Award Date

1-1-2007

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Psychology

First Committee Member

Daniel N. Allen

Number of Pages

135

Abstract

The neurocognitive assessment of visuospatial memory has begun to receive attention and has been recognized as being important in the understanding of overall memory processing. Additionally, there has been an increased emphasis on emotion processing, particularly affect discrimination and attention bias. However, little information is currently available on learning and memory for emotional information. Because emotion is expressed to a large extent through nonverbal means, a nonverbal test of emotion learning would be valuable, although no such test currently exists. The aim of the current study was to establish normative performance characteristics, convergent and divergent validity for two newly developed measures of emotionally valenced visuospatial learning and memory, the Facial Affect Learning and Memory Test (FALMT) and the Facial Identification of Affect Task (FIAT). The FALMT was developed in order to examine aspects of emotional visuospatial memory in a manner analogous to non emotional visuospatial learning tasks (e.g. Biber Figure Learning Test), as well as verbal assessments of learning and memory, such as the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT). The FIAT was developed as a measure of facial affect discrimination, and represents a complementary assessment to the FALMT in the assessment of visuospatial learning and memory of emotional stimuLi For the FALMT, learning across trials, interference effects, loss of information over the delay period, and serial position effects were measured. This study gathered initial evidence of the validity and reliability of these newly developed neuropsychological assessments.

Keywords

Affect; Development; Facial; Fiat; Identification; Learning; Memory; Task; Test; Validation

Controlled Subject

Psychology--Research--Methodology; Cognitive psychology

File Format

pdf

File Size

3307.52 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

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