Digital Commons Network^™

Examining Resilience In Relation To Ptsd Symptomatology In Maltreated Youth, Timothy Day

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Resilience following exposure to adverse life situations is an ongoing process that reduces the impact of traumatic experiences and opens potential for posttraumatic growth (Fincham, Altes, Stein, & Seedat, 2009; Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000). The relationship between resilience and risk for PTSD in maltreated youth, however, remains unclear. This study sought to explore this relationship by examining a sense of mastery, a sense of relation to others, and emotional reactivity in youth endorsing a history of maltreatment related trauma. Participants were recruited from a Las Vegas Department of Family Services affiliated clinic and were administered the Children’s PTSD Inventory …

Examining The Dynamics Of Infant Face Processing Using State Space Grids, Andrea Jane Kayl

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this investigation we examined the potential processes underlying infant preferences for and categorization of male and female faces as well as the outcome of these preferences. Infants with female primary caregivers exhibit preferences for same-race females over males and categorize females more readily than males. Little is known, however, about how infants may arrive at these collective preferences and categorization abilities. In research settings infants are exposed to novel stimuli in relatively short periods of time, and their experiences outside of the lab may be imposing structure onto their learning in lab settings. We used state space grids (SSGs) …

Examining The Inner Experience Of Individuals With Bipolar Disorder, Johanah Yoosun Kang

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a serious, chronic mood disorder. The diagnostic criteria for BD provide a description of expected experiences of individuals with BD (e.g., sadness, expansive mood, inflated self-esteem, anhedonia). Despite these criteria, the details of inner experience of individuals with BD are generally unknown. Understanding the inner experience of individuals with BD may provide greater understanding of the lived experience of BD and may provide insights into treating BD. The present study examined the inner experience of six individuals with BD using Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES), a method aimed at apprehending high- fidelity accounts of momentary inner experience. …

Differences In Absenteeism Severity Among Community Youth, Kyleigh Kay Sheldon

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examined the relationship between school absenteeism severity and specific clinical and family variables in 118 middle and high school youth aged 11-19 years recruited from two truancy settings. The primary aim was to determine specific clinical and family variables that may be predictive of absenteeism severity in community youth. A secondary aim was to examine the level of absenteeism that warrants the most clinical concern. Hypotheses for the proposed study were based on the premise that characteristics of a community sample of youth with problematic absenteeism would generally resemble those identified in previous clinical samples. The first set …

Inner Experience While Reading Fiction: A Descriptive Experience Sampling Exploration, Vincent Peter Brouwers

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Reading is ubiquitous. In Western culture, childhood education places a strong emphasis on acquiring the ability to read. Whereas many studies have examined the cognitive processes underlying reading ability, no previous studies have used a high-fidelity method of sampling inner experience to examine the direct, momentary inner experience while reading. The current study used the Descriptive Experience Sampling Method (DES) to explore the inner experience of 17 undergraduates, who had been trained in DES, while reading classical short stories. We found that participants while reading often innerly saw a visual depiction of the story, though the congruency of these depictions …

Experiencing Parental Loss During Adolescence And Factors Influencing Hospital Involvement And The Grieving Process, Vaida Kazlauskaite

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Experiencing the death of a loved one can be traumatic and painful to anyone. Adolescents in particular experience death in a unique way, during a time in their lives when they are developing their own autonomy and independence. Experiencing the deteriorating conditions of a terminally ill parent may affect an adolescent in many ways. However, there is relatively little research on adolescent involvement in the medical setting during a parent’s terminal illness and how this may affect the adolescent’s bereavement. This qualitative study utilized heuristic inquiry and procedures of Grounded Theory to investigate factors influencing the involvement in the hospital …

Integration Of Audio-~Visual Emotional Information In Schizophrneia, Bern Lee

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Schizophrenia (SZ) is a debilitating illness characterized by a number of perceptual and

cognitive deficits. Deficits in emotional judgment and perception are consistently identified, although less is known about the integration of emotional information from separate sensory modalities. This study investigates the integration of auditory and visual emotional information in schizophrenia and healthy controls through application of an emotion judgment task modeled after the McGurk effect. The emotional judgments of 54 participants (40 SZ and 14 control participants from the community) for auditory, visual, and bimodal phonemic stimuli conveying no lexical information were analyzed. Visual and auditory stimuli conveying joy …

The Impact Of Parental Divorce On Children's Confidence Levels In Young Adulthood, Lawrence Jackson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Divorce continues to be a life transition that affects a substantial amount of adults and children each year. In addition to the impact that divorce can have on adults involved, the impact of divorce is amplified greatly when there are children involved. Divorce can have long-term effects and may influence children’s relationship satisfaction, trust, commitment in intimate relationships, and optimism (Mustonen, Huurre, Haukkala, Kiviruusu, & Aro, 2011). The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between social support and confidence levels for those impacted by parental divorce. Social support includes guidance counseling, service support, or financial support (Kitson, …

Factor Analysis Of The Sport Interference Checklist With Collegiate Athletes, Travis Albert Loughran

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

There are a variety of cognitive and behavioral factors that have been indicated to have a negative impact on sport performance. College student-athletes may be at particular risk to evidence problems that interfere with optimal sport performance due to high physical, social, and emotional demands. To fully understand what factors influence student-athlete sport performance, appropriate, psychometrically validated assessment measures are needed. The Sport Interference Checklist (SIC) is an assessment tool that was developed to assess sport performance in both training and competitive situations for student-athletes. The SIC includes two scales, the Problems in Sport Training Scale (PSTS) and the Problems …

What Do We See: Number Line Estimation With Eye Tracking, Sarah Ann Salas

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The following paper presents a study investigating adult number line estimation patterns through use of an eye tracker. Estimation patterns were examined by changing the range of the number line on which the estimations occur from the typical ranges of 0-100 and 0-1000 to a more difficult range of 0-723. There were two main conditions of the experiment; in one condition the number to estimate and the number line were presented simultaneously, and in the other condition, the number line presentation was delayed. In each of the two conditions of the experiment, eye fixations and area of interest analysis were …

The Experience Of Participating In Des, Dio Turner Ii

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Descriptive Experience Sampling method (DES, Hurlburt, 1990, 1993) is designed to help researchers collect and describe participants’ inner experience in a way that minimizes the impact of the participant’s presuppositions and the researcher’s worldview on the description of participants’ inner experience. This study was an exploratory examination of the potential therapeutic effects of DES. It used three sources of data: pre and post-DES SCL-90-R questionnaires, observation of the process that unfolded during DES interviews, and a post-DES exit interview. Participants (n = 14) were drawn from the Psychology 101 Subject Pool. After five days of DES, there was a …

Objectification Theory And Eating Pathology In Latina College Students: Testing A Culture-Specific Model, Kimberly Claudat

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

To date, sociocultural risk factors for eating disorder development in Latina women are poorly understood. Objectification theory provides a useful framework for understanding how sociocultural and intrapsychic variables influence eating pathology in women. However, few studies apply an objectification theory framework to the study of disordered eating in Latina women and even fewer studies examine the influence of culture-specific variables, such as acculturative stress and marianismo beliefs. Consequently, to address limitations in extant research, the present study applied the tenets of objectification theory to the study of eating pathology in Latina women using a culture-specific model. Specifically, this study investigated …

Retroactive Interference In Recognition Memory: The Effects Of Mental Effort And Similarity On Recollection And Familiarity, Caleb Jordan Picker

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Learning new material may retroactively interfere with memory for older material. Retroactive interference research has typically focused on how similarity between old and new material affects recall of old material, which predicts greatest interference when similar material is presented just before test. However, mental effort may be another source of retroactive interference that could disrupt consolidation: Mental effort could cause the most retroactive interference when presented just after study. In Experiment 1, participants engaged in tasks designed to induce mental effort (e.g., solving easy or difficult math problems) at various times between the study and test of an associative recognition …

The Effect Of Sleep On Perceptual Learning And Memory Consolidation, Vanessa Claire Irsik

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

An ability to segregate speech accurately is essential given that most auditory environments contain other overlapping conversations or environmental noise. While perceiving speech among background noise can be difficult in and of itself, those with hearing impairments can experience considerable difficulty. While training has been shown to benefit perceptual segregation of trained sounds, it is unclear how such training transfers to sounds not included in a training regimen. The current study aimed to address this question by training listeners on a portion of sounds during a vowel segregation task, and subsequently testing on both the trained sounds and untrained sounds. …

The Development Of Language And Identity: A Sociocultural Study Of Five International Graduate Students Living In The U.S., Alexandra Dema

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this sociocultural study was to analyze the longitudinal process of identity development of international graduate students as their lives unfolded across time and experience in the second languaculture. Furthermore, it was aimed at exploring what role is attributed to second language in this process. The study relied on the mainstream sociocultural perspectives on individual development that originated from Vygotsky’s work and were further elaborated by his followers to address the issues of identity and language development of second language learners. As part of such perspectives, it integrated the unit of perezhivanie into the examination of individual experiences …

Effect Of Contextual Speech Rate On Speech Comprehension, David Michael Weintraub

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Despite an extensive history of study, the effects of phonetic context are only known to affect small units of speech (e.g., formant transitions, function words). Critical aspects of speech perception, however, occur at larger scales. The series of experiments reported here investigated the effects of contextual speech rate on perception of a large unit of speech, namely sentences. In particular, there was an effect of relative rate on sentence comprehension – the rate of a sentence compared to the average rate of all other sentences within the same conversation-length period of speech – such that relatively slow sentences were better …

Functional Capacity In Schizophrenia: Relationship Among Effort, Reinforcement Learning And Self-Beliefs, Sally J. Vogel

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Individuals with schizophrenia exhibit a wide range of complex neurocognitive, psychiatric and behavioral impairments. Recent research suggests that this complex array of symptoms can be at least partially accounted for by dysfunction in more basic mechanisms, such as the ability to learn from positive and negative reinforcement, or the ability to exert adequate effort when completing simple tasks. Evidence also suggests that deficits in these basic mechanisms may contribute to more complex symptoms, such as functional impairment. Also, the relationship between neurocognitive deficits and functional impairment has been found to be mediated by defeatist performance beliefs. However, studies have not …

Comparing Functional Motor Control And Gait Parameters In Children With Autism To Those Of Age-Matched Peers Who Are Typically Developing, Patricia Stevenson, Samantha Novotny, Jillian May, Christopher Ancell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study was to compare motor performance of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to that of age-matched peers who are typically developing (TD) on motor control tasks plus symmetry and variability of gait parameters across four walking conditions. A sample of convenience of children with ASD (n=6) and peers who are TD (n=6) were recruited. Motor control was assessed using initiation and completion times on the Timed Up and Go (TUG) test. Gait parameters were collected using a computerized walkway under four trial conditions: 1) walking at self-selected velocity (SSV); 2) walking during a tray-carrying task …

Playful Aggression And The Situational Contexts That Affect Perceptions, Jennifer Hart

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Play is considered a fundamental tool for early childhood education practices as it provides numerous developmental benefits for young children. However, not all play is viewed by children, parents, and early childhood educators the same, especially playful aggression. For example, rough-and-tumble play, risky play, superhero play, “bad guy” play, active pretend play, play fighting, big body play, war play, gun play, and physically active and imaginative play are types of playful aggression that benefits young children’s development; but are often viewed negatively by the adults who observe it. The contextual factors that influence the development of these conflicting perceptions—the motivation …

Objective Circumstances Of The Death And Complicated Grief: Examining Indirect Associations Through Meaning Made Of Loss, Vincent Rozalski

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

It has been proposed that losses by violent means and loss of primary attachment figures may increase the likelihood of developing a chronic and severe grief response (often referred to as complicated grief). Specifically, these losses may be more likely to violate cherished beliefs about the safety, security, and predictability of the world, and as a result, make it more difficult to find some benign (or even positive) meaning in the event. This study aims to test this hypothesis using path analysis. Participants include 741 bereaved young adults who lost someone within the past two years. Participants were recruited from …

Contrasting Perceptions Of Motivation To Change: Clinicians And Substance Abuse Clients, Arthur Tabrizi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Substance abuse persists as one of the most costly, prevalent, and damaging health problems in the United States. As of 2012, an estimated 22 million individuals, approximately 8.9 percent of the total population, were diagnosed with substance abuse or dependence disorder. Considering the significant number of clients served, successful national completion rates among individuals utilizing outpatient care remain markedly low. In the state of Nevada, where the present study is conducted, successful intensive outpatient treatment (IOP) completion rate remains at an alarmingly low 20.1 percent. Early dropout is a particular concern in that duration of participation in treatment has been …

The Attitudes And Beliefs Of Special And General Educational Professionals Concerning Alcohol And Drug Problems, Troy Wayne Kieser

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Drug and alcohol abuse is one of the greatest challenges of public education. Substance abuse affects student academic performance. Teacher attitudes concerning substance use are linked to drug and alcohol use by students. The purpose of this study was to assertion teacher attitudes and beliefs about drug and alcohol use. The data were collected using a questionnaire. The questionnaire was a modified version of the Addiction Belief Inventory (ABI) based on the five constructs (e.g., coping, efficacy, disease, lack of efficacy, moral weakness) of substance abuse (Broadus, Hartje, Roget, & Cahoon, 2010; Luke, Ribisi, Walton, & Davidson, 2002). The participants …

Ethnic And American Identity As Correlates Of Eating Pathology In College Women, Liya Markovna Rakhkovskaya

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

According to popular racial and cultural formation theories, ethnic identity is defined as the process of identifying with the culture and practices one's ethnic group while American identity is the process of identifying with the mainstream/majority culture and practices of the United States. A small body of research suggests that ethnic identity and American identity are positively associated with mental health in ethnic minority and European American individuals, respectively. Furthermore, a growing body of research suggests that ethnic identity is associated with diminished eating pathology in minority women. However, the protective effects of ethnic identity against eating pathology are unexplored …

Assessing The Effect Of Race Saliency In Measures Of Children’S Implicit Bias, Veronica A. Glover

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The main goal of this study was to determine if race saliency affected responses on implicit measures of racial bias. Including racial labels in measures assessing implicit bias, particularly when presenting two racial groups vs. just one group, may inadvertently cue children that race is an important grouping variable and, in turn, increase the bias they display. We investigated 8- and 13-year old children’s performance on the affective priming task (APT), which does not use labels; the single category implicit association test (SCIAT) with Black faces and the SCIAT with White faces, each of which includes only one racial label; …

Risk Misperception And Selection In Insurance Markets: An Application To Demand For Cancer Insurance, David S. Hales

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Spinnewijn (2013) posits that optimism about risk and the efficacy of risk-reducing effort could cause selection in insurance markets. We test for this using a survey of 474 subjects’ demand for hypothetical cancer insurance. We elicit perceptions of baseline cancer risk and control efficacy and combine these with subject-specific cancer risks predicted by the Harvard Cancer Risk Index to develop measures of baseline and control optimism. We find that only 23 percent of our subjects would purchase a fair insurance contract aligned to their true risk type. Of these subjects, 94 percent also overinvest in prevention, leading to advantageous selection.

"Breaking Up Is Hard To Do": An Analysis Of Parasocial Relationships And Breakups Among "How I Met Your Mother" Viewers, Sara Montes De Oca

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The study of one-sided mediated interactions, commonly known as parasocial interactions, have generated significant investigations which have examined both mediated relationships through television, the Internet, other media, and the discontinuation of these relationships (also known as parasocial breakups). These studies have specifically identified certain trends in which respondents have tended to form strong emotional connections with subject(s) within narrative fictional depictions. This study examines the relationship between parasocial breakup and the dissolution of a viewer following the end of primetime series, How I Met Your Mother. The following measures were used in the survey; 1) age, gender, and ethnicity; 2) …

The Neuroendocrine And Performance Correlates Of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder In Males And Females, Meghan E. Pierce

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Distinct gender differences exist in the incidence of posttraumatic stress disorder in the United States population. Currently, the direct biological mechanisms involved in the development of PTSD have not been elucidated. However, many studies indicate a dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA-axis) as a contributing factor in the development of PTSD. This study investigated performance and endocrine correlates of PTSD in 38 females without PTSD, 14 females with PTSD, 32 males without PTSD and 5 males with PTSD. We examined the differences between basal cortisol concentrations, as well as cortisol reactivity to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). In addition, …

Effects Of Instructor Attractiveness On Classroom Learning, Richard Shane Westfall

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Although there have been multiple studies examining the effects of physical attractiveness on a variety of human interactions, one domain has been largely overlooked. The current thesis examined the effect of teacher attractiveness on a learning task. Specifically participants were exposed to a photograph that they believed was their instructor while listening to an audio lecture. Upon completion of the lecture participants then completed a forced choice recognition task covering material from the lecture. I hypothesized that participants would perform significantly better on the learning task when they perceived their instructor to be high in physical attractiveness. Neither the gender …

A Comparison Of The Effects Of Different Doses Of Gabab Receptor Ligands On Spatial Learning And Memory And Memory Flexibility, Chelcie Heaney

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The principal inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain, gamma amino-butyric acid (GABA), mediates several types of learning and memory. Of the two main receptor subtypes for GABA, the in vivo role of GABAB receptor in learning and memory is less well characterized and the current data often conflict. Based on the current literature, it is unclear, for instance, whether enhancing GABAergic activity via the GABAB receptor could be beneficial for or detrimental to learning and memory. Hippocampally-dependent learning and memory tasks are of particular interest due to their clinical relevance to patients with schizophrenia or Alzheimer’s disease, who exhibit impaired performance …

Examining The Role Of Supportive Others In Substance Abuse Treatment And Child Welfare, Jessica Marie Urgelles

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Child neglect is a prevalent problem and often co-occurs with parental substance abuse. Mothers are most often the perpetrators of child neglect. The currently available treatment programs appear to be failing to meet the needs of these mothers. Most mothers are not completing treatment, putting them at risk of losing custody of their children. The literature suggests that women may have different risk factors associated with their substance use, as compared to men. Social networks appear to play a particularly important role in the maintenance of women’s substance abuse problems. The role of social networks may be distinct for different …