Across three separate investigations, this dissertation documents work examining the role of higher-order processes and cognitive effort during the top-down compensatory repair of degraded speech, specifically perceptual restoration. Perceptual restoration is a phenomenon where a listener can perceptually restore or repair speech…

Purpose: This quality improvement (QI) project evaluated the effectiveness of an educational intervention to enhance adult ADHD patients' understanding and acceptance of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) as an augmentative treatment. The goal was to encourage participants to pursue an MBCT referral from their provider. This initiative was…

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education is essential to the economic growth, health, and progress of the modern world. One cognitive ability that underpins thinking and learning in STEM, as well as other disciplines, is relational ability. This ability to spot common relations shared by different objects, events, ideas, or…

This quantitative study examined the effects of stored color knowledge on learning achievement and cognitive load using a randomized pretest-posttest control group design. Social media was used to recruit 60 adult participants, randomized into control and experimental groups. A multimedia lesson was presented where the control group viewed images…

Teacher educators play a multifaceted role in designing and implementing curriculum to nurture preservice teachers' growth in content knowledge, pedagogical skills, and teaching efficacy. Amidst evolving educational landscapes and diverse classroom environments, there's an increasing emphasis on fostering teacher agency and autonomy to navigate…

The goal of a triathlon is to provide a challenge to the athlete, but this comes with inherent risks. The drowning rate of triathlon participants has increased exponentially over the years in open water triathlon venues. This study sought to understand the decision-making process of experienced lifeguards in the unique conditions of the open water…

This dissertation seeks to investigate how digital gestures connect to students' mathematical understanding when playing "From Here to There!" (FH2T). This investigation explores the intersection of three fields, game-based learning, embodied cognition, and mathematics education. I used three studies which break down the different…

The purpose of the study was to demonstrate the effects of using high-quality feedback (HQF) to train educators on an ACT-based intervention called cognitive defusion. Since there was limited acquisition using HQF as a training method, the participants were switched to BST to learn the remaining cognitive defusion task. A delayed multiple probe…

Students come to their high school physics classroom with experiences and knowledge that can be used to help explain physics concepts, but those experiences may not fully align with the scientifically accepted science concept. When there is a misalignment between a student's prior knowledge and the scientifically accepted concept a misconception…

It is widely assumed within developmental psychology that spontaneously-arising conceptualizations of natural number--those that develop without explicit mathematics instruction--match the formal characterization of natural number given in the Dedekind-Peano Axioms (e.g., Carey, 2004; Leslie et al., 2008; Rips et al., 2008). Specifically,…

College students are asked to make critical decisions about which academic major to choose and subsequently to make specific career decisions. Students come to college with a myriad of different skill sets, backgrounds, developmental levels, cognitive processes, familial support, and levels of self-efficacy that may influence how they make these…

In today's complex workplace, organizations have implemented mentoring programs to serve the needs of employees by providing career development and personal support. Mentoring relationships provide a variety of vocational, psychosocial and role modeling functions to proteges. Previous educational psychology research has examined the role of…

The purpose of this qualitative grounded theory study was to describe and explain children's thinking present in multiple related contexts surrounding a single Earth Space disciplinary core idea in order to provide insight on whether and how children's everyday thinking forms the basis for learning in science classrooms. As most previous work on…

A high-quality, foundational education offers lifelong benefits for young children. The problem is that working memory in pre-school-aged children is declining and could be impaired by the extraneous cognitive load imposed during engagement with screen media apps and/or preschool programs. Although the pedagogical practices associated with…

This dissertation aimed to better understand how violin and viola private instructors teach Mental Practice in their studios, investigating different approaches on how to apply and teach auditory, motor, and visual imagery, score study, and auditory modeling, as well as its benefits. This research was divided into two different stages. In the…