Abschlussarbeiten
Vielen Dank für Ihr Interesse an einer Abschlussarbeit in der Kognitionspsychologie!
Wir bieten fortlaufend Themen für Bachelor- und Masterarbeiten in den Forschungsfeldern unseres Arbeitsbereichs an.
Abschlussarbeiten werden bei uns typischerweise im Rahmen größerer Forschungsprojekte geschrieben, wobei jede/r einzelne Studierende eine eigene (Sub-)Fragestellung bearbeitet. Die Datenerhebungen finden oft im Team statt. Datenauswertung und Berichtlegung sind jedoch als unabhängige Einzelleistungen zu erbringen. Es werden nur empirische Arbeiten bei uns im Arbeitsbereich betreut.
Im Rahmen der unten aufgelisteten Forschungsprojekte werden zahlreiche Daten erhoben, z.B. zum chronischen Stresserleben, zu Ängstlichkeit oder depressiver Verstimmung. Es ist daher auch möglich, im Rahmen dieser Forschungsprojekte Subfragestellungen zu bearbeiten, die von der Hauptfragestellung des Projekts unabhängig sind. Kommen Sie gern auf uns zu. Wir können sowohl die inhaltliche als auch die zeitliche Ausgestaltung der Abschlussarbeit gern individuell mit Ihnen abstimmen.
Aktuelle Forschungsprojekte:
How Stress Affects the Ability to Update Our Beliefs
Stress plays a significant role in mental health, often disrupting cognitive processes by directing attention toward stress-related information. Its impact on cognition depends on how relevant a task is to the stressor, potentially reducing the ability to adapt to new or changing situations.
This study explores how acute, task-unrelated stress affects dynamic belief updating—the ability to adjust beliefs in response to uncertainty and environmental change. Under stress, people may rely on more rigid learning strategies, leading to reduced cognitive flexibility and a shift in control from the hippocampus to the dorsal striatum.
Study Design
Participants will complete a clinical screening and cognitive tasks, including a belief updating task across three phases:
Block 1: Baseline assessment
Block 2: Introduction of a stress or control procedure
Block 3: Post-treatment assessment
In the stress condition, participants will undergo the socially evaluated cold pressor task (SECPT) during Block 2, while physiological and subjective stress measures will be collected throughout the experiment.
What Will Be Measured?
The study will analyze various factors related to belief updating and cognitive flexibility, including:
- Stress levels
- Depression & Anxiety symptoms
- Chronic stress
- MRI data
- Eye-tracking data
- Skin Conductance Response
- Physiological markers (Blood pressure, Heart rate, Respiratory rate)
- Mood
Why is This Important?
Understanding how stress influences belief updating can provide insights into stress-related cognitive impairments and help develop strategies for managing their effects in both clinical and everyday settings.
Contact: hendrik.heinbockel"AT"uni-hamburg.de
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Can’t Look Away: Why We Learn What We Don’t Want To
Acute stress has a profound impact on memory, particularly by prioritizing emotionally charged information. This study explores how stress affects encoding suppression—the ability to intentionally inhibit memory formation for specific information.
Emotional stimuli are typically remembered better than neutral ones because they are more attention-grabbing and relevant. Stress amplifies this effect by enhancing salience-driven processing, making negative experiences even more persistent over time. Stress hormones like cortisol strengthen emotional memory consolidation, which may reduce our ability to forget unwanted information.
Study Design
To investigate this, participants will complete a memory task under either stress or control conditions while undergoing:
- Eye-tracking (to measure attentional focus)
- EEG (to assess post-encoding neural reinstatements)
- Electrodermal activity recordings (to estimate arousal)
- Peripheral physiological measurements (blood pressure, cortisol) to confirm stress induction
What Will Be Measured?
The study will analyze the following factors related to encoding suppression and cognitive control:
- Acute stress levels
- Depression & Anxiety symptoms
- Chronic stress
- EEG data
- Eye-tracking data
- Skin Conductance Response
- Physiological markers (Blood pressure, Heart rate)
- Mood
Why is This Important?
By revealing how stress influences memory and cognitive control, this study aims to uncover mechanisms behind stress-related memory distortions. The findings could help explain why stressful experiences are difficult to forget and contribute to a better understanding of memory-related mental health conditions.
Contact: hendrik.heinbockel"AT"uni-hamburg.de
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How a stressful encounter impacts the memory for surrounding neutral events?
Stressful events can enhance memory for some surrounding events, while leaving others unaffected. What determines this selectivity remains unclear. According to the behavioural tagging hypothesis, weakly encoded information can be consolidated more effectively if a significant event occurs within a critical time window (Ballarini et al., 2009). Recently, prediction errors (PE) have been proposed as a unique mechanism that enhances memory (Rouhani et al., 2023). This study aims to explore whether the effect of stress on memory for events surrounding a stressor depends on the PE associated with those events.
Participants will complete two image encoding tasks designed to induce varying levels of PE, while their brain activity is recorded using EEG (electroencephalography). We will also measure physiological responses such as skin conductance and pupil dilation during encoding to track reactions to surprising material. After completing these tasks, participants will undergo the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) to induce a moderate level of stress (Kirschbaum et al., 1993), or a control treatment. The following day, they will complete a recognition memory task for the images they encoded. We will also assess their memory of the stressful encounter and gather additional data (e.g., blood pressure, pulse, salivary cortisol) to evaluate the stress response.
Example Research Questions:
- How does the tendency to jump to conclusions affect subjective prediction error and physiological surprise?
- Do task-irrelevant prediction errors trigger a similar surprise response as task-relevant prediction errors? And does this surprise response predict later memory for the learned material?
- How do the physiological and subjective stress responses influence memory for a stressful episode?
Contact: antonia.lilja"AT"uni-hamburg.de
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Top-Down Modulation of Memory Under Stress
Background
This study explores how attention influences memory under stress. Specifically, we aim to identify attention as a key cognitive mechanism in memory processes and examine its role in neural reinstatement—the reactivation of neural patterns that were present during initial encoding.
Study Design
The experiment consists of three parts:
- Day 1 (Online Session): Participants complete a set of psychological questionnaires.
- Day 2 (Lab Session): Participants undergo either a stress condition (Trier Social Stress Test, TSST) or a
control condition (non-stressful alternative).
- Top-down attention manipulation: Participants are instructed to memorize either images of fruits
or office equipment.
- Inhibition of top-down attention: Some participants will receive transcranial magnetic stimulation
(TMS) to disrupt top-down attention, while others receive sham stimulation as a control.
- EEG recordings will be taken throughout the session to measure brain activity.
- Day 3 (Recognition Task): Participants complete a memory test, identifying previously seen images
from Day 2 among an equal number of distractor images.
Main Measures
To assess the effects of stress on memory and attention, we will measure:
- Subjective stress levels
- Pupil diameter (eye-tracking)
- Skin conductance responses (electrodermal activity)
- Blood pressure & pulse (physiological stress indicators)
- Salivary cortisol
(Note: These samples will be collected but cannot be analyzed as part of your thesis.)
Contact: fabian.dorok"AT"uni-hamburg.de
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Memory and Threat Processing
Humans and animals constantly navigate ever-changing environments, yet they must make accurate predictions about potential threats to avoid harm. While classical (Pavlovian) conditioning plays a role in threat memory, it’s likely that other forms of learning and memory also contribute to how we predict and respond to threats (Baczkowski et al., 2023). This project aims to explore how conceptual knowledge influences the prediction of threats and the selection of appropriate defensive behaviors.
In this computer-based experiment, participants will first learn conceptual information about various threats. Then, in a second phase, they will guide an avatar through a virtual environment, choosing defensive behaviors to avoid these threats. The project will involve measuring several outcomes, including the timing of defensive actions, movement patterns, and physiological responses (e.g., skin conductance).
This project is an excellent opportunity for Bachelor’s or Master’s students, offering hands-on experience with developing research questions, collecting data, and analyzing results.
Potential research questions for this project include:
- Does individual trait anxiety affect how people infer the most appropriate defensive behavior?
- How does prior experience influence the movement trajectory in subsequent trials?
Reference
Baczkowski, B. M., Haaker, J., & Schwabe, L. (2023). Inferring danger with minimal aversive experience. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 27(5), 456–467. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2023.02.005
Contact: sarah.koch"AT"uni-hamburg.de
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Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms of Complex Habits
What exactly is a habit? Traditionally, this question has been explored through dual-system theories, which suggest that human behavior is controlled either by a goal-directed system (focused on achieving specific goals) or by a habitual system (Balleine & Dickinson, 1998). This project aims to test and expand upon an alternative, integrative theory of complex habits (Du et al., 2022), with a particular focus on how habits contribute to motor skill learning.
In this computer-based experiment, we will investigate whether different types of associations (e.g., between a goal and a stimulus, or between a goal and a response) can become habitual independently of one another. During the learning phase, participants will form these associations by responding to various stimuli, with correct responses being reinforced. In the test phase, we will examine how these associations influence behavior. Alongside behavioral measurements, EEG data will be collected to explore the neural mechanisms underlying these habits.
This project is ideal for Bachelor’s or Master’s students, offering the opportunity to develop an individual research question, gather data, and analyze results.
References
Balleine, B. W., & Dickinson, A. (1998). Goal-directed instrumental action: Contingency and incentive learning and their cortical substrates. Neuropharmacology, 37(4–5), 407–419. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0028-3908(98)00033-1
Du, Y., Krakauer, J. W., & Haith, A. M. (2022). The relationship between habits and motor skills in humans. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 26(5), 371–387. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.02.002
Contact: sarah.koch"AT"uni-hamburg.de