Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2014, Experimental Psychology (Arts and Sciences)

Six studies examine the effect of accuracy motivation and reward on intuitive performance. In the first three studies, extrinsic motivation was found to undermine performance on an intuitive performance task. Intuitive accuracy was tested using the Artificial Grammar System. In Study One, participants who were induced into an extrinsic-self mindset performed marginally worse at discriminating letter strings compared to participants induced into an intrinsic-self mindset. In order to encourage extrinsic motivation for Studies Two and Three, participants were told that top performers on the intuition task would receive a $50 gift card. Extrinsically motivated participants discriminated strings significantly lower than control participants (Study 2) and classified strings at chance levels (Study 3). Study Four added a retrieval deadline to the task to minimize conscious control. Accuracy motivation did not improve with the response deadline, so I concluded that extrinsic motivation negatively impacted the implicit components of intuition. Further investigation revealed that fragmented attentional encoding accounted for diminished intuitive performance (Study 5). Last, intrinsic motivation improved intuitive performance (Study 6).

Committee: Keith Markman PhD (Advisor); Taylor-Bianco Amy PhD (Committee Chair); Griffeth Rodger PhD (Committee Chair); Vigo Ronaldo PhD (Committee Chair); Rios Kim PhD (Committee Chair) Subjects: Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2014, Clinical Psychology (Arts and Sciences)

The detection of noncredible effort/malingering is an essential component of neuropsychological assessment. Malingerers most often feign impairment on memory measures, and memory concerns represent the most often cited complaints in forensic neuropsychological contexts. Understandably, many noncredible effort/malingering measures composed of explicit memory processes have been developed, as have been coaching techniques intended to circumvent effort detection. Given these realities, the continued development of novel noncredible effort/malingering measures remains of paramount importance. The present study examined whether an implicit learning and forced-choice memory task, the artificial grammar task (AGT), could serve as a novel noncredible effort/malingering measure, because existing literature has shown memory-impaired patients do as well as controls on the AGT. It was hypothesized that individuals simulating head injury would perform worse on the AGT than head-injury controls and memory-impaired controls. Results showed that, as expected given prior studies of the AGT, head-injury controls and memory-impaired controls did not perform differently. Furthermore, as predicted, simulating participants performed worse than head-injury controls. Simulating participants did not perform worse than the memory-impaired controls. Importantly, exploratory analyses suggested that the AGT's implicit learning phase trial cutoff score showed initial promise, suggesting the score may serve to practically distinguish malingerers from those performing with best effort in populations with a history of mild head injury presenting in clinical and forensic settings.

Committee: Julie Suhr (Advisor) Subjects: Psychology