Cognitive Science & Psychology Division, ULAB

Distractions and multitasking are generally detrimental to learning and memory.Nevertheless, people often study while listening to music, sitting in noisy coffee shops, orintermittently checking their e-mail. The experiment we replicated examined how distractionsand divided attention influence one’s ability to selectively remember valuable information.Participants studied lists of words that ranged in value from 1 to 10 points while completing adigit-detection task, while listening to music, or without distractions. Most of the figures weresuccessfully replicated using the given dataset and tools like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets.Since we were able to arrive at the same conclusion as the original author, we believe thisexperiment is valid and reliable for application to further extension studies. Our extension studyexamined correlations between gender and recall ability and between age and recall ability. Weconcluded that there was no significant correlation between these variables, suggesting thesefactors did not affect the outcome. This extension further supports the author’s results, as age andgender were seemingly not confounding variables.

fMRI has the potential of being able to differentiate between false memory and deception, but to apply this ability to real life situations, such as court cases or in neurodegenerative studies involving the brain's ability to recognize memory, it is vital that fMRI can detect the differences between general memory1 and deception, as false memory is often mixed in with true memory during recollection. To determine whether fMRI can do this, the prior study, “Can fMRI discriminate between deception and false memory? A meta-analytic comparison between deception and false memory studies” (Yu et al., 2019) [18] was extended. Yu et al., 2019 found that true memory and false memory, independently, could be distinguished from deception. This extension aims to determine if brain activity resulting from deception can be distinguished from activity caused by general memory as opposed to false memory. Given the broader scope of general memory compared to false memory, the prediction is put forth that general memory recollection will not be distinguishable from deception due to broader regions of activation in the brain. Appropriate meta-analyses for deception and general memory recollection were selected and used to determine z-scores and voxel coordinates of activity in different regions of the brain. The brain structures with the highest z-scores during general memory analysis were the caudate, the medial frontal gyrus, and the insula. The brain structures with the highest z-scores during deception analysis were the inferior frontal gyrus, the supramarginal gyrus, and the insula. After further analysis, it was determined that activation for general memory vs deception can be distinguished by looking at the activation of the cingulate gyrus and the precuneus.

Psycholinguistics is the study of how neuroanatomical processes influence language acquisition, language structure, and language use (Menn & Dronkers, 2017). According to the field of psycholinguistics, a concept is represented in the mind and is different from the word associated with those representations. Representational theory of mind seeks to explain concepts through symbols and models of cognitive processes (Williams, 1984). In order to be relevant from a psychological standpoint, representational theory of mind must utilize a computational model rather than focus on individual beliefs. Many different theories use a representational model to explore how individuals acquire and categorize concepts. The aim of this study is to develop a theoretical cognitive model—titled the Semantic-Phonological Association Network (SPAN)—of singular concept generation. While developing SPAN, an examination of the current literature and different theories of models relating to concept generation are used as the foundation for the research. For example, Pinker’s “Why We Curse” explores the relationship between the phonetics of swear words and the physical manifestations they represent (Pinker, 2007). It is necessary to represent the phonological and semantic networks as separate but intricately connected systems. SPAN seeks to symbolize the connection between the phonological and semantic system. The main goal is to establish auditory-semantic priming effects from the relationship between the mental systems and introduce a nuanced version about how one is able to generate singular concepts that contain semantic, phonological and lexical information.You can find our presentation link here:

https://drive.google.com/file/u/2/d/1vRzU6wGm5Di0GQZclCa3VK34JWlOYmY0/view

In this paper, we detail a theoretical research proposal to investigate the emergence of genderrelated gay males’ and lesbians’ stereotypes using a model called COAT measures which was used in gender stereotypes studies (Liben et al, 2012). Our idea is based on people’s tendency to attribute sexual orientation stereotypes with the opposite gender (Blashill & Powlishta, 2002). Extending on past literature on the early development of gender stereotypes on brilliance in children aged five to seven, we explored whether children in that age range start to perceive and associate gay males and lesbians with gender stereotypes of the opposite gender (Bian et al., 2019). Without carrying out the experiments, we have completed designing the framework of the study and corresponding analysis as well as addressing future ideas to enhance our understanding on the development of gay/lesbian stereotypes. Exploring the association between gender stereotypes, we hypothesize that gay/lesbian stereotypes emerge early at the same time with gender stereotypes.

The purpose of this study is to expand upon the findings published by Junhong Yu, Qian Tao,Ruibin Zhang, Chetwyn C.H. Chan, and Tatia M.C. Lee in their paper, “Can fMRI discriminatebetween deception and false memory? A meta-analytic comparison between deception and falsememory studies” by conducting a meta-analysis to compare brain activation between deceptionand general memory1 recollection (Yu et al., 2019). Meta-analyses compile fMRI results frommany individual studies with regard to a specific cognitive task into one, cumulative dataset. Themeta-analyses for this extension were compiled by Neurosynth using FMRIB Software Library(FSL) to measure the amount of brain activation corresponding to areas involved in bothdeception and memory in general (“Nipype: Neuroimaging in Python,” 2020). The purpose ofthis extension is to understand how general memory recollection might compare to deception.The prediction of this study is that by broadening the memory dataset to include data from falseand true memory, activation will be reported in more areas than those reported in Yu and hiscolleagues separate analysis of each kind of memory. This, in turn, should make it more difficultto differentiate deception from memory recollection when it is not known to be true or false.While Yu et al. 2019 concluded that areas associated with truthful memory and false memorywere both separately distinguishable from deception, the results found in this study indicate thatactivation involved with general memory was distinguishable from deception only in theprecuneus and cingulate gyrus.

Several lines of evidence indicate that glucose can enhance cognitive performancewithout being ingested. Previous research has found that the effect of food anticipation can boostcognitive resources in a testing environment [1]. This study was designed to replicate thefindings utilizing the same population, examining the effect that food anticipation has oncognitive abilities among multiple weight groups. 182 students were included in this replicationstudy. In order to accurately measure the results, the study randomized the order that foodanticipation tasks and cognitive tests were performed. The results indicated that an anticipatoryfood reward effect enhanced the cognitive capabilities of individuals categorized by BMI asoverweight and obese. Furthermore, this effect shifted the attention of these individuals towardlite food options as opposed to regular. Finally, this anticipatory food effect reduced emotionalarousal regarding food for individuals in the obese BMI category. We replicated previousfindings of increased cognitive resources in the presence of food anticipation prior to test taking.These findings add to the growing literature that the presence of food can boost cognitiveresources in testing environments. Future studies should shift the focus away from weight as adriving factor in the results, and instead look at how socio-economic status (SES) and foodinsecurity may affect eye gaze behavior and the anticipatory reward effect associated with foodcues.

Previous research has documented that mood affects memory accuracy. The present study aimsto (1) replicate earlier work showing that mood (negative, positive, neutral) and valence affectsmemory consolidation, (2) examine whether retrieval processes are more likely to preserve falsememories when a mood is induced, (3) identify error prevalence associated with memoryconsolidation. A recognition-memory standard for photographs depicting script-like events wasused. Individuals in both negative and positive moods–similar in arousal levels–correctlyidentified more target events and are more confident in fewer false memories comparing toindividuals in a neutral mood. This shows that arousal (but not valence) helps predict memoryperformance. These findings suggest that arousal state affects memory while mood mediates trueand false memory.

The following study examines the relation between perceived duration and the intensityand fundamental frequency of sounds. Sounds with higher fundamental frequency (the lowestfrequency of a periodic waveform) and greater intensity are judged to have longer duration.However, it is not known if fundamental frequency, intensity, or both affect the perceivedduration, and to what extent. The purpose of this study is to find out the variance in contributionof both fundamental frequency and intensity to perceived duration through two forced choicetasks. Through replication, we found that fundamental frequency does in fact have a significantpositive effect on perceived duration while intensity did not. Future research may focus ontesting these results among different language groups, and applying these results to anunderstanding of communication and language.

The replication seeks to provide some insight into whether nonlinguistic vocalizations,such as screams, are able to aid humans in identifying individuals based solely on theirscreaming patterns. Participants were asked to distinguish vocalizers after listening to tworecordings. Response accuracies and discriminability indices were calculated to check for screamreceptiveness. We also interpreted d’ scores in order to break down response errors and accuracyfor each participant. According to our findings, the majority of listeners were able to distinguishindividuals based on their screams.The replication also focused on results derived from vocalizer gender differences. Byanalyzing the varying mean response latencies created by male and female vocalizers, we wereable to interpret how well humans are at discriminating against each gender's screams. The goalof this project is to further our understanding of the evolutionary purpose behind screams and toprovide further insight into how screams are related to an individual's identity.

The paper aims to investigate how foreign accents impact perception and credibility by looking at various experiments that the researchers have conducted. To observe the effects that foreign accents have on listeners, we outlined three critical areas: visual and auditory stimuli, subtitle comprehension, and perception. By having an in-group or native accent as our control group, we were able to evaluate how various accents, such as Dutch and German, have a subtle impact on the accuracy of the speakers rated and measured by the participants. Based on our analysis, foreign-accented speakers are perceived to be less credible. In addition, it was concluded that perception also plays a key role in the day-to-day life of non-native speakers. While more research would be beneficial, it is clear that foreign accents reduce the speakers’ credibility and should be considered in environments such as job interviews and other social settings.