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Seeing Witchcraft, Bernhard Udelhoven

Journal of Global Catholicism

When Christians in Zambia struggle with witchcraft, they also struggle with African cultural and religious concepts that deal with life’s ambiguities and that require discernment. It is not by working against the cultural and religious heritage, but by working with it, as far as possible, that the pastor can identify the broken relationships towards which many witchcraft discourses point. However, before we place the concepts of witchcraft into the realm of superstition (as are the trends of mission Christianity) or the demonic (as are the trends of charismatic Christianity), the Church has the duty to look at the concepts, stay …

Relationships Between Religious Denomination, Quality Of Life, Motivation And Meaning In Abeokuta, Nigeria, Mary Gloria Njoku, Babajide Gideon Adeyinka

Journal of Global Catholicism

Inter-disciplinary research that combines methods in psychology of the impact of religious change in Africa and theological approaches has been very scant in Nigeria. This study examines the relationship among religious denominations, quality of life, motivation and meaning in life in Abeokuta metropolis in Ogun State, Nigeria using psychological and religious tools. The study hypothesizes that members of the Roman Catholic denomination would differ from members of the Redeemed Christian Church of God and the Living Faith Church in motivational factors and meaning making.

Let's Say A Word About The Girls, Wendi S. Williams

Occasional Paper Series

In this brief essay the author articulates the intersection of race and gender in the representation of Black girls’ educational experiences. The role of Black respectability politics to shape and disable the discourse around Black girls’ educational experiences is discussed. The work draws on varied texts and disciplines to explicate the challenges to naming some of the factors that influence their experiences in schools and society.

Watts Teaches About Social Responsibility And Leadership, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

“When I was an undergraduate, I kept ip- opping back and forth between being a business major and being a psychology major. Then I took a class on giving people psychological assessments to help them identify what their strengths are and what careers they might be a good fit for. It was in that class that I first heard of industrial/organizational psychology.” This is how Dr. Logan Watts explains how he chose to become a psychologist.

A native of Georgetown, Texas, he obtained his doctorate in industrial/organizational psychology from the University of Oklahoma, and today he is an assistant professor …

Self-Esteem In Spanish-Speaking Latinos In Northwest Ohio, Mckenna Freeman

Honors Projects

Self-esteem is a widely-studied construct across many disciplines of social science. However, previous research regarding self-esteem and language barriers has focused primarily on children and adolescent populations, while much less research has examined this relationship among adults. The current study measures linguistic acculturation and self-esteem in both Latino and control adult samples. Hypothesis 1 states that participants in the Latino sample would report significantly lower self-esteem than the control sample. Hypothesis 2 states that linguistic acculturation levels in Spanish speaking Latinos would be positively correlated with self-esteem. Finally, a research question was addressed measuring the differences in self-esteem between foreign …

Validation Of Minimally-Invasive Sample Collection Methods For Measurement Of Telomere Length, Stephanie A. Stout, Jue Lin, Natalie Hernandez, Elysia Poggi Davis, Elizabeth Blackburn, Judith E. Carroll, Laura M. Glynn

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Objective: The discovery of telomere length (TL) as a biomarker of cellular aging and correlate of age-related disease has generated a new field of research in the biology of healthy aging. Although the most common method of sample collection for TL is venous blood draw, less-invasive DNA collection methods are becoming more widely used. However, how TL relates across tissues derived from these sample collection methods is poorly understood. The current study is the first to characterize the associations in TL across three sample collection methods: venous whole blood, finger prick dried blood spot and saliva.

Methods: TL …

Big Data In Social And Psychological Science: Theoretical And Methodological Issues, Lin Qiu, Sarah Hian May Chan, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Big data presents unprecedented opportunities to understand human behavior on a large scale. It has been increasingly used in social and psychological research to reveal individual differences and group dynamics. There are a few theoretical and methodological challenges in big data research that require attention. In this paper, we highlight four issues, namely data-driven versus theory-driven approaches, measurement validity, multi-level longitudinal analysis, and data integration. They represent common problems that social scientists often face in using big data. We present examples of these problems and propose possible solutions.

Numerical Cognition In Action: Hand Trajectories Reveal Effects Of Early Musical Training On Numerical Processing In Spanish-English Bilingual Musicians, Daniel Arturo Pizaña

Theses and Dissertations

The mouse-tracking study examined whether early musical experience leads to changes of inhibitory control in numerical processing for bilingual speakers, as has not investigated in previous studies. Twenty-eight Spanish-English bilingual students completed two Stroop-like numerical and physical size judgment tasks via a mouse-tracking paradigm. Results showed that response times were slower during both incongruent and neutral trials for bilinguals who had received early musical training (before age 13) when compared to bilinguals who had received late musical training (after age 13) across tasks. Furthermore, hand trajectories revealed that a spatial attraction toward the incorrect response was more pronounced in bilinguals …

How Socioeconomic Disadvantages Get Under The Skin And Into The Brain To Influence Health Development Across The Lifespan, Pilyoung Kim, Gary W. Evans, Edith Chen, Gregory Miller, Teresa Seeman

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Socioeconomic disadvantage (SED) has adverse impacts on physical (Adler and Rehkopf 2008; Blair and Raver 2012; Braverman and Egerter 2008; Cohen et al. 2010; Poulton et al. 2002) and psychological (Adler and Rehkopf 2008; Bradley and Corwyn 2002; Grant et al. 2003) health development. SED is similar to low socioeconomic status (SES) which is based on occupation, income, and education or a composite of more than one of these indicators (McLoyd 1998). However, we conceptualize SED more broadly than socioeconomic status to also include subjective perception of social position and contextual indicators of disadvantage, such as neighborhood deprivation. One of …

Diversity Of Diagnoses And Student Learning Experiences In An On-Campus School Psychology Assessment Center: Future Directions And Focus, Nina M. Ellis-Hervey Ph.D., N.C.S.P., L.S.S.P., P.L.P., Ashley Doss B.S., Maio-Cert, Deshae Davis-Gatti M.A., Juliet Aura Bs/P

Journal of Multicultural Affairs

School Psychology Assessment Centers (SPAC) developed at the University-level are crucial in developing competent school psychologists. While many models on how to develop mental health centers are in existence, a new model exists for creating a SPAC on a University campus that is specifically designed to serve the diverse surrounding community and postsecondary students (see Ellis-Hervey et al., 2016). The community’s needs were reviewed, including missing service links in the region, and identification of potential clients who would benefit most from services provided. Senior students who work with clients in the SPAC gain assessment skills and build supervision skills through …

Family Income, Cumulative Risk Exposure, And White Matter Structure In Middle Childhood, Alexander J. Dufford, Pilyoung Kim

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Family income is associated with gray matter morphometry in children, but little is known about the relationship between family income and white matter structure. In this paper, using Tract-Based Spatial Statistics, a whole brain, voxel-wise approach, we examined the relationship between family income (assessed by income-to-needs ratio) and white matter organization in middle childhood (N = 27, M = 8.66 years). Results from a non-parametric, voxel-wise, multiple regression (threshold-free cluster enhancement, p < 0.05 FWE corrected) indicated that lower family income was associated with lower white matter organization [assessed by fractional anisotropy (FA)] for several clusters in white matter tracts involved in cognitive and emotional functions including fronto-limbic circuitry (uncinate fasciculus and cingulum bundle), association fibers (inferior longitudinal fasciculus, superior longitudinal fasciculus), and corticospinal tracts. Further, we examined the possibility that cumulative risk (CR) exposure might function as one of the potential pathways by which family income influences neural outcomes. Using multiple regressions, we found lower FA in portions of these tracts, including those found in the left cingulum bundle and left superior longitudinal fasciculus, was significantly related to greater exposure to CR (β = -0.47, p < 0.05 and β = -0.45, p < 0.05).

Enrichment Of Putatively Damaging Rare Variants In The Dyx2 Locus And The Reading-Related Genes Ccdc136 And Flnc, Andrew K. Adams, Shelley D. Smith, Dongnhu T. Truong, Erik G. Willcutt, Richard K. Olson, John C. Defries, Bruce F. Pennington, Jeffrey R. Gruen

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Eleven loci with prior evidence for association with reading and language phenotypes were sequenced in 96 unrelated subjects with significant impairment in reading performance drawn from the Colorado Learning Disability Research Center collection. Out of 148 total individual missense variants identified, the chromosome 7 genes CCDC136 and FLNC contained 19. In addition, a region corresponding to the well-known DYX2 locus for RD contained 74 missense variants. Both allele sets were filtered for a minor allele frequency ≤0.01 and high Polyphen-2 scores. To determine if observations of these alleles are occurring more frequently in our cases than expected by chance in …

Personal Narrative, Part I Of The Research Project [Psychology], Dušana Podlucká

Open Educational Resources

This assignment is the first in a series of assignments of the semester-long research project. The main goal of this assignment is to introduce students into the project and its theme (Becoming a LaGuardia college student). In the next step students conduct a simple analysis of their personal narratives, i.e. data they generated using a simple analytical tool based on concept of college readiness developed by David Conley (2008). In this first step of the project students were prompted through a series of questions to explore and reflect on their motivation for going to college, their future goals and aspirations, …

Scherbaum Studies The World Of Work, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

“My interest in psychology has evolved over time. My parents owned a small business when we were young, and we saw firsthand some of the challenges and issues of managing organizations, managing the people in the organizations, hiring, ring; and it always got me curious.” That is how Dr. Charles Scherbaum, a native of Anchorage, Alaska, explains how he became interested in psychology as a career.

After growing up in Seattle, where he obtained his bachelor’s in psychology from the University of Washington, he completed his master’s and doctorate, also in psychology, at Ohio University and became an assistant professor …

An Analysis Of The Experiences And Integration Of Transpersonal Phenomena Induced By Electronic Dance Music Events, Audrey Redfield

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Electronic dance music (EDM) events are attended by millions of people all over the world. While prior research uncovered the spiritual and religious elements as well as the transpersonal nature of EDM events, this preliminary study further explored the types of transpersonal phenomena that participants experience at EDM events and their subsequent integration of these experiences into daily life. A semi-structured, in-depth interview was used to explore this topic with 12 EDM participants. A thematic analysis was conducted on the data. Findings suggested that EDM events have the potential to foster interpersonal relationships with the numinous, spiritual beings, and human …

Electronic Dance Music Events As Modern-Day Ritual, Audrey Redfield, Marie I. Thouin-Savard

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Electronic dance music (EDM) events may function as a ritual space for psycho-spiritual exploration and personal development, often linked to the occurrence of non-ordinary states of consciousness in participants. This paper reviews the literature addressing the spiritual, religious, and transpersonal facets of participants’ experiences at EDM events, with an emphasis on the subsequent integration of these experiences into daily life. Several empirical studies conducted in the past two decades, of which the most recent was conducted by the first author of the present paper (Redfield, 2017, this issue), provides grounds to argue that EDM events can be vectors for enhancing …

Book Review: The Fearless Mind By Dr. Craig Manning, Kylan Rutherford

Marriott Student Review

A review of Dr. Craig Manning's The Fearless Mind. Manning provides understanding of and strategies for high mental performance. With a sports psychology background, he provides concrete examples that can be applied in any setting, be it on the field, in school, or at the office.

Albright Uses Avatars, Horses To Improve Mental Health., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

“When I was a college student, I was struggling in an intimate relationship I was forming, and it got to the point where I had to do something about it. So I went into the counseling center, and that’s what really turned me on—noticing the change within myself and the impact of counseling on the way we view our lives.”

That is the way Dr. Glenn Albright explains how he became interested in psychology in general and in counseling in particular. A native of Albany, New York, Albright received his bachelor’s in biology from Parson College in Iowa, his MS …

Enduring Chronic Kidney Disease: An Investigation Of Psychosocial Factors And Life Satisfaction In Older Adults Receiving Dialysis Treatment, Bailee Sobotka

Honors Theses

Chronic kidney disease is a condition during which the kidneys begin to shut down and no longer filter blood efficiently. Once the disease has progressed far enough, dialysis treatments are mandatory to sustain life. To further understand how older adults receiving dialysis treatments cope with their disease, psychosocial factors were evaluated to investigate possible correlations with life satisfaction using a Life Satisfaction Index Z (LSI-Z). Expected correlations with life satisfaction were sociability, financial satisfaction, importance of spirituality, and activities of daily living scores. Interviews were conducted with 30 dialysis patients and results were analyzed using various statistical measures. Significant correlations …

An Initial Application Of A Biopsychosocial Framework To Predict Posttraumatic Stress Following Pediatric Injury, Meghan L. Marsac, Nancy Kassam-Adams, Douglas L. Delahanty, Jeffrey Ciesla, Danielle Weiss, Keith F. Widaman, Lamia P. Barakat

Pediatrics Faculty Publications

Objectives—Each year millions of children suffer from unintentional injuries that result in poor emotional and physical health. This study examined selected biopsychosocial factors (i.e., child heart rate, peritrauma appraisals, early coping, trauma history) to elucidate their roles in promoting emotional recovery following injury. The study evaluated specific hypotheses that threat appraisals (global and trauma-specific) and coping would predict subsequent posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), that coping would mediate the association between early and later PTSS, and that heart rate would predict PTSS and appraisals would mediate this association.

Method—Participants were 96 children hospitalized for injury and assessed at 3 …

Liderazgo: Culturally Grounded Leadership And The National Latina/O Psychological Association, Marie L. Miville, Patricia Arredondo, Andrés J. Consoli, Azara Santiago-Rivera, Edward A. Delgado-Romero, Milton Fuentes, Melanie M. Domenech Rodríguez, Lynda Field, Joseph M. Cervantes

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This article, collaboratively written by the presidents of the National Latina/o Psychological Association (NLPA), presents leadership as conceptualized and practiced in NLPA. We first identify key leadership constructs in the available literature as well as relevant cultural values, describe liderazgo (leadership) through cultural lenses, and articulate the connections to counseling psychology and the social justice underpinnings that have guided NLPA's formation and development. We then present a number of events and decisions to illustrate how we have operationalized these organizing principles in both the daily management and long-term goals of NLPA. We conclude with a discussion of the future paths …

The Psychology Of Conflict: Mediating In A Diverse World, Samantha Skabelund

Arbitration Law Review

No abstract provided.

Psychological Determinants Of Physical Activity Across The Life Course: A "Determinants Of Diet And Physical Activity" (Dedipac) Umbrella Systematic Literature Review, Cristina Cortis, Anna Puggina, Caterina Pesce, Katina Aleksovska, Christoph Buck, Con Burns, Greet Cardon, Angela Carlin, Chantal Simon, Donatella Ciarapica, Giancarlo Condello, Tara Coppinger, Sara D’Haese, Marieke De Craemer, Andrea Di Blasio, Sylvia Hansen, Licia Iacoviello, Johann Issartel, Pascal Izzicupo, Lina Jaeschke, Martina Kanning, Aileen Kennedy, Fiona Chun Man Ling, Agnes Luzak, Giorgio Napolitano, Julie Anne Nazare, Grainne O’Donoghue, Camille Perchoux, Tobias Pischon, Angela Polito, Alessandra Sannella, Holger Schulz

Publications

Low levels of physical activity (PA) are reported to contribute to the occurrence of non-communicable diseases over the life course. Although psychological factors have been identified as an important category concerning PA behavior, knowledge on psychological determinants of PA is still inconclusive. Therefore, the aim of this umbrella systematic literature review (SLR) was to summarize and synthesize the scientific evidence on psychological determinants of PA behavior across the life course. A systematic online search was conducted on MEDLINE, ISI Web of Science, Scopus, and SPORTDiscus databases. The search was limited to studies published in English from January 2004 to April …

The Lived Experiences Of Counseling Graduate Students And The Impact Of Their Studies In Their Marital Satisfaction, Vania S. Palacios

Theses and Dissertations

Due to high levels of stress that students find throughout graduate programs, professional and personal lives are at times not prioritized. The heuristic study focused on analyzing common themes among counseling graduate students at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, the coping mechanisms students have used to improve their marital/relational satisfaction, and common stressors in their marriage as a reflection of the counseling graduate program. The researcher provided a personal narrative for the study and analyzed transcriptions of the interviews of four counseling graduate students at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Investigating The Relationships Of Attitude Clarity And Correctness With Political Identification Strength And Evaluations Of An Ideological Group, Gustavo Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

The present study examines two underlying attitude certainty dimensions in the context of political groups: attitude clarity and attitude correctness. Attitude clarity is the subjective sense that one knows what one’s attitude is, and attitude correctness is the subjective sense that one’s attitude is correct or valid. Based on predictions derived from social identity theory and attitude attribution research, it is expected that attitude clarity and attitude correctness will have diverging effects with political groups. First, it is expected that attitude clarity will better predict political identification than attitude correctness due to stronger ties to the self-concept. Secondly, it is …

General And Emotion-Specific Alterations To Cognitive Control In Women With A History Of Childhood Abuse, Kristen L. Mackiewicz Seghete, Roselinde H. Kaiser, Anne P. Deprince, Marie T. Banich

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Background

Although limited, the literature suggests alterations in activation of cognitive control regions in adults and adolescents with a history of childhood abuse. The current study examined whether such alterations are increased in the face of emotionally-distracting as compared to emotionally neutral information, and whether such alterations occur in brain regions that exert cognitive control in a more top-down sustained manner or a more bottom-up transient manner.

Methods

Participants were young adult women (ages 23–30): one group with a history of childhood physical or sexual abuse (N = 15) and one with no trauma exposure (N = 17), as assessed …

Gambling-Like Behavior In Pigeons: 'Jackpot' Signals Promote Maladaptive Risky Choice, Aaron P. Smith, Joshua S. Beckmann, Thomas R. Zentall

Psychology Faculty Publications

Individuals often face choices that have uncertain outcomes and have important consequences. As a model of this environment, laboratory experiments often offer a choice between an uncertain, large reward that varies in its probability of delivery against a certain but smaller reward as a measure of an individual’s risk aversion. An important factor generally lacking from these procedures are gambling related cues that may moderate risk preferences. The present experiment offered pigeons choices between unreliable and certain rewards but, for the Signaled group on winning choices, presented a ‘jackpot’ signal prior to reward delivery. The Unsignaled group received an ambiguous …

Learning To Think Slower: Review Of Thinking, Fast And Slow By Daniel Kahneman (2011), Samuel L. Tunstall, Patrick N. Beymer

Numeracy

Daniel Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 499 pp. ISBN 978-0374275631.

As an expansive review of Kahneman and others' work over the past half-century in understanding human decision-making, Thinking, Fast and Slow provides Numeracy readers much to consider for both pedagogy and research. In this review, we outline Kahneman's core argument—that humans use both rash (emotional) System 1 thinking and slow (logical) System 2 thinking—then discuss how such systems might be addressed in a quantitative literacy classroom.

An Evaluation Of Traffic Control Devices And Driver Distraction On Driver Behavior At Railway-Highway Grade Crossings, Radhameris A. Gomez Gabriel

Doctoral Dissertations

At-grade crossings (grade crossings) are those crossings in which any part of a roadway intersects with railroad tracks. Safety at these railroad-highway grade crossings is a major concern, with traffic control warning devices serving as the main mechanisms for improving safety. There are three factors that influence a driver’s behavior at a given crossing. First, traffic control devices, including warning devices at the railroad-highway grade crossings, provide the driver with information whose impact will depend in part on the likelihood that the driver knows whether to glance in the direction of the device based on prior experience, and in part …

Disordered Or [Ab]Normal Eating In Pregnancy, Amy Bannatyne, Peta Stapleton, Roger Hughes, Bruce Watt

Peta B. Stapleton

Introduction: Pregnancy is a powerful biopsychosocial event that involves a multitude of rapid changes to a woman’s body, eating patterns, social functioning, and self identity – most of which are largely outside her control. Although it is well known that eating disorders and disordered eating disproportionally affect young women often during childbearing years, historically, scientific understanding of the intersection between pregnancy and eating disorders has been poor. Overall, it is known that pregnancy can impact an eating disorder in three main ways: 1) Pregnancy may function as a catalyst for remission 2) Pregnancy may exacerbate existing ED symptoms 3) Pregnancy …