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Connection To Places: Exploring Impacts Of Development And Individual Characteristics, Seamus Mcgrath

Psychology Honors Papers

Research revolving around Sense of Place or connections to Place is a uniquely chaotic area of study. It is understood that these connections to places have many concrete outcomes like environmental stewardship or relative comfort in a location. However, little is known about what individual characteristics predict strong connections to places. In this study, Object Attachment (via the OASM), sentimentality (Kama Muta Frequency Scale), Belongingness (via SOBI), Animistic Thinking and Development (IDEA) are posited to have connections to sense of place, measured using the Five Dimensions of Place Attachment. The analysis primarily consisted of regression models, which supported previous research …

A Longitudinal Study Of The Development Of Social Anxiety In Young Autistic Children, Gillian K. Marshall

Senior Theses

Social anxiety is a prevalent anxiety disorder marked by fear and discomfort in social situations where scrutiny or evaluation by others is anticipated. This thesis investigates the interplay between social anxiety and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by social and communication challenges. Individuals with ASD often face heightened levels of anxiety, intensifying their social difficulties and impeding their social development. Early identification of social anxiety symptoms, particularly in ASD children, is crucial for timely intervention and improved outcomes. However, diagnosing social anxiety in preschool-aged children, especially those with ASD, presents challenges due to the complexity of symptoms …

Autism, Comorbidities, And Adaptive Functioning: A Potential Moderator, Joshua J. Montrenes

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Deficits in adaptive functioning and the presence of comorbid symptomatology are both commonly associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Previous research has identified relationships between functional level (e.g., intellectual quotient [IQ], adaptive functioning [AF]) and comorbid symptomatology in ASD. However, further insight into the relationship between AF, comorbid psychopathology, and ASD is unclear. Specifically, how AF affects the relationship between ASD and comorbid conditions is not well understood. Whether AF moderates the relationship between autism symptom severity and comorbid symptom severity in toddlers with ASD was examined. ASD symptom severity positively correlated with comorbid symptom severity across domains and negatively …

Motor Milestone Acquisition And Sleep-Related Learning And Development In Infancy, Aaron Demasi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of this dissertation is to summarize and extend work in the field of infant sleep and motor development. Chapter 1 summarizes what is currently known about typical infant sleep development and the way that sleep impacts learning throughout infancy. Chapter 2 describes two experiments showing the importance of napping and night sleep in the consolidation of gross motor learning. Given that sleep is beneficial for learning throughout human infancy, the remainder of the dissertation investigates how learning (in this case, motor development) impacts sleep. Chapter 3 establishes the possible role of sleep-dependent movement in sleep disruption resulting from …

Temporal Relevance Of Parent Qualities And Behaviors For Predicting Young Adults’ Emotion Regulation And Romantic Relationships, Saleena Wilson

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The present study sought to compare the utility of adolescents’ parental relationship qualities and behaviors for predicting young adult emotion regulation as well as the mediating role of emotion regulation in the intergenerational transmission of relationship qualities and behaviors. Early adolescence is characterized by the emergence of new emotions, responsibilities, and budding romantic relationships. Parental relationships with positive qualities may provide a safe environment for teens to explore these unfamiliar experiences. In late adolescence, teens depend less on this secure base but benefit from the utilization of specific relationship behaviors, modeled to them by their parents, in increasingly important …

A Novel Measure Of Narrative Self-Functioning And Its Role In The Transformative Potential Of Psychedelic Experience Across Clinical And Non-Clinical Participants, Nicole M. Amada

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The eudaimonic field of well-being is founded on the idea that self-knowledge and the realization of one’s potential is at the heart of what it means to strive for well-being. While the “self” is at the core of this perspective, theories derived from this field have yet to incorporate neurocognitive conceptualizations of the self, and account for the collection of self-referential cognitions that influence striving for well-being. Such a theory and measure could fill this theoretical gap and be applied in person centered interventions to capture change in these processes over time. One such intervention utilizes psychedelic experience as a …

A Close Look At The Connections Between Mental-State Talk, Theory Of Mind, And Source Monitoring During Parent-Child Reminiscing Of Emotional Events, Mallory Earnshaw

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Autobiographical memories play a critical role in shaping personal identity, regulating emotions, and guiding future behaviour. Reminiscing about these memories can be particularly beneficial for coping with negative experiences. This study investigated the connections between mental-state talk, theory of mind, and source monitoring in parent-child reminiscing, and how it can be influenced by remembering enjoyable versus frustrating events. This study involved children ages 3-8 (N = 50) and consisted of two sessions. In the first session, the child reminisced with their parent about an enjoyable and frustrating event and completed two source-monitoring tasks. In the second session, the child …

Incorporating A Developmental Perspective Into Gene Identification Models For Alcohol Use Behaviors, Nathaniel S. Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

Frequent alcohol use can lead to alcohol use disorder, which accounts for three million deaths and over 133 million life years lost to disability and death worldwide per year. Alcohol use behaviors unfold across development, beginning with initiation of drinking and progressing through various escalating stages of use. Alcohol use behaviors are also under genetic influence. Genome-wide association represents the state-of-the-science statistical methodology for identifying genes associated with alcohol use outcomes. However, contemporary genome-wide association study (GWAS) methods typically do not account for variability in genetic effects throughout development. In this project, I applied novel multivariate genomic methods to combine …

Context-Specific Conceptualizations Of Death In Early Childhood, Spencer Hart Winter

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Despite cultural myths and social taboos, young children are capable of understanding death and death concepts. Previous research has demonstrated that children have a varied and complex understanding of death that is influenced by their age, family culture, and previous experience. This study aims to differentiate children’s death concept depending on context, including children’s magical thinking, namely the difference between the deaths of a human, an animal, and an electronic toy. Using a modified version of the Death Concept Questionnaire, preschool-aged (3 to 5 years old) children (n=7) were presented with short video clips of a human, a dog, and …

The Developmental Importance Of Napping In Preschool Children, Adam T. Newton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Most children cease napping between 2- and 5-years-old. Little is known about the predictors or outcomes related to this cessation, or the interrelation of different components of nap behavior. Four empirical studies were conducted to investigate the developmental importance of napping among preschool children.

Studies 1 and 2 used a large, longitudinal sample of Canadian children to investigate the predictors (Study 1) and outcomes (Study 2) related to early nap cessation. Early nap cessation was defined as stopping daytime sleep before three years old. In Study 1, parents reported on their own, child, and family functioning at two timepoints (0-1 …

Moderating Factors In The Relationship Between Bully Victimization And Psychosomatic Symptoms, Tonya Paulson

Theses and Graduate Projects

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between bully victimization and psychosomatic symptoms, and to examine the protective influence of perceived parent and peer support across developmental age groups. Bully victimization frequency, somatic symptom severity, perceived parent support, and perceived peer support were assessed using archival data from 7,304 youth who participated in the 2009-2010 Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) U.S. survey, excluding perpetrators of bullying. Bully victimization and somatic symptoms were significantly positively correlated. Older adolescents consistently reported more severe somatic symptoms, but age did not moderate the relationship between bullying and somatic symptoms. Higher …

Examining The Relationships Between Socio-Cognitive Factors And Neural Synchrony During Movie Watching Across Development, Kathleen M. Lyons

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

While different cognitive abilities mature, the conscious experiences of children likely become richer and more elaborate. A challenge in investigating relationships between cognitive development and real-world experiences is having measures that assess naturalistic processing. Movie watching offers a solution, since following the plot of a film requires cognitive processes that are similar to real-world experiences. When different adults watch the same film, their brain activity begins to align (known as neural synchrony). The strength of this alignment has been shown to reflect the degree to which different individuals are having a similar experience of the movie. While this phenomenon has …

The Front Lines Of Student Success: A Phenomenography Exploring The Background And Knowledge Of Primary Role Academic Advisors In Higher Education, Alicia N. Abney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenographic study was to understand the experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives of new, primary role academic advisors at four-year public institutions in the United States. Research on advising has provided insight into advising best practices and the student perceptions of academic advising; however, there is little research illustrating current primary role academic advisors and their experience, or perhaps lack thereof.

To receive highly coveted federal and state funding, higher education institutions must show growth in student success. Academic advisors are on the front lines of student success because they are tasked with the responsibility of retaining …

Developmental Differences In The Learning And Consolidation Of Linguistic Regularities, Sarah Berger

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Relative to adults, children have a well-known advantage for learning linguistic regularities, which could be partially driven by their deeper sleep. To examine the relationship between consolidation and language learning across development, children and adults learned a novel article system with an implicit grammatical rule. Participants performed a judgment task on phrases containing the novel articles before and after a night of EEG-monitored sleep. We found that rule sensitivity emerged rapidly in children, whereas it did not emerge until the second session in adults. Children demonstrated better generalization of the rule than adults. Consolidation effects showed a developmental double dissociation, …

Early Mathematical Abilities Of 48-Month-Old Children With Williams Syndrome., Jenna N. Tinnell

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic neurodevelopmental disorder associated with relative strengths in concrete vocabulary, nonverbal reasoning, and verbal short-term memory and considerable weaknesses in visuospatial construction and relational language. While the cognitive profile of WS has been studied extensively, there have been few studies of the early mathematical abilities of children with WS and the cognitive predictors of these abilities. The purpose of this study was to describe the early mathematical abilities of 48-month-olds with WS and determine the concurrent cognitive predictors of these abilities. The Differential Ability Scales–second edition (DAS-II) was used to determine cognitive and mathematical abilities …

Multiple Approaches To Auditory Rhythm: Development Of Sustained Musical Beat And The Relation To Language, Development Of Rhythmic Categories Via Iterated Production, And A Meta-Analytic Study Of Neural Entrainment To Beat, Karli Marie Nave

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Rhythm is ubiquitous to human communication, coordination, and experience of music. In this dissertation, I address three empirical questions through three different methodologies, all of which contribute to the growing body of literature on human auditory rhythm processing. In Chapter 2, I present a registered report detailing the results of independent conceptual replications of Nozaradan, Peretz, Missal, & Mouraux (2011), all using the same vetted protocol. Listeners performed the same tasks as in Nozaradan et al. (2011), with the addition of behavioral measures of perception. In neuroscience, neural correlates to musical beat perception have been identified, yet little to no …

Validating An Observational Coding System For The Dominance Behavioural System (Dbs) In Childhood, Jennifer Mullen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The dominance behavioural system (DBS) is a biologically based system that underpins individual differences in motivation for dominance and power. However, little is known about the DBS in childhood. In a pilot study aimed at developing a behavioural coding system for dominance, a key facet of the DBS, we collected and coded observational data from 58 children, assessed at ages 3 and 5-6. Between these ages, dominance was moderately stable, to a degree comparable to other early child temperament traits. Consistent with study hypotheses, boys were more dominant than girls, and dominance was negatively associated with children’s behavioural inhibition, effortful …

Exploring How Interpersonal Childhood Trauma Impacts Emotional Development, Kathleen Hobbs

Educational Specialist, 2020-current

Our earliest interactions in life lay the foundation of how we relate to ourselves and others throughout adulthood. When a child experiences abuse and neglect that is relational in nature, referred to as interpersonal childhood trauma, research shows that they are at a much higher risk to display emotional difficulties that have been found to contribute to extensive health consequences throughout the lifespan. Less has been documented however regarding exactly how this kind of trauma influences emotional development. The purpose of this paper is to explore the current research that exists on the relationship between interpersonal childhood trauma and emotional …

Oppositional Behavior Parallels In Toddlers And Teens And Parent’S Response, Michele Dimmett

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Parents seem to manage oppositional conduct of toddlers but struggle emotionally and physically with oppositional conduct of teenagers, despite similarities in the behaviors. Self-efficacy theory, psychological theory of development, and theory of mind guided the conceptualization of how parents perceive and respond to these two sensitive periods of development. This contrasted group quantitative study pursued measurable similarities in the experience of first-time parents of children aged 18-36 months and 14-15 years of age. Establishing parents’ confidence level in their parenting skills and how they perceive and respond to their child's oppositional behavior was also a factor. One hundred and seventy-five …

Musical Meter: Examining Hierarchical Temporal Perception In Complex Musical Stimuli Across Human Development, Sensory Modalities, And Expertise, Jessica Erin Nave-Blodgett

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Performing, listening, and moving to music are universal human behaviors. Most music in the world is organized temporally with faster periodicities nested within slower periodicities, creating a perceptual hierarchy of repeating stronger (downbeat) and weaker (upbeat) events. This perceptual organization is theorized to aid our abilities to synchronize our behaviors with music and other individuals, but there is scant empirical evidence that listeners actively perceive these multiple levels of temporal periodicities simultaneously. Furthermore, there is conflicting evidence about when, and how, the ability to perceive the beat in music emerges during development. It is also unclear if this hierarchical organization …

Household Member Arrest And Adolescent Hopelessness: The Mediating Role Of Future Expectations, Caroline Victoria Begley, Elizabeth Inez Johnson Ph.D, Tanner Kilpatrick M.S

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Becoming Gatekeepers: A Constructivist Model Of Gatekeeper Development In Counselor Education, Natasha Joy Salier Schnell

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The need for diligent gatekeeping practices in counselor education is well documented in professional literature, ethical guidelines, and standards of practice; although much has been written about gatekeeping, an extensive examination of the literature did not reveal any studies on how and where counselor educators are learning to be gatekeepers. Therefore, this study sought to ascertain what counselor educators identify as meaningful learning experiences and critical incidents that facilitated their sense of efficacy and preparedness as gatekeepers and to examine how counselor educators acquire and develop the competence to become proficient gatekeepers in the counseling profession. Phenomenological interviewing and analysis …

Play's Role In The Development Of Antisocial Behavior, Cheyenne Vazquez

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper is a literature review which examines the relationship between play and prosocial behavior. More specifically, it examines its inverse, questioning whether a lack of play in early childhood may be correlated to the development of antisocial behavior later in life. Comparing research from an abundance of psychologists, criminologists, and sociologists, this paper answers various questions pertaining to play and prosocial behavior: What happens if play is inhibited in childhood? Would different reasons for play to be inhibited result in different results (i.e. abusive childhoods, desperate situations such as homelessness and poverty, chronic illness, etc.)? Is a lack of …

The Role Of Receptive Reasoning In The Development Of Intellectual Humility, Cathryn Richmond

Theses and Dissertations

Intellectual humility (IH) develops throughout childhood and adolescence and is critically important for effective learning, particularly with regard to science; however, the research examining the development of IH in children is quite limited. As such, this study utilized an exploratory, mixed methods, community-engaged research design with children ages three to 10 (n = 60; M_age = 5.98; 69.6% female) and their parents/guardians recruited from a public children’s museum.. As the construct of IH is intended to describe adult cognition, I operationalized the set of components that may lead to the development of IH in preschool children as Receptive …

The Role Of Gamma Oscillations And Cortical Inhibition In The Development Of Working Memory In Adolescence, Christopher P. Walker

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Adolescence is a dynamic period of social, cognitive, and biological changes. In particular, working memory, the ability to actively encode and maintain information over a short period of time, develops early in childhood and gradually increases in capacity and stability during adolescence. The precise neurophysiological mechanism by which working memory capacity increases during adolescence is unclear. The objective of this investigation was to evaluate the role of cortical gamma-band (> 30 Hz) oscillations—which are associated with working memory in adults—for the development of working memory capacity in adolescents, and to identify the extent to which the temporal profile of gamma-aminobutyric …

How Does The Brain Represent Digits? Investigating The Neural Correlates Of Symbolic Number Representation Using Fmri-Adaptation, Celia Goffin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

How does the brain represent numerical symbols (e.g., Arabic digits)? Activity in left parietal regions correlates with symbolic number processing. Research with functional resonance imaging adaptation (fMRI-A) indicates that the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) exhibits a rebound (increase in activation) effect when a repeatedly presented number is followed by a new number. Importantly, this rebound effect is modulated by numerical ratio as well as the difference between presented numbers (distance). This ratio-dependent rebound effect could reflect a link between symbolic numerical representation and an approximate number system (ANS). In this doctoral dissertation, fMRI-A is used to investigate mechanisms underlying symbolic number …

The Origins And Development Of Visual Categorization, Laura Cabral

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Forming categories is a core part of human cognition, allowing us to make quickly make inferences about our environment. This thesis investigated some of the major theoretical interpretations surrounding the neural basis of visual category development. In adults, there are category-selective regions (e.g. in ventral temporal cortex) and networks (which include regions outside traditional visual regions—e.g. the amygdala) that support visual categorization. While there has been extensive behavioural work investigating visual categorization in infants, the neural sequence of development remains poorly understood. Based on behavioral experiments, one view holds that infants are initially using subcortical structures to recognize faces. Indeed, …

Digital Childhood: How Mobile Devices Impact Child Development And Adolescent Behavior, Brenna Pinnock

Global Honors Theses

A new wave of smart and modern technology has integrated into lives and homes of families everywhere, thus the effects of early and continual exposure to this technology remain unknown. This is a global problem as many people around the world have access to this technology and interact with it in different ways. Whether it’s embracing it for future generations like Japan, or helping the newer generations with their overuse, almost addiction like tendencies with these devices like in South Korea. Around the world children are engaging with these devices at a young age and it’s found to have an …

First Thirty Days Of Life: Examining Calf Behavioral Development In Beluga Whales (Delphinapterus Leucas) And Pacific White-Sided Dolphins (Lagenorhyncus Obliquidens) At One Zoological Facility, Kendal Smith

Master's Theses

Cetacean development is important for general comparative understanding and the implementation of informed husbandry policies. Due to the inaccessibility of many of these species in the wild, researchers can study managed care populations to better understand basic developmental patterns of cetaceans, as well as to improve husbandry policies for facility animals. However, no previous studies have attempted to observe the behavioral development of Pacific white-sided dolphins (Lagenorhyncus obliquidens). Eight beluga whale calves and four Pacific white-sided dolphin calves were observed for the first 30 days of life to determine the developmental trajectory of several typically monitored behaviors. The …

Selection Or Socialization? A Propensity Score Matched Study Of Personality And Life Events, Emorie Beck

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Across the lifespan, personality changes in normative ways, but the source of such change remains ambiguous. Life events may be one impetus of such change, but strong selection effects into such events makes it unclear whether such change is driven by already existing differences (selection) between people or socialization following life events. In a preregistered study, we test socialization and selection effects of the Big 5 and life events using a large (N = 19,627) representative sample of Germans and 12 life events (e.g. marriage, retirement) from the GSOEP. Using propensity score matching and Bayesian multilevel growth curve models, we …