Psychology Commons^™

Early Life Experiences As Later Life Predictors For Criminality: Examination Of Public Criminal Records, Juliana S. Bastien

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Crime's detrimental impact on society, victims, families, and the justice system is undeniable. Thus, identifying factors that contribute to the perpetration of crime is essential to reduce the public health impact of crime. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are frequently found in community samples and are consistently associated with physical, psychological, and behavioral consequences. Research suggests that negative childhood experiences contribute to maladaptive behaviors, including delinquency and perpetration of crime later in life (Perez et al., 2018). The present study's purpose is to identify specific childhood experiences associated with criminality. The data presented on criminality and ACEs was collected from recruited …

Examining The Relations Between Obsessive Compulsive Disorder And Quality Of Life In A Transdiagnostic Eating Disorder Sample., Madison Rose Ortman

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Background: Eating disorders (EDs) are life threatening psychological disorders characterized by obsessions related to food, weight, and exercise. The presence of an eating disorders has been linked to poorer quality of life (QOL) and clinical impairment. Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a psychiatric disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts and ritualistic behaviors. EDs and OCD have similar symptom structure as well as similar independent relationships to QOL. The present study aimed to validate these relationships and extend the findings into a more fine-grained symptom analysis of the relationship between EDs, OCD and QOL. Method: Participants (N = 109) were those …

Understanding The Role Of Emotion Regulation Tendencies In The Momentary Associations Between Negative Affect And Eating Disorder Behaviors., Coby D. Banet

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Background: Eating disorders (EDs) are becoming increasingly commonplace and are associated with a broad array of dangerous medical complications. Further, EDs frequently present alongside comorbid psychiatric disorders (e.g., depressive and anxiety-related disorders), which are known to both predict ED severity and reduce treatment efficacy. While diagnostic categorization persists, Fairburn et al.’s (1993) transdiagnostic model suggests EDs may be more closely related and maintained through core, shared symptoms. To assess ED maintenance, momentary triggers such as negative affect (NA) are becoming increasingly centralized. The present study examines the roles of depressive symptoms and worry in predicting and moderating the relationships among …

Understanding The Evolution Of Enforcement Systems In Resource Dilemmas, Devin M. Flener

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

The effective management of resources on Earth is a pressing global social dilemma. An alternative solution to the traditional managing methods of these common pool resources is communal self-management facilitated through principles of restorative justice and developed through exploratory learning. We examined how communication, restorative justice techniques, and opportunity for exploratory learning impacted groups’ ability to develop a strong conceptual understanding of enforcement as well as an enforcement system in order to maintain an effective conservation strategy. Participants (N=288) were randomly assigned to 72 four-person groups in six separate conditions. Each group played nine rounds of a computer-simulated foraging task …

Does Using Clicker Questions Before Instruction Improve Students' Conceptual Understanding., Edward "Walker" Goshorn

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Active learning can be incorporated into STEM classrooms in multiple ways. With exploratory learning, students explore a novel activity before learning the concepts or procedures. With personal response devices (e.g., clickers), students respond to real-time questions posed during lecture. The current studies examined whether, and how, clicker questions can be used as exploratory learning, to improve students’ conceptual understanding and engagement over traditional instruction. Biology professors integrated clicker questions into a lecture, and either closed the clicker poll prior to (Restricted Clicker Experiment, N = 164) or after (Extended Clicker Experiment, N = 188) giving feedback to the class. Undergraduate …

Aha! Examining Insight In Exploratory Learning Versus Traditional Instruction., Olivia Kaiser

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

In undergraduate classrooms, students are typically first taught the concepts and procedures for solving problems, then practice. With exploratory learning methods, students explore novel problems and generate original solutions before receiving instruction, which benefits conceptual understanding and future learning. The current study examined whether students who explore before instruction experience greater insight moments, and whether insight leads to better learning. Prior research demonstrates that individuals remember problem solutions better if they experience a sudden moment of solution clarity (Aha! Experience). Participants (N = 83) were randomly assigned to instruct-first or explore-first conditions and taught three types of magic tricks …

Adjusting For Speaking Rate When Perceiving Speech In Background Noise., Dawson C Stephens

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Speech perception is a very relevant concept occurring every day. Acoustic context effects such as temporal contrast effects (TCEs) influence perception significantly. For instance, when a faster context sentence is spoken, the participant should perceive the following target word as slower and more like /t/ in “tier”; when a slower context sentence is spoken, the participant should perceive the following target sound as faster and more like /d/ in “deer”. Recent work by Bosker et al. (2020) concluded that selective attention (directing attention to a specific stimulus while ignoring surrounding stimuli) had no effect on TCEs, suggesting they were automatic …

The Effect Of Object Contact On Pre-Reaching Infants' Causal Perception., Mallory L. Thompson

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

The Sticky Mittens (SM) paradigm is an object manipulation task that provides infants the opportunity to explore objects through active experience before they have the necessary motor skills to do so on their own. Positive cognitive outcomes like increased attention to objects, object engagement, object exploration, and causal perception have been shown to result from active SM experience (Libertus & Needham, 2010; Rakison & Krogh, 2012). Researchers are interested in understanding which aspects of SM training are important for infant learning. Although there have been many SM studies looking at different variables, such as active vs. passive experience and parent …

Inducing Cognitive Reflection And Its Impact On Contradictory Beliefs., Margaret Powers

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Currently, there is extensive research within psychology about two distinct processing models where one is fast, automatic, and relatively effortless and the other is slow, systematic, and effortful. One mechanism of effortful processing is cognitive reflection which is one’s ability to reflect on their intuition. While there is research on explicit instructions of certain cognitive mechanisms and implicit induction of cognitive reflection, there is a lack of research on the explicit induction of cognitive reflection specifically. In this study, two techniques were investigated to see if cognitive reflection could be explicitly induced. Participants either read a prompt before beginning the …

Early Mathematical Abilities Of 48-Month-Old Children With Williams Syndrome., Jenna N. Tinnell

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic neurodevelopmental disorder associated with relative strengths in concrete vocabulary, nonverbal reasoning, and verbal short-term memory and considerable weaknesses in visuospatial construction and relational language. While the cognitive profile of WS has been studied extensively, there have been few studies of the early mathematical abilities of children with WS and the cognitive predictors of these abilities. The purpose of this study was to describe the early mathematical abilities of 48-month-olds with WS and determine the concurrent cognitive predictors of these abilities. The Differential Ability Scales–second edition (DAS-II) was used to determine cognitive and mathematical abilities …

The Interaction Of Spaced Retrieval Practice And Element Interactivity., Cameron K. Mattingly

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Our study investigates the interaction of retrieval practice and element interactivity. Spaced practice is the process of breaking up the retrieval of information into smaller chunks across a longer period of time as opposed to learning everything in one time block. Retrieval practice is the process of testing yourself on previously learned material. Spaced retrieval practice is the merger of these two ideas. This style of learning is well-suited for learning many items that must be retained indefinitely (Lyle et al., 2019). Element interactivity describes the amount of learned items (elements) that are interrelated and must be processed together in …

Examining Body Trust And Body Listening In Sexual And Gender Minorities., Emma G. Roberts

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Introduction: Minority stress theory posits that sexual and gender minority individuals (SGM) may be at higher risk for poor mental health outcomes due to unique social experiences of stigma and discrimination. Interoception (i.e., awareness of one’s body and bodily sensations; Mehling et al., 2012) is a factor that has been linked to mental health broadly, however, SGM individuals may experience interoceptive awareness differently than cisgender and heterosexual individuals given experiences of stigma. In this paper, we aim to examine how two specific facets of interoceptive awareness (body listening and body trusting) relate to differences in mental health outcomes among SGM …

The Effect Of Parent Interaction On Pre-Reaching Infants’ Visual Attention During An Object Manipulation Task., Jalena N. Slaton

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Infants do not begin intentionally reaching for and grasping objects until around 5 months of age. The sticky mittens paradigm (SM) provides infants the opportunity to manipulate and explore objects on their own. Active SM experience has been shown to lead to positive cognitive outcomes (Libertus & Needham, 2010), including facilitating causal perception (Rakison & Krogh, 2012). While some aspects of SM that contribute to positive outcomes are well understood (e.g., active vs. passive experience), the role of parent interactions has received little attention. In this study, SM training was used to investigate the role that parents play in their …

The Relationship Between Mothers’ Negative Emotional Symptoms And Mother-Infant Interactions During The Covid-19 Pandemic., Kolbie A Vincent

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between mothers' negative emotional symptoms (depression, anxiety, and stress) and mother-infant interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected in the early months of the pandemic, when daycares were closed, through an online survey of parents and infants. Participants included 54 mothers of infants 3-34 months of age living in Kentucky. Well-being was measured with the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale – 21 (DASS 21). Questions related to parent-infant interactions included time spent interacting with the infants by reading, singing, playing freely with no set goal, engaging in a meaningful …

The Relations Between Maternal Language Input And Language Development For Children With Williams Syndrome., Katarina L. Mayer

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

For typically developing (TD) children, maternal language input (MLI) is an important contributor to early language development. Until now, possible relations between MLI and language development for children with Williams syndrome (WS), a genetic neurodevelopmental disorder associated with language delay and intellectual disability, have not been addressed. The aim of the present study was two-fold: to examine concurrent relations between MLI and child language abilities at 24 months and to determine if individual differences in MLI and children’s lexical and cognitive abilities at 24 months make significant unique contributions to the variance in child language abilities at 48 months for …

Early Communication Abilities Of 24-Month-Old Children With Williams Syndrome As Measured By The Communication Complexity Scale., Sean B. Woods

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Williams syndrome (WS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with intellectual disability accompanied by a distinct cognitive profile. Despite their socially outgoing nature, children with WS exhibit delayed communication development and specific deficits across various functions of communication. The purpose of this study was to describe the range of communication complexity observed in 24-month-olds with WS and determine relations between communication complexity and other areas of cognitive development. The communication complexity of 17 24-month-old children with WS was measured using the Communication Complexity Scale (CCS), which quantifies optimal and typical communication complexity, as well as optimal communication for Joint Attention (JA) …

A Network Investigation Of Eating Disorder Symptoms And Risk Factors Before And After A Prevention Program In Adolescent Girls., Jordan E. Drake

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Eating disorders (EDs) are psychological disorders characterized by disturbances in eating that commonly develop during adolescence and may be influenced by risk factors, both ED-specific (i.e., factors linked to future ED symptoms) and transdiagnostic (i.e., factors underlying multiple psychological disorders). Network analysis allows for the study of the connections between ED symptoms and risk factors by identifying central symptoms (i.e., the most interconnected symptoms) and bridge symptoms (i.e., symptoms which strongly connect across the symptom and risk factor clusters). Examining networks of ED symptoms and risk factors in adolescence can inform how risk factors influence ED development, as well as …

Madwomen And Mad Women: An Analysis Of The Use Of Female Insanity And Anger In Narrative Fiction, From Vilification To Validation., Lindsay Haralu

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This project examines the use of female insanity and anger in narrative fiction, as demonstrated by the character of the madwoman. Madness is a concept that has long been gendered female throughout Western history, in medicine, language, religion, and culture. Socially and culturally constructed madness can be used to determine the boundaries of society, the norms and values from which “madness” deviates, while the character of the madwoman can be used to demonstrate how women have challenged these boundaries and how the roles of women and definitions of femininity have changed over time. This study analyzes the madwoman trope from …

Assessing Conduct Disturbance And Fly Ash Exposure In Children., Jillian G. Winn

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Minimal research has been conducted on fly ash (a byproduct of coal combustion) and health outcomes among exposed communities, and even less has looked at its effect on children’s behavior. This study specifically looks at fly ash exposure and conduct disturbance, using logistic regression to characterize their relationship. Conduct disturbance was gauged by t-scores of 55 or higher on the dimensions of aggression and delinquency of the Child Behavior Checklist. Fly ash exposure was determined by air and surface sampling of the children’s homes. While the odds ratios suggested fly ash exposure increases the likelihood of conduct disturbance, the results …

Assessing Perfectionism As A Predictor Of Exercise Dependency Over Time., Sarah E. Ernst

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Exercise is generally thought to be beneficial for physical and mental health; however, when done in excess, exercise can lead to damaging physical, psychological, and social health consequences. This type of exercise is known as exercise dependency and is frequently associated with eating disorder pathology. Perfectionism (high standards and evaluative concerns) is a risk factor for eating disorders and is also associated with exercise dependency. However, no studies have examined longitudinal relationships between perfectionism and exercise dependency. The current study used a sample of adolescent females (N = 444) from a Southeastern United States high school, and participants completed …

Anxiety Symptoms As A Predictor Of Head And Neck Cancer Survival And Potential For Mediation By Cancer Treatment Response., Tyler D. Pollitt

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

BACKGROUND:

Head and neck cancers (HNC) are associated with high rates of depression, which seems to affect overall survival. However, little attention has been paid to the effects of anxiety on overall survival, though anxiety has been shown to activate inflammatory pathways implicated in cancer symptom development and progression. Here it was hypothesized that higher pre-treatment anxiety levels in HNC patients would predict poorer overall two-year survival and a higher likelihood of subsequent HNC treatment failure. Additionally, we expected that the relationship between higher pre-treatment anxiety and poorer two-year overall survival would be mediated by treatment failure.

METHODS:

Patients (n …

The Role Of Antecedent-Focused Emotion Regulatory Strategies On Emotionally Dysregulated Behavior Above And Beyond The Influence Of Adhd., Skyler C. Vanmeter

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Emotion dysregulation in children may contribute to poor interpersonal relationships and a variety of internalizing and externalizing psychopathological outcomes in children both with and without ADHD. This study serves to provide an examination of how emotional self-awareness and situationally appropriate emotional expression may affect an individual's ability to broadly regulate emotion and additionally provides an exploratory investigation of how these attributes may affect specific emotion regulation. The present study found that emotional self-awareness and emotion recognition may both contribute to emotion regulation through shared variance with each other rather than unique variance of either one. Exploratory analyses of regulation of …

Effects Of Talker Variability On Categorization Of Spectrally Degraded Vowels., Emily A. Dickey

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

When a person listens to a context sentence with prominent higher frequencies, the subsequent vowel sound is more likely to be perceived as being of a lower frequency and vice versa. This is a spectral contrast effect (SCE). Recent work has shown that talker variability diminishes these SCEs. They were found to be smaller when 200 sentences were spoken by a different talker each time compared to one talker (Assgari & Stilp, 2015). Cochlear Implant (CI) users’ speech categorization is also influenced by SCEs but are known to struggle with talker discrimination. Here, I tested whether talker variability affected SCEs …

Racial Microaggressions Cohort Differences., Shayla R. Thompson

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This study examines the relationship between racial microaggressions and psychological distress and anger rumination among younger and older cohorts who belong to a racial or ethnic group other than White or European-American. The purpose of this study was to compare these relationships between older and younger cohorts. The hypotheses were that age will moderate the relationship between racial microaggressions and psychological distress and that age will moderate the relationship between racial microaggressions and anger rumination. A survey method was used to test the two hypotheses. Participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk and were compensated $1 for their participation. The …

The Effects Of Pitch And Speaking Rate On Foreign Accented Speech Perception., Rebecca F. Davis

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Perception of foreign accent is typically studied using an accentedness rating task. For example, native English listeners rate the degree of accentedness in sentences produced by non-native English speakers. However, in past studies, it has been unclear what criteria participants used to judge accentedness. Here, native English speakers rated the accentedness of Korean-accented English sentences on a scale from 1 (strong accent) to 9 (little to no accent). Participants rated sentences that were unmodified or had one acoustic property removed. In one block, pitch contours of sentences were flattened and set to their mean values. In another block, speaking rates …

The Effects Of Musical Training On The Well-Being Of Older Adults., Brianna Nicole Berry

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Objective. The current study sought to examine the effects of early musical training on the quality of life of older adults. Method. 58 older adults, at least 65 years old, were divided into three groups based on their levels of musicianship: non-musicians, low-activity musicians (less than ten years of lessons), and high-activity musicians (more than ten years of lessons). Self-report questionnaires were given to determine musical training and other factors such as physical activities. Quality of life was measured by the Quality of Life-AD, a 13-item survey. Results. The differences between level of musicianship and quality of life were statistically …

Illusory Correlation And Perceived Criminality., Rachel A. Carter

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Illusory correlation is the false perception that a relationship exists between two variables. Previous studies have shown that people sometimes perceive a relationship between minority-group members and negative characteristics, when in fact, there is no informational basis for this perception. The current study investigates whether people readily perceive a relationship between criminality and minority groups, as is sometimes seen in society. Participants learned about the behaviors of members of two groups, arbitrarily labeled S and T. The ratio of positive:negative behaviors was the same for both groups (2:1). However, participants were shown fewer statements about Group T, making it a …

Exploring The Role Of Mindfulness In The Established Relationship Between Self-Efficacy And Exercise Motivation., Savannah M. Neace

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate how exercise self-efficacy and self-reported mindfulness are related to motivation to be physically active. Investigating mindfulness in the field of exercise is at an early stage, and our findings may help bridge the gap between mindfulness and the lack of regular physical activity in the United States. Our initial hypothesis replicated an existing relationship between exercise self-efficacy and exercise motivation. Next, we hypothesized that mindfulness would be positively correlated with exercise motivation. Third, we predicted that mindfulness would be positively correlated with exercise self-efficacy. Finally, we hypothesized that intrinsic motivation (a type …

The Effects Of Parental Interaction On Infant Learning., Rachael D. Crenshaw

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

It was previously thought that infants could not perceive causal events as causal (e.g., one ball rolls into another making the 2nd ball move) until the age of 6 months (Cohen & Amsel, 1998). However, more recent research has shown that infants are able to understand the concept of causality earlier than 6 months of age if given the opportunity to have “real-life” exposure to physical causality with "sticky mittens" (Rakison &Krogh, 2012). "Sticky mittens” play sessions allow infants to manipulate Velcro balls while wearing mittens with Velcro sewn on the palms. This allows young infants, who are otherwise unable …

The Relationship Between Adhd And Emotion Regulation And Its Effect On Parenting Stress., Cibrian A. Johnson

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This study examined the relationship between ADHD diagnostic status and child-reported emotion regulation and its relationship with parenting stress within three subscales – Parent Distress, Difficult Child, and Parent-Child Dysfunctional interaction. Two hundred children ages 7-13 were enrolled in the study, including 120 children with ADHD and 80 children without ADHD. Overall, it was found that ADHD diagnostic status was significantly associated with the Parent Distress subscale, both ADHD diagnostic status and emotion regulation difficulties were significantly associated with the Difficult Child subscale, and emotion regulation difficulties were significantly associated with the Parent-Child Dysfunctional interaction subscale. This study not only …