Psychology Commons^™

Misgivings In Measuring Happiness, Sudhanva Char

International Review of Business and Economics

According to a resolution of the UN General Assembly (Resolution 66/281), March 20^th is observed annually as International Day of Happiness. A nation’s overall success is measured by people’s happiness, the litmus test. The World Happiness Report (WHR) states there is consensus about measuring happiness, whereas, happiness is idiosyncratic and its connotation differs from culture to culture, language to language, and even person to person. Personal ‘space’ in all spheres matters, and so do democracy or dictatorship, all factors leading to mismeasures of happiness scores. And so, there are paradoxes in happiness rankings in WHR. Economists have yet to …

Risky Behavior As Motivated Emotion Regulation: A Mixed-Method Approach, Lyneé A. Herrera

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Engaging in risky health behaviors is a ubiquitous human experience that often marks developmental progression from adolescence into adulthood. While much previous research has framed risky behaviors in terms of negative legal, social, and public health consequences, less empirical work has been done on potential benefits of their engagement. A growing body of research has identified emotion regulation deficits as a significant driver of risky behavior engagement, suggesting that these behaviors may offer perceived emotional benefits when other regulation strategies are less accessible. Previous research has shown that emotional outcomes can be influenced by the regulation strategies one chooses to …

Reference Frames In Human Sensory, Motor, And Cognitive Processing, Dongcheng He

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Reference-frames, or coordinate systems, are used to express properties and relationships of objects in the environment. While the use of reference-frames is well understood in physical sciences, how the brain uses reference-frames remains a fundamental question. The goal of this dissertation is to reach a better understanding of reference-frames in human perceptual, motor, and cognitive processing. In the first project, we study reference-frames in perception and develop a model to explain the transition from egocentric (based on the observer) to exocentric (based outside the observer) reference-frames to account for the perception of relative motion. In a second project, we focus …

Effects Of Dissociation And Hyperarousal On Item And Association Memory, Naomi M. Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Dual representation theory (DRT) asserts that when an individual experiences an acutely stressful or traumatic event, encoding of memory of individual parts of an event (i.e., items) is enhanced, while connections between parts of an event (i.e., associations) is impaired due to peritraumatic changes in cognitive functioning. The current project sought to refine understanding of DRT by examining the differential effect of dissociation and hyperarousal, two common peritraumatic cognitive reactions, on memory for item and association information. Method: Using experimental methods from the cognitive study of memory, two studies evaluated how individual differences in cognitive states (Study 1) and experimentally …

A Missing Narrative: The Creation Of A Trauma-Informed Children’S Book For Children In The Foster Care System, Elizabeth Hoff Saunderson

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

This article includes a review of literature relevant to the experiences of children in the foster care system including demographics, trauma and stressful experiences, attachment challenges, and useful interventions. Limited research has been conducted to inform resource tools for children in foster care. The aim of the present study was to create a trauma-informed resource tool for children in the foster care system in the form of a children’s book. A review of children’s books related to foster care yielded four major themes including the importance of mindful language, the need for a resource tool, a focus on safety, and …

Cancer Related Cognitive Impairment In Breast Cancer Patients: Guidelines For Neuropsychological Evaluation And Management, Ali Al-Humadi

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Current literature indicates there is still some debate regarding the scope and severity of cancer treatment related cognitive impairment (CRCI), with a wide variety of complex factors contributing to cognitive decline and discrepancies between objective findings and patient self-report. This paper aims to provide guidelines for neuropsychological evaluation, management, and rehabilitation of CRCI in breast cancer patients based on current research. This paper also aims to discuss current research on proposed mechanisms of action for CRCI, the cognitive domains affected in CRCI, and significant bio-psycho-social risk factors impacting CRCI.

Database Of Picture-Based Cognitive Reappraisal Experiments: Analyses Of Trial-Level Factors, Damon Abraham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cognitive reappraisal is widely recognized as an effective emotion regulation strategy for managing negative emotions. In laboratory research, reappraisal has been shown to attenuate self-reported negative affect as well as physiological and neurological markers of emotion and arousal. In these experiments, emotionally evocative images are frequently used to induce negative affect in participants. Depending on the trial condition, participants are instructed to either look and react naturally or to change their experience using reappraisal. Data are typically aggregated within trial condition, and the average difference in reported negative affect between conditions serves as the behavioral measure of reappraisal success. While …

Humor Improves Women’S But Impairs Men’S Iowa Gambling Task Performance, Jorge Flores‑Torres, Lydia Gómez‑Pérez, Kateri Mcrae, Vladimir López, Ivan Rubio, Eugenio Rodriguez

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is a popular method for examining real-life decision-making. Research has shown gender related differences in performance, in that men consistently outperform women. It has been suggested that these performance differences are related to decreased emotional control in women compared to men. Given the likely role of emotion in these gender differences, in the present study, we examine the effect of a humor induction on IGT performance and whether the effect of humor is moderated by gender. IGT performance and parameters from the Expectancy Valence Model (EVM) were measured in 68 university students (34 men; mean …

“A” For Effort: Rewarding Effortful Retrieval Attempts Improves Learning From General Knowledge Errors In Women, Damon Abraham, Kateri Mcrae, Jennifer A. Mangels

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Previous research has shown that the prospect of attaining a reward can promote task-engagement, up-regulate attention toward reward-relevant information, and facilitate enhanced encoding of new information into declarative memory. However, past research on reward-based enhancement of declarative memory has focused primarily on paradigms in which rewards are contingent upon accurate responses. Yet, findings from test-enhanced learning show that making errors can also be useful for learning if those errors represent effortful retrieval attempts and are followed by corrective feedback. Here, we used a challenging general knowledge task to examine the effects of explicitly rewarding retrieval effort, defined as a semantically …

Turning Down The Heat: Neural Mechanisms Of Cognitive Control For Inhibiting Task-Irrelevant Emotional Information During Adolescence, Marie T. Banich, Harry R. Smolker, Hannah R. Snyder, Jarrod A. Lewis-Peacock, Detre A. Godinez, Tor D. Wager, Benjamin L. Hankin

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

One major question in the cognitive neuroscience of cognitive control is whether prefrontal regions contribute to control by upregulating the processing of task-relevant material or by downregulating the processing of task-irrelevant material. Here we take a unique approach to addressing this question by using multi-voxel pattern analysis, which allowed us to determine the degree to which each of the task-relevant and task-irrelevant dimensions of a stimulus are being processed in posterior cortex on a trial-by-trial basis. In our study, adolescent participants performed an emotion word – emotional face Stroop task requiring them to determine the emotional valence (positive, negative) of …

Genome-Wide Association Scan Identifies New Variants Associated With A Cognitive Predictor Of Dyslexia, Alessandro Gialluisi, Till F. M. Andlauer, Nazanin Mirza-Schreiber, Kristina Moll, Jessica Becker, Per Hoffmann, Kerstin U. Ludwig, Darina Czamara, Beate St Pourcain, William Brandler, Ferenc Honbolygó, Dénes Tóth, Valéria Csépe, Guillaume Huguet, Andrew P. Morris, Jacqueline Hulslander, Erik G. Willcutt, John C. Defries, Richard K. Olson, Shelley D. Smith, Bruce F. Pennington, Anniek Vaessen, Urs Maurer, Heikki Lyytinen, Myriam Peyrard-Janvid, Paavo H. T. Leppänen, Daniel Brandeis, Milene Bonte, John F. Stein, Joel B. Talcott, Fabien Fauchereau, Arndt Wilcke, Clyde Francks, Thomas Bourgeron, Anthony P. Monaco, Franck Ramus, Karin Landerl, Juha Kere, Thomas S. Scerri, Silvia Paracchini, Simon E. Fisher, Johannes Schumacher, Markus M. Nöthen, Bertram Müller-Myhsok, Gerd Schulte-Körne

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Developmental dyslexia (DD) is one of the most prevalent learning disorders, with high impact on school and psychosocial development and high comorbidity with conditions like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, and anxiety. DD is characterized by deficits in different cognitive skills, including word reading, spelling, rapid naming, and phonology. To investigate the genetic basis of DD, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of these skills within one of the largest studies available, including nine cohorts of reading-impaired and typically developing children of European ancestry (N = 2562–3468). We observed a genome-wide significant effect (p < 1 × 10−8) on rapid automatized naming of letters (RANlet) for variants on 18q12.2, within MIR924HG (micro-RNA …

Motivational Valence Alters Memory Formation Without Altering Exploration Of A Real-Life Spatial Environment, Kimberly S. Chiew, Jordan Hashemi, Lee K. Gans, Laura Lerebours, Nathaniel J. Clement, Mai-Anh T. Vu, Guillermo Sapiro, Nicole E. Heller, R. Alison Adcock

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Volitional exploration and learning are key to adaptive behavior, yet their characterization remains a complex problem for cognitive science. Exploration has been posited as a mechanism by which motivation promotes memory, but this relationship is not well-understood, in part because novel stimuli that motivate exploration also reliably elicit changes in neuromodulatory brain systems that directly alter memory formation, via effects on neural plasticity. To deconfound interrelationships between motivation, exploration, and memory formation we manipulated motivational state prior to entering a spatial context, measured exploratory responses to the context and novel stimuli within it, and then examined motivation and exploration as …

Vmpfc Activation During A Stressor Predicts Positive Emotions During Stress Recovery, Xi Yang, Katelyn M. Garcia, Youngkyoo Jung, Christopher T. Whitlow, Kateri Mcrae, Christian E. Waugh

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Despite accruing evidence showing that positive emotions facilitate stress recovery, the neural basis for this effect remains unclear. To identify the underlying mechanism, we compared stress recovery for people reflecting on a stressor while in a positive emotional context with that for people in a neutral context. While blood–oxygen-level dependent data were being collected, participants (N = 43) performed a stressful anagram task, which was followed by a recovery period during which they reflected on the stressor while watching a positive or neutral video. Participants also reported positive and negative emotions throughout the task as well as retrospective thoughts …

Enrichment Of Putatively Damaging Rare Variants In The Dyx2 Locus And The Reading-Related Genes Ccdc136 And Flnc, Andrew K. Adams, Shelley D. Smith, Dongnhu T. Truong, Erik G. Willcutt, Richard K. Olson, John C. Defries, Bruce F. Pennington, Jeffrey R. Gruen

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Eleven loci with prior evidence for association with reading and language phenotypes were sequenced in 96 unrelated subjects with significant impairment in reading performance drawn from the Colorado Learning Disability Research Center collection. Out of 148 total individual missense variants identified, the chromosome 7 genes CCDC136 and FLNC contained 19. In addition, a region corresponding to the well-known DYX2 locus for RD contained 74 missense variants. Both allele sets were filtered for a minor allele frequency ≤0.01 and high Polyphen-2 scores. To determine if observations of these alleles are occurring more frequently in our cases than expected by chance in …

General And Emotion-Specific Alterations To Cognitive Control In Women With A History Of Childhood Abuse, Kristen L. Mackiewicz Seghete, Roselinde H. Kaiser, Anne P. Deprince, Marie T. Banich

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Background

Although limited, the literature suggests alterations in activation of cognitive control regions in adults and adolescents with a history of childhood abuse. The current study examined whether such alterations are increased in the face of emotionally-distracting as compared to emotionally neutral information, and whether such alterations occur in brain regions that exert cognitive control in a more top-down sustained manner or a more bottom-up transient manner.

Methods

Participants were young adult women (ages 23–30): one group with a history of childhood physical or sexual abuse (N = 15) and one with no trauma exposure (N = 17), as assessed …

Perspectives On Personality Assessment Of Children With Limited Cognitive Ability, Jasmine Fayeghi Schnurstein

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Personality assessment can be an important part of diagnosis and treatment planning with children and adolescents. Consequently, research in personality assessment with children and adolescents has received attention; however, there is still limited research in this area with children of below average cognitive capacity. In order to gain better understanding of the current practice of personality assessment of children with below average IQ, this interpretative phenomenological study explores expert psychologists' experience and recommendations for future practice. Structured interviews were conducted with four clinical psychologists with an expertise in personality assessment with children, including children with below average intelligence. Five themes …

Mental Skills Training In Martial Arts, Megan Rinderer, Adam Bernero

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

The following case recounts the experiences of two entry-level consultants implementing a 6-week Mental Skills Training program with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) athletes. Both consultants identify with an Acceptance and Commitment (ACT) approach to mental skills training. Each consultant worked with a BJJ athlete for six weeks, integrating mental skills interventions into the athletes’ existing training regimen. Overall, the interventions focused on cognitive defusion techniques, identifying and developing emotional intelligence, self-regulating arousal levels, and managing energy and attention. Consultants relied heavily on mindfulness exercises as well as biofeedback technology in order to identify, develop, and refine the psychological skills crucial …

Why Therapists Bite Their Tongue In Therapy And What To Do About It, Ingibjorg Thors

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Most therapists agree that therapy should be a place where the unspeakable is speakable, and the role of the therapist should be to help the client find a way to change by exploring the patterns of behavior that are no longer working for the client. Being blunt in therapy seems to be one of the key factors needed to promote immediacy, to challenge habitual ways of thinking that are not productive for our clients, and to create a relationship that is different from social and professional relationships. However, many therapists have distorted beliefs about using bluntness in therapy to stimulate …

The Role Of Self-Focused Cognition In Emotion Regulation, Ana Maria Draghici

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present dissertation reports a set of three studies that sought to characterize the effects of self-focused cognition on emotion regulation, specifically, cognitive reappraisal. Across the three studies, I investigated the effects of self-distancing, disengagement of self-focused thought, and changing the content of self-focused thought on multiple measures of emotion regulation success and emotion regulation difficulty. Results broadly suggested that disengaging self-focused cognition provides distinct advantages for emotion regulation, which are independent of effects on emotional reactivity. Specifically, I observed that other-focused cognition resulted in equally successful, but less difficult emotion regulation, the ability to more quickly disengage from self-focused …

The Role Of Passage Topic Knowledge In Typical And Poor Comprehenders' Recall, Chelsea E. Meenan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role of topic knowledge (TK) in comprehension among typical readers and those with Specifically Poor Comprehension (SPC), i.e., those who demonstrate deficits in understanding what they read despite adequate decoding. Previous studies of poor comprehension have focused on weaknesses in specific skills, such as word decoding and inferencing ability, but this dissertation examined a different factor: whether deficits in availability and use of TK underlie poor comprehension. It is well known that TK tends to facilitate comprehension among typical readers, but its interaction with working memory and word decoding is unclear, particularly among participants with deficits …

Attentional Processes Associated With Victimization History And Posttraumatic Symptomatology In Women Exposed To Intimate Partner Violence, Ryan B. Matlow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) puts women at risk for severe and chronic physical and mental health consequences, including elevations in IPV-related psychopathology and increased risk for future victimization. Previous research has examined attention as one of the key information processing mechanisms associated with elevated psychopathology and risk for victimization; however, the nature of attentional processing in response to IPV-related information in women exposed to IPV is poorly understood. Therefore, the current study aimed to further understanding of associations between attentional processing, IPV exposure, and related distress using measures of eye movement and subjective interpretations of IPV-related information. A …

Responses To Domestic Violence Public Service Ads: Memory, Attitudes, Affect, And Individual Differences, Courtney Elizabeth Welton-Mitchell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Public service ads (PSAs) are an increasingly visible part of efforts to decrease the occurrence and consequences of domestic violence. Like other advertising, domestic violence PSAs are designed to grab attention, influence attitudes, and enhance memory for ad content. Over the years, images in domestic violence PSAs have changed substantially; agencies have started using pictures that generate emotions - either vivid negative images (bruised faces or body parts), or positive images (smiling faces) that contrast with the negative text. It is not clear, however, how different types of ad images influence memory for the message and attitudes about domestic violence, …

Foreign Language Comprehension: Understanding The Centrality Deficit, Amanda C. Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study was to determine how reading in a foreign language (L2) affects one's mental representation of the text and the ability to recognize and recall the text's important information. Using a within-participants design, the proportion of central and peripheral ideas recalled by participants reading in their L2 was compared to that when reading in their native language (L1). Readers recalled a greater proportion of central than peripheral ideas when reading in both their L2 and L1, but when their L2 and L1 recalls were directly compared, a very interesting, yet counterintuitive, result emerged. The greatest deficit …

Dance/Movement Therapy: A Proposed Intervention For Meeting The Unique Psychosocial Needs Of Highly Gifted Children, Krista Brittain

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

This paper will demonstrate that the literature suggests and experts observe that intellectually gifted children, children with exceptional cognitive abilities, experience a unique set of psychological, social, and developmental stressors. Research has demonstrated that individuals with intelligence quotient (IQ) scores far above the mean tend to experience greater socio-emotional difficulty than their average-intelligence peers (Gross, 2002). For some gifted children the challenges and stressors they face may lead to areas of difficulty, including emotional functioning (including heightened emotional intensity, sometimes described as emotional overexcitability), affect regulation. development of the self (including perfectionism) and int.erpersonal functioning. As a result, some highly …

Attention And Emotion Influence The Relationship Between Extraversion And Neural Response, C. A. Hutcherson, P. R. Goldin, W. Ramel, Kateri Mcrae, J. J. Gross

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Extraversion has been shown to positively correlate with activation within the ventral striatum, amygdala and other dopaminergically innervated, reward-sensitive regions. These regions are implicated in emotional responding, in a manner sensitive to attentional focus. However, no study has investigated the interaction among extraversion, emotion and attention. We used fMRI and dynamic, evocative film clips to elicit amusement and sadness in a sample of 28 women. Participants were instructed either to respond naturally (n = 14) or to attend to and continuously rate their emotions (n = 14) while watching the films. Contrary to expectations, striatal response was negatively associated with …