Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: B, page: 3805. Adviser: Michel Regenwetter. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 160-177) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (M.S.)--Lehigh University, 2009. / Adviser: Catherine M. Arrington.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1962. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-184). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: B, page: 3803. Adviser: Kara Federmeier. Includes bibliographical references. Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

<p> The present study investigates whether internet technology is used by young (YA) and older adults (OA) to change bad moods. This study also investigates whether the number of strategies used to try to change a bad mood are significantly higher among YA as compared to OA. Continuity theory, described by Atchley (1989), is used to support the hypothesis that YA will indicate internet use as a mood self-regulation tool, whereas, OA will not. Undergraduate students and adults from local senior clubs and a church choir were surveyed regarding the strategies they use to change a bad mood. Results are analyzed by applying a chi-square test of independence, a <i>t</i>-test, and a factor analysis. Results indicate the difference between YA and OA who use the internet to change a bad mood is approaching significance. Results also indicate YA use more strategies to change a bad mood than do OA.</p>

<p> This dissertation investigated the role of individual differences in human use of automation in a simulated command and control task. Using this knowledge we then sought to redesign the simulation interface to improve human-automation interaction. In the first study, participants completed a battery of cognitive tasks to measure working memory capacity, simple memory span, and controlled attention ability. They then performed a simulated air defense task under varying levels of workload and automation assistance. Eye tracking data recorded fixations to capture eye movements during completion of each scenario. Although individual difference measures correlated with primary task performance, they did not predict use of automation. Only average percent of fixations on the automation messaging interface correlated with automation use. Therefore, the second study introduced a redesigned automation interface with the integration of an auditory chime and a visual flicker to promote additional fixations to the message interface and encourage increased automation use. However, this redesign did not increase average fixation percentage and surprisingly resulted in lower use of automation. This finding emphasized Parasuraman and Riley&rsquo;s (1997) warning that automation can change user behavior in unintended ways. Another notable finding from the study is the unexpected result that short term memory predicted primary task performance. Further, this study provides evidence to support the use of eye tracking measures as a continuous unobtrusive measure of automation use in complex systems. Limitations and future research are also discussed.</p>

Emotional experiences seem to be easier to remember than neutral ones, but whether memory for all aspects of an experience is improved by emotion remains unclear. Some researchers have argued that the influence of emotion is different on memory for item versus source information, whereas others have argued that emotion affects both similarly. Also, whether item and source memory are affected by emotion in older people in the same way as young people is currently unknown. This dissertation examined the relations among item and source memory, emotion, and aging. In Experiment 1, young people and older adults were asked to report memory for source information surrounding a real life event (i.e., how they heard about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001). No age differences were found in source memory, suggesting that emotion improves memory for contextual information, especially in older adults. This hypothesis was subsequently tested in a series of laboratory studies, in which item and source memory for emotional and neutral materials was examined in young people and older adults. Memory for emotional items was superior to memory for neutral items in both young and older adults, whereas the emotional content of the stimulus, for the most part, had no effect on source memory. However, source memory was improved when the source itself (tone of voice) was made emotional (in Experiments 3 and 4), although item memory was generally unaffected by this manipulation. Overall, item and source memory were poorer in older people compared to young, but emotion seemed to have a similar effect on both age groups. The dissociable influences of emotion on item and source memory suggest that by and large these two kinds of memory processing occur independently of one another.

Three assumptions of the pattern suppression model of retrieval-induced forgetting were examined, with a view to apply results toward making effective use of reminders. These assumptions included: (1) that retrieval-induced forgetting is retrieval specific, (2) that it results from retrieval competition and (3) that access to affected items is inhibited at the level of the item representation. In Experiment 1, the retrieval-specific nature of this effect was examined by contrasting the effects of read and generate tasks, conducted in the retrieval practice phase of the retrieval practice paradigm, on later free recall. Subjects showed retrieval-induced forgetting only when the generate task was employed, suggesting that the retrieval process is necessary to produce a forgetting effect. The scope of retrieval competition was tested in both Experiments 2 and 3. Experiment 2 focused upon whether items become competitors simply by sharing semantic features with retrieval practiced targets, or whether competitors also must be subsumed within the domain of the retrieval practice cue. Items in the overlap between two categories were retrieval practiced as members of one of the paired categories (e.g., "lemon" was practiced as a "YELLOW" item, but was also a "FRUIT"). Subsequent recall of critical items from either the retrieval practiced (YELLOW) or overlapping (FRUIT) category was examined. Subjects showed retrieval-induced forgetting only for items that were members of the retrieval practiced category, suggesting that mere semantic relatedness is not sufficient to make an item a competitor. Experiment 3 was designed to examine: (1) whether nonstudied items in the semantic domain of an episodic retrieval cue act as competitors, and (2) whether item representations are inhibited in retrieval-induced forgetting. A perceptual identification task was administered as the last segment of the retrieval practice paradigm. These results were inconclusive, as no effect of retrieval practice was found either for reaction times or numbers of errors. Possible interpretations of this result in light of current literature are discussed, as are potential applications and future directions for this line of research, particularly in cognitive rehabilitation.

In order to recognize a written word, the relative positions of its component letters must be encoded. Ultimately, this information must be precise enough to distinguish between anagrams such as causal and casual while retaining enough flexibility to recognize elehpant as elephant. The lexical decision experiments reported here used a more dramatic version of transposed letter priming than has previously been reported in order to identify the constraints on this flexibility. In light of the observed data, several current models of letter position coding were evaluated and suggestions for future models were proposed. The first goal of this research was to determine the degree of flexibility in word recognition in terms of how many transposed letters can be tolerated in the input. Reliable priming was observed throughout the experiments when as many as six of the eight letters had been transposed (most ps < .01). However, Experiments 5 and 6 identified the limit of this flexibility, in that fully transposed primes did not activate their target entries. The second goal was to identify letter position effects, or differences in the importance of various letter positions in lexical access. Experiments 1-4 supported Jordan et al.'s (2003) claim that the exterior letters of a word are the most crucial. Stronger priming was derived from primes with correctly placed exterior letters and transposed interior letters than from the reverse case. Support was also found for Inhoff et al.'s (2003) claim that a word's initial letters are more important to lexical access than later letters (Experiment 7). Overall, a trend of decreasing importance from left to right was observed, with the possible exception of the final letter. The observed data were compared to the predictions made by the BLIRNET model (Mozer, 1991), Grainger & van Heuven's (in press) open bigram coding scheme, the SOLAR model (Davis, 1999), and the SERIOL model (Whitney, 1999). This enabled us to identify particularly effective and problematic approaches to letter position coding. Finally, it is proposed that a visual word recognition system with two parallel, complementary processing streams best describes the data.

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