Psychology (Functional Area: Developmental & Cognitive Processes)
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Browsing Psychology (Functional Area: Developmental & Cognitive Processes) by Subject "Cognitive psychology"
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Item Open Access Exploring the Bilingual Advantage in Executive Control: Using Goal Maintenance and Expectancies(2016-09-20) Viswanathan, Mythili; Bialystok, Ellen B.Previous research has shown that bilingualism helps to offset age-related losses in certain executive processes such as inhibitory control, task switching and divided attention. The two studies presented in this dissertation investigated possible mechanisms underlying this bilingual advantage in executive control by examining the role of expectancies and goal maintenance in monolingual and bilingual younger (30 to 40 years) and older adults (60 to 80 years). In Chapter 2, the fadeout paradigm (Mayr & Liebscher, 2001) was used to examine differences in the ability to disengage from an irrelevant task cue. Testing began with single task blocks of shape and colour classifications presented separately, followed by a task switching block in which the two tasks alternated randomly. On trial 49, one of the tasks became irrelevant, leaving only a single task to perform. The critical variable was the point at which participants performance reflected this change by examining the number of trials required to return to single task block speed. Results showed that both younger and older bilinguals returned to single task block speeds sooner than monolinguals. The results were interpreted as showing that bilinguals were better able to use task cues to improve task performance and that outsourcing control to task cues may be beneficial. In Chapter 3, a dual modality classification paradigm was used to determine the speed at which two tasks could be executed at the same time as a means of measuring the ability to sustain task goals. The task required participants to simultaneously respond manually to visual stimuli and verbally to auditory stimuli. Results revealed that younger and older bilinguals showed smaller costs in responding to two tasks whereas monolinguals experienced larger delays in making their responses. Proportion analysis of dual task costs and pairs of responses revealed a bilingual advantage and did not show any age-related increases in costs. The results were interpreted as demonstrating the strength in goal maintenance in bilinguals, allowing them to establish a task goal, control interference from stimulus pairings in order to uphold the goal, and to manage multiple streams of information, and these abilities are sustained in aging.Item Open Access Relation of Infants' Memory and Expectation Formation: Evidence from Anticipatory Eye Movements and Pupil Diameter Changes(2014-07-09) Wong Kee You, Audrey Marie Beatrice; Adler, Scott A.Theories have suggested that infants’ ability to form expectations and exhibiting anticipatory eye movements, highlight our memory’s function of providing a foundation upon which expectations for future events are formed. This study aimed to assess this hypothesis by investigating the relation between long-term memory and expectation formation in 3-month-old infants. Infants underwent the Visual Expectation Paradigm and after a delay of 24 hours, infants were tested with either a change in the stimuli or the same stimuli. Infants’ level of anticipatory eye movements were measured on both test days. This study also aimed to study the relation between working memory and long-term memory by investigating if temporal decay (a limitation of working memory), would affect infants’ long-term memory. To this end, this study assessed the effect of two different interstimulus intervals (ISIs) on infants’ long-term memory performance. Finally, changes in pupil diameter during encoding and retrieval were also measured.