More than a century of research has investigated the etiology of dyslexia, coalescing around ‘phonological awareness’ – the ability to recognize and manipulate phonemes – as a trait typically deficient in reading disorders. Meanwhile, the last few decades of research in neuroscience have highlighted the brain as a predictive organ, which subliminally calibrates sensory expectations according to experience. Do the brains of adults with dyslexia respond differently than those of matched controls to expected tones and unexpected omissions? While auditory oddball paradigms have previously been used to study dyslexia, these studies often interpret group differences to indicate deficit auditory discrimination rather than deficit auditory prediction. The current study takes a step toward fusing theories of predictive coding and dyslexia, finding that event-related potentials related to auditory prediction are attenuated in adults with dyslexia compared with typical controls. It further suggests that understanding dyslexia, and perhaps other psychiatric disorders, in terms of contributory neural systems will elucidate shared and distinct etiologies.

Statistical word learning (SWL) has been proposed and tested as a powerful mechanism for word learning under referential ambiguity. Learners are adept at resolving word-referent ambiguity by calculating the co-occurrences between words and referents across ambiguous scenes. Despite the generalizability of such capacity, it is less clear which underlying factors may play a role in SWL, such as learners’ language experience and individual differences of working memory. The current study therefore asked two questions: 1) How do learners of different language experience (monolinguals and bilinguals) approach SWL of different mapping types–when each referent has one name (1:1 mapping) or two names (2:1 mapping)? and 2) How do working memory capacities (spatial and phonological) play a role in SWL by mapping type? In this pre-registered study (OSF: https://osf.io/mte8s/), 69 English monolinguals and 88 bilinguals completed two SWL tasks (1:1 and 2:1 mapping), a symmetry span task indexing spatial working memory, and a listening span task indexing phonological working memory. Results showed no differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in SWL of both mapping types. However, spatial and phonological working memory positively predicted SWL regardless of language experience, but only in 1:1 mapping. The findings show a dissociation of working memory’s role in SWL of different mapping types. The study proposes a novel insight into a theoretical debate underlying statistical learning mechanisms: learners may adopt more explicit processes (i.e. hypothesis-testing) during 1:1 mapping but implicit processes (i.e. associative learning) during 2:1 mapping. Future studies can locate memory-related brain areas during SWL to test out the proposal.

This thesis project examines neuropsychological disorders with regards to facial recognition. It looks at the research significance as well as the regions of the brain involved in facial recognition. It reviews what these regions look like when they are healthy, and what they look like when they are impaired and their resulting function. In addition, the project looks at autism and schizophrenia which have as one their symptoms facial recognition disorder. As a result, the project dives into what goes on these patients which results in impaired facial recognition. The project also looks at the own-race bias, and how that relates to facial recognition. Finally, the project proposes an experimental proposal to identify the neural centers involved in facial recognition in patients with Alzheimer’s, drawing upon previous research on the subject. An actual experiment was not conducted due to the pandemic, but there is a section of expected results in the event that the experiment is run. The expected results are that patients with Alzheimer’s should have deficits in the N170 component, the N400 component, the hippocampus and a smaller region of the cortex involved with processing faces compared to healthy controls.

Individuals encounter problems daily wherein varying numbers of constraints require delimitation of memory to target goal-satisfying information. Multiply-constrained problems, such as compound remote associates, are commonly used to study this type of problem solving. Since their development, multiply-constrained problems have been theoretically and empirically related to creative thinking, analytical problem solving, insight problem solving, intelligence, and a multitude of other cognitive abilities. Critically, in order to correctly solve a multiply-constrained problem the solver must have the solution available in memory and be able to target and access to that information. Experiment 1 determined that the cue – target relationship affects the likelihood that a problem is solved. Moreover, Experiment 2 identified that the association between cues and targets predicted inter- & intra-individual differences in multiply-constrained problem solving. Lastly, Experiment 3 found monetary incentives failed to improve problem solving performance likely due to knowledge serving as a limiting factor on performance. Additionally, problem solvers were shown to be able to reliably assess the likelihood they would solve a problem. Taken together all three studies demonstrated the importance of knowledge & knowledge structures on problem solving performance.

Cross-situational word learning (CSWL) is a method of learning new words where an individual
is exposed to the word’s meaning in an ambiguous fashion throughout different contexts. Many
studies have been conducted using CSWL tasks on both children and adults. Most of these
studies look at single-label pairings, which is when one object is paired with one word. More
recently, research has also started to look at double-label pairings. Double-label pairings consist
of one object being paired with two words. No study to date has compared adult and children’s
performance in a double-label design. This study’s aim was to better understand how adults and
children compare in these tasks. The current study conducted two experiments to compare adult
and children’s performance in a CSWL task in either a single-label and double-label design.
Results showed that adults were successful in both conditions but performed better in the
single-label condition than the double-label condition. Children on the other hand were
unsuccessful in both conditions and did not demonstrate learning. Several reasons for these
findings are discussed. These results highlight the need for further research that directly
compares age groups in CSWL tasks and for further research into the area of multiple-label
pairings.

In the daily life of an individual problems of varying difficulty are encountered.

Each problem may include a different number of constraints placed upon the problem

solver. One type of problem commonly used in research are multiply-constrained

problems, such as the compound remote associates. Since their development they have

been related to creativity and insight. Moreover, research has been conducted to

determine the cognitive abilities underlying problem solving abilities. We sought to fully

evaluate the range of cognitive abilities (i.e., working memory, episodic and semantic

memory, and fluid and crystallized intelligence) linked to multiply-constrained problem

solving. Additionally, we sought to determine whether problem solving ability and

strategies (analytical or insightful) were task specific or domain general through the use

of novel problem solving tasks (TriBond and Location Bond). Results indicated that

multiply-constrained problem solving abilities were domain general, solutions derived

through insightful strategies were more often correct than analytical, and crystallized

intelligence was the only cognitive ability that provided unique predictive value.

This study aims to identify the potential irrationality in the personal investment decision-making habits of university students, as influenced by the framing effect, loss aversion, and related heuristics. Researchers conducted a cross-sectional study of 114 students (n = 102). Participants responded to a survey regarding their willingness to invest in certain hypothetical investment scenarios. Outcome was measured primarily using Likert scales and yes
o binomial options regarding the participant’s willingness to participate in a specific deal. The study was broken into three blocks, the first of which dealt with the framing effect and the subsequent two considered loss aversion. Of the data collected, there were multiple significant results found to support the framing effect and loss aversion. There was a significant difference between responses that were positively and negatively framed, and between varying upside potential in equivalent-risk scenarios. For block one, those participants who received the positive framing condition were more likely to invest in the master’s program than those who received the negative framing condition. For blocks two and three, the majority of participants exhibited loss averse behavior more extreme than the predicted amounts; closer to 4x the upside was required (rather than the predicted 2x) for the participants to participate in the deal. Although the results did replicate the framing effect and loss aversion, college students were more loss averse than was predicted.

A category is a set of entities associated by specific characteristics (features). These features can have different relations between one another, including correlations and causal connections. The purpose of this study was to examine how the relations between features would affect the inference of unknown features of new entities from a given set of features. Categories and their relations were learned in a Learning Phase, whereas features were inferred in Transfer and Selection Phases. Correct inference of feature was enhanced by correlation between the features given and the features inferred. It is less clear whether causal connections further enhanced correct inference of features over and above the effect of the correlation. Future research of this topic may benefit from utilizing more difficult tasks, repeating instructions, or manipulating the participants' understanding of the relation in ways other than administration of instructions.

In this study, the oppositional processes theory was proposed to suggest that reliance on semantic and episodic memory systems hinder originality during idea generation for divergent thinking tasks that are generally used to assess creative potential. In order to investigate the proposed oppositional processes theory, three experiments that manipulated the memory accessibility in participants during the alternative uses tasks were conducted. Experiment 1 directly instructed participants to either generate usages based on memory or not from memory; Experiment 2 provided participants with object cues that were either very common or very rare in daily life (i.e., bottle vs. canteen); Experiment 3 replicated the same manipulation from Experiment 2 with much longer generation time (10 minutes in Experiment 2 vs. 30 minutes in Experiment 3). The oppositional processes theory predicted that participants who had less access to direct and unaltered usages (i.e., told to not use memory, were given rare cues, or were outputting items later in the generation period) during the task would be more creative. Results generally supported the predictions in Experiments 1 and 2 where participants from conditions which limited their access to memory generated more novel usages that were considered more creative by independent coders. Such effects were less prominent in Experiment 3 with extended generation time but the trends remained the same.

Individual differences in working memory capacity partly arise from variability in attention control, a process influenced by negative emotional content. Thus, individual differences in working memory capacity should be predictive of differences in the ability to regulate attention in emotional contexts. To address this hypothesis, a complex-span working memory task (symmetry span) was modified so that negative arousing images or neutral images subtended the background during the encoding phase. Across three experiments, negative arousing images impaired working memory encoding relative to neutral images, resulting in impoverished symmetry span scores. Additionally, in Experiment 3, both negative and arousing images captured attention and led to increased hit rates in a subsequent recognition task. Contrary to the primary hypothesis, individual differences in working memory capacity derived from three complex span tasks failed to moderate the effect of negative arousing images on working memory encoding across two large scale studies. Implications for theories of working memory and attention control in emotional contexts will be discussed.