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Quality Of Life And Affect Across The Adult Lifespan, Patrick Brown
Quality Of Life And Affect Across The Adult Lifespan, Patrick Brown
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The premise of this dissertation is based on the work of M. Powell Lawton, in particular his theories of Environmental Press: Lawton and Nahemow, 1973) and the Dual-Channel Hypothesis: Lawton, 1996; Lawton, Winter, Kleban, & Ruckdeschel, 1999). Study 1 used a correlational approach to test Lawton and colleagues: 1999) model in a community sample of people across the adult lifespan, thereby expanding previous findings to individuals under age 60. Study 2 used an experimental approach to determine if individuals are affectively susceptible to differing environmental conditions based on their performance on a cognitive task. Whereas Study 1 provided a naturalistic …
Training And Transfer Of Attentional Control In Older Adulthood, Anna Mackay-Brandt
Training And Transfer Of Attentional Control In Older Adulthood, Anna Mackay-Brandt
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Recent research in cognitive aging has brought renewed interest to a decades old question. Can cognitive skills be trained, and if so, how widely does that trained skill transfer? Previous research has demonstrated that older adults are able to improve their performance on laboratory cognitive tests and in some cases these benefits can transfer to other similar tests: e.g. Kramer et al., 2004). A few cases have demonstrated transfer to more distal outcomes: Willis et al., 2006). This area of research is still in an early stage, and reports are mixed with regard to the efficacy of cognitive training. These …
Beyond The Observable: Examining Self-Reported Well-Being In People With Dementia, Wingyun Mak
Beyond The Observable: Examining Self-Reported Well-Being In People With Dementia, Wingyun Mak
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The well-being of people with dementia is not well understood. Researchers often measure their well-being through observational methods or via proxies, but self-report is rarely used. Recently there is evidence that people with mild to moderate dementia are able to give reliable reports of their well-being, but empirical work in this area is limited. Most dementia-specific measures focus on mood or life satisfaction, and there are few that gauge more existential aspects of well-being: e.g., purpose in life). This study tested the use of a non-dementia-specific well-being measure in people with mild to moderate dementia. The relationship between goal pursuit, …
Associative Memory Processes In Schizophrenia, Aaron Bonner-Jackson
Associative Memory Processes In Schizophrenia, Aaron Bonner-Jackson
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Individuals with schizophrenia demonstrate cognitive deficits in a number of domains, including episodic memory: EM). Memory for both individual items and associations between items is impaired in schizophrenia, with some indication of a more severe deficit in associative memory. Furthermore, such memory impairments have been consistently linked with abnormalities in brain activation during both encoding and retrieval. However, certain experimental manipulations at the encoding and retrieval stages of EM significantly benefit memory performance in schizophrenia, suggesting that a strategic processing deficit may underlie memory impairment in schizophrenia. Additionally, the provision of beneficial encoding strategies increases encoding-related brain activity in key …
Medial Temporal Lobe Structure And Function, Meghana Karnik
Medial Temporal Lobe Structure And Function, Meghana Karnik
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Medial Temporal Lobe Structure and Function by Meghana Sunil Karnik Doctor of Philosophy in Biology and Biomedical Sciences: Neuroscience) Washington University in St. Louis, 2009 Professor John G. Csernansky, Chairperson My main goal was to examine the relationship between brain structure and function, specifically medial temporal lobe structure and episodic memory, in various groups of subjects who had schizophrenia, were at risk for schizophrenia because of genetic and disease influences, or who were healthy, in order to explore the influence of genetic and disease influences on brain structure-function relationships. Most of what is known about the neural structures thought to …
Discounting Of Delayed And Probabilistic Rewards By Women With And Without Binge Eating Disorder, Jamie Manwaring
Discounting Of Delayed And Probabilistic Rewards By Women With And Without Binge Eating Disorder, Jamie Manwaring
All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)
Obese individuals with binge eating disorder: BED) exhibit more general and eating-disordered psychopathology than obese individuals without BED. Binge eating also impedes weight-loss efforts, already difficult in an obese population. A better basic understanding of binge eating and obesity is needed to refine treatments for both conditions. Discounting, an experimental paradigm that examines changes in the value of delayed or uncertain outcomes, may provide an objective assessment of impulsive behavior. Impulsivity may perpetuate binge eating, but discounting tasks have never been evaluated with eating disordered individuals. A discounting procedure could help differentiate individuals with eating/weight problems from controls in terms …