Psychology Commons^™

Teaching Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder Self-Protection Skills In Response To Bullying Situations, Maya J. Fallon

Theses & Dissertations

Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at high risk of being bullied but research on teaching children with ASD self-protection skills for bullying situations is scant. We assessed the generality of teaching procedures used in Stannis et al. (2019) to teach adults self-protection skills with autistic children. We taught five children self-protection skills for two types of bullying (threats and unkind remarks) in a one-on-one format. In addition, we taught children a self-protection skill for repeated bullying occurrences. We first evaluated behavioral skills training to teach children to report threats of physical or material harm, provide a disapproving …

K-5 Elementary Alternative Program: A Case Study, William E. Scheuer Iv

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this case study was to examine how the K-5 elementary alternative program All Students Can Thrive (ASCT) used student-centered learning practices to influence the whole child. There is a lack of research on K-5 elementary alternative programs, such as ASCT, and specifically those that integrate student-centered learning practices to influence the whole child. Literature does not contain universally accepted interventions that are effective in the elementary alternative setting to help students return to the mainstream classroom setting better prepared to display appropriate behaviors when a student is removed from a mainstream classroom setting due to disruptive behaviors. …

The Effect Of Video Model Dosage And Self-Monitoring On Parent's Use Of Language-Promoting Behavior, Kacie Marie Mcgarry

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has found a disparity between the language trajectories of children within a high, medium, or low-economic-status family. A relationship is reliably found between the language trajectory of toddlers and success throughout school. This study will evaluate a training package to teach parents to engage in behaviors that promote language and assess the training's short-term effect on the trajectories of children (i.e., growing language) within low-socioeconomic backgrounds. Specifically, experimenters will evaluate the impact of the dosage of video modeling, self-evaluation, and self-monitoring on the acquisition of the targeted skills. Data may suggest that the more accurate the individual is …

Brief And Extended Effects Of Modified Competing Stimulus Assessments, Soray Nicole Castro

Theses and Dissertations

Competing stimulus assessments (CSA) are pre-assessment tools that systematically identify stimuli associated with reduced problem behavior. The current study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of an augmented CSA containing components of prompted engagement and response blocking. Results indicated the augmented CSA effectively identified two additional competing items for two of the three participants following prompted engagement. We also evaluated the extended effects of the competing stimuli on item engagement and stereotypy for two participants. Stereotypy reductive effects are maintained for one of the four competing stimuli for Participant 2 and two of the six items for Participant 3.

Psychosocial Factors And E-Cigarette Use: An Application Of Problem Behavior Theory, Samantha A. Fitzer

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use has increased among the U.S. population in recent years with estimates showing that nearly 15% of American adults have tried an e-cigarette (Villarroel et al., 2020). Problem Behavior Theory (PBT) has successfully outlined a variety of factors that affect an individual’s engagement in an identified problem behavior. In an attempt to better understand e-cigarette use among an emerging adult population (i.e., college student population), the purpose of the current study was to explore how a large subset of PBT factors may differentiate between e-cigarette user categories (nonuser, non-daily user, daily user). A sample of 487 college …

The Effects Of Segmenting Worksheets And Behavior Specific Praise On Independent Seatwork With Elementary Students, Lauren Peak

Dissertations

While the education system has seen many changes over the years due to COVID-19, one constant is that students must complete independent seatwork at certain times throughout the day. As teachers accommodate the many students in their classroom, an intervention that could increase students’ amount of academic production when doing independent seatwork would be mutually beneficial. For students, the increased contact with learning opportunities would provide the students means to increase fluency for that skill. Examining the effects of segmented and whole worksheets on production would, therefore, create additional learning opportunities.

This study sought to assess the effectiveness of the …

Using Behavior Skills Training To Promote Self-Advocating Behaviors: A Single Subject Research Design To Examine The Effectiveness Of Behavior Interventions Among Teachers, Clarence Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

Using Behavioral Skills Training to Promote Self-Advocating Behaviors: A Single-Subject Research Design to Examine the Effectiveness of Behavior Interventions Among Teachers. Clarence Cooper, 2022: Applied Dissertation, Nova Southeastern University, Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice. Keywords: applied behavior analysis, behavioral skills training, inclusion, individual education plan, operant conditioning, prompting, reinforcer, self-advocacy, accommodation

This applied dissertation utilized the behavioral skills training to train teachers on how to prompt, identify, and reinforce self-advocacy behaviors among students with learning disabilities. In applying behavioral analytic interventions to strengthen desired outcomes, a one- day intervention that was grounded in a …

Teaching Siblings To Encourage And Praise Play: Supporting Interactions When One Sibling Has Autism, Holly R. Weisberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sibling relationships may be strained when one sibling is typically developing (TD) and one has a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). TD siblings have been taught to encourage play in their siblings with ASD but there is limited literature examining the impact of intervention on the quality of the siblings’ relationships. In this study, we taught four TD siblings to encourage and praise play skills in their siblings with ASD as well as self-monitor those play skills. We measured changes in social-communicative behaviors during siblings’ interactions. All TD siblings learned the targeted play skills and increased social-communicative behaviors. Only …

Facilitating The Emergence Of Intraverbal-Tacts In Autistic Children Via Joint Control, Michael Aragon

Theses & Dissertations

Rodriguez et al. (2022) discovered that teaching four component skills was sufficient to facilitate the emergence of intraverbal-tacts across four applications with three participants. Our study evaluated an extension of this procedure aimed at facilitating intraverbal-tacts when a child learns the component skills but continues to fail to produce intraverbal-tacts. The extension consisted of procedures that attempted to enhance the divergent control exerted by the auditory stimulus (i.e., the question) and the discriminability of joint control. Intraverbal-tacts emerged for all three participants. These results are discussed in the context of Michael et al.’s (2011) conceptual analyses of intraverbal-tacts and the …

The Effects Of Acceptance And Commitment Training With Behavioral Skills Training On Educators' Skill Acquisition: A Systematic Review, Shalayah Gaines

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACTr) uses at least one of six self-management skills to alter the function of covert behaviors and teach staff to change or persist in behaviors in the moment to pursue long-term positive reinforcement. While ACTr addresses the private events that impact work performance, it does not provide educators with the skills to implement the procedures with integrity. Behavioral Skills Training (BST) is an evidence-based strategy that teaches educators to implement skills with integrity. However, BST does not address private events that impact work performance. The benefits of ACTr address the limitations of BST and vice versa. …

Teaching Perspective Taking Skills To Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Mitchell Cox

All NMU Master's Theses

Children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often lack perspective taking skills as evidenced by deficits in social communication and social interaction. The PEAK-T program Deictic: Single-Reversal I and You has previously been utilized to teach and establish singular I-YOU perspective taking repertoires in children with ASD, however no such studies exist for teaching plural WE-THEY perspective taking repertoires. The present study replicated the methods from a previous study (Belisle et al., 2016) to establish simple and single-reversal I-YOU deictic relations, and extended the evaluation to establish simple and single-reversal WE-THEY deictic relations. Of the four participants in this study, …

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 …

Evaluating Privacy Adaptation Presentation Methods To Support Social Media Users In Their Privacy-Related Decision-Making Process, Moses Namara

All Dissertations

Several privacy scholars have advocated for user-tailored privacy (UTP). A privacy-enhancing adaptive privacy approach to help reconcile users' lack of awareness, privacy management skills and motivation to use available platform privacy features with their need for personalized privacy support in alignment with their privacy preferences. The idea behind UTP is to measure users' privacy characteristics and behaviors, use these measurements to create a personalized model of the user's privacy preferences, and then provide adaptive support to the user in navigating and engaging with the available privacy settings---or even implement certain settings automatically on the user's behalf. To this end, most …

The Effects Of Presession Conditions On Behavior During A Brief Functional Analysis, Dung Haylie Le

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has demonstrated that patterns of responding during a no-interaction condition of a functional analysis (FA) may predict FA outcomes. Thus, behavior analysts may use an initial no-interaction condition to identify problem behavior maintained by social reinforcement when time and resources are limited. However, in a clinic setting, most functional analyses are conducted in between or immediately after instructional sessions or structured play. Therefore, the proposed study was designed to examine the differential effects of presession conditions of naturally occurring activities (work versus play) at a clinic setting during a modified brief functional analysis. Results showed that presession conditions …

The Effects Of Guided Notes In An Online Behavior Analysis Graduate Course, Natalya Theresa Gutierrez

Theses and Dissertations

Guided notes are handouts with fill-in-the-blank spots, incomplete outlines, or PowerPoint slides with blank spaces identical to those used by the instructor during class lectures (Biggers et al., 2020). This note-taking strategy was initially created for those who have difficulty in the classroom, such as students with learning disabilities (Williams et al., 2012). However, guided notes became a supplemental note-taking technique used during lectures for non-disabled college students as well. The authors examined the impact of guided notes in an online course format, counterbalancing three conditions across participants and instructional units: Guided notes, learning objectives and no notes to determine …

The Effects Of Teaching Children To Tact Their Emotions On Problem Behavior, Haley Nicole Harber

Theses and Dissertations

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often struggle to understand and describe private events, such as emotions. When an individual cannot communicate appropriately, it can lead to various problem behaviors. Previous literature suggested that we teach children to tact their emotions (e.g., "I am sad," "I am angry") in an attempt to decrease their problem behavior. The primary purpose of the current study is to teach children with autism to tact their emotions. The secondary purpose is to evaluate the effects of empathy statements on problem behavior. Four children participated, three with problem behavior maintained by access to tangibles and …

Teaching Children With Autism To Tact Private Events Based On Common Properties, Madisyn Quidort

Theses and Dissertations

Skinner (1957) proposed that people learn to talk about private events in several ways. This study sought to examine the plausibility of one of those mechanisms: common properties. Skinner asserted that children learn tacts for public stimuli through normal interaction with their caregivers. When a child experiences a private stimulus that shares some feature with a previously learned public stimulus, the child generalizes the tact to the private sensation because there is a common property between the two stimuli. Three children with autistic disorder were taught 6 to 9 sensation tacts (e.g., prickly, cozy, tight) depicted in videos (e.g., a …

An Examination Of The Effects Of The Presentation Of Preferred Items On Frequency Of Stereotypy In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Shauna Blady

Theses and Dissertations

Stereotypy is a restricted, repetitive behavior that features rigidity and invariance. Approximately 88% of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit some form of stereotypy (Chebli et al., 2016). Although it often occurs under conditions of stimulus deprivation, stereotypy may also occur under other environmental conditions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the occurrence of stereotypy when preferred items are available noncontingently. Three participants were exposed to a baseline condition in which they had no access to items, followed by conditions in which high and low preferred items were delivered noncontingently to investigate whether automatically-maintained stereotypy was likely …

Comparison Of Traditional And Eye-Gaze Preference And Reinforcer Assessments, Zhihao Ou

Theses and Dissertations

A variety of preference assessments have been used to identify potential reinforcers for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and related disabilities. However, during traditional selection-based assessments, participants may fail to select items or selection may be under faulty stimulus control (e.g., side bias). Previous research has evaluated the utility of eye-gaze preference assessments with individuals with profound intellectual disabilities. The purpose of this study is to compare preference assessments by eye gaze and traditional preference assessment in three participants with ASD. The results of reinforcer assessment showed that among 2 out of 3 participants, the eye gaze method was …

Assessment And Improvement Of Women’S Soccer Performance Using Precision Teaching And Frequency Building, Emily Anne Swope

Theses and Dissertations

Performance assessments may be a helpful tool to determine why performance is lacking in sports and fitness. They may also provide some examples of interventions that help improve performance. If the performance deficits are due to a lack of skill or knowledge, then one teaching procedure that may increase the performance of the skill is frequency building. The purpose of the present study was to use a sports performance assessment to identify the variables responsible for sub-standard performance on a college women’s soccer team. In addition, we used a frequency building procedure to improve the performance of three soccer players. …

Assessing The Validity And Reliability Of The Performance Diagnostic Checklist-Human Services 1.1, Sebastian Jimenez

Theses and Dissertations

The PDC-HS is an informant-based assessment tool used by OBM practitioners in human service settings. An updated version known as the PDC-HS 1.1 has recently been released. The present study measured the validity and reliability of the PDCHS 1.1 by analyzing answers obtained while watching a video of a simulated interview between a consultant and a supervisor. Three video vignettes were created, each describing a performance concern in one or more areas of the PDCHS 1.1. Twenty-one participants watched all vignettes and filled out the PDC-HS 1.1 based on the answers provided. Validity was measured by calculating the percentage of …

Using Contingent Praise To Increase Visual Engagement In An Asynchronous Online Learning Environment: An Eye Tracking Study, Andrew Rozsa

Dissertations

As more students move to online learning, this results in not only new barriers but new opportunities in academia. The purpose of this study was to examine how behavior-contingent praise affects visual engagement with an online video lecture when using WebGazer, a publicly available eye tracking software, with a user’s integrated webcam. A second aim of this study was to examine if using WebGazer with an integrated webcam was a valid alternative to hand scoring when collecting visual engagement data. Results of WebGazer measurement indicated a moderate effect size for three participants in the presence of contingent praise, and …

Programming Maintenance For The Mystery Student Intervention, Sarah Litten

Dissertations

The current study evaluated the effects of the Mystery Student Intervention (MSI) in university and community-based preschool settings on the appropriate and disruptive behaviors in the classroom utilizing a randomized independent group contingency. This study extended the literature base of the MSI, which was previously conducted in Head Start classrooms by Pasqua (2019), and Pasqua and colleagues (2021) which determined the MSI to be effective at reducing disruptive behaviors in the classroom setting. A nonconcurrent multiple baseline design across three classrooms was used. This study also sought to further extend the literature by evaluating programmed maintenance using a partial sequential …

Interview-Informed Synthesized Contingency Analyses On Challenging Problem Behavior: A Single-Case Meta-Analysis, Lauren Layman

Dissertations

The purpose of the current study was to conduct a thorough review of the literature on the Interview Informed Synthesized Contingency Analysis (IISCA) developed by Hanley et al. (2014) and its subsequent treatments. A total of 39 articles were identified as including an IISCA to assess the function of participants’ destructive problem behavior. Twenty-nine articles also conducted function-based interventions designed from the results of the IISCAs. Within those 39 studies, 235 participants participated in 293 synthesized contingency analyses (SCA) and 111 treatment evaluations. Results indicated that 95.56% of SCAs in the included studies were reported to be differentiated. Likewise, Tau-U …

Finance And Fear: Sentiment, Media, And Financial Markets During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Alison N. Sommers

Honors Theses

This thesis aims to build on existing research of market psychology and the effect of sentiment on financial markets. The main objective of this study is to determine the ability of investors to make rational decisions during the most recent period of high sentiment. The anomalies that have occurred in the stock market can be better understood by market psychology which focuses on the biases and social factors that influence investors. The media is a newly relevant factor impacting the volume of sentiment present in the market. A review of literature reveals that many studies of sentiment and financial market’s …

Effects Of Positive Reappraisal And Self-Distancing On Meaning-Making In Negative Experiences, Yong Hao Clement Lau

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Scant research has investigated the impact of common daily adversities on one’s sense of meaning, and how one can cope and find meaning in these distressing events. Drawing on the meaning-making model and tripartite model of meaning, this study sought to examine how using a combination of coping strategies (i.e., positive reappraisal and self-distancing) can help individuals to derive greater situational meaning (i.e., meaning from the experience), greater global meaning (i.e., meaning in life)—across three facets (i.e., coherence, significance, and purpose). Specifically, it is proposed that the effects of positive reappraisal on promoting meaning would be enhanced by adopting a …

The Effects Of Paired Kinesthetic Movements And Embedded Pictures On Literacy Skills With Preschoolers, Erica Lozy

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Reading difficulties during childhood often continue during adulthood and result in adverse effects (e.g., unemployment, poverty). A common method to teach early literacy skills is via multisensory instructional programs, which use combinations of mnemonic devices, such as visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic movements. The current literature on the effects of pairing visual mnemonics and kinesthetic movements with literacy skills, either in isolation or in combination, is sparse. The purpose of Study 1 and Study 2 was to compare the efficacy, generalization, and maintenance of and preference for letter sound interventions with and without mnemonic devices. Study 1 evaluated a traditional …

The Significance Of Sonic Branding To Strategically Stimulate Consumer Behavior: Content Analysis Of Four Interviews From Jeanna Isham’S “Sound In Marketing” Podcast, Ina Beilina

Student Theses and Dissertations

Purpose:
Sonic branding is not just about composing jingles like McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It.” Sonic branding is an industry that strategically designs a cohesive auditory component of a brand’s corporate identity. This paper examines the psychological impact of music and sound on consumer behavior reviewing studies from the past 40 years and investigates the significance of stimulating auditory perception by infusing sound in consumer experience in the modern 2020s.

Design/methodology/approach:
Qualitative content analysis of audio media was used to test two hypotheses. Four archival oral interview recordings from Jeanna Isham’s podcast “Sound in Marketing” featuring the sonic branding experts …

Analyzing The Validity Of Self-Reports Of Emotional Responding Using An Electronic Device, Tiffany E. Shiflet

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The assessment of internal behaviors such as thoughts, feelings, or physiological symptoms not seen by the naked eye are often assessed with indirect measures such as self-reports and questionnaires given the lack of accessibility and observations by outside observers. The self-management of human behaviors, including internal events, carries socially valid implications for an individual’s quality of life, including children and individuals with neurological, developmental, and intellectual disabilities. This study aimed to address the following question: are there valid measurement procedures (e.g., collecting data on physiological responses) to analyze the correspondence between self-reports of emotional states and observable and measurable overt …

An Analysis Of Behavior Management Strategies Used Within Parent-Child Interaction Therapy To Facilitate Verbalizations By Children With Developmental Disabilities, Megan Barnes

Masters Theses, 2020-current

We examined the effects of the procedures recommended for interventions using the Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) protocols on child verbalizations. The effects of the procedures of Child-Directed Interaction (CDI) were examined in a non-concurrent multiple baseline across participants design. Two seven-year-old participants with developmental disabilities and language delay experienced a baseline condition followed by two experimental conditions during a free play environment. A range of child toys were rotated systematically throughout the study. The total number of therapist-child interactions remained consistent across all experimental conditions. The experimenter received bug-in-the-ear feedback about her use of the therapy components in order to …