Current views posit that forming and retrieving memories of ongoing events influences action control. However, the organizational structure of these memories, or event files, remains unclear. The "hierarchical coding view" posits a hierarchical structure, wherein task sets occupy a high level of the hierarchy. Here, the contents of an…

Sleep deprivation impairs a wide range of cognitive processes, but the precise mechanism underlying these deficits is unclear. One prominent proposal is that sleep deprivation impairs vigilant attention, and that impairments in vigilant attention cause impairments in cognitive tasks that require attention. Here, we test this theory by studying the…

Perceivers spontaneously segment ongoing activity into discrete events. This segmentation is important for the moment-by-moment understanding of events, but may also be critical for how events are encoded into episodic memory. In 3 experiments, we used priming to test the possibility that perceptual event boundaries organize memory for everyday…

The purpose of this study was to determine if implementing student response technology (SRT) and case studies into a largely populated university undergraduate course would influence student engagement. When student engagement is influenced the potential for positive learning outcomes occurs leading to a higher likelihood of student success (Swap…

The congruency effect in distracter interference tasks is often reduced after incongruent relative to congruent trials. Moreover, this "congruency sequence effect" (CSE) is influenced by learning related to concrete stimulus and response features as well as by learning related to abstract cognitive control processes. There is an ongoing…

We tested whether mental rotation training improved math performance in 6- to 8-year-olds. Children were pretested on a range of number and math skills. Then one group received a single session of mental rotation training using an object completion task that had previously improved spatial ability in children this age (Ehrlich, Levine, &…

We tested whether mental rotation training improved math performance in 6- to 8-year-olds. Children were pretested on a range of number and math skills. Then one group received a single session of mental rotation training using an object completion task that had previously improved spatial ability in children this age (Ehrlich, Levine, &…

In a sample of 50 verbally fluent adolescents and adults with autism spectrum disorders (age: 16-31 years; verbal IQ: 72-140), we examined the pattern of response and associations between scores on common measures of depressive symptoms, participant characteristics, and clinical diagnosis of depressive disorders. Beck Depression Inventory--Second…

The purpose of this study was to explore transcultural self-efficacy in nursing education administrators/faculty and to gain understanding of confidence related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) issues. The 83-item Transcultural Self-Efficacy Tool (TSET) with an additional 11 LGBT questions was administered to 535 nursing education…

The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is a combinatorial optimization problem that requires finding the shortest path through a set of points ("cities") that returns to the starting point. Because humans provide heuristic near-optimal solutions to Euclidean versions of the problem, it has sometimes been used to investigate human visual…

Although it is well known that music can affect cognitive processes, little research has been conducted examining the influence of background music on students in information literacy classrooms. In 2010, librarians at Western Michigan University investigated the effect of background music on student engagement and retention of information…

The 3 most often-used performance measures in the cognitive and decision sciences are choice, response or decision time, and confidence. We develop a random walk/diffusion theory--2-stage dynamic signal detection (2DSD) theory--that accounts for all 3 measures using a common underlying process. The model uses a drift diffusion process to account…

This study examined the relationship between sense of coherence, demographic characteristics, and career thought processes among college students with disabilities based on Antonovsky's conceptual framework of sense of coherence. Participants were college students with disabilities collected through the Resource Center for Persons with…

Being able to make claims about what students know and can do in science involves gathering systematic evidence of students' knowledge and abilities. This paper describes an assessment system designed to elicit information from students at many placements along developmental trajectories and demonstrates how this system was used to gather…

The purpose of this study is to determine how behavioral symptoms of inattention predict rapid automatized naming (RAN) performance and reading skills in typically developing children. Participants included 104 third- and fourth-grade children from different elementary schools in mid-Michigan. RAN performance was assessed using the four Rapid…