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Adverse Childhood Experiences And Its Association With Cognitive Impairment In Non- Patient Older Population, Mohini D. Dutt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explores cognitive impairment and its correlation to early- life adverse experiences in non-patient population between the ages of 50 to 65. This developmental approach and observational study design explores cognition in pre-clinical Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Using a standardized neuropsychological instrument, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and clinically administered questionnaire, the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences), I hypothesized that participants with high ACE scores will inversely have low MoCA scores.

My goal was to use a multiple linear regression model with 3 covariates and 1 predictor of interest (ACEs). At 80% power, a sample size of 40 was calculated as …

Documenting An Imperfect Past: Examining Tampa's Racial Integration Through Community, Film, And Remembrance Of Central Avenue, Travis R. Bell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the Civil Rights Movement in Tampa, Florida through documentary film to recognize an imperfect past and visually reconstruct Central Avenue as a physical and Thirdspace site of remembrance located at an intersection of race and community. Motivated by an ethnographic approach and through community engagement, Tampa Technique: Rise, Demise, and Remembrance of Central Avenue is a 54-minute film that explores Central Avenue’s rise to prominence through segregation, its physical and symbolic demise as a racialized site of communal space, and how it is remembered through collective and public memory in the location it once occupied. Documentary film …

Emotional Memory For Affective Words In Manifest And Prodromal Huntington’S Disease, Patricia Lynn Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Huntington’s disease (HD) patients have been found to have specific deficits in emotional processing, most consistently demonstrating impairment recognizing the emotion expressed on a static face. The purpose of this study was to examine emotional memory in HD, which has not yet been investigated, and its relationship with executive functioning, emotional facial recognition, and the disease progression in HD. An emotional memory task with pleasant, neural, and unpleasant words was administered to control (n=26), prodromal HD (n=26), and manifest HD (n=29) participants in addition to executive function measures, an apathy scale, and emotional facial recognition task. Free recall was not …

Development Of Ethologically-Based Inhibitory Avoidance Models Of Fear Memory, Savannah Dalrymple

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Translational research provides a unique opportunity to investigate innate and conditioned fear to develop an integrated understanding of anxiety disorders, ultimately improving treatment for those afflicted. Many fear conditioning paradigms use physically aversive stimuli to induce fear but ethological stimuli may better represent psychological disorders from a translational standpoint. Natural predators and immobilization have been successful in inducing both innate and contextually conditioned fear in rodents but an inhibitory avoidance paradigm that uses ethologically relevant stimuli has yet to be developed. To expand the use of these stimuli into inhibitory avoidance conditioning, an inhibitory avoidance paradigm was developed to include …

The Relationships Among Emotion, Cognitive Dysfunction And Anosognosia In Huntington’S Disease, Danielle C. Hergert

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Huntington's disease (HD) is a genetic, neurodegenerative disorder that is characterized by motor, cognitive and psychiatric disturbances. Anosognosia, or lack of awareness of symptoms, is commonly observed in neurodegenerative disorders, including HD. Most theories suggest that emotion, executive functioning, and memory play important roles in self-awareness. There is limited research of anosognosia in HD and no theoretical model of how it manifests in the disease. The purpose of this study was to examine Metacognitive Knowledge, or overall beliefs about the self, and Online Awareness, or the ability to predict (Anticipatory Awareness) and evaluate (Emergent Awareness) task performance, in …