Behavior and Behavior Mechanisms Commons^™

Teacher Voices: Stress And Coping Mechanisms Among The Teaching Profession, Jasmine Suttles

Education | Master's Theses

Stress is a natural response that occurs in our body when we feel overwhelmed, and it can manifest in both positive and negative instances. The teaching profession is not exempt from this phenomenon, as it is unique in that educators have multiple roles to play and have to manage and interact with many students simultaneously. Teachers have been described as "exasperated by heavy loads of emotional labor in the classroom" (Ferguson et al., 2022). This "heavy load" can place the teaching profession at risk of stress and burnout if self-care is not addressed or mental health resources are not offered. …

Exploring The Effects Of Christian Worldviews On Heart Rate, Stress, And Adjustment After Loss In Bereaved Individuals, Emma Radini Ratnavel

Honors Scholar Theses

The objective of this study is to investigate the correlation between Christian values, perceptions of God, and physiological stress, assessed through heart rate, among individuals who are experiencing grief due to the loss of a loved one. Previous studies have analyzed various physiological effects on the body. There are very few studies that examine the correlation between Christian values and heart rate in bereaved participants. To explore these topics further, this study analyzes 59 undergraduate students who have recently lost a loved one, identify as a Christian, and are at least 18 years old. The participants' perceptions of God and …

Neurobiology Of Ptsd In Adults And Children: The Impact Of Stress-Induced Brain Abnormalities Across The Lifespan, Catherine Clover

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In the scholarly community, there is disagreement about the effects of PTSD or chronic stress on the brain of adults and children. Though PTSD or chronic stress are known to negatively affect neurobiological structures, specifically due to prolonged glucocorticoid excess, volumetric discrepancies between traumatized and control groups are not unanimously confirmed. This review sought to address the common understandings in academia of the effects of PTSD on the brains of adults and children. Literature on this topic indicated that, in adults, the hippocampus, cingulate gyrus, and prefrontal cortex bilaterally appeared to decrease in gray matter volume and the corpus callosum …

Early Life Exposure To Unpredictable Parental Sensory Signals Shapes Cognitive Development Across Three Species, Elyssia Poggi Davis, Kari Mccormack, Hina Arora, Desiree Sharpe, Annabel K. Short, Jocelyne Bachevalier, Laura M. Glynn, Curt A. Sandman, Hal S. Stern, Mar Sanchez, Tallie Z. Baram

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Exposure to early life adversity has long term consequences on cognitive function. Most research has focused on understanding components of early life adversities that contribute to later risk, including poverty, trauma, maltreatment, and neglect. Whereas these factors, in the aggregate, explain a significant proportion of emotional and cognitive problems, there are serious gaps in our ability to identify potential mechanisms by which early life adversities might promote vulnerability or resilience. Here we discuss early life exposure to unpredictable signals from the caretaker as an understudied type of adversity that is amenable to prevention and intervention. We employ a translational approach …

Cognitive Load Effect On Moral Decision Making, Elise Crause, Liz Eisenga, Caroline Hopper, Merry Bailey

Science University Research Symposium (SURS)

Cognitive Load Effect on Moral Decision Making

Elise Crause, Merry Bailey, Liz Eisenga, Caroline Hopper

Choices are made each day to determine the outcome of our lives. To better understand the human process of decision making, philosophers and psychologists have examined moral dilemmas. Cognitive load is a type of stress that alters decision-making and the likelihood of choosing a self-motivated behavior over a behavior that benefits another person or group. For this study, moral dilemmas were given in sets of two before and after a cognitive-load-inducing task. The cognitive-load-inducing task required participants to verbally answer subtraction problems until the answer …

A Randomized Controlled Trial Of Psychological Outcomes Of Mobile Guided Resonant Frequency Breathing In Young Adults With Elevated Stress During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Al Amira Safa Shehab

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Deep breathing practices have shown promise in reducing stress, anxiety, and depression in different populations, including young adults. Specifically, resonant frequency breathing can exert an impact on stress response systems through the vagus nerve and the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. This may induce reductions in stress and improvement in emotion regulation. Young adults, including college students, tend to be at a higher risk for psychological distress, as they face several psychosocial challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed new and unique stressors that resulted in higher levels of stress and emotional symptoms and it has been shown that this may have placed …

How Duty Rosters And Stress Relate To Sleep Problems And Fatigue Of International Pilots, Marion Venus, Martin Grosse Holtforth

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

While previous research focused on pilots’ fatigue, rosters, potential performance-impairment and aviation-safety, this research investigates, how pilots’ work-related and psychosocial stress and rosters can affect their sleep and fatigue. A cross-sectional online survey was completed by 192 pilots flying for European operators, 180 Australian pilots and 34 pilots from UAE, Turkey and Asia Pacific. Pilots reported their actual duty- and flight-hours, flown sectors, standby, rest, vacation days, number of early starts, night-flights and sports-hours for the last two months. Schedule-related data, way to work, age, flight-hours on the present type of aircraft, subjective job-security and psychosocial stress were used as …

Human Adaptability For Deep Space Missions: An Exploratory Study, Paul T. Bartone, Robert R. Roland, Jocelyn V. Bartone, Gerald P. Krueger, Albert A. Sciarretta, Bjorn Helge Johnsen

Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments

The present qualitative study conducts in-depth interviews with astronauts and other subject matter experts in order to shed light on human adaptability in extreme environments. Deep space travel will entail a range of highly stressful conditions to which astronauts must adapt. Feelings of isolation will be increased, as the space traveler is farther from Earth for longer periods of time. Daily life will take place in small and confined areas, for durations extending into years. The dangers of the extreme environment of space are ever-present, and failure of critical equipment or components can lead to death. Astronauts will need to …

The Influence Of Stressful Life Events On The Development Of Type 2 Diabetes, Joshua Minks

Dissertations

This study examined the relationship between distress and the development of Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in the presence of established risk factors. Distress secondary to mental health disparities, stressful life events, and work conditions has been shown to promote insulin resistance and the development of T2DM.

Subjects (N=79) diagnosed with T2DM within the previous six months were recruited from SSM Health Centers and VA Medical Centers in the greater St. Louis area. They completed the Recent Life Changes Questionnaire, ENRICHD Social Support Instrument, and a demographic survey and analyses were conducted to determine differences between the veteran …

The Role Of Stress In The Pathogenesis And Maintenance Of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Thomas G. Adams, Benjamin Kelmendi, C. Alex Brake, Patricia Gruner, Christal L. Badour, Christopher Pittenger

Psychology Faculty Publications

Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder often identify psychosocial stress as a factor that exacerbates their symptoms, and many trace the onset of symptoms to a stressful period of life or a discrete traumatic incident. However, the pathophysiological relationship between stress and obsessive-compulsive disorder remains poorly characterized: it is unclear whether trauma or stress is an independent cause of obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms, a triggering factor that interacts with a preexisting diathesis, or simply a nonspecific factor that can exacerbate obsessive-compulsive disorder along with other aspects of psychiatric symptomatology. Nonetheless, preclinical research has demonstrated that stress has conspicuous effects on corticostriatal and limbic …

Social Status Modulates Restraint- Induced Neural Activity In Brain Regions Controlling Stress Vulnerability , Sahba Seddighi, Matthew A. Cooper

Haslam Scholars Projects

Understanding the cellular mechanisms that control resistance and vulnerability to stress is an important step toward identifying novel targets for the prevention and treatment of stress-related mental illness. Dominant and subordinate animals have been shown to exhibit different behavioral and physiological responses to stress, with dominants often showing stress resistance and subordinates often showing stress vulnerability. We have previously found that dominant hamsters exhibit reduced social avoidance following social defeat stress compared to subordinate hamsters, although the extent to which stress resistance in dominants generalizes to non-social stressors is unknown. In this study, dominant, subordinate, and control male Syrian hamsters …

Age Differences In Stress And Coping: Problem-Focused Strategies Mediate The Relationship Between Age And Positive Affect, Yiwei Chen, Yisheng Peng, Huanzhen Xu, William H. O'Brien

Psychology Faculty Publications

The present study examined the different types of stressors experienced by adults of different ages, their coping strategies, and positive/negative affect. A mediation hypothesis of coping strategies was tested on the relationships between age and positive/negative affect. One-hundred and ninety-six community-dwelling adults (age range 18-89 years old) reported the most stressful situation they experienced in the past month and coping strategies. Levels of positive and negative affect in the past month were also measured. Content analysis revealed age differences in different types of stressors adults reported. Three types of coping strategies were found: problem-focused, positive emotion-focused, and negative emotion-focused coping. …

Stress And Sleep Quality: Mediating Effects Of Social Support, Felisha L. Younkin, Elizabeth A. Axtell, Chelsea R. Anderton

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

Stress is defined as the “nonspecific response of the body to any demand made upon it” (Kohn & Frazer, 1986). Stress is among the top five threats to academic performance among college students (Pettit & DeBarr, 2011). The purpose of the study was to investigate whether stress affects perceived sleep quality, as mediated by social support, and to determine whether stress levels vary based on academic major. Using ANOVA in SPSS 24, we tested three hypotheses: stress and sleep quality are negatively correlated, social support mediates the relationship between stress and sleep quality, and stress levels will vary by academic …

Social Motivation Is Associated With Elevated Salivary Cortisol In Boys With An Asd, Vicki Bitsika, Christopher Sharpley, Linda Agnew, Nicholas Andronicos

Vicki Bitsika

Because social communication difficulties and stress are common in children with an ASD, and because it has been hypothesised that the two are related, the association between these two variables was investigated in a sample of 90 boys with an ASD and who were aged between 6 years and 12 years of age. The Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) was completed by the parents of these boys about their sons, plus salivary cortisol samples were collected from the boys. Results indicated that only one aspect of the boys' SRS was significantly correlated with cortisol—Social Motivation (SM). Factor analyses revealed two discrete …

Effects Of Early-Adolescent, Mid-Adolescent, Or Adult Stress On Morphine Conditioned Place Preference, Chloe Shields

Senior Theses

In light of previous work demonstrating that stress can increase subjective drug reward in adult rats, the present study investigated the influence of stress on morphine conditioned place preference (CPP) in early-adolescent, mid-adolescent, and adult male Sprague-Dawley rats. Subjects in each age group were assigned to either a no stress condition or a stress condition in which they were exposed to an unpredictable eight-day schedule of elevated platform and synthetic fox odor stressors. Place conditioning then evaluated subjective morphine reward in all animals. Using a biased procedure, subjects were assigned to receive morphine on the initially non-preferred side of the …

Autonomic And Behavioral Reactivity To An Acute Laboratory Stressor, Jeremy C. Peres

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Stress has been widely shown to directly influence people’s emotional and behavioral processing as well as their underlying biological systems. This project examined physiological and behavioral responses as indicators of stress and coping in the context of a psychosocial stressor in a controlled laboratory setting. We examined the association between indicators of behavioral coping and underlying physiological reactivity within participants while experiencing stress. Participants included 68 emerging adults. Physiological measures include autonomic biomarkers (e.g., heart-rate, skin conductance) at rest and during the stressor while behavioral indicators that were coded include acute verbal and non-verbal actions exhibited by participants during the …

The Effects Of Adolescent Binge Drinking On Corticotropin-Releasing Factor Cells In The Amygdala And Social Predictors Of Alcohol Intake In Male And Female Rats, Chrisanthi Karanikas

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Alcohol is one of the most common drugs of choice among adolescents. Normally, the method of consumption is drinking large quantities of alcohol in short periods of time, otherwise known as “binge drinking.” Corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) stress peptide producing cells in central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) has been implicated in behavioral responses to stress and addiction. The goals of this thesis were to determine the effects of voluntary binge drinking in adolescence and vapor-induced alcohol dependence in adulthood on CRF cells in the CeA. These studies were done using an operant model of voluntary binge drinking in rodents …

Stressful Life Events As Predictors Of Functioning: Findings From The Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study, Maria E. Pagano, Andrew E. Skodol, Robert L. Stout, M. Tracie Shea, Shirley Yen, Carlos M. Grilo, Charles A. Sanislow, Donna S. Bender, Thomas H. Mcglashan, Mary C. Zanarini, John G. Gunderson

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

Objective:  Although much attention has been given to the effects of adverse childhood experiences on the development of personality disorders (PDs), we know far less about how recent life events influence the ongoing course of functioning. We examined the extent to which PD subjects differ in rates of life events and the extent to which life events impact psychosocial functioning. Method:  A total of 633 subjects were drawn from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study (CLPS), a multi-site study of four personality disorders – schizotypal (STPD), borderline (BPD), avoidant (AVPD), obsessive-compulsive (OCPD) – and a comparison group of major depressive …