DSpace Repository :: Browsing by Author "Merrill, Edward C."

Browsing by Author "Merrill, Edward C."

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The acquisition of survey knowledge across repeated exposures to a novel environment in individuals with down syndrome
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2018) Himmelberger, Zachary Mark; Merrill, Edward C.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Down syndrome (DS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with many cognitive weaknesses, including certain aspects of wayfinding. There are several theoretical reasons, such as abnormal brain development and similar weaknesses in smaller scales of space, that these deficits include developing survey knowledge of an environment. However, few studies have directly investigated this ability. The current study compared people with DS to typical adults matched on chronological age and typical children matched on the KBIT-II Matrices Subtest on a measure of survey knowledge. More specifically, an experimenter exposed participants to a novel virtual environment, and then were asked to find a specific target on their own. The total distance traveled and time taken to find the target served as dependent variables. The task was repeated three times, such that the participants navigated to the target after the experimenter showed them the environment once, two additional times, and again after two more times. Participants in both comparison groups demonstrated linear improvement across the three trials, with the children travelling a longer distance and taking longer to find the target at each trial compared to the adults. Participants with DS performed similarly to the typical children after the initial exposure, but did not demonstrate any learning across the trials, thereby resulting in a worse performance than both control groups on subsequent trials. The findings suggest that survey representations are impaired in DS, specifically in the ability to improve these representations over time. This has important implications for developing wayfinding interventions, and for understanding how these individuals learn about new environments.
The Acquisition of Survey Knowledge by Individuals With Down Syndrome
(Frontiers Media, 2020-07-03) Himmelberger, Zachary M.; Merrill, Edward C.; Conners, Frances A.; Roskos, Beverly; Yang, Yingying; Robinson, Trent; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa; Montclair State University
People with Down syndrome often exhibit deficiencies in wayfinding activities, particularly route learning (e.g.,Courbois et al., 2013;Davis et al., 2014;Farran et al., 2015). Evidence concerning more sophisticated survey learning has been sparse. In the research reported here, two experiments are reported that evaluated survey learning of youth with DS and typically developing children (TD) matched on mental age. In Experiment 1, participants learned two overlapping routes consisting of three turns each through a virtual environment depicting 9 square city blocks. Following acquisition, they were tested on multiple measures of survey knowledge: finding a shortcut, identifying the direction of landmarks not currently visible from their location in the environment, and recognizing a bird's-eye representation of the overall environment. Under these conditions, which should provide relatively optimal opportunities for survey learning, the participants with DS performed comparably to TD participants matched on non-verbal ability on all of our measures of survey learning. Hence, we concluded that people with DS can acquire some survey knowledge when tasked with learning a small environment and given the opportunity to do so. In Experiment 2, the experimenter navigated participants through a large, relatively complex, virtual environment along a circuitous path, beginning and ending at a target landmark. Then, the participants were placed at a pre-specified location in the environment that they had viewed previously and instructed to navigate to the same target (a door) using the shortest possible path from their current location. They completed the task three times: once after being shown the environment one time, once after three exposures, and once after five exposures. Results indicated that the participants with DS exhibited significantly less skill at identifying the shortcut than did the TD participants, with differences emerging as the number of exposures increased. Participants with DS were also less able to recall landmarks at the end of the experiment. Overall, however, the performance of both groups was relatively poor in both experiments - with the performance of participants with DS being worse as conditions became less optimal. These results were discussed in terms of underlying mechanisms that may account for variations in survey learning as environmental complexity increases.
Auditory and visual sustained attention in Down syndrome
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2014) Faught, Gayle Graham; Conners, Frances A.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Cognitive deficits are pervasive in youth with Down syndrome (DS) and are likely due to abnormal brain development. Alterations to the prefrontal cortex in particular suggest sustained attention may be a deficit in DS, though some psychological studies found youth with DS performed at developmental level on sustained attention tasks. The current study investigated sustained attention in DS by comparing youth with DS to typically developing (TD) youth matched for cognitive ability. Groups completed visual and auditory sustained attention to response tests (SARTs), as well as tasks to determine if sustained attention predicted their short-term memory. Results indicated groups performed similarly on both SARTs, and sustained attention predicted only a small portion of variance in their short-term memory beyond the influence of cognitive ability. Overall, these findings suggested sustained attention matches developmental level in DS, and it does not predict the pattern of poor auditory relative to visual processing characteristic of DS.
Awareness of rhyme in children and adolescents with Down syndrome
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2009) Moore, Marie; Conners, Frances A.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
The aim of the present study was to measure rhyme awareness, along with alliteration and final phoneme detection, in a sample of children and adolescents with Down syndrome, compared with typically developing children of similar verbal mental age. Each phonological task was a judgment task requiring participants to decide whether two auditory words rhymed, alliterated, or shared the final phoneme. However, most participants with Down syndrome did not score above chance on a non phonological same different judgment control task. Although it was not possible to test the original hypotheses in this group, this finding is informative for future attempts to measure phonological skills in this population. Also, item analyses of data from typically developing children revealed specific performance patterns on the phonological tasks.
Children's selective attention in contextual cueing
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2012) Yang, Yingying; Merrill, Edward C.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
In this thesis, 20 younger children (6-7 years old), 20 older children (9-10 years old) and 20 young adults (18-21 years old) were tested using a modified contextual cueing procedure. They located one particular cartoon character (target) among two sets of other cartoon characters (distracters). The main purpose was to investigate how age interacts with selective attention in contextual cueing. Selective attention was manipulated by varying the degree of similarity between two sets of distracters. Specifically, two levels were used: low heterogeneity (distracters were similar to each other), and high heterogeneity (distracters were different from each other). The results suggested that the younger children exhibited impaired implicit learning in the low heterogeneity condition yet intact implicit learning in the high heterogeneity condition. In contrast, the adults demonstrated robust implicit learning in both conditions. The older children performed at an intermediate level, exhibiting intact implicit learning in both conditions yet at a slower acquisition rate in the low heterogeneity condition than the adults. Therefore a clear transition pattern was observed indicating a developmental difference in selective attention in the acquisition of contextual cueing effects. Older children and adults were more capable of exhibiting contextual cueing effects in the absence of a salient feature difference between distracter sets, suggesting an effective selective attention mechanism based on expectancy. Younger children relied more on salient features than spatial co-occurrences in visual search, suggesting a deficit in the selective attention mechanism. This deficit might be related with factors such as difficulty in perceptual grouping, immature selective attention competence, and limited perceptual and working memory capacities.
Cognitive profiles of medical morbidities associated with premature birth: a study of children with a history of BPD, IVH, and/or PDA
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2011) Ryan, Sarah M.; Klinger, Laura G.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Infants who are born prior to 37 weeks gestation are considered premature and are at high risk for medical and neuropsychological complications. Specifically, preterm infants are at risk for medical complications such as Intraventricular Hemorrhage, Patent Ductus Arteriosus, and Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia. While medical complications are often associated with cognitive difficulty, few studies have examined whether specific medical complications are related to specific cognitive difficulties. The purpose of the current study was to determine whether these medical complications differentially impact long-term cognitive outcomes of preterm infants. The current study assessed 55 preterm children born weighing less than 1500g at 9-12 years of age using a neuropsychological battery assessing intellectual, language, motor, attention, memory and executive function skills. The results of the current study indicated that each medical complication was associated with a different pattern of cognitive outcomes. Specifically, IVH was associated with impairments in Verbal IQ, executive function, and memory. However, these difficulties were no longer significant after controlling for SES and birthweight. BPD was associated with decreased gross motor and language skills, even after controlling for SES and birthweight. PDA was associated with improved outcomes in the areas of Performance IQ, executive function, language, memory, and fine motor skills. It is hypothesized that the medication often used to treat PDA (i.e., indomethacin) may be preventative with regards to long-term neuropsychological sequelae. Taken together, this study confirms that long-term outcomes associated with prematurity may be differentially predicted by the specific medical complications that occur following birth.
A comparison of parenting dimensions between mothers of children with Down syndrome and mothers of typically developing children
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2014) Phillips, Belinda Allyson; Conners, Frances A.; Curtner-Smith, Mary Elizabeth; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Introduction: The purpose of the current study was to compare the parenting styles and dimensions in mothers of children with Down syndrome and mothers of typically developing children. Effective parenting is vital for a child's intellectual, physical, social, and emotional development, and not all parenting techniques are equal in their effectiveness in raising a healthy, well-adjusted child. We expected that parents of children with Down syndrome would display more negative parenting techniques than parents of typically developing children because of their decreased parental well-being and increased caregiving demands. Methods: The sample was comprised of 35 mothers of children with Down syndrome and 47 mothers of typically developing children. The mothers completed nine parent-report questionnaires asking about the way in which they parent their child, their child's cognitive and behavioral abilities, their own well-being, and the expectations and fears they have in relation to their child. Results: We found that mothers of children with Down syndrome use an authoritative parenting style less and a permissive parenting style more than mothers of typically developing children. Additionally, we found that mothers of children with Down syndrome provided their children with less structure but more chaos than mothers of typically developing children. However, these differences between groups on parenting styles and dimensions no longer existed when we included parental stress in the analyses. Finally, we found that within the Down syndrome group negative parenting dimensions were positively correlated with child behavior problems. Conclusion: The results suggested that mothers of children with Down syndrome are overall using similar parenting methods as mothers of typically developing children. All differences that do exist in parenting styles and dimensions can be accounted for by parental stress. As such, parenting interventions for parents of children with Down syndrome should be either focused on reducing parental stress in an effort to improve parenting techniques or on educating parents on how to utilize positive parenting techniques despite their stressful life circumstances.
Contextual Cueing Effects Across the Lifespan
(Routledge, 2013) Merrill, Edward C.; Conners, Frances A.; Roskos, Beverly; Klinger, Mark R.; Klinger, Laura Grofer; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa; University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
The authors evaluated age-related variations in contextual cueing, which reflects the extent to which visuospatial regularities can facilitate search for a target. Previous research produced inconsistent results regarding contextual cueing effects in young children and in older adults, and no study has investigated the phenomenon across the life span. Three groups (6, 20, and 70years old) were compared. Participants located a designated target stimulus embedded in a context of distractor stimuli. During exposure, the location of the target could be predicted from the location of the distracters in each display. During test, these predictable displays were intermixed with new displays that did not predict the target location. Response times to locating predictable relative to unpredictable targets were compared. All groups exhibited facilitation effects greater than 0 (95% CIs [.02, .11], d = .4; [.01, .12], d = .4; and [.01, .10], d = .4, for the children, young adults, and older adults, respectively) indicating that contextual cueing is robust across a wide age range. The relative magnitude of contextual cueing effects was essentially identical across the age range tested, F(2, 103) = 1.71, (2) = .02. The authors argue that a mechanism that uses environmental covariation is available to all age ranges, but the expression of the contextual cueing may depend on the way it is measured.
Contextual cueing in moving scenes
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2017) Robinson, Adam Trent; Merrill, Edward C.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
There are a number of different processes involved while performing a visual search task. One likely process involves learning spatial regularities in our surroundings. Contextual cueing reflects a form of associative learning between a target location and its surrounding environmental context through repeated exposure to consistent spatial orientation. Research on the phenomenon as it applies to a real world search has been limited by several choices in research methodology. The current study addresses this problem by incorporating dynamic, multicolored, and complex videos that allow for more accurate conclusions about the realistic applications of contextual cueing effects to be drawn. Participants (N =62) completed a search task while viewing videos taken from a virtual environment. Videos were either experienced once or multiple times throughout the experiment. Results showed that participants were able to locate a target object within the repeated videos faster than in novel videos. It appears that target-context associations can be formed under dynamic conditions using realistic stimuli. Implications for wayfinding, along with underlying cognitive processes, are discussed.
Contingency learning in preschool-aged children with autism spectrum disorders: an examination of learning simple and complex relationships
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2011) Fowler, Stevie Nichole; Klinger, Laura G.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Impairments in social interactions in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) may be due to difficulties understanding the complex nature of social contingencies, as social information is not always straightforward or predictable. Prior research has shown that social interactions increase with greater predictability and that children with ASD are capable of learning contingent relationships and of modifying their behaviors based on these contingencies. The current study sought to explore contingency learning in children with ASD by examining learning of predictable relationships that varied in complexity. It was predicted that children with ASD would show deficits in contingency learning when the relationship was more complex. Fourteen preschoolers with ASD and twenty with typical development (TD) were included. Learning of simple and complex relationships was assessed using a contextual cueing task. In the simple condition, one picture in an array of four predicted the position of the target. In the complex condition, the arrangement of four stimuli was predictive of the target's location. Across conditions, there were unpredictable trials at the end of the task in which the relationship no longer applied. Contingency learning was measured using difference scores between latencies for predictable and unpredictable trials. Consistent with hypotheses, children with ASD exhibited learning in the simple condition. However, when presented with more complex relationships, differences in performance across predictable and unpredictable trials were negligible. Conversely, TD children did not show the expected pattern of learning across tasks. The pattern of results suggested that TD children showed learning of complex relationships as expected, but, interestingly, did not exhibit overall learning of simple relationships. This is surprising as pilot research clearly documented contingency learning in children with typical development. Overall, these results suggest that preschool children with ASD may have impaired implicit learning of complex relationships but are able to learn simple relationships. Given the importance of early intervention, these results bolster the suggestion that preschool-aged children with ASD have the ability to learn contingent relationships, particularly when information is presented in a salient and simplified manner and may benefit from interventions that specifically teach contingency learning in both simple and complex relationships.
Developmental differences in repeated visual search as modulated by signal to noise ratio
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2015) Yang, Yingying; Merrill, Edward C.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
This dissertation was designed to study developmental differences in the way simultaneous and sequential signal to noise ratios impact contextual cueing effects. Contextual cueing refers to a form of implicit associative learning of the target location and its context. Over repeated exposures, participants typically respond faster to repeated displays than to new displays that are not repeated. Researchers have assumed that this reflected the learning of associations between the location of the target and the locations of the distracters in the repeated displays. Couperus et al. (2011) found that 10 year olds were able to show intact contextual cueing when the ratio between the predictive distracters and the unpredictive distracters within each display was 75:25, but not when the ratio was 50:50. In contrast, adults showed significant contextual cueing effects when the ratio was 50:50. Hence, it seems that children and adults are differentially sensitive to noise (irrelevant distracters) in the displays. The current study incorporated two forms of signal to noise ratio (S/N): simultaneous S/N, defined as the ratio of predictive and unpredictive distracters within each display; and sequential S/N, defined as the ratio of repeated and new displays within each block. It was predicted that low S/N might be more detrimental to the learning of contextual cueing effects for children than it was for adults. Three age groups participated in the study: 6-8 year old children, 10-12 year old children and college students. In the simultaneous condition, 20 participants in each group were included in the final analysis. The results suggested that all three groups demonstrated significant and comparable contextual cueing effects across three S/N ratio conditions. In addition, the analysis of search efficiency suggested that all three groups demonstrated guided search. This was indicated by faster search slopes to the repeated displays than to the new displays as a function of set size. Therefore, no developmental difference was found in the simultaneous condition. In the sequential condition, 22 participants in each group were included in the final analysis. The results suggested that adults demonstrated significant contextual cueing effects across all three ratio conditions. Older children demonstrated significant contextual cueing effects in the high and medium conditions but only marginally significant learning in the low condition. By contrast, younger children only demonstrated significant learning in the high and medium conditions, but they did not show significant contextual learning in the low S/N condition. There was a significant developmental difference in the sequential condition. Explicit memory tests conducted after the experiment suggested no conscious awareness about the repetition for any age group in any condition. First, the results suggested that adults have an intact ability to extract repeated information from the information stream, as long as it is at least 33% predictive. Contextual cueing is hence a relatively robust form of implicit learning. The developmental difference found in the sequential but not in the simultaneous condition suggested that the presentation mode of irrelevant information impacted the acquisition of contextual cueing in children. It is likely that children's intact learning in the simultaneous condition reflected their relatively mature selective attention mechanisms. They were able to selectively attend to the predictive information when the unpredictive information was presented on the same scene. The developmental difference observed in the sequential condition might be due to children's immature working memory, especially as it applies to younger children. The practical and methodological implications of this dissertation were also discussed.
Effect of Interruptions on Route Recall Performance
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2021) Burchardt, Dalton Warren; Roskos, Beverly; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Previous studies have displayed increased error rates and longer task completion times on primary tasks when participants were interrupted with a secondary task. This experiment utilized a virtual maze to examine the effect of an interruption on one’s memory for a previously learned route and manipulated when the interruption occurred to explore the effect of interruption timing on task performance. University students were asked to learn a route through a virtual maze by watching a first-person video of someone successfully navigating it twice. After which, they were guided along the maze and tested on their ability to recall the correct path at each intersection in the maze. During this testing phase, participants were interrupted either early, midway, late, or were not interrupted with a short reading task. The presence of an interruption did not affect the total number of errors made recalling the route or the time needed to complete the route. Similarly, the timing of the interruption did not affect the number of errors made or the time needed to complete the route. These results indicate that navigation in a virtual environment is not affected by interruptions, regardless of their timing. This may be due to landmarks in the environment aiding memory recall.
The effects of classification on teacher and parent interpretations of the cognitive performance of children with intellectual disability
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2013) Davis, Megan Benson; Merrill, Edward C.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Previous research has indicated that the classification of intellectual disability (ID) may negatively impact interpretations of the cognitive performance of children with ID, especially for general-education teachers. However, there are some findings that suggest that these negative effects of classification may be overcome when competing information is present. The current study examined the effects of classification by having three groups of participants, parents, general-education teachers, and special education teachers, watch a video of a child who was classified as either typically developing or as having an intellectual disability perform a time-telling task. Level of performance was also manipulated such that the child in the video performed either very poorly or very well on the task. The results indicated that level of performance was a more significant predictor of participant judgments than classification, particularly for general-education teachers. Further, parents and special education teachers exhibited a tendency to overestimate the performance of the child in the video, regardless of classification or level of performance. Performance attributions and correlations between the accuracy of judgments and participant variables were also examined.
The effects of landmark instruction on wayfinding in persons with Down syndrome
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2010) Benson, Megan Jo; Merrill, Edward C.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Previous research has suggested that individuals with Down syndrome experience specific hippocampal dysfunction which may impair their ability to navigate from one environment to another. One strategy used to enhance spatial navigation is the instruction of prominent landmarks along a path. The current study examined the effects of landmark instruction on wayfinding ability in persons with Down syndrome in comparison to typically developing children of the same mental age and individuals with intellectual disability not resulting from Down syndrome of the same chronological age. The results indicated that the participants with Down syndrome performed significantly worse on the wayfinding task than both the typically developing participants and those with mixed-etiology intellectual disability, despite showing an improvement in performance due to landmark instruction. Future research could examine the direct connection between hippocampal dysfunction and impairment in spatial navigation as well as explore the role of prior experience in wayfinding ability.
Evidence of emotion knowledge in down syndrome
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2012) Moore, Marie; Conners, Frances A.; Barth, Joan M.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Emotion knowledge was examined in 19 children and adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) who were individually matched to typically developing (TD) children of equivalent mental age (3 to 6 years). The ability to identify emotions from facial cues and social context was measured. This study improved upon past research by assessing emotion knowledge without a verbal narrative of the social context (minimizing language ability from interfering with emotion judgments), by using more engaging video stimuli, and by simplifying response demands. Children viewed videos created for this study that included three types of emotion cues: face only (only the protagonist's facial expressions were shown), context only (the protagonist acted out action sequences, but his face was blurred), and context plus face (actions and facial expressions were visible). An exploratory fourth video type (incongruent) was included in which the protagonist's facial expressions contradicted what would be expected from the context. Children responded by pointing to a schematic face of a happy, sad, or fear expression. Static photographs of facial emotion expressions were also presented to follow previous DS studies. Results indicated that the participants with DS performed as well as the TD participants on every measure of emotion knowledge. Additional analyses compared DS and TD participants' performance on the static vs. dynamic expressions, emotion expressivity, empathic behaviors, and accuracy for each emotion expression. Still, there were no group differences in level of emotion knowledge or its related skills. This study underscores the importance of using developmentally sensitive measures when studying special populations like DS.
Examining the relationship physical activity (PA) has with neuropsychological functioning, Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms, and academic achievement
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2019) Rondon, Ana Teresa; Jarrett, Matthew A.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Objective: The overarching goal of this study was to better understand the relationships physical activity (PA) and other physical well-being variables (i.e., body composition and fitness) have with mental health symptoms, academic achievement, and executive functioning in a middle-school aged sample. Additionally, this study sought to explore the unique contributions physical well-being variables and in particular physical activity had on youth and teacher- rated symptomatology. Finally, this study aimed to determine whether the relationship between PA and academic functioning was better accounted for directly or indirectly using a serial mediation model whereby PA predicted academic achievement through neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptoms. Background: Previous research has revealed that youth who engage in physical activity, be it a one-time acute bout or an intervention, generally experience positive neuropsychological outcomes and in some studies, a decline in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Impulsivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms. Additionally, studies investigating the efficacy of physical activity in reducing depression and anxiety symptoms have produced promising findings. Furthermore, the relationship that increased physical activity has with academic success has been recognized for several years. Importantly, fewer studies have considered the relationship that everyday PA has with functioning using a cross-sectional design and hardly any studies have included youth ratings. Further, much of the research investigating this relationship has been completed with either community or clinical samples. When studies have involved school samples, they have excluded participants with elevated ADHD symptomatology and considered the relationship fitness, rather than PA, has with academics. Finally, while a large literature suggests that PA can contribute to improvements in academic achievement in typically developing children, there is limited information on whether this relationship occurs in the context of ADHD symptoms. Method: 59 youth enrolled at a local middle school and six youth attending a day camp completed questionnaires, tasks of neuropsychological functioning, and measures of body composition during a one-hour period. Further, for students, their elective course teacher completed a rating scale yielding scores for inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms and scores from the Alabama Physical Fitness Assessment were retrieved. Results: There was a positive relationship between self-reported PA and self-reported academic achievement, and a negative relationship between self-reported PA and internalizing problems. Regressions showed that physical well-being variables accounted for a unique portion of the variance when predicting youth-reported internalizing problems. Notably, this relationship held when controlling for demographic variables and task-measured neuropsychological functioning but not when self-reported executive functioning was included in regression models. Mediation analyses revealed significant direct effects between self-reported PA and self-reported academic achievement but did not identify any statistically significant indirect effects. Conclusions: The findings in this study support the research suggesting that higher levels of PA are associated with better academic performance and fewer internalizing problems. While significant relationships between PA and attention difficulties did not emerge the results still highlight the importance of physical activity to overall well-being and encourage continued research on the topic of physical activity, mental health, and domains of functioning.
Explicit learning in down syndrome: a cross-sectional developmental trajectory approach
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2012) Phillips, Belinda Allyson; Conners, Frances A.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Introduction: The purpose of the current study was to analyze the cross-sectional developmental trajectories of explicit category learning in individuals with Down syndrome compared to individuals with intellectual disability and typically developing individuals. Explicit learning is active, conscious, controlled, and intentional; it is a deliberate attempt to acquire new knowledge or skill from repeated tries with feedback. Explicit learning improves with age throughout childhood and is closely related to intelligence. Because of its relation to intelligence, we expected individuals with Down syndrome to perform below the level expected for their chronological age and nonverbal ability. Methods: The sample was comprised of 41 individuals with Down syndrome, 25 individuals with intellectual disability, 40 individuals who were typically developing chronological age matches, and 27 individuals who were typically developing nonverbal mental age matches. All participants completed a measure of nonverbal ability, the Leiter International Performance Test-Revised, and two measures of explicit learning, the Category Task and the Concept Formation subtest of the Woodcock-Johnson-III. Results: Cross-sectional developmental trajectories were created examining explicit learning over chronological age and explicit learning over nonverbal ability. For the Category Task over chronological age trajectory, the Down syndrome and intellectual disability groups had a delay in onset in explicit learning. For the Woodcock-Johnson-III over chronological age trajectory, the Down syndrome and intellectual disability groups had a delay in onset in explicit learning, and the Down syndrome group showed a slower rate in development in explicit learning. For the Category Task over nonverbal ability trajectory, no group showed a delay in onset or slower rate in development in explicit learning. For the Woodcock-Johnson-III over nonverbal ability trajectory, the Down syndrome group had a slower rate of development in explicit learning. Conclusion: The results suggested that in comparison to typically developing individuals and individuals with mixed-etiology intellectual disability, individuals with Down syndrome show similar performance in and development of explicit category learning in relation to their nonverbal ability as long as the explicit learning measure does not constrain their performance.
Eye spy?: emotion recognition and detection in psychopathy
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2015) Kastner, Becca; Glenn, Andrea L.; Sellbom, Martin; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Psychopathy is a constellation of personality traits including callousness, manipulativeness, social dominance, and antisocial behavior. Psychopathy is associated with deficits in the recognition of emotions in others, which along with poor emotional responsivity may facilitate in the perpetration of criminal or immoral treatment of others. Emotional features detection is the orientation of visual attention to the emotionally salient aspects of an image that convey the emotion expressed. Thus, emotional features detection is necessary to accurately identify the emotions in others and subsequently for social learning abilities. Previous research on emotional features detection related to emotion recognition has focused mainly on children and adolescents with callous unemotional traits. The current study examined emotion recognition errors in two adult samples and features detection in a sample of university students. Participants exhibiting affective-interpersonal traits of psychopathy tended to have more difficulty recognizing fearful emotions in others and spent less time looking at the emotionally salient aspects of facial images than individuals higher on disinhibition. The garnered information will be useful in elaborating upon the fundamental understanding of psychopathic personalities, and it will potentially guide treatment approaches.
Factor analysis of lateralized auditory perceptual resources
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2015) Greenlee, Eric T.; Boles, David B.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
The primary goal of this study was to identify independent, hemispherically lateralized auditory perceptual resources so that they could be used to expand the Multiple Resources Questionnaire (MRQ), an existing measure that assesses the demands that a task places upon multiple resources (Boles & Adair, 2001a). Researchers have demonstrated that the MRQ's subjective ratings of resource demand can be used to predict multi-task interference, and the measure has demonstrated advantages over other subjective measures of task demand (for review Boles & Dillard, in press). Yet, of the 13 perceptual resources represented by the MRQ, only two are auditory. This shortage of auditory resources in the MRQ prevents the accurate measurement of tasks presented within the auditory modality, and the diagnosticity of the MRQ would likely benefit from the addition of items representing auditory resources (Finomore et al., 2008). The methods used to identify auditory resources in the present study were the same as those used to identify the bulk of the resources that are currently represented within the MRQ. A comprehensive survey of auditory perceptual research was conducted to identify the types of processing and tasks that appear to demand hemispherically lateralized perceptual resources. Based on this literature review, 13 tasks were selected for use in the current study. These tasks were administered as a test battery to 124 right-handed, nonmusicians. All significant, reliable performance asymmetries produced by these tasks were factor analyzed in order to identify underlying perceptual resources. Exploratory factor analysis revealed evidence for a novel right-lateralized Auditory Spectral Pitch resource which is specialized for processing and perceiving pitch based on the harmonic content in complex sounds. Results also indicated the possible existence of a right-lateralized Auditory Intensity resource, which is specialized for the processing of perceived intensity (i.e. loudness). However, the existence and independence of this Auditory Resource is suggested cautiously, since the data used to infer the resource was relatively unreliable. Additionally, two previously identified resources were evident in the current results: the Auditory Linguistic and Visual Temporal resources. The theoretical implications and human factors applications of these findings are discussed.
Factors related to social wayfinding: environment, ability, and anxiety
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2011) McKeen, James Henry; Roskos-Ewoldsen, Beverly; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Two experiments and a qualitative study investigate variables that predict different aspects of wayfinding. The first experiment investigated the extent to which sense of direction, general anxiety, spatial anxiety, gender, and a non-threatening or threatening description of environments predicted perceived threat in the environment. In addition, the experiment compared and contrasted spatial and general anxiety, investigating the nature of these two measures as wayfinding variables. Sense of direction, gender, and the described environment manipulation predicted perceived threat for a walking scenario while general anxiety predicted perceived threat for a driving scenario. The second experiment investigated the extent to which spatial anxiety, general anxiety, perceived threat, the environmental threat description manipulation, and gender predicted likelihood of asking for directions from strangers and acquaintances. Higher general anxiety predicted lower likelihood of asking strangers for directions, while having no predictive value for familiar persons (as expected). The third study was a qualitative analysis of participants' essays remembering their thoughts and behaviors from the last time they were lost or disoriented by themselves, revealing that self-reported descriptions included the variables of interest (thoughts regarding one's sense of direction, anxious feelings, and environmental assessment).

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