The aim of this study was to find if manipulating fluency, that is, the ease of processing, could affect confidence ratings about whether an event occurred in the respondents&rsquo / past. To test the familiarity misattribution hypothesis, which states that familiarity caused by fluent processing can be misattributed to past experience if the source of fluency cannot be identified, two methods were used: a revelation task, which was anagram solving and repetition priming. In the revelation task the familiarity misattribution hypothesis and the activation based hypothesis were tested by presenting one of the words in each one of the Life Event Inventory (LEI) items as an anagram or an unrelated anagram before the LEI, respectively. Higher confidence ratings for LEIs with an anagram compared to LEIs without anagrams would indicate that a revelation effect. A revelation effect was not observed for either condition. Therefore, the previous findings of revelation effect for autobiographical memories (Bernstein et al., 2002) could not be replicated when Turkish counterparts of LEI and anagrams were used. In the repetition priming experiments, the participants&rsquo / awareness of the source of fluency was manipulated by presenting either a subliminal or a supraliminal prime before they responded to a LEI item. The prime was either the same as the verb of the LEI sentence, or a different verb. Participants gave higher confidence ratings if subliminal primes were identical to, rather than different from, the verb of the sentence. If the participants were aware of seeing the primes, this difference disappeared. These results were consistent with the familiarity misattribution hypothesis.

Reading fluency bridges the concepts of word recognition and reading comprehension, both of which are vital skills needed to become a successful reader. This study evaluated the impact of video self-modeling (VSM) on oral reading fluency in four upper elementary students at-risk for failing in reading. A multiple-baseline design across participants was used to evaluate the outcomes of the VSM intervention. The results indicate that VSM may have a positive impact on reading fluency of students at-risk for reading failure; the use of VSM was positively associated with increases in reading fluency in three of the four participants. The participant for whom VSM alone did not result in substantial reading gains needed an additional repeated reading intervention to improve fluency. Generalization occurred for all participants and some evidence of maintenance was noted in three participants. Social validity surveys indicated high acceptability of the VSM intervention by study participants.

Dominant approaches in film studies reflect the deeply-rooted assumption – inherited in large part from Marx and Foucault – that human nature and human history are inherently characterized by conflict and the struggle for power. However, this normative adversarialism prevents us from acknowledging the experiences and works of individuals who operate under a different set of foundational assumptions based instead on mutualism, cooperation, and forms of power that do not engage in zero-sum struggles. This dissertation will treat adversarialism not as an essential, inevitable, or preferable aspect of human nature, but rather as a culturally learned pattern of behavior that can be overcome, both individually and collectively. How would dominant theoretical frameworks in film studies be affected by a view of human nature that does not celebrate moments of conflict and adversarialism, but mutualistic tendencies instead? By mobilizing the definition provided by the Bahá’í discourse community (BDC) of “world citizenship” as a global ethic founded on the inherent oneness of humanity, this study will challenge three generally adversarial assumptions in the study of film: 1) That any filmmaker working within a non-democratic or “oppressive” state is politically worthy of celebration primarily when actively criticizing the politics of that state; 2) That any filmmaker with a complex multicultural background will have a psychologically difficult time reconciling their own cultural differences and reflect that internal struggle in their films; and 3) That conflict is an essential part of any popular cinematic narrative. Current approaches to filmmaking in an era of globalization, operating under normative adversarialism and often emphasizing the articulation of difference, are inadequate to explain the works of filmmakers living and working within a mutualistic ethic of world citizenship. By taking Dayyan Eng – a multicultural filmmaker based in Beijing, China – as the primary case study, I will develop a “world citizen” framework based on the articulation of the essential oneness of humanity and a filmmaker’s development of a “triple fluency” (cinematic, cultural, and industrial) to address limitations inherent in existing concepts in order to more appropriately illuminate the works of other media makers who work and live according to similar conceptual frameworks.

People use facial appearance to infer the social attributes of others. A primary indicator of facial attractiveness is prototypicality (the proximity of an object to its categorical central tendency); faces and objects closer to the central tendency are judged as more attractive. Perceptual fluency theory suggests that cognitive processing speed directly generates positive affect. This dissertation examined the relationships among attractiveness, prototypicality, and affective response in faces and non-face objects across adult and 8-year-old participants using a reaction time (RT) paradigm. RT predicted positive affect and disgust responses to facial stimuli. Of particular note are the series of complementary findings suggesting that reaction to unattractive faces may be both quantitatively (i.e., longer RT latencies) and qualitatively (i.e., judged to be less typical) different from high and medium attractive faces. These findings may help explain how appearance-based stereotypes are formed and maintained. / text

The purpose of the present study was to explore whether the phonological encoding difficulties that have been demonstrated in children who stutter persist in adults whose stuttering persists. This hypothesis was investigated by comparing the phonological working memory of adults who stutter (AWS) and adults who do not stutter (AWNS) using non-word repetition and phoneme elision tasks. Twenty-four adults (age range = 17;9 to 46;11 mean age = 28;2): 12 AWS and 12 AWNS matched on gender and age participated in this study. A total of 48 non-words consisting of an equal number (N = 12 per syllable length category) of two-syllable, three-syllable, four-syllable and seven-syllable non-words were selected for use in the non-word repetition and phoneme elision tasks. In the non-word repetition task, results showed a significant interaction between fluency group and syllable length for the 7-syllable length category only, indicating that AWS require a significantly higher mean number of attempts than AWNS. Results of the phoneme elision task revealed a significant main effect for syllable length with both groups demonstrating a significant reduction in accuracy as the non-words increased in length, but there was no significant interaction between fluency group and syllable class length. Potential implications of these findings are presented along with recommendations for future research. / text

There are data to suggest that the phonological representations of young children who stutter are less specified than their typically fluent peers. The purpose of the present study is to determine if this apparent difference in phonological encoding persists in adults who stutter. Utilizing a false memory paradigm, nine adults who stutter (AWS) were asked to listen to and then recall/produce 12 lists of 12 words each. Each word list was comprised of either semantic, phonological or an equal number of semantic and phonological associates of a single, unpresented, critical ‘lure’ word. Three parameters of recall performance were measured across these three conditions: 1) number of accurately recalled productions, 2) number of lure intrusions and 3) number of other intrusions. AWS produced significantly more accurate recalls in the semantic condition than either the hybrid or phonological conditions, and significantly more lure intrusions in the phonological and hybrid conditions than the semantic condition, but there was no significant difference on measures of other intrusions. These results extend the findings with young children who stutter, and indicate that the phonological representations are less robust than the semantic representations in the lexicon of AWS. / text

Reading is an essential skill for students with physical disabilities which opens up opportunities in many areas of an individual’s life including the acquisition of knowledge, the ability to read for enjoyment, and the chances of gaining employment. Students with physical disabilities often do not read fluently; however, there is a lack of research on instructional methods to address reading fluency with this population. Methodologies used with students who have physical disabilities are often borrowed from other populations (e.g., the use of repeated readings to increase fluency with students with learning disabilities). Additionally, advances in technology suggest the possible use of computers to model reading. This study employed a changing criterion design to examine the use of a treatment package consisting of repeated readings, computer modeling, error correction, and performance feedback on improving reading fluency with students with cerebral palsy. The areas of reading comprehension and accuracy were also examined. An analysis of the data demonstrated that all students were able to increase reading fluency, accuracy, and comprehension from first to final readings within a session (positive nontransfer effects). Analysis of the percentage of nonoverlapping data revealed that three of the four students also showed slight increases in reading fluency on novel passages (positive transfer effects). Although the results of this study indicated that the treatment package was effective with students who have physical disabilities, more research is needed to examine individual components of the treatment package and to evaluate the use of such methods over a lengthier period of time.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2007), 27% of the nation’s 8th grade population scored below the basic reading level in 2006-2007. Reading fluency strategies are a viable practice for improving reading achievement yet seldom are they incorporated into the 8th grade curriculum. To be effective, passages used in reading fluency strategies should be at the students’ instructional reading level (Daly, Persampieri, et al., 2005; Welsch, 2007). However, if increased oral reading fluency gained at the instructional reading level fails to generalize to content-area text that a student is required to read, the gain is not clinically significant, as it does not allow the student access to required reading. Stahl and Heubach (2006) recommended providing instruction in more difficult material while providing a strong degree of support. In this study, four middle school students reading one to two years below grade level received strong support for increasing reading fluency while using their social studies textbook. The intervention package consisted of listening passage preview, repeated reading, phrase-drill error correction, and performance feedback with student charting. Two research questions guided this study: (a) What are the effects of a comprehensive treatment package consisting of commonly utilized strategies for improving oral reading fluency on middle school students’ oral reading fluency using their required grade-level social studies textbooks? and (b) to what extent does performance generalize to required literature textbook passages and passages from CRCT Coach in Science (2002) and CRCT Coach in Social Studies (2002)? A multiple probe across participants design was used to answer these questions. Visual analysis of graphically displayed single-case data revealed that the multicomponent reading intervention positively affected student performance on intervention and generalization passages. The results of this study are promising, and given that reading content-area text is the core of education in middle school, further research is necessary.

Evidence suggests that cerebral blood flow patterns accompanying a mental activity are retained in many locked-in patients. Thus, real-time monitoring with functional transcranial Doppler (TCD) together with a specific mental task could control a brain-computer interface (BCI), thereby providing self-initiated interaction. The objective of this study was to create an automatic detection algorithm to differentiate hemodynamic responses coincident with one's performance of verbal fluency (VF) versus counting tasks. We recruited 10 healthy adults who each silently performed up to 30 VF tasks and counted between each. Both middle cerebral arteries were simultaneously imaged using TCD. Linear Discriminant Analyses (LDA) successfully differentiated between VF and both prior and post counting tasks. For every participant, LDA achieved the 70% classification accuracy sufficient for BCIs. Results demonstrate automatic detection of a VF task by TCD and warrant further investigation of TCD as a BCI.

Evidence suggests that cerebral blood flow patterns accompanying a mental activity are retained in many locked-in patients. Thus, real-time monitoring with functional transcranial Doppler (TCD) together with a specific mental task could control a brain-computer interface (BCI), thereby providing self-initiated interaction. The objective of this study was to create an automatic detection algorithm to differentiate hemodynamic responses coincident with one's performance of verbal fluency (VF) versus counting tasks. We recruited 10 healthy adults who each silently performed up to 30 VF tasks and counted between each. Both middle cerebral arteries were simultaneously imaged using TCD. Linear Discriminant Analyses (LDA) successfully differentiated between VF and both prior and post counting tasks. For every participant, LDA achieved the 70% classification accuracy sufficient for BCIs. Results demonstrate automatic detection of a VF task by TCD and warrant further investigation of TCD as a BCI.