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Social Loafing, Social Facilitation And Self-Efficacy Theory: Judgments Of Control In A Group Psychokinesis Task, Mark Jordan Henn

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the effects of self-efficacy and group size on the judgments of control of individual subjects in a group situation. It was predicted that highly efficacious subjects would report more judged control, inefficacious subjects would report less judged control. Group size was predicted to affect judgments of control in a manner consistent with the social loafing and social facilitation literature, such that individually unidentifiable subjects should "loaf" and report less control. Individually identifiable subjects should find their prior efficacy beliefs facilitated, such that high believers feel increasing control with increasing group size and low believers feel decreasing control …

Internal Working Models Of Self And Others In Adolescents: A Social-Cognitive Perspective, Saul Rosenthal

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, links between internal working models of attachment and self-concept are examined. Attachment and self-concept researchers discuss mental models of the self and the self in relationships as cognitive processors that affect attention to social information, as well as encoding, interpretation, and recall. Although some research supports the notions of attachment and self-concept constructs, no associations between the two have been previously examined. An argument is presented that concepts of the self and models of important relationships are interdependent. This argument is empirically tested with a sample of adolescent girls and their mothers, who completed a series of …

Thalamocortical Contributions To Olfactory Non-Matching To Sample And Discrimination In The Rat, Susan Margaret Koger

Doctoral Dissertations

Twenty-eight male rats were pretrained on a go/no-go, continuous olfactory non-matching to sample (CONMTS) task, and randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups: radiofrequency lesions of either the medial wall or rhinal sulcal cortical projection sites of the mediodorsal thalamic nucleus (MDn); lesions of the lateral internal medullary lamina site (L-IML) of thalamus; or sham surgical control.

All three lesioned groups exhibited a significant impairment on initial retraining of CONMTS. However, the two cortical groups rapidly improved, and did not differ from the control animals for the remainder of CONMTS training. Alternatively, the L-IML deficit persisted throughout retraining. The …

Family Systems, Object Relations, And Identity Formation In Late Adolescent College Women, Elizabeth Anne Jordan

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine whether characteristics of family system and object relations are associated with identity formation in late adolescent women. Identity status, features of family system function and structure, and two dimensions of object relations were assessed in a sample of 204 18- to 21-year-old college women. It was hypothesized that different combinations of family system functioning and object relations dimensions would be found for each of the four identity statuses. Univariate analyses and discriminant function analyses revealed that distinct patterns characterized the family system and object relations of the Diffusion and Foreclosure statuses. The …

Accessibility Of Goal Information In A Mental Model, Jason E. Albrecht

Doctoral Dissertations

Most models of comprehension differ in the degree to which they suggest that readers attempt to maintain both local and global coherence. Several models suggest that readers are concerned primarily with maintaining local coherence and only attempt to establish global coherence when there is a local coherence break. In contrast, other models suggest that readers attempt to establish both local and global coherence even when there is no local coherence break. These different types of models make competing predictions about accessibility of goal information during comprehension. Local coherence strategies predict that readers should only have access to goal information when …

Toward An Understanding Of The Cognitive Etiology Of Depressive Reactions To Life Stressors: An Evaluation Of The Hopelessness Theory Of Depression, Nancy Lynne Asdigian

Doctoral Dissertations

Abramson, Metalsky, and Alloy's (1989) theory of hopelessness depression is the most recent model of depression to emerge from the learned helplessness tradition (Seligman, 1975). Hopelessness theory describes an etiological pathway by which a unique subtype of depression--hopelessness depression--is believed to emerge.

The most proximal cause of hopelessness depression is the formation of a hopelessness expectancy. Experiencing a significant life stressor and either making stable and global causal attributions, anticipating adverse consequences, or inferring derogatory self-attributes is thought to contribute to hopelessness. In turn, generalized tendencies to make stable and global causal attributions, expect negative consequences, or perceive personal deficiencies …

Predicted Hue And Saturation For Non-Spectral Lights, Thomas David Kulp

Doctoral Dissertations

The Jameson and Hurvich opponent colors model of hue and saturation was tested for spectral and non-spectral lights. Four observers scaled, using standard color naming techniques, the hue and saturation of both spectral and non-spectral lights. These lights consisted of 11 wavelengths from 440 to 640nm in steps of 20nm and consisted of 5 purities, 1.0, 0.80, 0.60, 0.40 and 0.20. Admixtures of monochromatic light and a xenon-white desaturant yielded the different colorimetric purities. For each observer, chromatic response functions were measured by the method of hue cancellation for each purity, and an achromatic response function was measured by the …