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Persuasion Via Audiovisual Transmission: Is The Persuasiveness Of A Message Affected By Whether The Audience Believes The Message Presentation Is A Videotaped Recording Or Is An Unrehearsed Live Telecast?, Charles Laurier Dufour

Doctoral Dissertations

One hundred and fifty-nine university students participated in a study examining the effect on persuasion of believing that an audiovisual message presentation was a videotaped recording or was an unrehearsed live telecast from an adjacent room. Participants were also assigned to one of two other groups, one instructed to focus its attention on the information being presented (i.e., a centrally focused group), the other instructed to focus on the message source's physical appearance (i.e., a peripherally focused group).

A 2 (Believed Live vs. Believed Recorded) x 2 (Centrally Focused vs. Peripherally Focused) Analysis of Variance was performed on the data. …

Priming Access To Natural-Object And Trait Category Hierarchies On Pronunciation, Lexical Decision, And Category Verification Tasks, John F. Calabrese

Doctoral Dissertations

Lexical decision, pronunciation, and category verification response times (RTs) to natural object and trait hierarchies were measured. Prime and target words consisted of both superordinate and subordinate object and trait category members. Trait words were categorized as desirable and undesirable (Hampson, et al., 1986). Subjects' RTs to object and undesirable trait words displayed similar patterns. In all experiments, RTs to natural-object subordinate target words were significantly more rapid compared to superordinate words. This same pattern was also true for the undesirable traits, but reached significance in only the lexical decision task. The facilitation effect of the prime reached significance for …

Assertiveness, Family History Of Hypertension And Other Psychological And Biophysical Variables As Predictors Of Cardiovascular Reactivity To Social Stress, Kim Marie Mooney

Doctoral Dissertations

This study was conducted to assess whether certain personality characteristics and a positive family history of hypertension are associated with excessive cardiovascular reactivity. Subjects (M = 28, F = 37) engaged in a laboratory task designed to serve as a social stressor. Subjects were separated into three groups based on their self-reports of assertiveness in social situations. It was hypothesized that high and low assertiveness groups would exhibit greater heart rate and cardiovascular reactivity than subjects with average assertiveness tendencies. This relationship was not supported although significant correlations were found between low assertiveness scores and increased systolic and diastolic reactivity …

The Effect Of A Readiness Year On Children's School Achievement, Self-Concept, And Teacher Expectations, Maria White Mckenna

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of a readiness year on children's later school performance and self-concept. An examination of teachers' attitudes towards readiness and expectations for students' performance was also included.

School records of fourth graders in two New Hampshire school districts were examined. Classroom grades, standardized test scores, Gesell School Readiness Test results, age, and sex were recorded for each participating student. A self-perception scale was administered to the students near the end of the third grade.

Teachers in the two districts completed a questionnaire composed of a series of vignettes. Five variables …

The Concept Of Conscious Pleasure In The History Of Modern American Psychology, David C. Devonis

Doctoral Dissertations

The concept of pleasure is acknowledged by historians of psychology as one of psychology's principles. Because the details of the concept's development are not well known, however, diverse views of pleasure's place in the history of psychology arise. Some historians see pleasure or hedonism as issues which were important only in psychology's distant past. Others believe that pleasure, understood as a conscious and valuable personal experience, vanished from psychology's conceptual vocabulary during the behaviorist period. Some have equated pleasure only with behavioristic theories and with psychoanalysis, two systems which have characterized pleasure as unconscious. These views, along with tendencies within …