Additionally, the results demonstrated that social presence could be used in organizational settings in order to improve employee performance, while also sometimes reducing the perceived workload associated with the task.

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This dissertation addresses a gap in the existing sustainability behavior research, by integrating research from the social sciences about environmental attitudes and knowledge with approaches from engineering regarding the characteristics of the built environment. Specifically, this dissertation explores the role of both environmental knowledge and design features within the built environment on building occupants' energy behaviors throughout the course of an environmental conservation campaign. Data were collected from 240 dormitory residents using a multi-phase questionnaire approach to study these factors and their combined impact within the context of environmental sustainability practices on UCF's campus. The results from a series of correlational and multiple regression analyses indicate that both the design components of the built environment and the attitudes held by individuals within that environment have a significant positive influence on behaviors. Furthermore, these findings indicated that this effect increases significantly when the two factors work together. Finally, the results show that pro- environmental attitudes and behaviors can be successfully targeted through a cue-based energy conservation campaign. By addressing a gap in the extant Human Factors research about the relationship between attitudinal factors and the built environment, this dissertation provides a unique contribution to the field and points the way towards development of promising solutions for encouraging sustainable behaviors.

Performance consequences have been long established when humans multitask. This research concerns the impact of distraction on the attentional shifts during a task that underlies many cognitive processes and everyday tasks, searching for a target item among non-target items (e.g., scanning the road for potential collisions). There is evidence that increasing the mental workload by introducing additional tasks influences our ability to search our environment or interferes with processing fixated information. In the current studies, I aimed to evaluate the changes in gaze behaviors during visual search to evaluate how multitasking impairs our attentional processes. Participants completed a visual search task (search for a target T among distractor L's) while wearing a heads-up display (Google Glass) which displays an unrelated word during the dual task condition, while the control condition required participants to complete the search task without distraction. The changes in oculomotor behavior were observed in four experiments: (1) evaluating general oculomotor behavior during distraction, (2) masking the display onset of the secondary information during an eye movement to reduce the possibility of distraction from the word appearing, (3) removing any occlusion of stimuli from the heads-up display by having no visual overlap of the two tasks, and (4) evaluating whether oculomotor behaviors were similar to previous results when the nature of the distracting task changes in sensory modality. Participants typically took longer to respond when distracted, except for when the word onset was masked and the word was present auditorily. Oculomotor results indicated an increase in fixation durations (occasionally for the initial saccade latency as well) and a reduction of target fixations when participants were distracted by secondary information. These results suggest that secondary visual information can impact how humans search their environment in a fashion which increases their time to respond and impacts selective visual processing.