Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Effects Of Biased Literature On Self- And Social-Perceptions Of Lgbtq Individuals, Marielle Crisler

Honors Theses

Though media portrayal of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals has increased significantly in recent years, the representation has brought and cemented harmful stereotypes along with it. People who are discovering their identity as sexual minorities might consume media that portrays LGBTQ individuals negatively, or even kills them in many cases, and believe that they are doomed to the same outcome. Literature is no exception to this influx of negative stereotypes. The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of stereotypes in LGBTQ literature on those who identify with the characters presented in the text to the same extent …

Changes In Hemodynamic Response To Faces, Scenes, And Objects In A Visual Statistical Learning Task: An Fmri Analysis, Aaron T. Halvorsen

Honors Theses

Learning causes changes in brain activity and neural connections. Statistical learning is an implicit learning process that involves extracting regularities from the environment and finding patterns in stimuli based on their transitional probabilities. The following study describes an attempt to elucidate temporal changes in hemodynamic activity for three category-specific brain areas using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Blood oxygen-level dependent signal (BOLD) responses were collected while subjects viewed faces, scenes, and objects with high and low transitional probabilities in an fMRI scanner. We expected brain activity to show a temporal shift in timing of activation when comparing BOLD signal responses …

An Exception In Risk-Taking Behavior: Religiosity As A Situation-Specific Predictor Of Sexual Risk-Taking, Trenton Buhr

Honors Theses

The relationship between religiosity and sexual risk-taking has been widely studied but conclusive consensus on the influence has not been established. Part of this stems from how religiosity is measured. The current study analyzes how religious fundamentalism, one way of measuring religiosity, and risk-taking propensity predict sexual risk-taking. We used a wide range of risk-taking propensity measures to better understand their role and the unique role of religious fundamentalism in this risk-taking area. The current study aims to assess whether religious fundamentalism has potential to be a situation-specific predictor of sexual risk-taking. To test this, 17 participants completed risk-taking propensity …

Understanding Fear And Self-Blame Symptoms For Child Sexual Abuse Victims In Treatment: An Interaction Of Youth Age, Perpetrator Type, And Treatment Time Period, Amanda Nelson

Honors Theses

Child Sexual Abuse victims have been known to experience a wide array of emotional and behavioral symptomology following abuse. These symptoms can have a negative impact on victims in the future if proper intervention and treatment is not provided. This study focuses specifically on the symptomology of fear and self-blame in victims and what factors influence the efficacy of treatment due to these symptoms’ continuous and impartial characteristics. Participants were 333 sexually abused youth attending Project SAFE (Sexual Abuse Family Education), a cognitive-behavioral treatment program through a local Child Advocacy Center. Children were 6 to 18 years old, 79.9% female, …

Sleep-Wake Problems And Daytime Sleepiness As Predictors Of Emotion Regulation Strategies: A Longitudinal Study In Early Adolescence, Megan Toney

Honors Theses

Objective: Research has analyzed the association between poor sleep and emotion regulation abilities, yet most studies have focused on adult samples which may not generalize to youth. The present study examines how sleep problems and daytime sleepiness in early adolescence were associated with specific forms of emotion regulation later in adolescence.

Methods: A group of 109 children from a larger longitudinal study on cognitive development completed questionnaires at two separate timepoints. Cognitive tasks and survey-based measures were completed at the first point of data collection (M_age = 11.90, SD = .91, range = 10-14). Approximately 10 months later, …

An Evaluation Of Police Interviewing Methods: A Psychological Perspective, Cassandra Neal

Honors Theses

This paper discusses false confessions and memory’s fallibility and how they can decrease the reliability of an investigative interview. In an effort to remedy this issue, the three most popular interview techniques utilized by police officers during an investigation were examined to decipher which one elicits the most reliable testimony. In order to determine which of the three methods out of the Reid Technique, Cognitive Interview, and PEACE Method is the most reliable, literature on the different techniques was examined to see which method resulted in the most accurate information, free from false statements. As a result of this evaluation, …

When Does The Positivity Effect Emerge? : Age-Related Emotional Biases At Encoding And Retrieval, Hannah Wolfe

Honors Theses

The Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST) posits that as their future time perspective shrinks, older adults tend to be more motivated by emotionally meaningful goals and therefore experience what is called the “positivity effect” with age (Carstensen, 2006). The positivity effect had been studied in both attention biases (Isaacowitz et al., 2006a) and memory biases (Kensinger, 2008), with older adults dwelling longer on and better remembering the positive stimuli over the negative. Yet, few studies have measured emotional biases at both the encoding and retrieval phases, which is why this study uses eye-tracking to determine whether any biases in gaze patterns …