Honors Thesis Archive

Major(s): Cognitive Science
Graduated: 2018
Started Thesis: Technically, I started summer 2018, but it was a continuation of a project I had been working on since February 2016.
Thesis Title: The Influence of Goal Setting on Value Learning: Examining how Goal-directed Behavior leverages the Reinforcement Learning System
Thesis Advisor: Anne Collins, Linda Wilbrecht (Second Reader)
Thesis Summary: People are able to generate intrinsically-defined rewards that drive choice similar to extrinsic reward. However, these intrinsically-defined rewards drive learning differently from extrinsic reward.
Tip for Students Writing a Thesis: 1) If you think you might want to do a career in research, 100% do it. It'll give you an answer very quickly whether or not you want to pursue it. 2) If you can, try to take as few classes as possible your last semester while you're finishing up your thesis. It's really nice to be able to spend over 20 hours a week on it and not have to worry about also juggling 4 to 5 classes. 3) Meet with your advisor as often as possible and ask for advice from your second reader. I didn't use my second reader at all, but retrospectively, I think she would have been happy to give me advice that would've improved the quality of my thesis. 5) Come May, you'll hate your thesis and will never want to talk about it again because it is a piece of flaming garbage, but wait a couple of months and you'll come to like discussing it again. 6) Literally, no one is done in time for the Glushko prize, so just submit something no matter what state your thesis is in. So few people apply because it's an early deadline and they think everyone else has their shit together. No one has their shit together. Just submit it.

Major(s): Cognitive Science
Graduated: 2018
Started Thesis: 2017
Thesis Title: The Effects of Aging and Cognitive Tutoring on Planning Abilities
Thesis Advisor: Tom Griffiths, Falk Lieder, William Jagust (Second Reader)
Thesis Summary: People's ability to make complex planning decisions is known to deteriorate with age. This work examines the nature of these changes and also examines the effect that cognitive tutoring systems could have in teaching people to plan more effectively. The findings suggest that such systems can help aging decision-makers stay sharp.
Tip for Students Writing a Thesis: Writing a thesis is equivalent to taking two classes to make sure to plan your workload accordingly. Also, it's really really important to have an advisor who can meet with you frequently to give you advice or feedback on your project (especially if you're starting late, like I did). Some professors may not have this kind of time, so don't be afraid to ask a senior graduate student or post-doc to be your co-advisor!

Major(s): Cognitive Science
Graduated: 2017
Started Thesis: Spring 2016
Thesis Title: Representational gesture and memory: an empirical analysis
Thesis Advisor: Eve Sweetser, Terrence Deacon
Thesis Summary: Gestures are nonverbal, visible indexes of cognition (Hostetter & Alibali, 2008), interesting in part for what they reveal of mental representations on behalf of a speaker during communication. While study of those performing gesture is extensive, a great deal is yet to be understood about the role gesture serves for those viewing it. In an empirical study we explore how viewing gesture that accompanies speech (co-speech gesture) impacts memory and mental representation of a story scene relayed in English to both native and non-native English speakers. We find that gesture is significantly associated with accurate memory of an episodic story scene – an effect driven by non-native, but not native, speakers of English. Across participants, gesture provides surprisingly minimal aid to accurate recall of gesture-only story details. We consider differences in viewpoint along with spatial and temporal directionality norms for native English speakers as potential explanatory factors.
Tip for Students Writing a Thesis: "[my thesis] was completed and submitted in 2017 (my senior year at Cal). A revised version of my thesis was published in the Spring 2017 Undergraduate Journal of Psychology at Berkeley. I was also awarded the Robert J. Glushko Prize for Distinguished Undergraduate Research in Cognitive Science for the thesis. I include that information to encourage anyone with even an inkling toward completing a thesis to do so. It isn't about perfection (mine is clearly far from it), but rather about putting in the effort and actually getting it done. I was a transfer student, so timing and taking action were really critical. I began planning the project in the late Spring of my Junior year, designed, conducted the experiment, and began analysis during that summer abroad. I completed the analysis and write-up during the Fall of my senior year."

Major(s): Cognitive Science, Linguistics, Statistics, CalTeach Minor
Graduated: 2017
Started Thesis: Summer 2015
Thesis Title: Informational sensitivity and communicative order
Thesis Advisor: Terry Regier, Alexandra Carstensen, Susanne Gahl (Second Reader)
Thesis Summary: In 2008, Goldin-Meadow et al. claimed that SOV is the ‘Natural Order of Events’ with regards to gestural communication order. Our study addresses potential confounds concerning task-based and corpus-based informativeness. In our study’s experiments, English speakers played a communication game to assess the influence of communicative pressure, English Language Statistics, and Game Statistics on gestural communication order. Our results indicate that people attend to relative informativeness given communicative pressure, but that they do not use relative informativeness to determine communicative order.
Tip for Students Writing a Thesis: Working on an undergraduate honors thesis is the perfect way to run into all of the chaos and failures involved in research. It'll be long and it'll be messy, but that's ok! I recommend starting early by coming up with a long list of research questions and check them with a grad student mentor because many will be difficult to test or may not be an appropriate scope for 1 year. I ended up taking a gap year after graduation which ended up being useful. Had I applied for grad school in my senior year, I would not have even started working on the research that I fell in love with (my Linguistics thesis, see below). Don't worry about an undergrad thesis being perfect or that you'll be tied to that work in the future. Use it as a way to figure out what you like and dislike about research.

Major(s): Cognitive Science, Computer Science
Graduated: Fall 2015
Started Thesis: Summer 2014
Thesis Title: A computational account of sensory prediction error gating in reinforcement learning models
Thesis Advisor: Richard Ivry
Thesis Summary: Sensory prediction errors are often considered as error signals used to correct errant motor plans, but an alternative function could be to gate learning in the decision-making system when a negative outcome is a consequence of a motor error as opposed to a poor selection. This thesis examines the effect of sensory prediction error gating in actor-critic reinforcement learning models of decision-making.
Tip for Students Writing a Thesis: Write often and early. The writing process will uncover new insights, errors, and gaps. Aim for having a full draft early on in your last semester so you can solicit and incorporate feedback from your advisor.

Major(s): Cognitive Science, Linguistics
Graduated: Spring 2015
Started Thesis: Fall 2013 (finished that year)
Thesis Title: Testing a rational account of pragmatic reasoning: The case of spatial relations
Thesis Advisor: Terry Regier
Thesis Summary: In 2012, Frank and Goodman proposed a Bayesian model of pragmatic inference which had a near perfect correlation with participant responses when asked to communicate about simple geometric stimuli. For my honor’s thesis project, I have tested their model in the more complicated and naturalistic domain of space.
Tip for Students Writing a Thesis: Foster a good relationship with your PI/grad student/post doc. They know what they are doing, and have done this before. Ask for help when you need it.