No description available.

No description available.

Writing is a complex task that requires the successful management of cognitive resources. Freewriting is a technique, popularized in the 1960's and 70's, where the writer writes for a set period of time without stopping; only after the time is up does the writer return to revise. The technique has been used widely, and is thought to improve writing, perhaps by reducing cognitive overload. However, few well-controlled studies have been conducted to investigate its efficacy and the consequences of its use. In the experiment carried out here, the effects of freewriting on the writing of short, expository essays was examined. Based on review of the literature, it was expected that the use of freewriting would result in essays rated higher in quality than essays written in a control condition (where no specific writing instructions were offered) and also higher that essays written using another writing strategy, the "polished draft" strategy, in which the writer attempts to write as well as possible from the start. The characteristics and quality of essays composed using freewriting were compared to that of essays composed in a control condition and to essays written using the polished draft strategy. Results suggested that excepting students receiving the very lowest course grades, freewriting had an unfavorable effect that increased with course grade; thus, students with average and above-average course grades saw a decrease in essay quality with the use of freewriting. The use of freewriting was also found to produce essays that were longer, used more present tense (as compared to past and future), and contained a smaller proportion of large words. / Psychology

The presented dissertation grew out of the need to achieve a better understanding of the relationship between language processing and short-term memory (STM) in persons with aphasia (PWA). Deep dysphasia and phonological dysphasia form a classification of aphasia identified by a pattern of speech errors attributed to chronic verbal STM impairment. Exploring evidence demonstrating the pattern of speech errors mediated by STM impairment in PWA, research objectives were three-fold: • To add to the knowledge base on deep dysphasia and phonological dysphasia and extend the characteristic presentation of this; • To determine the characteristic profile of recovery in deep dysphasia, providing further evidence that deep dysphasia is an impairment that exists at the most severe point along a continuum of recovery which in milder form demonstrates phonological dysphasia. • To evaluate the efficacy of treatment approaches developed on the basis of Dell and O’Seaghdha’s (1992) two-step interactive activation model of word production and using repetition to improve verbal STM and word processing. First, a comprehensive systematic review of the deep dysphasia and phonological dysphasia literature base was conducted. This review addressed the paucity of case studies reporting the diagnoses of dysphasia. Studies investigated individuals with chronic STM impairment in the auditory modality as well as other characteristic markers of deep and phonological dysphasia, such as an imageability effect. In repetition tasks, an imageability effect indicates that concrete (high-image) words are repeated with greater ease when compared to accuracy in the repetition of abstract (low-image). The review supported the hypothesis that these profiles reflect a chronic impairment of auditory-verbal STM existing on a continuum of severity. Evidence from this review supports the hypothesis that deep dysphasia and phonological aphasia are two points on a continuum of an impairment mediated by verbal STM (Martin, Saffran & Dell, 2006, Willshire & Fisher, 2004). Second, with the insights from this review, a single-subject multiple-baseline, multiple-probe treatment study was undertaken. The participant LT presented with a pattern of repetition consistent with the continuum of deep-phonological dysphasia, including an imageability effect in repetition (Martin et al., 1996, Wilshire & Fisher, 2004). This treatment approach sought to directly remediate language and short-term memory abilities using a repetition task targeting imageability effect. In order to improve access to and repetition of low-image (LI) words, this approach aimed to enhance semantic context. Results of this study indicate improving LT’s access to abstract word pairs improved verbal STM as well as language processing. Third, the single-case study led to the development of a four-condition, multi-participant facilitation study that aimed to improve access to and repetition of LI words by embedding them in a context that enhanced their imageability. The goal of this manipulation was to increase the probability of accessing lexical and semantic representations of abstract words in repetition by enriching their semantic-syntactic context. Ten participants with chronic impairment in verbal STM demonstrated that this approach participants’ ability to repeat those words when presented in isolation. Evidence from PWA has confirmed that a damaged language processing system includes disruption to STM (Martin & Saffran, 1992; Martin et al., 1996; Martin & Saffran, 1997; Martin & Saffran, 1999; Martin & Ayala, 2004; Kalinyak-Fliszar, Kohen, & Martin, 2011; Allen et al., 2012). Recent investigations have provided evidence that STM tasks can be used as mechanisms to improve language processing (Kalinyak-Fliszar et al., 2011; Salis, 2012; Berthier et al., 2014). Despite the central role repetition plays in functional communication and the difficulties PWA encounter with repetition due to STM impairment, few treatment approaches have targeted STM and the language processes supporting repetition (Martin, Kohen, & Kalinyak-Fliszar, 2010; Kalinyak-Fliszar, 2011; Berthier et al., 2014). This dissertation research filled that void and demonstrated the promise of clinical approaches that directly target language processing and auditory verbal STM impairment in PWA. / Communication Sciences

This dissertation provides an analysis of the phenomenon of musical imagery, or the internal 'hearing' of music. I uphold the view that musical imagery, as a kind of auditory imagery, is a kind of sensory or perceptual imagination, and cannot be incorporated into a propositional model of imagination. I further argue that musical imagery differs in important respects both from visual imagery and from other types of auditory imagery, such as inner speech. For this reason, this project makes a contribution to what would be a larger project (not necessarily carried out by a single researcher) of analyzing the sensory or perceptual imagination through careful comparative work in each sensory modality and their various combinations. Chapter 1 provides the background on theories of imagination necessary in order to make this argument, and demonstrates the lack of attention currently paid to auditory imagination in general and musical imagination in particular. The analysis of musical imagery then proceeds from three points of view: phenomenological, conceptual or analytical, and empirical. The goal of Chapter 2 is to describe our subjective experiences of musical imagery. While this description is a description of the phenomenological aspects of our experiences, it is not an example of work in phenomenology proper, as practiced by the followers of Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty or Heidegger. Rather, the method is necessarily first person, but appeals to the idea that musical imagery experiences occur along a spectrum of possible abilities. That is, while there is too much variation among reports of subjective musical imagery, it still makes sense to appeal to a kind of normal imaginative experience, and, as a result, the reliance on introspection does not result in hopeless idiosyncrasies. Chapter 3 discusses four topics related to content of musical imagery. First, I address the question of what makes auditory imagination specifically auditory; second, I examine the relationship between auditory imagination and imagining hearing; third, I address questions about the ontology of sounds and the ontology of music in the context of my claims about auditory imagination; finally, I discuss whether the contents of musical imagery, as a type of auditory imagination, should be thought of as conceptual or nonconceptual. Chapter 4 addresses the question of the ontology of the mental image, discussed both by Gilbert Ryle and by participants in the mental imagery debate in the field of psychology. Having demonstrated that scientific inquiry into the mechanisms of mental imagery does not involve commitment to ontologically problematic mental entities, I then survey empirical work in cognitive psychology and neuroscience that sheds light on the neural underpinnings of musical imagery. By way of conclusion, I discuss methodological issues regarding the integration of historical, empirical, conceptual, and phenomenological I use to develop a theory of musical imagery as sensory imagination. / Philosophy

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This study replicated and extended the results of some recent studies concerned with the effects of repeated testing in false-memory creation (e.g. Brainerd and Reyna, 1996), and recent studies concerned with the persistence of false memories over time (Brainerd and Reyna, 1996; McDermott, 1996; Payne et al., 1996). One hundred and twenty children of ages 6, 9 and 12 listened to a series of sentences and took three recognition tests (Immediate, One-week, One-month). Participants made recognition decisions about four items: (1) targets, (2) distractors with the same meaning as targets but different words, (3) distractors with different meaning than targets, but the same words, and (4) distractors with different meaning than targets and different words. Analysis of variance of hits and false alarms showed effects of repeated testing on both. Stochastic dependency analyses showed greater long-term persistence for false alarms than for hits. The effects of testing repetition in creating false memories and the persistence of false memories increased with age. Results are discussed using Fuzzy-Trace Theory as a theoretical framework.

<p> Choosing specific implementational details is one of the most important aspects of creating and evaluating a model. In order to properly model cognitive processes, choices for these details must be made based on empirical research. Unfortunately, modelers are often forced to make decisions in the absence of relevant data. My work investigates the effects of these decisions. Looking at infant speech segmentation, I incorporate empirical research into model choices regarding model input, inference, and evaluation. First, I use experimental results to argue for syllables as a basic unit for early segmentation and show that the segmentation task is less difficult than previously thought. I then explore the role of various inference algorithms, each of which produces testable predictions. Lastly, I argue that standard methods of model evaluation make unrealistic assumptions about the goal of learning. Evaluating models in terms of their ability to support additional learning tasks shows that gold standard performance alone is an insufficient metric for measuring segmentation quality. In each of these three instances, I treat model design decisions as free parameters whose impact must be evaluated. By following this approach, future researchers can better gauge the success or failure of cognitive models. </p>

<p> The vigilance decrement is the decline in performance over time that characterizes tasks requiring sustained attention. Resource Theory proposes that the vigilance decrement is due to information processing assets that become depleted with use. Resource theorists must thus identify these assets and the process of how resources are depleted and replenished. The Microlapse Theory of Fatigue (MTF) identifies the resource that is depleted when performing a sustained attention task as the central executive attentional network. The depletion of the central executive network resource results in microlapses or brief gaps in attention that prevent the perception and processing of information. The MTF can explain various effects in the sustained attention literature regarding how resources are depleted. However, the MTF alone cannot explain the event rate effect or the motivation effect because it does not include replenishment mechanisms that can occur during a sustained attention task. To better understand the process of replenishment, participants were assigned to varying event rate and external motivation conditions in a novel paradigm that could measure the perceptual processing of a trial over time. These stages of processing included when participants looked at the first stimulus, looked at the second stimulus, and responded. In Experiment 1, it was found that the vigilance decrement was more severe for faster event rates, consistent with Resource Theory and counter to the MTF. In Experiment 2, the event rate effect was replicated, but unexpectedly, external motivation did not impact the vigilance decrement. In both experiments it was found that for the stages of processing that involved looking at the stimuli, more slowing was found as event rate increased. Additionally, more slowing was detected earlier in the processing of a trial than later. These results supported the process of microlapses inducing the vigilance decrement due to not having enough time to perceive, encode, and respond to stimuli, as described by the MTF. It was interpreted that the interaction between time-on-task and event rate was due to opportunistic breaks that occurred more frequently in slower event rate conditions. The finding that more slowing occurred earlier in processing was interpreted as evidence for internal rewards related to learning impacting the speed of processing a trial. To explain these findings, I propose the Microlapse Theory of Fatigue with Replenishment (MTFR) a process model similar to MTF, but that includes additional replenishment mechanisms related to opportunistic rest periods and internal rewards. The Microlapse Theory of Fatigue with Replenishment (MTFR) closely correlates to the empirical data and is an important step forward in the effort to build a comprehensive model of sustained attention.</p>

<p> This theoretical dissertation uses a hermeneutic methodology to weave together three strands--ecopsychology, narcissism, and death denial--to explore ecological narcissism, defined as the tendency of humans in technologically advanced cultures to be so self-absorbed as to be unable to see anything in nature except objects that might satisfy their own needs. The study responds to 3 research questions: How is ecological narcissism related to the denial of death? Does ecological narcissism, with its denial of death, play a role in our destruction of the environment? And, how might we mitigate ecological narcissism and renew a more life-sustaining attitude towards death? It posits that beneath the confident, manic fa&ccedil;ade of modern cultures lurks fear of death masquerading as death denial. Ecological narcissism co-arises with this fear as the offspring of human belief in separation from nature. The study examines the theories developed by Berman, Hillman, and Shepard to account for how humanity has come to feel separate from nature. It proposes that ecological narcissism and death denial support us in perceiving nonhuman created environments as a collection of objects devoid of the sentience and subjectivity credited to humans. Such a perceptual orientation is interested in the answer to only one question: Do these objects (which might include elephants, oaks, and oceans) help further human life? If so, we feel free to use them, and if not, we feel free to destroy them. A final conclusion of this study is that one way in which humans might move towards a more life-sustaining attitude towards nature and death is through an increase in direct experience of wilderness "out there" and "in here" (within one's psyche). Practitioners of depth psychotherapy therefore have an opportunity to support a welcoming attitude towards wild forces within and beyond us, which in turn may support a cultural transition from the prevailing attitude of narcissistic entitlement to a maturity recognizing human relationship with all nature.</p>