School of Psychology Undergraduate Research Option Theses
The Research Option offers students majoring in psychology the opportunity for a substantial, in-depth research experience. Students are strongly encouraged at the end of their experience to work with their faculty mentor to develop a journal publication or conference presentation on the research in addition to the actual thesis.
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Recent Submissions
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Effects of Various Cognitive Processes on Quasi-Periodic Patterns
Quasi Periodic Patterns are a way of finding reoccurring patterns in brain imaging data. In this experiment, researchers were interested in examining how similar QPPs were in various cognitive processes. In order to execute ... -
Brain Mechanisms for the Cognitive Effects of Narrative Persuasion
The ability of a narrative to transport individuals, or converge focus of attentional, emotional, and sensory resources to events in the narrative world, has been shown to lead to attitude and behavior changes. Proposed ... -
Impact of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation on Leadership Emergence in Teams
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-07-18)This paper explores the relationship between motivation (intrinsic & extrinsic) and leadership emergence in order to mitigate extreme (too much or too little) leadership claiming and granting. The study examines DeRue and ... -
The Mechanisms of the Temporal Release from Proactive Interference
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-04-29)The release from proactive interference (PI) is a well-studied phenomenon, but its cause is elusive. When a release in PI is caused by changes in the content of to-be-remembered items, the more accurate retrieval is likely ... -
Technology Constraints on Nonverbal Aspects of Communication
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-05-08)Communication involves more than just verbal speech; there are nonverbal aspects of communication such as body position, eye contact, hand gestures, and the like. Specifically in an interview setting, both the person ... -
Observing Negative Events at Work and Their Relationship to Job Stress and Well-Being
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-05-08)Although changes in employment status have long been recognized as important life events in relation to psychological well-being (e.g. Holmes & Rahe, 1967), there has historically been a deficit in research on additional ... -
Culture influences source-memory for self-referenced information
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2012-05-07)Much of existing memory research has focused on individuals from Western cultures. As our society becomes increasingly multi-cultural, a cross-cultural approach to memory research is critical for generating more generalizable ... -
The Neural Correlates of Within Category Competition for Visual Representation
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-05-09)Electroencephalography (EEG) was used to study the mechanisms of categorical perception in neurologically-normal participants. Inferring from previous studies, the N1 component of the event related potential (ERP) was ... -
Item selection and self-paced study when learning Chinese pictographs: Does the region of proximal learning hypothesis apply to unfamiliar stimuli?
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010-05-12)This experiment examined the order of learning when faced with a time-constrained, difficult, and unfamiliar task by using 36 Chinese-English word pairs. Eighty younger adults (18 to 25 years old) and forty older adults ... -
Subjective Evaluation and Bias Relating to Paraplegics
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010-05-12)This study investigated subjective bias relating to paraplegia. Eighty-eight Georgia Tech students took part in rating eight pictures on dimensions such as creativity and color. The participants were either shown a picture ... -
Induced Negative Mood and the Positivity Effect
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010-05-12)Older adults sometimes demonstrate a bias in memory for positive over negative stimuli, referred to as a positivity bias. In contrast, young adults demonstrate the opposite bias and remember more negative than positive ... -
Training Novices on Hierarchical Task Analysis
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-12)The training of a complex task such as task analysis is an area that very few have explored. This study examines how different training methods affect knowledge acquisition, focusing on content learned and errors made by ... -
Effects of Word Replacement on Juror Perceptions and Guilt Ratings During a Criminal Trial
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-12)This research was performed with the aim of improving the body of knowledge on juror perceptions during criminal trials. Three juries were formed of men and women at least 18 years old. The juries witnessed key excerpts ... -
False memory and aging: an event-related potential study
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-05-04)The DRM paradigm is used to examine false memory—when a list of highly associated words (e.g. SEWING, THREAD, THIMBLE) is studied, a nonpresented but associated false target (e.g. NEEDLE) is often confidently (but incorrectly) ... -
Environmental Effects on Variable Practice of Example Formats
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-05-07)There is a lack of women in mathematics-related fields. This might be due to stereotype threat, when a person performs worse than usual when presented with a negative stereotype because they are worried they will prove the ... -
Investigating Color as Cue to Recalling Text Location
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-05-04)This experiment compared the accuracy and latency of text location recall from color versus non-color images under five experimental conditions. Condition 1 contained images with constant color and text location. Condition ... -
Development of a Cohesive Theory of Leadership
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-05-04)Previous assessments of leadership have failed to fully take into account what leadership is. Therefore, the goal for this study was to combine existing theories into one cohesive theory. In this study, undergraduate ... -
Functional Neuroimaging Investigation of the Neural Mechanisms for Successful Feeling-of-Knowing Judgments
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-05-04)A feeling-of-knowing (FOK) is a sense of knowing that an item would be recognizable if seen again later, despite one’s current inability to recall that item from memory. An FOK judgment occurs after a memory search and is ... -
Efficiency of Spearcon-Enhanced Navigation of One Dimensional Electronic Menus
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-05)This study simulated and compared cell phone contact book menu navigation using combinations of both auditory (text-to-speech and spearcons) and visual cues. A total of 127 undergraduates participated in a study that ... -
Visual and Auditory Velocity Perception and Multimodal Illusions
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-05-05)Although ambiguous and conflicting sensory information from different sensory modalities is common, people seldom experience perceptual ambiguities or conflict between senses. Just as the retinal nerve blind spot is filled ...
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