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Self-Efficacy And Performance Of Younger And Older Adults In Verbal, Reasoning, And Spatial Domains, Judy L. Thompson

Master's Theses

Age-related decline in intellectual abilities is domain-specific; that is, whether older adults show decreased intellectual performance depends on the type of ability being assessed (Foster & Taylor, 1920; Horn & Cattell, 1967; Kaufman, Reynolds & McLean, 1989; Sattler, 1982). Specifically, verbal abilities tend to decrease with older age (Botwinick, 1977; Cornelius, 1984; Horn & Cattell, 1967; Lachman & Jelalian, 1984). This prevalent finding has been labeled the "classic aging pattern" (Botwinick, 1977). Beyond mere descriptions, however, researchers have begun addressing explanatory mechanisms that underlie age patterns of intellectual decline, maintenance, and growth. What factors might mediate age-related decline on certain …

Mutuality And Intimacy In Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder And Normal Boys' Friendship Relations, Anna Loring Tyler

Master's Theses

The present study explored both the frequency and patterns of affective expression, play duration, and communicative exchange among dyads of boys diagnosed with ADHD with their friend. As expected, few significant differences between the two groups were revealed through frequency analyses, but interesting findings resulted from the examination of the patterns of behaviors (through sequential analyses). Overall, the results supported the hypothesis of less mutuality and intimacy in the friendships of boys diagnosed with ADHD. The boys in the ADHD/friend dyads were found to spend more time in nonassociative play during free-play and to be less likely to return to …

Stress Coping Abilities Of Individuals High And Low In Social Anxiety, Rita Marie Wittmer

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of socially anxious persons' tendencies to cope with social stress and to examine the differences in the coping abilities of i ndividuals high and low in social anxiety. The differential coping potential of the cognitive coping technique reversal of affect was tested.

Sixty four {32 control, 32 treatment) college students participated in the pretest and posttest of the experiment in which they self-disclosed information in a stressful situation. Self-report, physiological and behavioral measures of anxiety were recorded. Subjects in the treatment group received the coping skills training to deal with …

Number Conservation As Related To Type Of Transformation, Marsha Taliaferro Will

Master's Theses

In order to assess the negative effects of color, size, shape, and spacing (length) transformations on conservation judgements sixty-four 3, 4, 5, and 6 year old children were tested on four Piagetian type conservation of number tasks each containing one reversible color, size, shape or spacing transformation. Order of transformation presentation was counterbalanced and number of objects used per transformation were varied from 3 to 5 to 7 to 9. Results show that spacing (when compared to color, size and shape) is a prepotent cue for non-conserving 3, 4, and 5 year olds but not for 6 year olds. Results …

Sequential Processing Deficits In Reading Retardation, Sara Gambrell Tarver

Master's Theses

Doehring (1968) hypothesized that a basic sequential processing deficit underlies specific reading disability. To investigate sequential processing deficits in reading retardation, four tasks involving the reproduction of stimuli in a particular sequence were administered to a group of retarded readers and a group of normal readers matched on age, sex, race, educational opportunity, sociocultural environment, and Non-Language IQ on the CTMM. The normal readers were significantly superior to the retarded readers on the four sequential processing tasks and on two other tests, vocabulary and rhyming. The two groups did not differ significantly on reversals discrimination, perceptual speed, or cumulative learning. …

Partial Reinforcement With A Small Number Of Acquisition Trials : The Effects Of Reward Technique, Samuel Joseph Thios

Master's Theses

There have been a number of investigators who have noted superior resistance to extinction of a runway locomotion response by rats which were trained under partial reinforcement schedules as compared with rats trained under continuous reinforcement schedules (e.g., Logan, Beier & Kincaid, 1956; Weinstock, 1954; Badia, 1965; McCoy & Marx, 1965; Black & Spence, 1965).

The present experiment, involving four acquisition trials and nine extinction trials, was designed to investigate the influence of reward technique in an experimental context which systematically examined the effects of thwarting and nonthwarting reward techniques.

An Evaluation Of The Effectiveness Of Moderator Variables Developed By Three Techniques, James Porter Tucker Jr.

Master's Theses

In a recent article, Hobert and Dunnette (1967) maintained that compared to the Absolute-difference and Algebraic-difference techniques Quadrant Analysis should yield the more effective moderators. Their assertion was based on the reasoning that more homogenous subgrouping should yield moderators with increased sensitivity to error. The present study was carried out as an empirical investigation of their assertions. Further, the design of the study permitted an investigation of moderator function.

The total sample (n=333) of male college students was randomly divided into a developmental sample and a cross-validation sample. Employing the aforementioned techniques a total of five moderator scales were developed …

The Effects Of Readership Selectivity On The Reading Of Controversial Material Dealing With The Reader's Personal Prejudices : A Test Of The Theory Of Cognitive Dissonance, John Marshall Tucker

Master's Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to test the theory of cognitive dissonance as it relates to a reader's selectivity in reading controversial material involving his personal prejudices or attitudes. Festinger states that forced or accidental exposure to new information which tends to increase dissonance will frequently result in misinterpretation and misperception of the new information by the individual thus exposed in an effort to avoid a dissonance increase. Therefore, cognitive dissonance theory would predict that a person's prejudiced attitude would negatively effect his reading comprehension on material which was disharmonious with his attitude. The dissonance situation examined here is …

Construction And Validation Of A Forced-Choice Scale For Rating Clinical Performance Of Physical Therapy Students, Margot Trimble

Master's Theses

One of the major objectives of education in the profession of physical therapy is to prepare the student to adequately perform in a clinical setting. A part of the education of each physical therapy student is devoted to full-time clinical experience under the supervision of qualified therapists. These therapists, designated as clinical supervisors or clinical instructors, are faced with the problem of evaluation of each student's performance during the period of clinical education. The problem of providing valid evaluation of clinical performance by a student is one common to many professions. It is not unlike the problem faced by many …

Oxamates As Intermediates, Linwood Powers Tenney

Master's Theses

This thesis concerns the use of ethyl N-substituted oxamates and ethyl N, N-di-substituted oxamates as intermediates in the synthesis of large molecules.

Richardson et al. (1) showed that ethyl N-aryloxamates were effective in differentiating between primary and secondary alkyl amines.

This thesis makes use of such differentiating ability in order to obtain preferential reaction on series of compounds, each compound containing both primary and secondary amino groups.

Further, the oxamates have been modified in an attempt to find compounds with greater differentiating ability than those used by Richardson et al., (1).

The use of oxamates describes herein offer a synthetic …

Density Measurements Of Urea Adducts, Pascal Angelo Tarantino

Master's Theses

The principal objective of this thesis is to investigate the densities of four different homologous series of urea adducts to discover the effect functional groups have on the density and molar ratio of the adducts. The four series selected are straight chain saturated hydrocarbons of the following types: n-paraffins, alcohols, acids and bromides. The number of carbon atoms contained in the chains are 8, 10, 14 and 18 for each of the respective series.

Since the discovery of urea complexes in 1939 by Frederick M. Bengen, an exceedingly high interest has been awakened in many chemical laboratories all over the …

Predictive Measurements Of College Success : A Study Of The Relationship Between The Freshman Testing Program And College Success At The University Of Richmond, Walter Nelson Taylor

Master's Theses

The writer undertook this study with several objectives in view. Primarily it was desired to study the exact statistical relationship between academic success at University of Richmond and each of several scores obtained in the freshman testing program. More specifically, it was desired to check the predictive ability of: (1) the "Q" or quantitative score, (2) the "L" or linguistic score, (3) the "T" or total score, (sum of "Q" and "L" scores) obtained from the American Council on Education Psychological Examination for College Freshmen.

In addition to this, it was desired to compute the validity coefficient for another test …