Digital Commons Network^™

Masculine Gender Roles And Therapy: A Conceptual Workshop, Sara Lindsey Gray

Master's Theses and Capstones

Traditional gender stereotypes, no matter how inaccurate they may be, still greatly affect how we view ourselves as men and women in our society. While all these stereotypes are constricting male stereotypes present some of the most limiting expectations for individuals. Within the realm of counseling and psychotherapy, these stereotypes conflict with such ideals as self exploration and emotional awareness and expression.

This paper reviews past and recent research and theories on the development and reiteration of male stereotypes as well as how these expectations play a role in therapeutic techniques. A conceptual workshop model is also presented as an …

The Lived Experience Of Adolescents With Dyslexia, Josefine M. Garcia

Master's Theses and Capstones

In this study, interviews with 8 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 16 were performed to explore how young people with dyslexia experienced school in terms of well-being, educational performance and challenges, self-esteem, peer relations, the roles of teachers and parents, and views on support. The elementary years of school seemed to be the most difficult for interviewees. While peer interactions were often seen as a crucial part of school, all students reported that they had experienced or feared ridicule from peers. Academic and personal self-esteem seemed low for all participants, and while many students saw their problems as …

Self-Injury Behavior In Adolescents: An Education And Prevention Model, Leslie Desrosiers

Master's Theses and Capstones

Many research studies have been focused on self-injury pertaining to adolescents in an in-patient community. There has been little research conducted on adolescents in normative populations that are engaging in self-injurious behavior which is on the rise. The importance of educating an entire community concerning self-injurious behavior is vital in order to help prevent this growing trend. Educators in our schools are not fully prepared to deal with self-injurers and how to help them through intervention and treatment. The need for a developed curriculum in the schools to educate the students, faculty, and staff is crucial in addressing the increasing …

Chronic Pain As The Result Of Traumatic Injury: A Group Counseling Model For Survivors, Corianne S. Woodard

Master's Theses and Capstones

Millions of Americans live with chronic pain as the result of traumatic injury. These individuals face countless challenges as they attempt to cope with daily pain and grieve the many losses caused by their injuries. The physical and emotional stresses associated with chronic pain and traumatic injury place these survivors at significant psychological risk and contribute to the perpetuation of their chronic pain. Group counseling with a grief model emphasis is a cost effective way to meet the specific needs of survivors living with chronic pain. These needs include: the establishment of a social support system, an opportunity to grieve …

Grief, Grieving And Death, E Elaine Andrews-Ahearn

Master's Theses and Capstones

Grief is a journey one can only take alone. There is no rehearsal for it, no primer courses, it cannot be measured or timed. No one can do it with you, or for you. There is never an end, completion, finish line. There is not one prescribed way to do it, nor is there a tidy process. Grief is messy. Most importantly, grief is something that no one ever escapes. It surrounds us all the time, it is layered in our lives, permeates the atmosphere. It is ubiquitous. There are many types and degrees of grief; there are deep pockets …

The Effects Of Documentation On Young Children's Memory, Bethany Karen Benson Fleck

Doctoral Dissertations

A central part of the Reggio Emila approach to early childhood education is the teaching method of "documentation." In documentation, educators extensively observe, record, and display young children's work through its progression. Educational and developmental literatures offer speculative claims and a theoretical basis supporting the facilitative effects of documentation on young children's memory. The current study is the first to empirically investigate the effects that documentation has on episodic and semantic memory. Sixty-six four and a half to 6-year-old children experienced a novel learning event. Two days later the children were reminded of the event and its content information using …

Keeping Visual-Auditory Associations In Mind: The Impact Of Detail And Meaningfulness On Crossmodal Working Memory Load, Anne T. Gilman

Doctoral Dissertations

Complex objects have been found to take up more visual working memory---as measured by lowered change-detection accuracy with such stimuli---than simple colored shapes (Treisman, 2006; Xu, 2002). While verbal working memory studies have similarly shown reduced apparent capacity for longer words (Baddeley, 2007), other research has demonstrated that features contributing to object categorization and recognizability can help visual working memory capacity (Olsson & Poom, 2005; Alvarez & Cavanagh, 2004). Until very recently, no measures of crossmodal working memory capacity had been proposed, even though crossmodal associations are part of the fabric of learning, from classical conditioning to calculus. The working …

The Mental Demands Of Marine Ecosystem -Based Management: A Constructive Developmental Lens, Verna Gerard Delauer

Doctoral Dissertations

Ecosystem-based Management (EBM) is a relatively new and promising approach to the management of marine systems. EBM is holistic by seeking to include ail stakeholders affected by marine policy. Stakeholders may include individuals from ail levels of government, academia, environmental organizations, and marine-dependent businesses and industry. This dissertation lays out the substantive differences of marine EBM stakeholder engagement processes versus other, single sector processes. EBM processes are more complex than existing stakeholder engagement mechanisms, to sufficiently require a more sophisticated conceptual understanding of the process and the people involved. There are implicit cognitive, interpersonal, and intra-personal demands of EBM that …

The Maritime Revival: Antimodernity, Class, And Culture, 1870--1940, Glenn Michael Grasso

Doctoral Dissertations

Between 1870 and 1940, Americans redefined their perceptions, ideas, and cultural meanings of seafaring under sail. The Maritime Revival---a cultural phenomenon that took the workaday nineteenth-century maritime world and converted it into an archetypical exercise in essential Americanism---selectively picked stories, symbols, and specific lifestyles and elevated them to heroic status. Part of larger nineteenth-century revivalism, the Maritime Revival created an image of seafaring that was a small subset of the entire experience-as-lived. By the 1930s, Americans recognized a heroic, but lost, golden age of sailing ships that did not correspond to the maritime world that had once been a ubiquitous …

Executive Control In The Anterior Cingulate Cortex, Lori A. Newman

Doctoral Dissertations

Converging evidence supports the hypothesis that the prefrontal cortex is critical for executive control. One prefrontal subregion, the anterior cingulate cortex has previously been shown to be active in situations involving high conflict, presentation of salient, distracting stimuli, and error processing, i.e. situations that occur when learning new response contingencies, when previously learned response strategies fail, or when a shift in attention or responding is required. These situations all involve goal-oriented monitoring of performance in order to effectively adjust cognitive processes. Several neuropsychological disorders, for instance schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and obsessive compulsive disorder, are correlated with morphological changes …

Emotional Responses To Environmental Messages: Implications For Future Environmentally Responsible Behavioral Intentions, Jeffrey L. Perrin

Doctoral Dissertations

The present study analyzed the role of environmental message characteristics (message modality and message valence) and emotional arousal (positive and negative) in predicting environmentally responsible behavioral intentions. Using an experimental protocol designed to induce emotions in the laboratory, I measured specific emotional responses to gains-framed and losses-framed video and text-only environmental messages, and investigated the relation between intensity of emotional responses to environmental messages and environmentally responsible behavioral intentions. The sample consisted of 161 college students (116 women, 45 men). A hierarchical linear multiple regression was computed to assess the contributions of background variables (environmental knowledge, environmental beliefs, and outdoor …

Predicting Inclusive Teaching Using The Transtheoretical Model Of Behavior Change And The Theory Of Planned Behavior, Heather D. Hussey

Doctoral Dissertations

The diversity related materials in many university and college courses do not reflect the extent of diversity in society (Banks, 2002). Attempts to diversify curriculum have been made (Montgomery, 2001; Richards, Brown, & Forde, 2007), but further work is needed to prepare students to thrive in a culturally diverse society (Banks, 2002; Marshall, 2002). Research regarding faculty views toward diversity on campus and in the curriculum is limited (Brunner, 2006; Piland, Hess, & Piland, 2000; Wasonga & Piveral, 2004). Although a majority of faculty believe that a diversified institution and curriculum is positive, little research has examined the types of …

Correctional Group Treatment For Victims Of Sexual Assault, Todd Derbyshire

Master's Theses and Capstones

There is a lack of research regarding therapeutic treatment for inmates who suffer from suicidal ideation after being sexually victimized. This paper reviews the existing research on sexual assault in prisons and the various impacts an event can lead to including suicidal ideation. A model is proposed in using reality therapy to introduce a new perspective in treatment for inmates that suffer suicidal ideation from being sexually victimized.

Many psychological theories are suggested when working with the sexually victimized population. The uniqueness of the correctional population emphasizes the strengths of reality therapy. In reality therapy the individual is limited only …

Impact Of Media Exposure, Ethnicity And Body Mass Index On The Body Image Of College Women, Shannon Wong

Master's Theses and Capstones

The current thesis project sought to analyze the following three problems: (1) the relationship between media exposure and body image, (2) the relationship between body image and media exposure to determine if there are racial group differences, and (3) the relationship between body image, Body Mass Index and media exposure.

Eighty-one females participated in this study, recruited from two large public northeastern universities. The results of the study show a significant negative correlation between media exposure and measures of body image. There were no significant differences found between Caucasian and non-Caucasian women for media exposure. Based on the results, magazines …

Understanding Personality Through Preferences In Popular Mass Media: An Archetypal Approach, Michael A. Faber

Doctoral Dissertations

In the Digital Age, it may be possible to assess personality in ways beyond those traditionally employed by psychologists. This work examines individual preferences in popular or mass culture media and what they say about people's psychological processes. For example, knowing that someone likes romantic comedy movies and jazz music arguably paints a more useful picture of personality than saying that one is high in both extraversion and openness. In such cases, a media-based self-description provides a clear and tangible metric of individual interests. Here, we hypothesize that one reason such preferences may reflect personality is because media and the …

Effect Of Cholinergic Deafferentation Of Prefrontal Cortex On Working Memory For Familiar And Novel Odors, Emily Carter

Master's Theses and Capstones

The role of acetylcholine in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in working memory was investigated in aged rats. Subjects with cholinergic lesions of the prelimbic portion of the mPFC (pACh-lx) or a sham lesion of the same region were trained on an odor delayed non-match to sample paradigm. The effects of prefrontal cholinergic depletion and aging were assessed in task variations that manipulated mnemonic demand and stimulus novelty.

pACh-lx animals were impaired relative to sham-lx animals at memory for familiar stimuli over delays. This global impairment was not dependent on the length of the delay, suggesting that aged pACh-lx animals …

The Influence Of Personal Navigation Devices On Drivers' Visual Attention On The Road Ahead And Driving Performance, Nemanja Memarovic

Master's Theses and Capstones

Nowadays, personal navigation devices (PNDs) that provide GPS-based directions are widespread in vehicles. These devices typically display the real-time location of the vehicle on a map and play spoken prompts when drivers need to turn. While such devices are less distracting than paper directions, their graphical display may distract users from their primary task of driving. This thesis investigates the influence of two PNDs on driving performance and visual attention. In the experiments conducted with a high fidelity driving simulator, we found that drivers using a navigation system with a graphical display indeed spent less time looking at the road …

A Qualitative Study Of Coping With Unemployment, Mark Baddeley

Master's Theses and Capstones

Unemployment is among the largest stressors of adult life. There are many factors that help determine how people cope with unemployment, and several models have been developed to provide schema for understanding the coping strategies people use. In this qualitative study, in-depth individual interviews yield rich detail of how men who have been highly successful in their careers cope with unemployment. The participants offer unique perspectives on their common experience. The concept of self-determinism provides a useful framework for understanding the coping behavior of the participants and for the absence of reported distress.

A Survey Of School Counselor Attitudes Regarding Animal-Assisted Interventions, Sara Morrow

Master's Theses and Capstones

Though animal-assisted interventions (AAI) have been used in many institutional settings, there is little evidence of AAI use in public schools. This study examined attitudes of school counselors regarding the incorporation of AAI into their practice.

The Pet Attitude Scale Modified (PAS-M) was used to measure attitudes towards animals and was incorporated into an online survey containing items addressing knowledge, interest, and perception of benefits and challenges associated with AAI. A sample of 220 public school counselors completed the online survey. Most considered themselves knowledgeable about AAI (73%), approximately half were interested in using AAI (56%), "reducing stress and anxiety" …

Centeredness: A Qualitative Study On The Mind-Body Connection, Tara Rousselle

Master's Theses and Capstones

Centeredness is the concept of living in a constant state of awareness of the physical, psychological and spiritual selves. Through this awareness, a person has the ability for greater connection to their self, health and the world around them, thus leading to the ability to seek optimal health.

The purpose of this study is to explore this concept and its experience from the perspective of those who claim to be experts on such a topic.

The Social Construction Of Disability And The Modern-Day Healer, Jennifer Anne Vanderminden

Master's Theses and Capstones

Ramon Cuevas is a physical therapist and the founder of Cuevas Medek therapy (CME), a physical therapy for children with severe physical impairments. Since creating CME he has taught and practiced throughout the world. Families bring their children to see Ramon in his Chile office and elsewhere around the world to see him for therapy. I have conducted in-depth interviews with parents and Ramon, more than five weeks of participant-observation, and analyzed various online materials related to CME. I found that the community that is formed around these families and Ramon provides an excellent example of how disability is constructed …