Psychology Commons^™

Generalization Effects Of Social Story Interventions For Individuals With Asperger's Disorder, Jennifer Alphonso Abraham

Dissertations

Social Stories™ (Gray, 2004) is a relatively new intervention designed to teach appropriate skills to individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Although there is preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of Social Stories it has typically been implemented in one target setting. As a result, there are little data to support whether or not the effects of Social Stories will generalize to other settings. The current study examined the effectiveness of Social Stories for increasing appropriate behaviors exhibited by four children diagnosed with Asperger's Disorder. Generalization effects across settings were assessed using a typical Social Story (Train and Hope) format and …

An Examination Of Napping And Psychosocial Functioning In Preschool Children, Brian Kenneth Crosby

Dissertations

The objectives of this study were to examine racial differences in the sleep distribution of 4- to 5-year-old children, to assess the relationship between napping and psychosocial functioning, and to determine if there are racial differences in the relationship between napping and psychosocial functioning. The sleep behavior of 67 children (52.2% non-Hispanic White; 55.2% male) 4 to 5 years old from a community sample was assessed through caregiver-report and actigraphy. Psychosocial functioning was examined through caregiver-report and laboratory tasks designed to assess aspects of behavioral and emotional functioning. Results indicate that, compared to White children, Black children nap significantly more …

Parental Influences In Child Obesity, Janel Lynn Calinisan

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

One of the greatest concerns in American society is peoples’ health. In the past several years there has been an overwhelming increase in obesity in Americans. This concern relates not only to adults, but also to children, as more are found to be overweight. Many factors have been suggested as to why more children are becoming obese, including parenting, demographics, physical activity, nutrition, and biological factors. Studies have shown that parental influence or involvement can be related to child obesity such that neglected children were more likely to be obese in adolescence and sustain it through adulthood. In order to …

Psychological Distress And Change In A Pediatric Obesity Population, Amy Rebecca Beck

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Pediatric overweight and obesity is a growing national epidemic with 15 percent of children ages 6-19 considered obese and at least 22 percent considered overweight. While there is considerable research pointing to contributing factors of obesity, there is a paucity of research which elucidates what contributes to successful intervention. Considering that by the year 2050, nearly 50 million Americans may be obese, understanding the factors delineating success of weight loss and prevention is a necessity. The purpose of this study was to utilize archival data from the LLU Growing Fit Program to evaluate the levels of psychological distress experienced by …

Bullying Prevention, Naveen Jonathan

Marriage and Family Therapy Faculty Presentations

Defines various forms of bullying, addresses why they are issues, discusses the motives behind bullying, and gives tips on how to stop bullying.

Using Social Cognitive Theory To Predict Physical Activity In Inner-City African American School Children, Jeffrey J. Martin, Nate Mccaughtry

Kinesiology, Health and Sport Studies

Researchers using social cognitive theory and employing built environment constructs to predict physical activity (PA) in inner-city African American children is quite limited. Thus, the purpose of our investigation was to evaluate the ability of important social cognitive variables (e.g., self-efficacy) and built environment constructs (e.g., neighborhood hazards) to predict African American children’s PA. Children (N = 331, ages 10–14) completed questionnaires assessing social cognitive theory constructs and PA. Using multiple regression analyses we were able to account for 19% of the variance in PA. Based on standardized beta weights, the best predictors of PA were time spent outside …

Self-Harm, Substance Abuse And Age: Relatedness To Sexually Abusive Behaviors Toward Others By Juveniles, Tara K. Cossel

Tara K. Cossel (Tara Morton)

No abstract provided.

"It's All One Big Circle": Welfare Discourse And The Everyday Lives Of Urban Adolescents, Staci T. Lowe

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Welfare reform succeeded, in part, because of discourse that characterized the poverty problem as one of long-term dependency and personal irresponsibility. Adolescent pregnancy was targeted as both cause and manifestation of a welfare crisis. This study examined how welfare reform was perceived and experienced by lowincome, urban adolescents. Findings from interviews revealed that adolescents agreed with many of the basic tenets of welfare reform, largely because they had appropriated much of the discourse prevalent in wider society. However, their complex life stories contained a powerful subtext concerning structural determinants of poverty that ran counter to prevailing notions of "personal responsibility."

Religious Orientation And Religious Coping In Adolescents With And Without A Chronic Illness, Jacqueline Beine Brown

Dissertations

Religion plays an important role in most people's lives and can greatly affect how individuals cope and interpret stressful situations. However, very little is known about how adolescents incorporate religion into their lives (e.g., is it central or peripheral to their lives, do they utilize religious coping). Furthermore, given the additional stressors experienced by adolescents who have a chronic illness, it is likely their religious orientations and religious coping strategies are different from their healthy peers. Thus, the present study was designed to examine the constructs in both typically developing and chronically ill adolescents. Additional constructs of hope, general coping, …

Child Sexual Abuse Victims And Their Families Receiving Services At A Child Advocacy Center: Mental Health And Support Needs, Tara K. Cossel, David J. Hansen

Tara K. Cossel (Tara Morton)

The purpose of this study is to document the effects of child sexual abuse among children, siblings and non-offending parents so the needs of child victims and their families can be further addressed. Children are often referred to Child Advocacy Centers (CACs) for mental health and other support needs. Today most sexually abused children receive the same treatment from CACs, but there is variability in the symptoms and needs these children and their family members present with. Recent research has begun to investigate the variability in symptom patterns of sexual abuse victims, finding aspects of the abuse including severity, duration, …

Evaluating Children’S Advocacy Centers’ Response To Child Sexual Abuse, Theodore P. Cross, Lisa M. Jones, Wendy A. Walsh, Monique Simone, David Kolko, Joyce Sczepanski, Tonya Lippert, Karen Davison, Arthur Crynes, Polly Sosnowski, Amy L. Shadoin, Suzanne Magnuson

Sociology

Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) play an increasingly significant role in the response to child sexual abuse and other child maltreatment in the United States. First developed in the 1980s, CACs were designed to reduce the stress on child abuse victims and families created by traditional child abuse investigation and prosecution procedures and to improve the effectiveness of the response. According to several experts (Fontana, 1984; Pence and Wilson, 1992; Whitcomb, 1992), child victims were subjected to multiple, redundant interviews about their abuse by different agencies, and were questioned by professionals who had no knowledge of children’s developmental limitations or experience …

Using Virtual Reality Enhanced Behavioral Skills Training To Teach Street-Crossing Skills To Children And Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Tina R. Goldsmith

Dissertations

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) often have poor safety skills due to their insensitivity to subtle environmental cues and poor problem solving in the face of stressful tasks. These skill deficits threaten their physical well-being and limit their personal independence. An effective intervention model for teaching safety skills is behavioral skills training (BST). The effects of this 4-part intervention, which includes Instructions, Modeling, Rehearsal, and Feedback, improve with the addition of in situ training. However, creating realistic, safe, and logistically feasible contexts for rehearsal of skills may prove difficult, if not impossible. Virtual reality (VR) may present a solution. …

A Comparison Of Maintenance-Training Methods For Children Diagnosed With Autism, Nicholas L. Weatherly

Dissertations

The current study evaluated the effects of two different maintenance-training methods and one control condition on skill maintenance within a public-school classroom for children diagnosed with autism. The two training methods involved the use of either a continuous-reinforcement schedule or a thinned partial-reinforcement schedule during 20 overlearning training sessions following skill acquisition. The control condition did not involve any overlearning following skill acquisition. Three children were each taught two curricular programs, with each program involving the two training methods and the control condition using a multielement design. Overlearning using a thinned partial-reinforcement schedule reliably produced greater maintenance across all participants, …

Combined Cognitive Behavioral Treatment Plus Caregiver Sessions For Childhood Depression, Dikla Eckshtain

Dissertations

Childhood depression is intimately related to the family context and caregiver-child relations, but only a limited number of treatment outcome studies for depressed youth have formally included members of the family in the intervention. To address this discrepancy the present study evaluated the efficacy of adding caregiver sessions to individual cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for the treatment of depressed youth. The treatment included 16 individual sessions and 7 caregiver sessions administered in the child's school to promote accessibility. Fifteen children (10 females and 5 males ranging in age from 8-13), who met inclusion criteria based on self-report and interview measures …

Suffering In Silence: Girls With Asperger Syndrome, Lee Wilkinson

Lee A Wilkinson, PhD

No abstract provided.

Child Sexual Abuse Victims And Their Families Receiving Services At A Child Advocacy Center: Mental Health And Support Needs, Tara K. Cossel, David J. Hansen

David J. Hansen

The purpose of this study is to document the effects of child sexual abuse among children, siblings and non-offending parents so the needs of child victims and their families can be further addressed. Children are often referred to Child Advocacy Centers (CACs) for mental health and other support needs. Today most sexually abused children receive the same treatment from CACs, but there is variability in the symptoms and needs these children and their family members present with. Recent research has begun to investigate the variability in symptom patterns of sexual abuse victims, finding aspects of the abuse including severity, duration, …

18. Complex Questions Asked By Defense Lawyers But Not Prosecutors Predicts Convictions In Child Abuse Trials., Angela D. Evans, Kang Lee, Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

Child Sexual Trauma: Testing The Robustness Of Browne & Finkelhor's Theory, Jose Mauricio Ramirez

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Trauma has received great attention in the last three decades and a major societal issue today is child sexual abuse. Twelve percent of victims of maltreatment every year are victims of child sexual abuse (CSA). Several studies have suggested that the prevalence of CSA in women is in the range of 6% to 62% depending on how the data was collected (e.g., interviews, surveys) and the nature of the population sampled (e.g., general population, clinical population). Because of CSA, victims are impacted by the experience and encounter a change in the way they perceive the world on both the way …

Children's Hedonic Responses To The Odors Of Alcoholic Beverages: A Window To Emotions, Julie A. Mennella, Catherine A. Forestell

Arts & Sciences Articles

The present study of 145 children and their mothers aimed to determine whether children's responses to the odors of alcoholic beverages were related to their mothers' reasons for drinking. Mothers completed a series of questionnaires to describe the emotional context in which they drink and whether they use alcohol to “escape” by changing their state of mind and reducing feelings of dysphoria. Children participated in two age-appropriate tasks that focused on the most salient psychological attribute of an odor, its perceived hedonic valence. To this aim, we determined children's liking, reaction times, and identification of individual odors including beer and …

The Impact Of Adolescent Social Anxiety On Adulthood Adjustment Among Sexually Abused Girls, Madeline Anne Rakow Ivanchenko

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is a significant social problem that has gained increased recognition since the 1980s. The increased attention has led to a substantial body of research that documents both the high prevalence and pervasive effects of CSA. CSA is associated with a wide range of adulthood psychopathology, including major depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, substance use, suicidal behavior, alterations in self-concept, and disruptions in interpersonal relatedness (Beichtman, Zucker, Hood, DaCosta & Cassavia, 1992; Browne & Finkelhor, 1986; Cole & Putnam, 1992; Polusny & Follette, 1995; Russell, 1986; Wilson, 2006). Sexually abused children are also at a higher …

Schedule Thinning Following Mand Training: Attempts To Enhance Signaled Delay To Reinforcement, Jamie M. Severtson

Masters Theses

Mand training, a common component of language training programs for children with autism, is associated with several clinical benefits (Sundberg & Michael, 2001), yet mand training sometimes results in high-rate responding that is difficult to maintain. One method of reducing high-rate mands to manageable rates is known as graduated signaled delay to reinforcement. The current investigation involved a series of three studies to evaluate the ability of three independent variables (a) highly preferred toys, (b) signal duration, and (c) schedule thinning methods to enhance signaled delay to reinforcement. The results of the three studies indicate that 7 of the 8 …

17. Maltreated Children’S Understanding Of And Emotional Reactions To Dependency Court Involvement., Jodi A. Quas, Allison R. Wallin, Briana Horwitz, Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

Vision For "A New Human Being" And A "Human Synergistic Movement": A New Humanistic Movement Aligned With Transformational Archetypal Energies, Carroy U. Ferguson

Carroy U "Cuf" Ferguson, Ph.D.

In previous writings, I spoke of the “Path of the Bridger: AHP’s Role in Co-Creating a New Reality for Human Togetherness and the Evolution of Consciousness,” “The Voices of Transformational Archetypal Energies: The Psychic Energy behind AHP’s Mission,” and “The Gift and Challenge of ‘Free Will’: The Connection to Transformational Archetypal Energies.” I wanted to remind us of how and why AHP came into being as a “Mother Organization,” arguably to give birth to an organized focus on validating the dignity of the Human Spirit, maximizing Human Potential, and planting seeds for Well Being and the Evolution of Consciousness. In …

16. Coaching, Truth Induction, And Young Maltreated Children’S False Allegations And False Denials., Thomas D. Lyon, Lindsay C. Malloy, Jodi A. Quas, Victoria A. Talwar

Thomas D. Lyon

Adolescents With Two Nonresident Biological Parents: Living Arrangements, Parental Involvement, And Well-Being, Valarie King, Katherine C. Stamps, Daniel Hawkins

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

We know little about children who have two living nonresident biological parents. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examines the diverse living arrangements of U.S. adolescents in this situation, the kinds of relationships they have with each of their nonresident parents, and the consequences of these arrangements for child well-being. Differences between these adolescents (N = 502) and those who have one nonresident biological parent (N = 4746) are also examined. Results point to certain groups of adolescents with two nonresident parents who are at particular risk of exhibiting higher levels of behavior problems …

Dissociation Predicts Later Attention Problems In Sexually Abused Children., Julie B Kaplow, Erin Hall, Karestan C Koenen, Kenneth A Dodge, Lisa Amaya-Jackson

Faculty Publications

OBJECTIVE: The goals of this research are to develop and test a prospective model of attention problems in sexually abused children that includes fixed variables (e.g., gender), trauma, and disclosure-related pathways.

METHODS: At Time 1, fixed variables, trauma variables, and stress reactions upon disclosure were assessed in 156 children aged 8-13 years. At the Time 2 follow-up (8-36 months following the initial interview), 56 of the children were assessed for attention problems.

RESULTS: A path analysis involving a series of hierarchically nested, ordinary least squares multiple regression analyses indicated two direct paths to attention problems including the child's relationship to …

Adolescent Risk Behaviors And Religion: Findings From A National Study, Jill Sinha, Ram Cnaan, Richard Gelles

Ram A Cnaan

Too few studies have assessed the relationship between youth risk behaviors and religiosity using measures which captured the varied extent to which youth are engaged in religion. This study applied three measures of religiosity and risk behaviors. In addition, this study ascertained information about youths’ participation in religious activities from a parent or caretaker. Based on a national random sample of 2,004 teens (ages 11-18), this study indicates that youth perceive religion as important, are active in religious worship and activities, and further shows that perceived importance of religion as well as participation in religious activities are associated with decreased …

Response Style Differences In The Inattentive And Combined Subtypes Of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Karen J. Derefinko, Zachary W. Adams, Richard Milich, Mark T. Fillmore, Elizabeth P. Lorch, Donald R. Lynam

Psychology Faculty Publications

This study examined potential differences between the inattentive and combined ADHD subtypes using laboratory tasks assessing behavioral inhibitory processes. Seventy-five children completed two tasks of behavioral inhibition believed to isolate different processes: the cued reaction time task (CRT), a basic inhibition task, and the go/no-go task (GNG), a complex inhibition task that incorporates motivational contingencies. Three groups of participants were identified, including ADHD/Inattentive (n = 17), ADHD/Combined (n = 37), and comparison (n = 21). Results indicated that rather than showing behavioral inhibition deficits, the ADHD/I children appeared overly inhibited, as evidenced by slower reaction times across …

Cyberbullying & Bullying In Massachusetts: Frequency & Motivations, Elizabeth Englander

MARC Publications

This brief reports on the major findings of the studies conducted in the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center during the years 2006 to 2008. Detailed analyses are omitted but general findings are displayed and explained. The data deals primarily with cyberbullying, but some data related to bullying behaviors is reported. The findings are separated by study. Two studies are reported upon here: a survey of 334 college freshman and a survey of 178 K-12 educators from public schools across the Commonwealth. A third study, of 75 pediatricians in Massachusetts, will be discussed under separate cover. The findings from the two studies …

Cyberbullying And Information Exposure: User-Generated Content In Post-Secondary Education, Elizabeth K. Englander

MARC Publications

The term “Cyberimmersion” refers to the central role that the Internet and electronic communications now play in the lives of individuals born after 1980 in the First World. Cyberimmersion has transformed everything about bullying and harassment between youth in the First World. It has also transformed the information landscape, although confusion about the scope and nature of this transformation is common. User-generated content has opened the door to a vast “spillage” of information, both damaging and promising. Younger users evidence a high comfort level with technology but many remain naïve in the areas of electronic security, privacy, and information exposure. …