Most of the human visual field falls in the periphery, and peripheral processing is important for normal visual functioning. Yet, little is known about peripheral object recognition in naturalistic scenes and factors that modulate this ability. We propose that a critical function of scene and object memory is in order to facilitate visual object recognition in the periphery. In the first experiment, participants identified objects in scenes across different levels of familiarity and contextual information within the scene. We found that familiarity with a scene resulted in a significant increase in the distance that objects were recognized. Furthermore, we found that a semantically consistent scene improved the distance that object recognition is possible, supporting the notion that contextual facilitation is possible in the periphery. In the second experiment, the preview duration of a scene was varied in order to examine how a scene representation is built and how memory of that scene and the objects within it contributes to object recognition in the periphery. We found that the closer participants fixated to the object in the preview, the farther on average they recognized that target object in the periphery. However, only a preview duration of the scenes for 5000 ms produced significantly farther peripheral object recognition compared to not previewing the scene. Overall, these experiments introduce a novel research paradigm for object recognition in naturalistic scenes, and demonstrates multiple factors that have systematic effects on peripheral object recognition. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Two skills necessary for the execution of proficient calculation, retrieving arithmetic facts from memory and accessing number magnitude information, were studied in a group of patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and healthy controls to try to elucidate the locus of impairment in AD-related calculation deficits. This was achieved through the use of an arithmetic production task and a number-matching task as measures of explicit and implicit retrieval of arithmetic facts, and a numerical Stroop task that assesses automatic access to number magnitude representation. AD patients, but not MCI patients, showed high response latencies and a high number of errors when performing multiplications in the production task, and reduced automatic retrieval of arithmetic task in the number-matching task. All participants showed the classic problem-size effect often reported in the mathematical cognition literature. Performance on the numerical Stroop task suggests that access to number magnitude information is relatively resistant to cognitive impairment. ... Results for the AD group are consistent with a pattern of preserved and impaired cognitive processes that might mediate the reported calculation deficits in AD. / by Marâia Beatriz Jurado Noboa. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

This experiment investigated an individual's memory of specific motion events, unique actor, intrinsic motion, and extrinsic motion combination. Intrinsic motions involve the movement of an individual's body parts in a specific manner to move around, while extrinsic motions specify a path in reference to an external object. Participants viewed video clips, each depicting an actor performing a unique extrinsic and intrinsic motion combination. One week later, they viewed a different series of retrieval video clips consisting of old (identical to encoding), extrinsic conjunction (extrinsic motion previously performed by different actor), intrinsic conjunction (intrinsic motion previously performed by different actor), and new (novel extrinsic or intrinsic motion) video clips. Participants responded "yes" to viewing the old video clips the most often, followed by conjunction video clips, and then new video clips. Furthermore, there were a greater number of "yes" event memory recognition responses for extrinsic conjunction items than intrinsic conjunction items. / by Johanna D. Berger. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Across three experiments, we assessed how location and color information contributes to the identification of an object whose image has been degraded, making its identity ambiguous. In Experiment 1, some of the target objects had fixed locations within the scene. We found that subjects used this location information during search and later to identify the blurred target objects. In Experiment 2, we tested whether location and color information can be combined to identify degraded objects, and results were inconclusive. In Experiment 3, both the location and color of each object was variable but statistically predictive of the object's identity. We found that subjects used both sources of information-color and location - equally when identifying the blurred image of the object. Overall, these findings suggest that location information may be as determining as intrinsic feature information to identify objects when the objects' intrinsic features are degraded. / by Derrick Schlangen. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Satellite-framed languages and verb-framed languages differ in how they encode motion events. English encodes or lexicalizes Path in verb particles, prepositional phrases, or satellites associated with the main verb. In contrast, Turkish tends to encode Path in the main verb of a clause. When describing motion events, English speakers typically use verbs that convey information about manner rather than path, whereas Turkish speakers do the opposite. In this study, we investigated whether this crosslinguistic difference between English and Turkish influences how the speakers of these languages perform in a non-linguistic recognition memory task. In a video description task, English speakers used more manner verbs in the main verb of sentences than Turkish speakers did. In the recognition memory task, English speakers attended more strongly than Turkish speakers did to path of motion. English and Turkish speakers attended equally to manner of motion, however, providing no support for the linguistic relativity hypothesis. / by Ferhat Karaman. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Recent research in visual object recognition has shown that context can facilitate object recognition. This study assessed the effect of self-relevant familiarity of context in object recognition. Participants performed a task in which they had to recognize degraded objects shown under varying levels of contextual information. The level of degradation at which they could successfully recognize the target object was used as a measure of performance. There were five contextual conditions: (1) no context, (2) context, (3) context and size, (4) context and location, (5) context, size and location. Within each contextual condition, we compared the performance of "Expert" participants who viewed objects in the context of their own house and "Novice" participants who viewed those particular settings for the first time. Ratings were performed to assess each object's consistency, frequency, position consistency, typicality and shape distinctiveness. Object's size was the only contextual info rmation that did not affect performance. Contextual information significantly reduced the amount of bottom-up visual information needed for object identification for both experts and novices. An interaction (Contextual Information x Level of Familiarity) was observed. Expert participants' performance improved significantly more than novice participants' performance by the presence of contextual information. Location information affected the performance of expert participants, only when objects that occupied stable positions were considered. Both expert and novice participants performed better with objects that rated high in typicality and shape distinctiveness. Object's consistency, frequency and position consistency did not seem to affect expert participants' performance but did affect novice participants' performance. / A regression analysis model that included Level of Familiarity, Contextual Information Level, Shape and Typical performance. Our results are in accordance with the priming model of visual object recognition. We concluded that a self-relevant context has its own consistency rules and that it affects visual object recognition by narrowing down the number of expectations and the search space significantly more than a non-self-relevant context does. Keywords: visual object recognition, self-relevant familiarity, location, size, probability. / by Evangelie Daskagianni. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 292-306).

Measuring public opinion on abortion is an ongoing concern for political scientists, mainly because the public does not always exhibit fixed attitudes on such topics. Most citizens express a centrist viewpoint between the pro choice and pro life extremes. These include a small group whose answers to abortion questions are so inconsistent that they give public officials an inaccurate measure of public opinion on this important issue. Inconsistent responses may result from context effects, such as the order in which the questions are asked or the way they are asked. Usually, researchers ask a battery of questions in which respondents say whether they approve of abortion generally and under a variety of circumstances, citing the reasons for which a woman might seek an abortion. This project includes an independent national survey using questions adopted from the General Social Survey. The sample is divided into four experimental groups with different question orders. Based on these findings, the recommended question order would be the one with the general question last and the remaining specific questions in a somewhat random pattern alternating between the so-called “hard” and “easy” individual abortion situations. One of the more surprising findings is that people didn’t recognize themselves as subtracting the specific situations from the general question when it was asked first; hardly any said that was what they were doing when they gave inconsistent answers. Otherwise, about an equal number of respondents admitted answering the questions off the top of their heads as those who showed ambivalence by claiming they were deeply committed to their inconsistent responses. The study found most people who inconsistent on abortion are moderates leaning towards pro choice. Also, politically conservative regular church-goers can be just as inconsistent on abortion as the non-religious, non-political, low-educated non-church goers, especially if they are basically pro choice. Without a full understanding of who is generating inconsistent answers on abortion, some researchers may be tempted to eliminate these respondents from their sample. This research should allow them to understand these respondents better and develop better question wording and question orders to reduce their numbers.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 241-258). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis supervisor: Michael S. Lewis-Beck. Thesis supervisor: David Redlawsk. Includes bibliographic references (p. 187-195).