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Articles 1 - 16 of 16
Full-Text Articles in Psychology
Masculinity And Men’S Health Attitudes Toward Consideration Of Weight-Loss Surgery, Karaline Fusco
Masculinity And Men’S Health Attitudes Toward Consideration Of Weight-Loss Surgery, Karaline Fusco
Theses and Dissertations
The rise in obesity across the United States has led to greater educational outreach, considerable research, and medical interventions aimed at decreasing the rate of obesity-related health diseases. But are these interventions reaching everyone? Despite men and women having equivalent rates of obesity, only 20% of weight-loss surgery patients are men. While men have an average life expectancy that is 5 years less than women and are twice as likely than women to have heart disease, men also underutilize healthcare services. Given these factors, this research explored men’s health beliefs, conformity to male norms, and receptivity to weight-loss surgery. This …
Effects Of A Novel, Non-Toxic Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor On Hippocampal Memory Formation, Histone Acetylation, And Bdnf Gene Expression In Male Mice, Sarah Brianna Beamish
Effects Of A Novel, Non-Toxic Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor On Hippocampal Memory Formation, Histone Acetylation, And Bdnf Gene Expression In Male Mice, Sarah Brianna Beamish
Theses and Dissertations
Memory dysfunction is a common symptom of aging, neuropsychiatric disorders, and neurodegenerative disorders, yet truly effective treatments for memory loss do not exist. De novo gene transcription is a molecular requirement for long-term memory formation. The transcription of genes related to synaptic plasticity and learning are regulated in part by histone acetylation, an epigenetic mechanism that regulates chromatin accessibility. Pharmacological compounds that maintain histone acetylation, called histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi), enhance memory by preventing deacetylation of core histone proteins, which initiates binding of transcriptional machinery to open chromatin. Therefore, HDACi are potentially promising therapeutics that could be used to prevent …
Investigating The Contribution Of Instance-Reliant Learning In Visuomotor Adaptation And Its Generalization, Shancheng Bao
Investigating The Contribution Of Instance-Reliant Learning In Visuomotor Adaptation And Its Generalization, Shancheng Bao
Theses and Dissertations
Motor adaptation has been of great interest in the past two decades as it reflects how movement skills are acquired and consolidated by the nervous system. In our recent studies, instance-reliant learning is considered as an essential component of visuomotor adaptation, since it plays a unique role in fast and automatized control of movement output. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the nature of instance-reliant learning on two aspects: to determine the differential contributions of algorithmic learning and instance-reliant learning to visuomotor adaptation; and to determine the nature of movement instance involved in visuomotor adaptation and its generalization …
Motivators And Barriers To Health Behaviors In African American Women, Teresa M. Depratt
Motivators And Barriers To Health Behaviors In African American Women, Teresa M. Depratt
Theses and Dissertations
Women who identify as African American are at particularly high risk of developing obesity and associated health concerns such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancers. Eating healthfully and engaging in a minimal amount of physical activity are known to be both preventative and curative. Based on review of research, this study investigated potential constructs of Motivators and Barriers to health-supporting behaviors as they are perceived in African American women. The study also constructed a novel scale, Motivators and Barriers to Health Behaviors (MBHB), which intended to capture some constructs of each domain via two surveys. Also of interest was if …
Establishing Quality Standards For Applied Behavior Analytic Skill- Acquisition Interventions: A Translational Model With Undergraduate Students, Samantha Cj Bergmann
Establishing Quality Standards For Applied Behavior Analytic Skill- Acquisition Interventions: A Translational Model With Undergraduate Students, Samantha Cj Bergmann
Theses and Dissertations
Treatment integrity is the extent to which components of an intervention are implemented as intended (Gresham, 1989). Recent behavior-analytic literature has begun to evaluate the effects of impaired treatment integrity on efficacy and efficiency of skill-acquisition interventions. We extended current literature on the effects of errors of omission and commission of reinforcement on the acquisition of conditional discriminations. We used a translational research model to replicate and extend Hirst and DiGennaro Reed (2015) to investigate the effects of impaired treatment integrity with undergraduate students. We compared the efficacy and efficiency of instruction implemented with varying degrees of integrity in a …
Using Functional Communication Training With Extinction To Reduce Attention-Maintained Problem Behavior: A Novel Application To A Spanish-Speaking Family With English-Speaking Therapists, Roger Kyle Caldwell
Using Functional Communication Training With Extinction To Reduce Attention-Maintained Problem Behavior: A Novel Application To A Spanish-Speaking Family With English-Speaking Therapists, Roger Kyle Caldwell
Theses and Dissertations
Functional communication training (FCT) is a well-established treatment for problem behavior that involves arranging extinction for undesirable responses and providing reinforcement for an appropriate communicative response. However, language barriers between the therapist and the client’s caregivers may inhibit the efficacy of this intervention and solutions to these language barriers have not been discussed in the research literature. The current study replicated functional analysis and FCT procedures with a child with autism and Down syndrome presenting with severe aggressive behavior whose parents were native Spanish speakers with limited English proficiency. We detail our process and procedural modifications made to address these …
An Evaluation Of Parent Preference For Prompting Procedures, Mary Halbur
An Evaluation Of Parent Preference For Prompting Procedures, Mary Halbur
Theses and Dissertations
Previous researchers have suggested that parent participation in intervention can enhance intervention and promote generalization of skills across settings. Thus, parents should be trained to implement behavioral interventions. The purpose of the current investigation was to evaluate parent preference for and acceptability of three commonly used prompting procedures. Experimenters trained parents of children with disabilities to use three evidence-based prompting strategies (i.e., least-to-most, most-to-least, and a progressive prompt delay). Once the parent reached the mastery criteria with each prompting procedure, his/her preference for each of the strategies was evaluated using a concurrent-chains arrangement. Additionally, treatment acceptability of all procedures was …
Effects Of The Permutation Of Reinforcement Magnitude On Measures Of Delay Discounting In A Hypothetical Money Scenario, Michael James Harman
Effects Of The Permutation Of Reinforcement Magnitude On Measures Of Delay Discounting In A Hypothetical Money Scenario, Michael James Harman
Theses and Dissertations
The current study analyzed the extent to which three common permutations of reinforcement magnitude – quantity, volume, and duration – affected the rate at which participants discounted hypothetical monetary rewards. College students served as participants. Hypothetical scenarios were presented using the Hypothetical Money Procedure (Kirby, 1996), and participants self-reported the subjective value of a delayed monetary reward. Conditions presented the monetary choices as (a) quantity of dollar bills, (b) heights (inches) of a stack of dollar bills, and (c) durations of time to spend in a hypothetical cash machine to collect dollar bills. For each condition, participants’ combined subjective values …
Examining A Novel Response Modality: Teaching Sighted Individuals To Read Braille Visually, Madelynn Audrey Lillie
Examining A Novel Response Modality: Teaching Sighted Individuals To Read Braille Visually, Madelynn Audrey Lillie
Theses and Dissertations
In order to prepare teachers to instruct children with visual impairments in braille, previous research has taught sighted adults to match braille sample stimuli to print comparisons in a matching-to-sample (MTS) format and has assessed the emergence of other braille repertoires such as transcribing and reading following this training. Although participants have learned to match-to-sample with braille, they displayed limited emergence of other braille repertoires. This lack of generative responding may have resulted from participants’ over-selective attending to components of compound braille characters during instruction. The current study taught three undergraduate learners to construct braille characters given a print sample—which …
An Assessment Of Treatment Options For Pre-Existing Prompt Dependence In Children With Developmental Disabilities, Ella Gorgan
An Assessment Of Treatment Options For Pre-Existing Prompt Dependence In Children With Developmental Disabilities, Ella Gorgan
Theses and Dissertations
Prior research has focused on identifying effective strategies to prevent prompt dependence from occurring during the training of novel skills. This has been targeted in a variety of ways, including differential reinforcement, prompt fading, and allowing extended response intervals. Current literature has also indicated that the relative efficacy and efficiency of different prompting procedures may be idiosyncratic across learners, suggesting the potential benefit of an individualized assessment. The purpose of the current study was to extend the literature on prompt dependence by comparing interventions for skills for which four participants with developmental disabilities consistently engaged in correct responses following prompts …
Comparing The Efficacy And Efficiency Of Varying Task Interspersal Ratios, Sophie Claire Knutson
Comparing The Efficacy And Efficiency Of Varying Task Interspersal Ratios, Sophie Claire Knutson
Theses and Dissertations
Task interspersal (TI) is a procedural variation of discrete trial training that has been implemented with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to facilitate the acquisition of novel skills, and may reduce problem behavior during instruction. The literature shows equivocal results regarding the efficiency of TI, but there is limited literature indicating the effects on level of problem behavior. The current study extended the literature on TI by comparing the efficacy and efficiency of varying TI ratios implemented in early intervention practices with children with ASD and related disorders on acquisition and levels problem behavior. The four ratios of mastered …
Apoaequorin Differentially Modulates Fear Conditioning In Adult And Aged Rats, Vanessa Ehlers
Apoaequorin Differentially Modulates Fear Conditioning In Adult And Aged Rats, Vanessa Ehlers
Theses and Dissertations
Normal aging is associated with a number of changes in behavioral and cellular function, and is often linked to increased susceptibility to cognitive impairment. The hippocampus has been widely implicated in learning and memory, and many forms of learning that are hippocampus-dependent (e.g. trace fear conditioning) are impaired in aged animals. A proposed contributor to aging-related cognitive impairment is aging-related calcium (Ca2+) dysregulation. This dysregulation is thought to result from changes in specific Ca2+-regulatory mechanisms, including abnormal Ca2+ ion channel activity or expression, as well as reduced Ca2+-binding protein (CaBP) expression, which is associated with cognitive and synaptic impairment. Previous …
Functionally Distinct Pools Of Calcineurin Contribute To Depotentiation-Like Synaptic Changes In The Lateral Amygdala During Auditory Fear Extinction, Elena Kay Rotondo
Functionally Distinct Pools Of Calcineurin Contribute To Depotentiation-Like Synaptic Changes In The Lateral Amygdala During Auditory Fear Extinction, Elena Kay Rotondo
Theses and Dissertations
Until recently, auditory fear extinction was not thought to modify substrates involved in the storage of the original auditory fear memory. Evidence now suggests that extinction results in the reversal of the fear conditioning-induced potentiation of thalamic inputs to the lateral amygdala. However, little is known about the molecular mechanisms that support this depotentiation of synaptic strength. Here we present behavioral and molecular evidence in support of the contribution of two distinct pools of the protein phosphatase calcineurin to depotentiation-like changes in lateral amygdala AMPA receptor trafficking during auditory fear extinction. Calcineurin protein that exists prior to the onset of …
Effects Of Reinforcement Duration And Duration-Correlated Stimuli On Preference In Pigeons, Michael James Harman
Effects Of Reinforcement Duration And Duration-Correlated Stimuli On Preference In Pigeons, Michael James Harman
Theses and Dissertations
Pigeons were trained in a two-key, concurrent chains choice procedure with equal initial and terminal links. Across conditions, the durations of reinforcement in the terminal links were either equal (3-s vs 3-s) or unequal (3-s vs 6-s), and these durations were either uncued by hopper lights (both white) or cued (3-s: white; 6-s: colored). The pigeons’ choice responding leading to the longer duration of reinforcement was generally in the range of indifference with nondifferential hopper lights, but favored the longer duration with differential hopper lights. Taken together, the data suggest that differential hopper lights facilitated the discrimination of the longer …
Using Video Modeling To Teach Parents To Use The Natural Language Paradigm, Brittany Ann Leblanc
Using Video Modeling To Teach Parents To Use The Natural Language Paradigm, Brittany Ann Leblanc
Theses and Dissertations
There is paucity of research examining the use of video modeling to train parents to implement formats of early intervention such as Naturalistic Environmental Training (NET). The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the efficacy of video modeling to train parents to implement the Naturalistic Language Paradigm (NLP), a specific format of NET, with their children diagnosed with or suspected of having autism spectrum disorder. All three parents demonstrated accurate performance of the components of NLP with an adult confederate and met the mastery criterion in two or three video modeling sessions. We measured the parent’s accurate implementation …
Comparing Fixed-Amount And Progressive-Amount Schedules Of Reinforcement For Tic Suppression, Matthew Richard Capriotti
Comparing Fixed-Amount And Progressive-Amount Schedules Of Reinforcement For Tic Suppression, Matthew Richard Capriotti
Theses and Dissertations
Chronic tic disorders (CTDs) involve motor and/or vocal tics that cause substantial distress and impairment. Existing behavioral interventions for CTDs have comparable efficacy to pharmacological treatments but still leave many individuals with significant tic symptoms and impairment. One approach to improving existing treatments involves conducting pre-clinical laboratory research to evaluate procedures that may be attractive candidates for applied treatment research. Reinforcing tic suppression via differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) procedures produces decreases in tic frequency of ~80% in youth with CTDs; however, a more robust reduction may be needed to affect durable clinical change. The present study compared the …