Psychology

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/9892

This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of Psychology.

Research outputs are organized by type (eg. Master Thesis, Article, Conference Paper).

Waterloo faculty, students, and staff can contact us or visit the UWSpace guide to learn more about depositing their research.

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Now showing 1 - 11 of 11

Adapting to Change: The Role of Priors, Surprise and Brain Damage on Mental Model Updating
(University of Waterloo, 2017-04-24) Filipowicz, Alexandre; Anderson, Britt; Danckert, James
To make sense of the world, humans build mental models that guide actions and expectations. These mental models need to be receptive to change and updated when they no longer accurately predict observations from an environment. Although ubiquitous in our everyday lives, research is still uncovering the factors that guide mental model building and updating. A significant challenge arises from the need to characterize how mental models can be both robust to noisy, stochastic fluctuations, while also being flexible to environmental changes. The current thesis explores this trade-off by examining some of the main components involved in updating. Chapter 2 proposes a novel task to measure the influence of prior mental models on the way new information is integrated. Chapter 3 tests the role of unexpected, ‘surprising’ events on our ability to detect changes in the environment. Chapter 4 measures the strategies used to explore new mental models, after a change has been detected, and how specific forms of brain damage influence these strategies. The results from this thesis provide novel insights into the behavioural and neural mechanisms that underlie mental model updating. The last chapter situates these results in existing literature, and suggests directions for future research.
Cognitive homeostasis: Boredom as a drive for optimal engagement
(University of Waterloo, 2024-05-02) Trudel, Chantal; Danckert, James
Boredom is the feeling of wanting but failing to engage the mind. The first part of this thesis proposes a theory that casts boredom as a signal of suboptimal utilization of cognitive resources. Homeostasis is used as an analogy that frames the in-the-moment feeling of boredom as a deviation from optimal engagement. It also offers an allostatic account for chronic boredom (i.e., trait boredom proneness) and briefly explores potential neural indicators of both boredom and cognitive engagement before considering related processes of meaning making. This model of boredom characterizes the experience as a dynamic response to both internal and external exigencies and leads to testable hypotheses for both the nature of the state and the trait disposition to experience the state frequently and intensely. Furthermore, it casts a more general hypothesis that humans strive to optimally engage with their environs, in order to maintain a kind of cognitive homeostatic set point. The second part of the thesis consists of a study, its replication, and an experiment derived from the theory. The study is resting on a prominent model of affective regulation suggesting that interoceptive signals are used to predict the affective outcomes of intended actions paired with recent neuroimaging work implicating the anterior insular cortex in boredom. Results showed strong relations with boredom proneness and attention to interoceptive signals. Data also showed that high boredom prone individuals tend to struggle to make sense of interoceptive signals. The experiment that followed made use of a heartbeat counting task to objectively test interoceptive accuracy as a function of boredom proneness. Heart rate variability was also measured while inducing moods of boredom and interest. While poor performance did not correlate with chronic boredom, induced state boredom triggered a higher stress response as indicated by cardiac vagal tone. These results characterize state boredom as a physiological stressor that fits well within the model proposed as a push to restore cognitive homeostasis by prompting the agent to find a more positively valenced endeavour.
The Desire to Act: Exploring Situational, Dispositional and Genetic Correlates of a Fundamental Motivational State
(University of Waterloo, 2019-07-02) Struk, Andriy A.; Danckert, James
Animals do not simply act to survive and maximize pleasure. They also act for the sake of action itself. Although such intrinsically motivated actions are ubiquitous throughout the animal kingdom, the mechanisms by which they are enacted remain poorly understood. Likewise, little is known in regard to what influences which actions an animal ultimately chooses. It has been speculated for some time that boredom signals our failure to satisfy this drive to act, and that it may play a crucial role in launching us into action. The goal of the current thesis was to investigate the role of boredom in mediating our desire to engage with our environment and to explore factors that influence how we interact with our environment. Chapter 2 tested whether boredom signals opportunities for action and makes us want to engage with such opportunities. Chapter 3 investigated whether different situations make us sensitive to distinct opportunities to act. Chapter 4 investigated whether a genetic variation predisposes us to be sensitive to specific opportunities to act. The results from this thesis highlight the importance of boredom in regulating our desire for action and provide novel insights into what factors make us act in specific ways. The last chapter situates these results within a broader self-regulatory framework.
Examining the relationship between boredom and creativity
(University of Waterloo, 2022-09-08) Nettinga, Jamie; Danckert, James
Popular sentiment expresses that boredom leads to creativity despite a lack of research investigating the relationship explicitly. Across two experiments this thesis examined the relations between both state and trait boredom and creativity. Experiment 1 explored these relations by inducing boredom and having participants complete a divergent thinking task. In addition, trait level self-reported creativity and boredom proneness were measured. Results indicated that state boredom was in fact associated with poorer performance on the divergent thinking task and trait boredom proneness was associated with diminished belief in creative potential and lower levels of engagement of everyday creative pursuits. Experiment 2 utilized a novel, creative foraging task and again found no relation between state or trait boredom and creativity. Overall, the findings of these studies suggests that neither state boredom nor trait boredom proneness leads to or promotes creative output, although further research is needed in order to determine how boredom may be associated (or not) with creativity and creative behaviours.
An Exploration of the Correlates and Causes of Boredom
(University of Waterloo, 2020-08-19) Mugon, Jhotisha; Danckert, James
Boredom has been defined as self-regulatory signal which tells us that whatever we are currently doing is failing to keep us engaged, pushing us to seek out more satisfying alternatives. It is a negatively valenced experience associated with a wide range of negative consequences ranging from problem gambling to depression and poor academic performance. The pervasiveness of boredom points to the need to better understand the various contingencies that lead to it. As such, the goal of this thesis was to explore some of the lesser studied correlates and causes of boredom. Chapter 2 explored the relationship between boredom and willingness to engage in various tasks. Results showed that the less willing one is to engage in a task, the more bored they are likely to be. Chapter 3 investigated the relationship between boredom and effort regulation with results indicating that those who are less willing to expend effort are more likely to be bored. Chapter 4 examined the role of autonomy on boredom and demonstrated that control by itself does not differentiate between different levels of state boredom when tasks are boring. Finally, Chapter 5 explored whether having control over the challenge level of a task influenced boredom. Here too, results showed that the different manipulations of control over challenge did not influence boredom. The challenge of isolating individual factors that lead to boredom, highlighted across all the studies presented here, suggests that boredom arises from complex interactions of multiple variables. The last chapter discusses the possible interactions that can give rise to boredom.
Foraging in internal and external environments: developing behavioural assays for boredom proneness.
(University of Waterloo, 2016-08-30) Mugon, Jhotisha; Danckert, James
Previous research has shown that boredom proneness is associated with failures of self-regulation. As yet few studies have directly explored the behavioural consequences of this relationship. The goal of this study was to examine the behavioural constituents of boredom proneness and various self-regulatory traits. Foraging represents a common goal directed behaviour that emphasises exploration and attainment of valued outcomes. As such, foraging tasks were used as behavioural assays of self-regulatory behaviour. Foraging can be thought of as either internal or external: an internal forging task, emphasizes exploration of problem spaces with a goal of determining as many solutions as possible. The Boggle game, in which participants made as many words as possible from a grid of 9 letters, was used as an internal foraging task. An external foraging task, on the other hand, emphasizes exploration of physical or virtual environments, with a goal of maximizing provisions. A spatial foraging task, in which participants explored a virtual environment collecting as many red “berries” as possible, served as an external foraging task. Results suggest that although each self-regulatory trait was associated with a specific set of behaviors, self-regulatory traits seem to be better characterized as behavioral preferences. When individuals behaved contrary to what would be preferred under a given self-regulatory trait, it reflects a recurrent lack of regulatory fit. Instances of non-fit in the current study were associated with increased trait boredom proneness. These findings suggest that how goals are pursued may be an important determinant of boredom proneness.
Investigating the relation between boredom and media multitasking
(University of Waterloo, 2020-09-09) Drody, Allison; Danckert, James; Smilek, Daniel
Media multitasking entails simultaneously engaging in multiple tasks when at least one of the tasks is based in media. Despite the abundance of research devoted to understanding the antecedents of media multitasking, little research has focused directly on what might be the most common trigger of media multitasking: boredom. Across two studies, we tested the assumption that state boredom leads to media multitasking by manipulating participants’ levels of boredom using video mood inductions prior to administering an attention-demanding 2-back task during which participants could media multitask by playing a task-irrelevant video. Experiment 1 also explored whether individual differences in trait boredom proneness predict the extent to which participants media multitask in the lab. We found no direct evidence for the view that state boredom leads to media multitasking. However, trait boredom proneness predicted greater amounts of media multitasking in Experiment 1. Unexpectedly, in both experiments, post-task ratings of boredom were equivalent regardless of mood induction condition, alerting us to the short-lived effects of video mood inductions and the boring nature of cognitive tasks. The implications of our findings are discussed in detail.
Mental Model Updating and Eye Movements
(University of Waterloo, 2020-08-31) Go, Hanbin; Anderson, Britt; Danckert, James
Two studies investigated what eye movements can reveal about how we process surprising information and use it to update mental models. Mental models guide our actions to make decisions in a dynamic environment. Participants made saccades to visual targets presented one at a time, radially, around an invisible perimeter, while their eyes were tracked. Target locations were normally distributed and changed at an unannounced point during the task. In Experiment 1, the distribution changed to one with non-overlapping regions of target locations. Saccadic latencies were slower when targets appeared in areas of low as opposed to high spatial probability. The length of time participants looked at targets, dwell time, increased when unexpected, low probability events occurred. In a second study, the mean of the distribution was held constant, but variance changed in three ways; a narrow-to-wide variance shift; a wide-to-narrow shift, and a no-shift condition. Hence distribution shifts were not as apparent as study 1, especially for the wide-to-narrow variance shift. Participants reported trials on which they perceived a shift in the target distribution, via a mouse click. Participants were poor at determining the distributional shifts. On trials with reported distribution change, participants dwelled on the target longer and were slower to generate saccades. When presented with a narrow-to-wide distribution shift, saccadic latencies were slower for targets from the new wide-distribution (unexpected, low probability), however, no changes were observed in dwell time, suggesting that participants deemed the highly surprising events as random noise with no predictive value for future events, and hence felt no need to update their predictive model. Results suggest that slower saccadic latency reflects surprise, whereas longer dwell time reflects updating of a mental model.
On the Relationships Between Mind-Wandering, ADHD, Engagingness, and Effort
(University of Waterloo, 2020-12-21) Hurst, Austin Jeremy; Danckert, James
Existing research on mind-wandering (MW) has found that adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) experience it more frequently and find it more disruptive to their daily lives than individuals without the disorder (Franklin et al., 2017). However, little research has been done on the academic costs of frequent and disruptive MW associated with ADHD. In addition, past theoretical work has made a distinction between intentional and unintentional MW (Grodsky & Giambra, 1990; Seli, Risko, Smilek, & Schacter, 2016), but has not examined how effort to stay on-task informs this distinction. To address these distinct lines of research, we conducted an omnibus study to examine how ADHD symptomatology related to MW while reading engaging and unengaging textbook content (Experiment 1A), as well as how reports of intentional and unintentional MW related to reported effort to stay on-task (Experiment 1B). For Experiment 1A, we found that ADHD symptomatology predicted higher rates of inattention for unengaging texts, and that this effect was stronger for unengaging texts that were read second. However, we found no evidence for an effect of ADHD symptomatology on reading comprehension. For Experiment 1B, we found that reports of intentional MW were associated with moderate effort to remain on-task, contradicting existing theory and suggesting alternative distinctions may be more theoretically and practically useful. Together, both lines of research broaden our understanding of the practical consequences and theoretical nuances of mind-wandering.
Towards an Understanding of How People Build Mental Representations
(University of Waterloo, 2016-12-13) Valadao, Derick; Danckert, James
Navigating the environment and making everyday decisions is a process plagued by noise, uncertainty, and non-stationary contingencies. Efficient and effective action is predicated upon a stable internal representation of the environment that guides action without extensive or exhaustive observation, deliberation, and alteration at the slightest deviation from expected outcomes. The ability of individuals to build these mental models and update them as needed represents a critical component of everyday decision and action. The current thesis provides an in-depth exploration of this construct though a series of brain imaging and behavioural experiments examining the neural correlates of mental model building and updating focusing on how other cognitive abilities (i.e., working memory and attention) influence the speed and accuracy of these processes. Brain imaging results highlight a network of frontal, parietal, and subcortical areas that support mental model updating. Follow-up behavioural experiments reveal both working memory and attention to be important gating mechanisms to the processing of environmental stimuli that comprise a mental model. Taken together, the results point to a robust neural network coupled with working memory and attentional gating mechanisms that support this behaviour.
Understanding boredom proneness: Cognitive and affective correlates in healthy and traumatic brain injured individuals
(University of Waterloo, 2017-03-16) Isacescu, Julia; Danckert, James
Boredom proneness has been associated with a raft of negative cognitive, affective, and behavioural consequences. Research has sought to better understand boredom proneness from both cognitive and affective perspectives; however, an explanation of its underlying processes is still lacking. First, this thesis explored cognitive and affective factors related to boredom to assess the degree to which levels of self-control could explain these relationships. Next, boredom proneness and self-control were assessed in individuals who had sustained varying degrees of traumatic brain injury (TBI) to explore whether a link exists between boredom proneness, self-control, and head injury severity. Finally, the neural underpinnings of state boredom were explored in healthy controls and a small sample of TBI patients, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Study 1 showed that boredom proneness was associated with spontaneous mind-wandering, increased depression and hostility, with individual levels of self-control driving these relationships. Study 2 showed that boredom proneness increases as a function of head injury severity. Finally, Study 3 showed recruitment of large-scale default mode network regions (DMN) associated with boredom, with concurrent downregulation of the anterior insula, an area important for switching between default and executive networks. In the TBI patients, results were heterogeneous, with individual patients displaying opposing patterns of activation within and between conditions. Collectively, these results offer insights into the mechanisms of boredom proneness and self-control. Results are discussed in terms of a current definition of boredom which suggests the state represents disengagement from one’s environment despite a motivation to engage – an experience that is negatively valenced, and likely represents failures of cognitive and affective self-regulation.

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Browsing Psychology by Author "Danckert, James"