Speech recognition in complex acoustic environments is dependent on myriad bottom-up (i.e., peripheral) and top-down (i.e., central) processes. While bottom-up processes remain fairly stable during childhood, the development of top-down processes persists into young adulthood. The immaturity of top-down processes places younger children at considerable risk for poorer speech recognition...
Dynamic decision-making is a complex process that relies on our ability to generate, evaluate and implement a variety of strategies. Understanding how people navigate this process is a difficult problem that requires a wide range of methodologies. This study details a combination of behavioral experiments, computational modeling, and neuroimaging that...
Interactions between working memory and long term memory systems are still not well understood, as the systems have long been thought to be mostly separate. An interesting intersection of these memory systems is domain-specific expertise, whereby individuals are able to show supra-span memory for information related to the area of...
This dissertation investigates the relationship between melancholy and the development of American and Iranian literary discourses as responses to the crisis of postwar sovereignty. While situating itself against the complicated backdrop of US/Iran relations since the Second World War, it explores the impact of religion on the formation of political...
Agency is a broad orientation aimed to advance the self and one’s own abilities, whereas communion is a broad orientation aimed to interact with others and connect to people in a larger social context. In Chapter 1, I introduce a new framework to conceptualize the constructs of agency and communion....
The groups that we identify with help to make us who we are. This dissertation investigates the impact of the way that each of us understands those identities, through the newly introduced construct of collective self-concept clarity (Gardner & Garr-Schultz, 2017). Two aspects of collective self-concept clarity are introduced and...
Sexual minority individuals are at increased risk for negative health outcomes relative to heterosexual individuals (Meyer, 2003), and accumulating evidence indicates experience the greatest burden (for a review, see Feinstein & Dyar, 2017). These health disparities are due, in large part, to stigma-related stressors (e.g., discrimination; Meyer), and bisexual individuals...
Negative body image in women has been a prevalent issue throughout history. Societal expectations have left many women feeling insecure and dissatisfied. Current research has indicated that oftentimes negative body image is passed down from mother to daughter. While there is a variety of research on mother-daughter interactions with body...
We think data is definitive, but our perception of it contains bias from expectations and motivations. For example, when Democrats and Republicans view the same depiction of global temperature trends, Democrats see an increasing trend, while Republicans see overall flatness. Could prior beliefs bias our perception of relations depicted in...
Life stories are strong predictors of identity, since the specific narratives adults tell about themselves represent individual differences in personality characteristics. One way researchers analyze these life stories in adults is by measuring the story’s coherence, which is comprised of a clear context, a linear chronology, and an explanation of...