MA, University of Cincinnati, 2009, Arts and Sciences : Psychology

Olfactory abilities decline with age and have been linked with a number of neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Preliminary studies in young, healthy adults showed that a manipulation that improved performance on a semantic task of odor naming also improved performance on an episodic task of odor recognition. The results supported the hypothesis that simultaneous presentation of the odors together with their names improved olfactory pattern matching thereby facilitating the identification and episodic recognition of the odor. The present study investigated the effect of providing label alternatives during the episodic encoding or retrieval phases of the memory task. One hundred healthy adults were randomly assigned to four experimental groups. Odor naming and recognition memory performance was assessed for each condition. The results support previous findings suggesting that the effects of labels on episodic memory cannot be explained as cuing effects at the time of encoding or as retrieval cues. An alternative explanation is that verbal labels serve to enhance olfactory pattern recognition which aids in identifying the odor and leads to improved naming and recognition memory performance.

Committee: Robert Frank PhD (Committee Chair); Paula Shear PhD (Committee Member); Peter Chiu PhD (Committee Member); Steven Howe PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2017, Psychology

Very little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms of individual differences in judgment and reasoning ability, and even less work has been done to investigate neural correlates of dual-processing. According to many dual-processing theories, type 2 processing in judgment and reasoning relies heavily on cognitive control. Two particular patterns of neural activity, frontal midline theta (FMT) and fronto-parietal theta coherence, have been related to cognitive control in several different paradigms. As such, they presented candidates for neural correlates of type 2 processing. Additionally, working memory capacity has been linked to FMT, fronto-parietal theta coherence, and performance on judgment and reasoning tasks. However, the relationship between these variables had not been tested in previous research. Across two experiments, working memory capacity failed to predict FMT or fronto-parietal theta coherence, but did predict more logical fallacies and semantic coherence in Experiment 2. Judgment ability was measured through the number of conjunction and disjunction fallacies committed, as well as semantic coherence, a stricter benchmark of judgment ability that measures how well participants' responses correspond to the type of probability set described in the problem In Experiment 1, FMT predicted more logical fallacies and more semantic coherence, reflecting higher levels of cognitive control. In Experiment 2, there was less fronto-parietal theta coherence in identical sets compared to other types of probability sets, which require more cognitive control, supporting the link between fronto-parietal theta coherence and cognitive control. However, neither FMT nor fronto-parietal theta coherence predicted logical fallacies or semantic coherence in Experiment 2. Together, these experiments provide preliminary evidence that FMT and fronto-parietal theta coherence are important for cognitive control in judgment and reasoning tasks, but no evidence that they ar (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Christopher Wolfe Dr. (Committee Chair); Robin Thomas Dr. (Committee Co-Chair); Joseph Johnson Dr. (Committee Member); Anne Farrell Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1972, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Psychology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2012, Engineering and Applied Science: Computer Science and Engineering

Idea generation is a central cognitive activity in humans, and studying the mechanisms of idea generation is important both to understand the creative process better and to produce applications that mimic human creativity. The goal of this research is to explore the neural basis of idea generation in individuals through computational connectionist modeling, and to use the resulting framework to study broader aspects of higher level cognition. The product of this is a model called Context-Adaptive NeuroDynamical IDeation (CANDID). While there have been other models of ideation, CANDID attempts to incorporate known information about the actual structures and processes of the brain - at least at an abstract level. Following widely accepted theories of ideation, the model postulates that ideas are conceptual combinations, and that the combinations arise naturally from the dynamics of the neurocognitive system under the influence of contextual information. Concepts, which constitute the fundamental semantic elements of the model, are represented in the system in two ways: 1) amodally via the activity of neural units in a Concept Network (CN); and 2) in terms of their sensory, functional and abstract attributes, or features, which are encoded in a neural network termed the Feature Layer (FL). Concepts are grouped together into categories based on their functional and/or attribute similarity. The categories are represented as distributed patterns of neural activity in the Dynamic Selector Network (DSN), which confines the ideational dynamics to a context-appropriate cognitive space through a dynamic biasing mechanism – termed “neurocognitive spotlights” due to its usage. The system receives information about the context as input, which interacts with the intrinsic dynamics of the DSN-CN-FL idea generation system to generate an itinerant sequence of ideas. These are evaluated by a critic, which models both internal and external evaluative processes. Based on its evaluation, (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ali Minai PhD (Committee Chair); Raj Bhatnagar PhD (Committee Member); Yizong Cheng PhD (Committee Member); Karen Davis PhD (Committee Member); Carla Purdy PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2008, Allied Health Sciences : Communication Science and Disorders

Confrontation naming abilities decline with normal aging and in Alzheimer's disease (AD). The focus of this research was to investigate at which stage the breakdown in processing occurs for typically aging elderly and individuals with AD. This research investigated the hypothesis that naming impairment in AD is a result of visual perceptual deficits occurring prior to accessing semantic memory. Sixty subjects participated in this study; 30 young control subject, 30 elderly control subjects and 30 individuals with early to mid-stage AD. Subjects were given a neuropsychological battery of tests related to visual perception (BVFDT, BFRT), semantic abilities (P&PT) and confrontation naming abilities (BNT). In addition, subjects participated in a visual discrimination task and a visual naming task created for this research. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed significant group differences between the performance of elderly control subjects and individuals with AD on each of the standardized tests, indicating visual perceptual, semantic and confrontation naming impairment in subjects with AD. Regression analysis confirmed that semantic abilities (as measured by performance on the P&PT) were a better predictor of AD participants' performance on a visual discrimination task and a visual naming task than were visual perceptual abilities (as measured by the BVFDT and the BFRT). There were visual perceptual deficits in AD, but no significant correlation between confrontation naming abilities and visual perceptual abilities (as measured by the BVFDT and BFRT). Post hoc analyses confirmed a positive relationship between AD participants' performance on the P&PT and measures of confrontation naming (BNT and visual naming task), which support the theory that naming impairment in AD stems from degradation of semantic knowledge. Although no causal relationship was found between visual perception and naming impairment in AD, there were subjects who presented with evide (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jean Neils-Strunjas (Committee Chair); James Eliassen (Committee Member); John Clark (Committee Member) Subjects: Speech Therapy

PHD, Kent State University, 2012, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Computer Science

Text comprehension (understanding by reading) is a fundamental way in which people will learn about the world around them. During text comprehension the reader segments the concepts from the text into recognized or unrecognized concepts and then integrates the recognized concepts into their present knowledge base which is represented as a concept network. Formation of this concept network is the central process in understanding from texts. In this thesis we present a mathematical framework for the segmentation (recognition) and integration of concepts. The model can explain how and why different readers construct different concept networks on reading the same text. It can also describe why some readers may understand a text easily as compared to other readers, and also why some texts are difficult to understand than other texts for the same reader. The model is also used to explain the effect of the age of acquisition of a concept on comprehension. It is seen that earlier a concept is acquired the more important it is for comprehension of other concepts. The model leads to an algorithm which is used to simulate concept network growth during text comprehension. These networks are then analyzed to investigate their structural properties. It is seen that these networks are small worlds with high local clustering and a normal degree distribution. These properties are indicative of the high connectivity and reachability not observed in similar random networks. It is also seen that although concept networks may start off with multiple disconnected components, the process of comprehension leads to most of the nodes getting connected to form a single giant component.

Committee: Javed Khan I (Advisor); Austin Melton PhD (Committee Member); Arvind Bansal PhD (Committee Member); Katherine Rawson PhD (Committee Member); Denise Bedford PhD (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Cognitive Psychology; Computer Science; Experimental Psychology; Physiological Psychology

PHD, Kent State University, 2013, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Health Sciences

This study investigated two classifications of semantic features, feature importance and feature relevance, to verify if they differentially influence lexical semantic knowledge in individuals with aphasia. Feature importance is defined as "how important a feature is in defining a concept" (Hampton,1979), while feature relevance represents the "core meaning of a concept" (Sartori, Lombardi & Mattiuzi, 2005). A sorting task was used with 20 volunteer participants with aphasia to investigate the semantic processing involved in the association of semantic features with nouns. A corpus of 18 nouns was displayed in front of each participant in groups of three along with a card containing the word "UNRELATED." The participants were given a deck of 18 cards containing features corresponding to the nouns and to the unrelated category, and were verbally instructed to sort the deck of cards into each of the four designated piles. The semantic features on the cards were rated as high, mid and low importance (HI, MI, LI) and high, mid and low relevance (HR, MR, LR). Analysis was completed using a two-way between-subjects ANOVA to determine was whether the mean scores at the three different levels (e.g., low, mid and high) of importance and relevance differed, and to analyze if there was an interaction between the two classifications. The participants were able to assign high importance features with nouns more accurately than they did mid and low importance features. Feature relevance did not differentially influence noun-feature association. These results indicated that the ability of individuals with aphasia to accurately associate features with nouns is influenced by levels of feature importance. In conclusion, this study found that individuals with aphasia are more cognitively sensitive to high level versus low level feature importance and the effect does not extend to a mid level of importance. The study also demonstrated that the levels of feature relevance did not d (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kate Krival (Advisor); Anna Schmidt M (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: Speech Therapy