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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 30 of 137
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Associations Between Early Childhood Sleep, Memory Function, And Brain Development Across The Nap Transition, Sanna Lokhandwala
Associations Between Early Childhood Sleep, Memory Function, And Brain Development Across The Nap Transition, Sanna Lokhandwala
Doctoral Dissertations
Preschool-age children often distribute their sleep across a midday nap and overnight sleep. Skipping the nap is suggested to increase the duration and depth of deep sleep (i.e., slow wave activity; SWA). Moreover, missing the midday nap has been shown to impair learning processes. This may be because children’s brains at this point in development are immature, necessitating the intervening nap period to strengthen memories before they are forgotten. Nonetheless, at some point during the preschool years, many children begin transitioning naturally out of napping. It is unclear whether the memory benefits of overnight SWA after a skipped nap depend …
Collective Autonomy Restriction: A Theoretical Model And Empirical Investigations, Adrian Rivera-Rodriguez
Collective Autonomy Restriction: A Theoretical Model And Empirical Investigations, Adrian Rivera-Rodriguez
Doctoral Dissertations
Collective autonomy refers to a group’s freedom to define and practice their own cultural and social identity without interference from other groups. According to the “threat and defense” hypothesis of collective autonomy restriction, group members are motivated to defend their collective autonomy from outside restriction. However, the psychological processes that influence advantaged vs. disadvantaged group members perceptions of collective autonomy, as well as the specific strategies they use to protect collective autonomy, have yet to be articulated. This dissertation presents three manuscripts that examine the social conditions and psychological processes that shape advantaged and disadvantaged group members’ perceptions of collective …
The Collateral Consequences Of Criminal Stigma In Higher Education: Investigating Barriers To Institutional Access And Social Inclusion, Hannah K. Chimowitz
The Collateral Consequences Of Criminal Stigma In Higher Education: Investigating Barriers To Institutional Access And Social Inclusion, Hannah K. Chimowitz
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation explores the collateral consequences of criminal record stigma within the realm of higher education, an important institutional domain that is recognized as facilitating social mobility and providing opportunities for individuals with criminal histories. I develop an integrative theoretical framework and present two empirical studies. Study 1 investigates the relationship between criminal screening in undergraduate admissions applications and campus crime rates, as well as Black undergraduate enrollment rates. Using the Common Application's removal of criminal history questions as a natural experiment, I employ propensity score methods and estimate a series of latent growth curve models using structural equation modeling. …
The Fear-Avoidance Model And Persistent Post-Concussion Symptoms In University Students, Michael Broggi
The Fear-Avoidance Model And Persistent Post-Concussion Symptoms In University Students, Michael Broggi
Doctoral Dissertations
Ten to 20% of individuals who sustain a concussion continue to experience symptoms outside the typical window of recovery. Pre-morbid and post-injury anxiety are risk-factors for persistent post-concussion symptoms (PCS). However, mechanisms linking anxiety and persistent PCS are unclear. The fear-avoidance model of disability could add clarity to associations between anxiety and persistent PCS. This study examined if factors of the fear-avoidance model (e.g., catastrophic thinking, fear of symptoms, anxiety sensitivity) would mediate the association between persistent PCS and maladaptive coping responses (e.g., avoidance, limiting activities) following concussion. To achieve this aim, university students (N = 43) with resolved …
Professional And Personal Humility In Relation To Between-Therapist Differences In Effectiveness, Heather Muir
Professional And Personal Humility In Relation To Between-Therapist Differences In Effectiveness, Heather Muir
Doctoral Dissertations
Objective: Research demonstrates that mental health clinicians vary in their general effectiveness—the “between-therapist effect.” Thus, it is important to identify determinants of such differences in order to understand and cultivate the therapist characteristics or actions that reliably foster better patient outcomes. To date, several of such variables have emerged empirically. For example, therapists who exhibit higher versus lower levels of professional self-doubt (PSD; a critical questioning of one’s skills as a clinician) have been shown to achieve better interpersonal outcomes with their average patient. Although arguably counterintuitive, the beneficial influence of PSD may make sense if, instead of simply reflecting …
Examining Shifts In Racial Attitudes In The Aftermath Of George Floyd’S Death And The 2020 Blm Protests, Se Min Suh
Examining Shifts In Racial Attitudes In The Aftermath Of George Floyd’S Death And The 2020 Blm Protests, Se Min Suh
Doctoral Dissertations
The killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 instigated one of the largest social movements in the United States history. Despite the wealth of research that has evaluated the efficacy of social movements using different social outcomes (Andrews, 1997; Biggs & Andrews, 2015; Branton et al., 2015; Enos et al., 2019; Gillion, 2012; Schwartz, 2016), less attention has been given to how social movements that concern racial issues impact racial attitudes (Riley & Peterson, 2020). Thus, the current research aimed to examine how Americans’ racial attitudes shifted in the period immediately following the onset of BLM protests. We …
For The Love Of Teaching: Pre-Service Teachers’ Experience Of Moral Education, Anne Marie Foley Ruiz
For The Love Of Teaching: Pre-Service Teachers’ Experience Of Moral Education, Anne Marie Foley Ruiz
Doctoral Dissertations
Moral aspects of teaching arise each and every day, yet we lack information about how prepared teachers feel about this critical aspect of teaching. This multi-case study explores perceptions of five pre-service teachers in an elementary teacher education program in Western Massachusetts. A series of interviews explore their histories prior to the program and their experiences in the program as related to the pre-service teachers’ orientations to the moral work of teaching. Research questions address the awareness and self-efficacy of student teachers in implementing the moral aspects of teaching. Using Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006), this study explores beliefs …
Increasing Teacher-Student Relationships And Classroom Engagement: The Effects Of Modifying Existing Tier Two Intervention On Adolescent Students And Their Teachers, Julia Doherty
Doctoral Dissertations
The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of a Tier II behavior intervention, Check-in/Check-out (CiCo), on student engagement, and if a modification to the intervention that includes teacher use of microaffirmations improves the teacher-student relationship (T-SR) and thus, increases student engagement in class. It utilized multiple baseline design, and the study sample consisted of three fifth grade students from an urban school district in Southeastern Virginia. All three students were paired with one of their teachers to serve as the mentor for the intervention. Student engagement was measured directly using the Behavioral Observation System for Students (BOSS; …
Assessing Potential Cognitive Precursors To Math Anxiety: Non-Symbolic Operations And Symbolic Ordinality In Adults, Eli Zaleznik
Assessing Potential Cognitive Precursors To Math Anxiety: Non-Symbolic Operations And Symbolic Ordinality In Adults, Eli Zaleznik
Doctoral Dissertations
Math anxiety, or a sense of dread related to performing mathematics, affects a wide population of students and adults, but we do not fully understand how math anxiety comes into being. One possibility is the Reduced Capacities Theory, which suggests that natural variations in numeric/spatial capacities are a causal factor in math anxiety. To understand how these numeric capacities relate to math anxiety in adults, this work focuses on three areas that remain underexplored. Chapter 2 focuses on performing operations on nonsymbolic quantities, which has not yet been tested in relation to math anxiety. We tested the hypothesis that performing …
On The Importance Of Perceived Interpersonal Safety: Antecedents And Consequences Of Living A Subjectively Safe Life, Stylianos Syropoulos
On The Importance Of Perceived Interpersonal Safety: Antecedents And Consequences Of Living A Subjectively Safe Life, Stylianos Syropoulos
Doctoral Dissertations
The need to be and feel safe is a fundamental human need. Despite extensive theoretical arguments on the subject, and research on relevant concepts, empirical work on what it means to feel interpersonally safe (i.e., in the presence of others or in social environments in general) is scarce. This dissertation presents four investigations that seek to address this gap. It also seeks to highlight the consequences of feeling interpersonally safe for our mental and physical health, and to what degree healthy and high-quality close relationships influence how safe we feel. Chapter 1 is a literature review summarizing theories underlying these …
Negotiation And Peacemaking In Conflict Narratives: The Influence Of Narrative Reminders Of Peace Processes On Attitudes Toward Protracted Conflicts Via Zero-Sum Beliefs, Quinnehtukqut Mclamore
Negotiation And Peacemaking In Conflict Narratives: The Influence Of Narrative Reminders Of Peace Processes On Attitudes Toward Protracted Conflicts Via Zero-Sum Beliefs, Quinnehtukqut Mclamore
Doctoral Dissertations
“Hegemonic” conflict narratives help reinforce intergroup conflict through focus on ingroup victimhood, denying outgroup narratives, and advancing beliefs that the conflict is “zero-sum” in nature. Many researchers have used narrative-based interventions to shift exclusive focus on ingroup victimhood and denial of outgroup narratives, but relatively little attention has been paid to the role of zero-sum beliefs. Here, I argue that narrative primes recalling past peace processes can potentially be used to shift zero-sum beliefs, thereby shifting conflict-relevant outcome variables indirectly. In two survey studies of American participants (Studies 1 & 2), I found evidence that participants who read about the …
Familial And Environmental Contributions To Child Theory Of Mind Development, Sarah Mccormick
Familial And Environmental Contributions To Child Theory Of Mind Development, Sarah Mccormick
Doctoral Dissertations
Theory of mind is a social cognitive domain, reflecting the understanding that internal mental states motivate outward behavior, that develops rapidly over the preschool time period. While critical for healthy social development, less is known about the how aspects of the family environment interact to influence this development or the neural mechanisms that support it. Several decades of research have demonstrated behaviorally that aspects of parent behavior and language are associated with theory of mind skill use in early childhood. Many of the earliest social interactions occur with parents within the family context and little research to date has examined …
Acculturative Parenting Cognitions: Bicultural Socialization Beliefs Among Chinese American Parents, Albert Lo
Acculturative Parenting Cognitions: Bicultural Socialization Beliefs Among Chinese American Parents, Albert Lo
Doctoral Dissertations
Chinese American and Chinese immigrant parents within the United States possess parenting cognitions that reflect their multidimensional cultural experiences. One such parenting cognition is parents’ bicultural socialization beliefs, defined as their desire for their children to adopt both heritage Chinese values as well as destination American values in order to be successful in the United States. The aim of the current dissertation was to quantitatively examine bicultural socialization beliefs among Chinese American parents of adolescents and young adults. Four studies were conducted to model a pathway from parents’ social and cultural experiences to outcomes in their children. Study 1 examined …
Social Stressors, Emotional Responses, And Nssi Urges And Behaviors In Daily Life, Lauren A. Haliczer
Social Stressors, Emotional Responses, And Nssi Urges And Behaviors In Daily Life, Lauren A. Haliczer
Doctoral Dissertations
Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is prevalent among young adults, and is associated with myriad negative outcomes, including heightened suicide risk. The defective self model of NSSI theorizes that individuals who are highly self-critical and who feel they are deserving of punishment are more likely to choose NSSI over other emotion regulation strategies. This empirically-supported model has a number of under-examined implications. Specifically, individuals who engage in NSSI may be more prone to experiencing self-conscious emotions in response to negative social feedback, and this may place individuals at heightened imminent risk for NSSI in everyday life. Few studies have examined self-conscious emotional …
Interpersonal Process Differentiating Patient-Therapist Dyads With High Versus Low Convergence In Alliance Ratings, Brien Goodwin
Interpersonal Process Differentiating Patient-Therapist Dyads With High Versus Low Convergence In Alliance Ratings, Brien Goodwin
Doctoral Dissertations
Objective: In a study of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), greater early patient-therapist convergence on post-session perceptions of their shared alliance quality was associated with better subsequent outcomes (Coyne et al., 2018). To further understand this evidence-based process, the present study examined whether in-session interpersonal microprocesses differentiated dyads known to possess high versus low early alliance convergence. First, I hypothesized that high versus low convergence dyads would be characterized by more overall positive interpersonal complementarity; moreover, in light of an interpersonal vulnerability associated with GAD (i.e., high deference to others), I investigated whether a …
The Roles Of Identity And Beliefs About Social Change In Decision Making Processes For Identity-Laden Social Change Efforts, Joel Ginn
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation presents three investigations into distinct processes that attempt to explain people’s decision making around social change action in three identity-laden domains. Chapter 1 reviews existing literature and theory on how social identity and social change beliefs can impact social change action. Chapter 2 examines identity-based motivated cognition by showing how identification as a meat-eater leads to biased estimates of meat reduction’s climate change impacts. Chapter 3 examines cisgender student reactions to faculty who use gender pronouns as an inclusion strategy for transgender and gender nonconforming students to examine if this action leads to stereotyping and judgement. Chapter 4 …
What Did You Expect? An Investigation Of Lexical Preactivation In Sentence Processing, Jon Burnsky
What Did You Expect? An Investigation Of Lexical Preactivation In Sentence Processing, Jon Burnsky
Doctoral Dissertations
Language users predictively preactivate lexical units that appear to the comprehen- der to be likely to surface. Despite ample language experience and grammatical competence, it appears that language users tend to preactivate verbs in some contexts, called role-reversal contexts, that would create plausibility violations if they were to actually appear; these verbs assign thematic roles to their arguments in such a way that it leads to implausibility. These anomalous predictions provide a window into the mechanisms underlying lexical preactivation and are the case study that this dissertation focuses in on. This dissertation is an exploration of what linguistic information is …
It’S Not Black & White: Relationship Quality Within Interracial Couples, Alexandrea Craft
It’S Not Black & White: Relationship Quality Within Interracial Couples, Alexandrea Craft
Doctoral Dissertations
Within the United States, there has been a significant rise in multiracial families and biracial children. Approximately 17% of marriages occur between spouses of different races and/or ethnicities while 1 out of every 7 children born identify as multiracial. In light of the growing number of racially and ethnically diverse families, it is of concern that interracial couples are at heightened risk for divorce or separation compared to monoracial couples. Little research has explored why these disparities exist. Poorer relational outcomes in multiracial families may be the result of heightened conflict caused by a greater difference in partners’ values and …
Motivated Attention To Social And Nonsocial Reward Images: Examining Relations With Externalizing Risk In Children, Adaeze C. Egwuatu
Motivated Attention To Social And Nonsocial Reward Images: Examining Relations With Externalizing Risk In Children, Adaeze C. Egwuatu
Doctoral Dissertations
Children that exhibit issues with externalizing behaviors often experience maladaptive outcomes in later life. Externalizing problems during middle childhood (e.g., 6-10 years old) are linked to issues with emotion regulation, which are, in turn, caused by disrupted attention and emotion reactivity to reward. Externalizing problems during this period have also been linked diminished processing of social reward stimuli, suggesting externalizing risk in children may be reflected in contrasting patterns in processing of non-social and social rewards. However, research comparing how differences in affective processing of specific reward content (i.e. social versus non-social) patterns relate to externalizing behavior within normative development …
Assessing Impacts Of Negative Stereotypes And Designing Theory-Driven Interventions To Support Underrepresented Minorities In Stem, Deborah Wu
Doctoral Dissertations
The underrepresentation of women, racial ethnic minorities, and first-generation college students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in the United States has been well-documented. Members of these minority groups face negative stereotypes casting doubt on their abilities in these fields, which can cause the concern that they will be judged through the lens of the stereotype and devalued. This concern is called social identity threat. This dissertation presents three investigations focusing on the experiences of underrepresented students in STEM, examining when and how altering situational contexts increases or decreases their vulnerability to social identity threat. Chapter 1 is …
Quiet Ego And Well-Being: The What, Why, And How -- An Investigation Of The Implications Of The Quiet Ego For Psychological Well-Being, Guanyu Liu
Doctoral Dissertations
Ego is that which constructs and evaluates the concept of self in that it processes information and interprets objects (e.g., people, experiences) and labels them as part of the self (or not). To put it another way, ego is an active experiencer, perceiver, and doer that constructs, maintains, and regulates our sense of self and our relationships with others. Ego processes information in different modes. The mode that has been most extensively studied is the egotistical-narcissistic one because it fits well with the predominant cultural ideology of being individualistic and being motivated by self-interest. Thus, what has largely been ignored …
Evaluation Of A Remote Implementation Of The Well-Being Promotion Program With Middle School Students During Covid-19, Emily C. Barry
Evaluation Of A Remote Implementation Of The Well-Being Promotion Program With Middle School Students During Covid-19, Emily C. Barry
Doctoral Dissertations
The COVID-19 pandemic and pivot to emergency remote teaching changed the way in which many students access school-based mental health interventions. Furthermore, the effects of the pandemic heightened distress and decreased life satisfaction amongst many youth, increasing the need for schools to provide targeted mental health supports (Lazarus et al, 2021; Magson et al., 2021). Empirically supported Tier 2 mental health interventions exist (i.e., the Well-Being Promotion Program; Suldo, 2016), but little is known about how these interventions can be adapted and feasibly implemented in remote school contexts. This retrospective case study evaluated the implementation of a remote version of …
Therapist-Level Moderation Of Within- And Between-Therapist Process-Outcome Associations, Alice E. Coyne
Therapist-Level Moderation Of Within- And Between-Therapist Process-Outcome Associations, Alice E. Coyne
Doctoral Dissertations
Objective: Although higher-quality patient-therapist alliance and more positive patient outcome expectation (OE) consistently predict improvement in psychotherapy, most research has failed to capture the inherent nuance in these process-outcome relations by parsing them into within-therapist (i.e., differences between patients treated by the same therapist) and between-therapist (i.e., differences between therapists’ average process/outcome ratings across all patients in their caseloads) components. Moreover, the few studies that have done so have produced mixed results, suggesting the possibility of systematic variability in these associations (i.e., moderators). One potential source of such variability could be providers themselves; that is, different therapists could use these …
Early Development Of Adhd And Odd Symptoms From The Toddler To Preschool Years, Hallie Brown
Early Development Of Adhd And Odd Symptoms From The Toddler To Preschool Years, Hallie Brown
Doctoral Dissertations
ADHD and ODD are common and impairing externalizing disorders in childhood that are often comorbid. Understanding the development of these symptoms when they first emerge is crucial for better identifying children who are at-risk for later impairment. Parents (N = 273) were recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to complete surveys about their 2-year-old, followed by surveys every six months for two years. Children’s general pattern of ADHD and ODD symptom growth were examined with latent class analyses. Temperament traits were subsequently added as covariates. Dual group-based trajectories and cross-lagged analyses examined the co-development of these disorders. Results showed 4 distinct …
Neural Precursors Of Apathy And Depressive Symptoms In Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment, Molly A. Mather
Neural Precursors Of Apathy And Depressive Symptoms In Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment, Molly A. Mather
Doctoral Dissertations
Depressive symptoms and apathy are common in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and are associated with increased risk of conversion to Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The shared neuropathological model of neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) in AD suggests that symptoms of depression and anxiety represent noncognitive manifestations of neuropathological changes. Neurodegeneration in aMCI occurs in areas of the brain that support emotion regulation, including the limbic system and prefrontal control regions. Depression and apathy in aMCI have been linked to atrophy in the limbic system and prefrontal cortex and reduced connectivity in resting-state networks. However, it is not yet established whether neural changes …
The Benefits Of Spatial Separation On The Cortical Representations Of Speech Sounds, Benjamin H. Zobel
The Benefits Of Spatial Separation On The Cortical Representations Of Speech Sounds, Benjamin H. Zobel
Doctoral Dissertations
Spatial separation between competing speech streams reduces their confusion (informational masking) and improves speech processing under challenging listening conditions. The precise stages of auditory processing and the bottom-up and top-down mechanisms involved in this spatial release from informational masking are not fully understood. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to measure the cortical processing of relevant speech under conditions of informational masking and its spatial release, and to examine the preattentive and attentive mechanisms that benefit listeners. Participants were asked to detect noise-vocoded target speech presented with noise-vocoded two-talker masking speech. In separate conditions, the same set of targets were spatially …
Exploring The Relationship Between School Organizational Health, Advice Seeking Networks, And Student Behavior, Abbey M. Nachman
Exploring The Relationship Between School Organizational Health, Advice Seeking Networks, And Student Behavior, Abbey M. Nachman
Doctoral Dissertations
The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between organizational health and advice seeking behavior of school staff around students exhibiting social, emotional, or behavioral concerns. School staff are front line responders to mental/behavioral health issues and it would benefit schools to better understand the organizational factors that influence advice seeking behavior and the affect that school climate amongst teachers has on student behavior. This study investigated the climates and communication patterns of two urban elementary schools. Social network analysis was used to visualize and analyze both schools’ respective networks. School staff completed the Organizational Health Inventory as …
Representation Of Reward And Risk In The Brain’S Motor System: Studies In Adolescents And Adults, Xingjie Chen
Representation Of Reward And Risk In The Brain’S Motor System: Studies In Adolescents And Adults, Xingjie Chen
Doctoral Dissertations
In the neuroscience of economic decision making, the brain’s motor system has been ascribed a role in implementing choice actions. However, recent work has revealed canonical motor signals much in advance of choice action, possibly indicating their role in evaluation of decision options. In the current dissertation, we applied multimodal neuroimaging combining EEG and fMRI and used a novel paradigm that temporally separated the evaluation phase from the action phase of a decision-making process to investigate the mechanisms through which the motor control system contributes to decision making. Additionally, we further examined the developmental changes during the two phases of …
Multiple Identities In Sport Fandom: Balance, Conflict, & Negotiation, Aaron Mansfield
Multiple Identities In Sport Fandom: Balance, Conflict, & Negotiation, Aaron Mansfield
Doctoral Dissertations
Simultaneous to the sport industry’s ascent, obesity has become an issue of growing societal concern. Scholars have explored the role of social-psychological identification in both fandom and physical health, but have not yet explored the intersection of the two. Throughout life, individuals must negotiate all of their identities, including their attachment to sport teams, yet understanding of role identity within sport management is limited. Likewise, scholars have noted the need for greater illumination of the relationship between fandom and physical well-being. I address these gaps through three studies. In Study One, I completed semi-structured interviews with individuals who consider both …
Really, You Should Be Thanking Us: Paternalism And Instrumental Gratitude Expectations, Greg Larsen
Really, You Should Be Thanking Us: Paternalism And Instrumental Gratitude Expectations, Greg Larsen
Doctoral Dissertations
Intergroup helping is sometimes motivated by paternalistic narratives about recipients being incapable of making good choices. Five studies investigated whether paternalistic perceptions of recipients encouraged members of groups that provide help expect gratitude from recipients, and whether receiving gratitude and affirmation from recipients was rewarded when it was given. I first found preliminary evidence that paternalistic perceptions of recipients affects the way that members of a helper group respond to recipients’ responses to help (Study 1). I then found that believing paternalistic narratives about recipients did increase participants' expectations that recipients should show them gratitude, and that these expectations did …