Honors College

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https://repository.library.cofc.edu/handle/123456789/436
The College of Charleston Honors College expands on partnerships between faculty and student by creating a vibrant living-learning community where personal attention gives the support students need to reach their goals during and after college. Inside the CofC Honors community, motivated students live, learn, and grow together while pursuing their unique interests and goals – everything from study abroad, internships, research and service projects at home and globally.

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Browsing Honors College by Issue Date "2016-08"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Factors Affecting Autobiographical Recall: Mindfulness Meditation and Emotional Memories
    Besson, Haley; Greenberg, Daniel L
    When people learn to be mindful, they learn to be present in the moment, observant of feelings, and nonreactive to emotional stimuli. Because of this, someone who is more mindful may remember emotional memories differently from someone who is less mindful. Consequently, we designed a study to examine the effects of mindfulness on autobiographical recall. We recruited undergraduate students and assessed their level of mindfulness. We induced a mindful state or a relaxed state using audio-files. Participants recalled “angry” or “happy” memories and then rated their emotional state. Blood pressure was taken at several points throughout the study. We hypothesized that participants who were more mindful (whether through trait mindfulness or induced mindfulness) would react less to their emotional memories both psychologically and physiologically since mindfulness promotes nonreactivity to emotional stimuli. We also hypothesized that the sense of reliving that characterizes autobiographical memory would be inhibited in more mindful participants since mindfulness promotes awareness in the present. Finally, we hypothesized that more mindful participants would have either equal amounts of affective words, cognitive mechanistic words, and perceptual features in their memory recollections as compared to less mindful participants (mindfulness affects one’s reaction to emotional events and therefore amount of detail recalled) or more of these properties in the positive memories since mindfulness improves mood. Only one of our analyses proved to be significant: When participants were recalling negative memories, they used more cognitive-process words when they were in the mindful condition. Other analyses were not significant. Future research should focus on more powerful ways of inducing a mindful state; it should also examine different ways of eliciting memories, including handwritten memories and in-person interviews.
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    Temporal and Spatial Variation in Ambient Seismic Noise in the Charleston Region
    Cobb, Savannah E; Jaume, Steven
    Charleston has a high earthquake hazard, and understanding site response in the region is important for earthquake preparedness. Previous studies have revealed a 1-3 Hz peak in horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratios (HVSRs) on the Charleston peninsula. These studies also found that the amplitude of this response varies with surface geology and, at a few locations, with time of day. The objective of this study is to study the spatial and temporal variation of the 1-3 Hz peak amplitude in Charleston using recently acquired seismic data. In Summer 2015, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) recorded up to 7 hours of daytime ambient seismic noise from ten arrays of up nine to ten Nanometrics Trillium Compact seismometers placed throughout the Charleston region. I computed HVSRs using 1-hour-long time segments when all seismometers in an array were recording. I analyzed variation in HVSRs by hour and by station to determine if spatial variation or temporal variation in the amplitude of the 1-3 Hz peak was more significant. I found that spatial variation in ambient seismic noise was consistently much greater than temporal variation in ambient seismic noise for all stations. Therefore, the observed spatial variation in the 1-3 Hz HVSRs from this and the previous studies is a robust observation relatively unaffected by the time of day when data were collected.