MacEwan Open Journals (MacEwan University)
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Preliminary Evidence of Spatial Memory in the Red Squirrel, Tamiasciurus hudsonicus: Implications for Cache Recovery and Use.
No full textMany animals use long-term memory for spatial information (Roth et al., 2012). In food recovery, the importance of long-term memory remains unclear. However, the role of long-term spatial memory in successful food recovery has been demonstrated in some animal species (Pravosudov et al., 2015). In line with this finding, previous studies have shown that spatial memory plays a role in the ability of an animal to recover previously stored food. In squirrel species, past studies have examined the performance of individuals in tasks of spatial memory. Nevertheless, squirrels have been previously assumed to forget the locations of food they have buried. In the North American red squirrel, Tamiasciurus hudsonicus, past research has not explored its use of spatial memory. Since these individuals live in environments of fluctuating food ability, their ability to encode, store, and use spatial information affects their survival. To our knowledge, the duration and precision of long-term spatial memory in North American red squirrels have not been empirically documented. For this reason, our study focused on the role of long-term spatial memory in successful food recovery. To test these abilities, we examined whether squirrels were capable of long-term memory for a precise spatial goal through a food-motivated, associative-learning task.
Discipline: Psychology (Honours)
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Shannon Digwee
Look Up: Reality Over Virtuality A Socially Responsible Campaign, Encouraging Individuals to use their Electronics Less.
No full textThis project focuses on finding ways to motivate and persuade people to spend less time on their electronic devices, and more time immersed in the present. Our socially responsible campaign aims to raise awareness surrounding the disconnection the digital age has created and the detrimental impacts it has on meaningful human relationships.Brainstorming and other ideation techniques were put into practice to ensure a wide variety of ideas were generated to effectively tackle our problem. Then, by applying a user-centered design approach, we conducted surveys, interviews, and contextual observations to better understand our user. Our team is half-way through the design process thus far, currently creating the visual identity for our campaign, as well as creating tangible objects to communicate our message to the public. The final stages of this project will include: creating an experimental design component where the user will have the opportunity to interact with the campaign, and a 3-minute video portraying our complete design process.
Discipline: Design Studies
Faculty Mentor: Constanza Pache
Read Receipts in Romantic Relationships: Personality, Attachment, and Trust
No full textTrust is essential for fostering human interactions. It allows us to build and maintain meaningful relationships. One’s ability to trust is shown to be strongly influenced by personality traits and attachment. With the emergence of texting, as well as social media sites and the instant messaging that they afford, trust is subject to more challenges than ever before. One such challenge is the read receipt, which allows users to confirm when the person they are engaging in conversation with has seen their message. Texting is currently the preformed form of communication, yet research looking specifically at read receipts is hard to come by, if at all. This study aims to investigate how those who score high in neuroticism, as well as those with preoccupied attachment, perceive their messages being read and not responded to. We hypothesize that those high in neuroticism, and those with preoccupied attachment, will exhibit the lowest amount of trust for a romantic partner who reads their messages and does not respond when read receipts are turned on compared to when read receipts are turned off or unavailable. Methodology will rely upon vignettes and self report measures using Qualtrics with an estimated total sample size of 200. Significant findings would further develop our understanding of the effects technology has on relationships, suggest that read receipts have negative consequences on relationships, and facilitate further research on the effects of read receipts. This could contribute towards therapeutic psychological practices in areas such as couple counselling.
Discipline: Psychology (Honours)
Faculty Mentor: Sean Roger
Student\u27s Expectations of the Sociology Degree at MacEwan
No full textAlthough our research project is still in progress, my partner and I are looking to do an in-depth study about the Sociology Degree here at MacEwan. My partner\u27s focus is on student\u27s expectations of their sociology degree and if it has changed over time. My own focus is on student\u27s career goals and how the sociology degree has helped students shape their career goals. Together these two studies work hand in hand to bring light to student\u27s expectations of learning Sociology at MacEwan.
Discipline: Sociology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kalyani Thurairaja
Change in Troponin Collection and Cutoff and the HEART Score
No full textI created this information based on the needs of the emergency department of Northeast Community Health Centre in NURS 479. It covers the change, the importance to nursing, the benefits to patient care, and introduces the HEART score which can be used in triage for cardiac patient assessment. I created the HEART score poster which will be hung throughout the Edmonton zone emergency departments and presented all the information to the staff during the rotation. The information and HEART score will assist nurses and other health care providers to use researched supported best practice in emergency department\u27s across Edmonton.
Discipline: Nursing
Faculty Mentor: Susan Carlso
Effects of Acute Exposure to Cannabinoids on Zebrafish Behaviour
No full textCannabinoid therapeutic potential is increasingly studied using animal models. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are a useful model organism because cannabinoids interrupt zebrafish endocannabinoid systems similarly to how human endocannabinoid systems are interrupted (Oltrabella, Melgoza, Nguyen, & Guo, 2017). Zebrafish also demonstrate observable behavioural changes when under stress. Zebrafish behaviour in response to multiple doses of the cannabinoids, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), will be recorded. Finally, dose response curves for the effects of THC and CBD on behaviour during the light/dark preference and novel tank dive tests will be established. Both of these tests are tests of anxiety displayed by individual zebrafish, and both are linked to predator avoidance behaviours. Previous research has suggested that THC and CBD may have anxiolytic effects (Stewart, Kaleuff, 2013; Nazario et al., 2015), implying these cannabinoids may alter zebrafish fish behaviour during the tests, as compared to zebrafish in the control condition.
Discipline: Psychology (Honours)
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Melike Schalomo
Certainty of Persuasive Appeal
No full textPeople believe their opinions directly reflect reality, which commonly leads them to adopt certain views (Ross & Ward, 1996). This certainty of position often leads people to think those who disagree with them are biased and extreme (Blatz, Sumantry, and Mercier, 2017). In the present study, we tested whether opponents who are interpreted as certain and thus more biased have less persuasive appeal than those who are uncertain because they are seen as biased and extreme. Participants on each side of the legalization of marijuana read articles regarding the political issue. The articles were ostentatiously written by an expert source - a doctor describing a position opposite to the participant’s either certainly or uncertainly. We hypothesized that individuals would interpret the certain author as biased and thus less persuasive than the uncertain author. Results suggest that certainty of an opposing opinion did not affect its persuasive appeal. This may be a result of applying the theory to an improper context – an expert source as people may not interpret expert sources as biased. It may also result because of a failure in the study design - the manipulation check of perceived certainty suggested that the passages were not seen as more or less certain. Future directions will be discussed.
Discipline: Psychology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Craig Blat
Experimental Typography in a Collaborative Publication. AZURA: Invisible Cities Abridged
No full textIn this experimental typography project, we translated the novel Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (1972), into layouts that aimed at pushing the boundaries of how we read literature. Each student was assigned to one of the fifty-five cities described in the novel, and to one dialogue between the two protagonists, Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. As we worked with the content of this piece — including a wide range of concepts such as urbanism, linguistics, and human nature — we were encouraged to challenge convention by exploring: alternative ways to organize the page; linear and non-linear representations of the text; the integration of text and image; and the nuisances of written and spoken language through linguistic deconstruction, pace, rhythm, and other techniques. As a group, we built a collective publication that was professionally printed in the Fall of 2017.
Discipline: Design Studies
Faculty Mentor: Constanza Pache
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls: A Digital Story
No full textThis Digital Story reflects the horrendous effects that colonization had and continues to have on Indigenous women. The number of Indigenous women that go missing or are murdered is alarmingly high and the causes of this number continues to be neglected. It is our goal to shed light on this crisis
An aerial inventory of rock glaciers in the Southern Alberta Rocky Mountains
No full textRock glaciers are large lobes of rocky debris commonly found within alpine permafrost in the Alberta Rocky Mountains. Alpine permafrost is of significant scientific interest as it encompasses a large area and exhibits unique responses to climate change. Rock glacier falls from these increasingly unstable mountain slopes can represent significant geohazards, which makes mapping the spatial distribution of these features and classifying their morphology important. They can also be used to identify and understand past climatic change in these alpine regions, with relict (fossilized) rock glaciers indicating a past climate formerly able to create and support these features. Although a common feature within the Alberta Rocky Mountains, information on rock glacier characteristics and distribution within this region is rather limited. The inventory is based on the aerial classification of rock glaciers using high- resolution satellite imagery available through Google Earth and in ArcMap, a geospatial processing program. Geospatial mapping and remote sensing techniques were used for the quantitative and spatial analysis of these features to create an inventory that classifies, quantifies, and characterizes the rock glaciers within this region. Classification of talus-derived and glacier-derived rock glaciers was done using morphological characteristics as the elemental method for identification. Digital Elevation Models (DEM) and optical satellite imagery were used to quantify various attributes such as shape, state, slope, aspect, and elevation. A digital database with the findings from this research will be made publically available for future research through the Alberta Geological Survey.
*Indicates presente