Department of Psychology Graduate Theses
Recent Submissions
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Sleep Contributions to Hippocampal Gist Extraction
To better understand the world, humans scan the information contents of our experiences for patterns, corresponding to the extraction of gist, or essential meaning (Brainerd & Reyna, 1990). Research suggests that some forms ... -
What's odd? Cognitive processing of social contexts based on autistic traits within the general population
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by social and communicative deficits, such as being able to identify and understand a joke. These social deficits can be understood in a cognitive ... -
Mechanisms Contributing to the Specificity of Gynephilic Men’s Sexual Responses
Men’s sexual responses have historically been characterized by their gender specificity, meaning that men show stronger genital and subjective arousal to preferred (i.e., sexual stimuli that include one’s preferred gender) ... -
An ERP Investigation into the Influence of Spatial Relevance on Attentional Deployment
In visual search, top-down task knowledge and bottom-up stimulus salience interact to determine where observers are most likely to attend. Past research has demonstrated that during search tasks, scene regions with a high ... -
Life After Prostate Cancer: An Investigation of Patients' Health-Related Quality of Life, Sexual Outcomes, Mental Health, Social Support, and Healthcare Experiences
Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in Canadian males. Survivorship rates, particularly for early-stage diagnoses, are high, meaning that the majority of diagnosed individuals must live with the consequences ... -
FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING OF THE SPINAL CORD/BRAINSTEM AND BRAIN IN WOMEN WITH PROVOKED VESTIBULODYNIA
Vulvodynia (i.e., idiopathic chronic pain affecting the vulva) is a common but poorly understood pain condition, affecting 16% of women in the general population and leading to negative impacts in many life domains, including ... -
Effects of Reticular Activation on Long-Term Depression in Primary Visual Cortex of the Long-Evans Rat
Long-term depression (LTD) is a widely studied form of activity-dependent synaptic plasticity, typically induced by prolonged low-frequency stimulation (LFS). LFS is highly effective in eliciting LTD in vitro, but several ... -
Self-Perception in Autism Spectrum Disorder
Recent research suggests that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are unaware of their competencies in a variety of domains and overestimate their competencies above what is normative in the general population. ... -
Catcalls or Compliments: Men's Attitudes on Street and Sexual Harassment in Relation to Their Personality
Street harassment, also known as public harassment, sexual harassment in the public, and stranger harassment, is defined as physical and verbal unwanted behaviours done by a stranger in the public sphere. Sexual harassment ... -
The Wandering Mind: An Examination of the Predictors and Consequences of Mind Wandering
It has been reported that when listening to a lecture, the average student spends approximately one third of lecture time thinking about things unrelated to the lecture material (Szpunar et al., 2013). With that said, ... -
Age-Related Differences in Preschoolers’ ability to Change a Belief as Evidenced by Load-Force Adaptation
Over the preschool years, children’s core beliefs about the world go through significant changes in a number of content domains. Although the characteristics and timetables of these changes are well mapped out, little is ... -
Socioemotional Flexibility in Mother-Daughter Dyads Across Multiple Time Scales: A Longitudinal Follow-Up
Socioemotional flexibility involves shifting in and out of emotion states, and the range of emotional states expressed during interpersonal interactions (Hollenstein et al., 2013). Previous research has shown that ... -
Perceptual Effects of Inconsistency in Human Animations
Animation retargeting is a method of producing human-like animations for use in research, video games, and movies. The procedure consists of capturing the motion of a performer and applying it to a computerized avatar. In ... -
Music Engagement in Alzheimer Disease
Alzheimer disease (AD) is characterized by progressive memory loss and deterioration of functional abilities, but anecdotal and clinical observations suggest that many individuals with AD continue to respond in meaningful ... -
Motivation to expend physical and cognitive effort as predictors of functioning in major depression
Background: Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is associated with severe functional disability; however, the mechanisms of impaired functioning are understudied. Cognitive deficits is one known mechanism of functional impairment ... -
Childhood Maltreatment and Mechanisms of Vulnerability Within Anhedonia and Depression
Anhedonia is one of the defining features of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and may be characteristic of an especially severe depression. Because MDD is highly heterogeneous, anhedonia may represent an easier target for ... -
Developing an Implicit Measure of Habit Strength: The Habit IAT
Habits are defined as a form of automatic, spontaneous behaviours that are initiated following exposure to contextual cues. Although habits have been a focus of research for health, social, and consumer psychologists for ... -
The Role of Emotion Regulation in the Relationship Between Pain, Catastrophizing, Depression, and Disability in Women with Interstitial Cystitis/Bladder Pain Syndrome
Interstitial Cystitis/Bladder Pain Syndrome (IC/BPS) is a chronic pelvic pain condition with an unknown etiology and biomedical treatment outcomes for IC/BPS are poor. Catastrophizing and depression have been implicated ... -
Investigating the Dopaminergic and Glucocorticoid Systems as Underlying Mechanisms of Anhedonia
Anhedonia, a severe deficit in reward processing, is an endophenotype of several neuropsychiatric disorders (APA, 2000) and increases susceptibility to depression (Atherton et al., 2015), substance abuse (Hatzigiakoumis ... -
The Impact of Noisy Vestibular Stimulation on Self-motion Phenomena
Low immersion and sickness experienced in virtual reality (VR) are two important barriers that inhibit the widespread adoption of VR technology. Both are thought to relate to visual-vestibular mismatch. Recoupling multisensory ...
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