Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Individual Differences In Rat Locomotor Activity Are Diminished By Nicotine Through Stimulation Of Central Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors, Rick A. Bevins, Joyce Besheer

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

An increasing body of research has focused on isolating factors that predict or alter individual differences in the behavioral and neural processes mediating the effects of abused drugs. Within this framework, the current report assessed individual differences and the locomotor effect of nicotine. Rats were screened for activity induced by a novel environment. Rats, which were more active to initial environment exposure, remained more active even after seven additional 30-min exposures to the same environment. Treatment with nicotine-di-D tartrate (1 mg/kg, sc) disrupted this effect. This nicotine disruption of individual differences occurred whether nicotine suppressed locomotor activity (initial administration) or …

Are Suicide Attempters Who Self-Mutilate A Unique Population?, Barbara Stanley, Marc Gameroff, Venezia Michalsen, John Mann

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

OBJECTIVE: Individuals who mutilate themselves are at greater risk for suicidal behavior. Clinically, however, there is a perception that the suicide attempts of self-mutilators are motivated by the desire for attention rather than by a genuine wish to die. The purpose of this study was to determine differences between suicide attempters with and without a history of self-mutilation.

METHOD: The authors examined demographic characteristics, psychopathology, objective and perceived lethality of suicide attempts, and perceptions of their suicidal behavior in 30 suicide attempters with cluster B personality disorders who had a history of self-mutilation and a matched group of 23 suicide …

A Closer Look At The Nature Of Intimate Partner Violence Reported By Women With A History Of Child Sexual Abuse, David Dilillo, Dawn Giuffre, George C. Tremblay, Lizette Peterson

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This study provides an examination of violence occurring in the couple relationships of female survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Participants were 240 low-income women, 113 of whom (47%) reported some history of CSA. Compared with non–sexually abused women, those who had experienced CSA reported that their couple relationships were more likely to have involved several severe forms of violence, including hitting, kicking, and beating. Comparisons of the directional patterns of partner violence revealed that a greater proportion of CSA survivors’ relationships had involved at least one incident of both man-to-woman and woman-to-man aggression. An unexpected finding was that a …

Anorexia Nervosa : A Psychological Perspective Of Etiology And Current Treatment Procedures, Arlene Lagary

Graduate Research Papers

Anorexia nervosa is a chronic and sometimes fatal illness characterized by physical and psychological complications. Although no etiology for this illness has been determined, this paper presents a psychological etiology based on a synthesis of both traditional and current literature. The influence of culture, the therapeutic alliance, and client resistance are also considered. Relapse is common and the illness may last for many years. The health care community has addressed the complexity and chronicity of this illness by using a multi-component approach that includes psychoeducation, cognitive-behavioral therapy, psychodynamic interventions, family therapy, and psychopharmacology.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder : Is It A Behavior Disorder Or Active Childhood Behavior?, Larry G. Scheel

Graduate Research Papers

Although attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder constitutes 33 to 50% of mental health referrals for children, an increasing number of researchers has begun to question the validity of ADHD as a legitimate diagnosis. Eberstadt in her 1999 review stated, "Society has changed since the mid-1980s to view what may be normal childhood activity as lack of behavioral compliance" (p.1). Could the prevalence of ADHD simply be an increasingly active society's response to normal, active childhood behavior? The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of ADHD and explore assessment methods. Data from current literature and personal interviews with recognized professionals …

The Motivational Quality Of Global Attributions In Hypothetical And Experienced Situations Of Gender Discrimination, Mindi D. Foster

Psychology Faculty Publications

Traditionally, global attributions have been thought to reduce instrumental behavior aimed at resolving negative events. However, the present research shows global attributions for gender discrimination are related to taking action against unfair treatment. In Study 1, women ( N = 157) completed a questionnaire assessing attributions for hypothetical scenarios of discrimination and collective responses to discrimination. In Study 2, women ( N = 79) were placed into a laboratory situation of discrimination and asked to indicate their attributions for and responses to their unfair treatment. In both studies, hierarchical regression analyses showed that global attributions were related to both individual …

Describing Individual Incidents Of Sexual Abuse: A Review Of Research On The Effects Of Multiple Sources Of Information On Children’S Reports, Kim P. Roberts, Martine B. Powell

Psychology Faculty Publications

Objective. For successful prosecution of child sexual abuse, children are often required to provide reports about individual, alleged incidents. Although verbally or mentally rehearsing memory of an incident can strengthen memories, children’s report of individual incidents can also be contaminated when they experience other events related to the individual incidents (e.g., informal interviews, dreams of the incident) and/or when they have similar, repeated experiences of an incident as in cases of multiple abuse.

Method. Research is reviewed on the positive and negative effects of these related experiences on the length, accuracy, and structure of children’s reports of a particular incident. …

Assessment Of Clinical Partner Violence Screening Tools, Ann L. Coker, Brian O. Pope, Paige H. Smith, Maureen Sanderson, James R. Hussey

CRVAW Faculty Journal Articles

Objective: to compare the Women’s Experience with Battering Scale (WEB) with the Index of Spouse Abuse-Physical Scale (ISA-P) as screening tools to identify intimate partner violence (IPV).

Methods: We conducted a large cross-sectional survey of women age 18 to 65 attending one of two family practice clinics from 1997 to 1998. All women completed both the WEB and the ISA-P and a telephone interview. We figured agreement estimates between the two tools, used stratified analyses to evaluate attributes of those more likely to screen as battered or physically assaulted, and compared associations between the WEB and ISA-P and a range …

Parental Compliance: Its Role In Terimination Of Parental Rights Cases, Eve M. Brank, Angela L. Williams, Victoria Weisz, Robert E. Ray

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This Article examines the current state of termination of parental rights law, along with the results of an appellate case review, an exploratory project, and an empirical investigation of decision-making related to these cases. Section I begins with an overview of termination of parental rights law. The focus of this section will be recent statutory changes in the area, highlighting some key differences between the former and the current law. In Section II, the focus shifts to a review of the foundations for the empirical study that will be described later in the Article. Section III more specifically addresses the …

Sonification Of Daily Weather Records: Issues Of Perception, Attention And Memory In Design Choices, John H. Flowers, Laura E. Whitwer, Douglas C. Grafel, Cheryl A. Kotan

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Daily climate records that include temperature and precipitation observations, along with other optional “event” records (such as a severe storm occurrence or the highlighting of record high or low temperatures) are a form of multivariate time series data that is well suited to sonification. Our project describes and demonstrates sonification of historical monthly weather records from Lincoln, Nebraska that allow perceptual comparisons between corresponding monthly records from different years for illustration of climatic trends and fluctuations. Choices of data-sound mapping schemes and temporal properties of the display will be related to basic principles of auditory perception, attention and cognition

Vireo Song Repertoires And Migratory Distance: Three Sexual Selection Hypotheses Fail To Explain The Correlation, D. James Mountjoy, Daniel Leger

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Previous studies have found a relationship between migration and the degree of elaboration of sexually selected traits, but investigators have differed in the mechanisms they proposed to account for this association. We examined the relationship between song repertoire size and distance migrated among birds in the genus Vireo. There is a strong positive relationship between migratory distance and repertoire size in this genus, but our data do not support the specific predictions of any of the three proposed mechanisms (the “rapid pairing,” “good migrations,” and “territory lottery” hypotheses). Migration distance is presumably correlated with other life-history characteristics that influence the …

Psychoanalytic Praxis And The Truth Of Pain, William J. Richardson

Research Resources

William J. Richardson’s, “Psychoanalytic Praxis and the Truth of Pain” critically reviews Lacan’s conception of science, truth, and language above all. For Lacan, speaking of the “subject of science,” it is as if the entire scientific enterprise – its history, its institutions and all the virulence of its burgeoning power – may be conceived as the function of a single hypostasized, egoless subject: the “correlate” of science as such, taken as a whole. Reading Lacan’s essay “Science and Truth,” Richardson offers a philosophical outline of the strengths of Lacan’s analysis along with its limitations, including a discussion of Heidegger's aletheia …

Introduction: Fear And Loathing Of Evolutionary Psychology In The Social Sciences, Daniel Leger, Alan Kamil, Jeffrey A. French

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

When one looks at the intellectual landscape of the modern university, at the scholarly and scientific interests of its faculty, the panorama is seamless. There are no discontinuities. The interests of physicists transmogrify into those of chemists, those of chemists into those of biologists, and so on. The lines, the divisions, between departments have been created out of administrative, not intellectual, necessity.
For example, consider the divide between chemistry and biology. There is a set of chemical processes that are characteristic of living systems. Is the study of these processes chemistry or biology? This is a meaningless question. To be …

Review Of Handbook Of Hypnotic Inductions, John Stephen Brantley

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Review Of Handbook Of Hypnotic Inductions, John Brantley

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Hierarchical Classification And The Integration Of Self-Structure In Late Adolescence, Eric B. Elbogen, Gustavo Carlo, William D. Spaulding

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

A number of empirical studies have demonstrated that one’s self-concept is multidimensional in nature, varies according to social context, and shows increased differentiation throughout adolescence. There has been relatively less work, however, examining the integration of multi-dimensional social selves. Rosenberg and Gara’s (1985) model of the multidimensional self (a model that utilizes a statistical procedure called “hierarchical classification” or HICLAS) was employed to investigate the integration of social selves during late adolescence. First- and fourth-year college students (n = 128) completed a computer program designed to collect data required to construct HICLAS “self-structures.” The findings indicated that the social selves …

Asian American Mental Health Clients: Effects Of Ethnic Match And Age On Global Assessment And Visitation, Richard H. Dana, Glenn Gamst, Aghop Der-Karabetian, Terry Kramer

Regional Research Institute for Human Services

Effects of client-counselor ethnic match (i.e., match, no match) and client age group (child, adult) on counselor-evaluated Global Assessment of Function (GAF) and visitation were investigated. The sample consisted of 253 Asian-American outpatient clients (24.9% children 75.1% adults) of a community mental health center. Unadjusted results indicated that ethnically matched clients had more positive GAF evaluations and more clinic visits than nonmatched clients. When adjusted for eight covariates, results showed ethnically matched clients continued to show higher levels of visitation. Analysis of separate diagnostic categories showed that ethnically matched mood-disorder clients had higher levels of visitation. Conversely, nonethnically matched anxiety …

Research On Faith And Health: New Appoaches To Old Questions, Thomas G. Plante, Allen C. Sherman

Psychology

Does religious faith influence health? Are religious practices associated with altered risks for morbidity or mortality? Do religious or spiritual individuals tend to enjoy better well-being or mental health across the lifespan? Does spiritual or religious involvement change the way individuals adapt to the demands of chronic illness? This volume brings together some of the leading investigators who have explored these intriguing questions. Though research is in its early phases, the chapters that follow review some of what we have learned and begin to trace the outlines of the many mysteries that remain.

Religious Faith And Mental Health Outcomes, Thomas G. Plante, Naveen K. Sharma

Psychology

In this chapter we review recent research regarding the relationship between religious faith/spirituality and mental health outcomes, as well as provide directions for future research and discussion. The specific aspects of mental health and illness that we focus on include well-being, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and schizophrenia. We also briefly discuss research pertaining to religious faith and personality disorders, eating disorders, somatoform disorders, and bipolar disorder.

Stress In 1st-Year Women Teachers: The Context Of Social Support And Coping, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

The effects of adverse work environments were examined in the context of other risk/protective factors in this extension of a short-term longitudinal study involving 184 newly appointed women teachers. Regression analyses revealed that, adjusting for preemployment levels of the outcomes and negative affectivity, social support and adversity in the fall work environment were among the factors that affected spring depressive symptoms, self-esteem, job satisfaction, and motivation to teach. Support from nonwork sources was directly related to future improved symptom levels and self-esteem; supervisor and colleague support were directly related to future job satisfaction. Effects of occupational coping, professional …

El Impacto De Las Nuevas Technologias En El Futuro De Las Technicas De Evaluacion Psicologica Clinica, Richard H. Dana, Isidro A. E. Sanz, Barry A. Ritzler, Jan Ivanouw

Regional Research Institute for Human Services

En este trabajo se presentan reflexiones desde distintas perspectivas acerca del futuro de la Evaluación Psicológica y el papel que las tecnologías informáticas tendráen ella. En la actualidad, es innegable la importancia que ha alcanzado la informática dentro de las actividades académicas y profesionales en tomo a la Evaluación Psicológica. La capacidad cada vez mayor de las computadoras facilitó las tareas de investigación, desarrollo, y aplicación de tests psicológicos. Parece altamente previsible que en el futuro la informática tendrá un lugar aún mayor en el auxilio del psicógicos evaluador. Algunas posibles consecuencias futuras son expuestas y debatidas por los diferentes …

Research Across Multiple Systems: Probabilistic Population Estimation (Ppe), Diane Haynes, Rebecca Larsen, Shabnam Mehra

Mental Health Law & Policy Faculty Publications

Today, social service administrators are examining client service utilization using cross system analysis, because often a client's needs require accessing governmentfunded services from multiple organizations. One technical problem that arises is that organizations do not share common unique identifiers from which to link one individual’s information together (i.e., system #1 uses Social Security Number (SSN) and system #2 uses Personal Identification Number (PIN)). Different methods have been employed to deal with the issue of working with information across data sets when there is no common unique identifier. Probabilistic Population Estimation (PPE), Caseload Segregation/Integration Ratio (C/SIR), and Probabilistic Population Matching (PPM) …

The Role Of Culture In Appraisal, Batja Mesquita, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Book Chapters

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries travelers to the South Seas brought back stories of a Malaysian emotional syndrom called amok, in which a person rushes around in a state of frenzy, recklessly attacking anyone who gets in the way, and impervious to all attempts at restraint. No Western language had a word that meant the same thing as amok, and Westerners were fascinated by this bizarre phenomenon. Fascinated, but not mystified. Amok was strange, but it was not unrecognizable, and the term "running amok" was quickly incorporated into Western speech to refer to a kind of violent …