Psychology Commons^™

Virtual Reality Supplement To The Peers Social Skills Intervention For Adolescents With Asd, Kevin Ambrose

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to replicate findings of the Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relation Skills (PEERS) parent-assisted social skills training program for a diverse group of adolescents with historical autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnoses in an urban locality. Additionally, this study sought to pilot a 3D multi-user virtual environment for adolescent participants and an online learning community for parent coaches; both hypothesized to reinforce the social skills curriculum. A randomized controlled trial of PEERS was completed with 12 adolescents diagnosed with ASD with some participation from their caregivers. Results show that participants who received the …

Unexpected Arousal Suppresses Memory And Metamemory Predictions During Associative Face-Name Recognition Task, Sameer Sabharwal-Siddiqi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Successful recognition often depends on probabilistic estimation of memory-signal. Arousal has been shown to offset the influence of heuristic evidence on memory prediction. We conducted three experiments that tested whether arousal also suppresses predictions relevant to memory confidence. Experiments employed associative face-name memory tasks that included retrospective (Experiments 1 and 2) or concurrent (Experiment 3) judgements of confidence. During test, subjects were presented with a masked-affective face on a subset of trials. By timing the masked-affective face to precede a recognition judgement (Experiment 1), we replicated the finding that unexpected arousal offsets the influence of heuristic evidence on expectations of …

Lost In Digitization: Physical Products Are Vessels For Social Meaning, Oden H. Groth

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The explosion in digitization means that consumers increasingly have the opportunity to choose between digital and physical versions of products — for example, between an eBook and a paperback book. However, despite the popularity of digital objects, many people nonetheless prefer physical equivalents. This dissertation explores one reason why this may be the case; namely, that physical versions of objects and products are better vessels for social meaning. In chapter 1, explore the specialness of physical objects, and posit that materiality is critical for holding and embodying significance. In chapter 2, I investigate the effects of product format on perceptions …

A Pilot Feasibility Trial Of Mindfulness And Modification Therapy For Males Who Use Aggression, Jenny Mitchell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Physical aggression incurs substantial harm to victims and witnesses, particularly when it occurs within close relationships such as family, friendships, or intimate partnerships. Men who use aggression against partners and other adults frequently experience high levels of psychopathology, including depression, posttraumatic stress symptoms, anxious/insecure attachment, paranoia, bipolar disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, personality disorders, and substance abuse, which contribute to use of aggressive behaviors. However, existing treatments for aggression often do not address these symptoms. It is important that treatments for aggression are grounded in theoretical literature and backed by empirical support in order to increase treatment engagement and effectiveness. Treatments …

The Role Of Mortality Salience And Social Identity In Police Officers And Students Reporting Misconduct, Anna M. Stenkamp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the past several decades, high-profile police shootings, police brutality, and police misconduct have contributed to a decreased trust in policing in the United States. Beyond the severity and abuse of power, many of these incidents have also revealed that officers have covered up these incidents from the public. The refusal of police officers to both report misconduct or cover it up is well established and known as the “blue wall of silence.” However, no previous studies have examined the psychological processes behind this failure to report fellow officer misconduct. Two psychological theories that may explain this failure are Terror …

The Effects Of False Heartbeat Feedback On Moral Judgment, Scott Koenig

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research on human morality is at a crossroads, with one side claiming that moral judgment is the result of rational inference and the other side claiming that it is the result of emotion-laden intuition. This study investigated whether emotion drives moral judgment by manipulating a core component of the experience of emotion: physiological arousal. The sample consisted of 77 undergraduate students at Brooklyn College (57% women, 43% men; mean age = 20.1). One group of participants was led to believe their heart was beating quickly, and another group slowly, while they read and evaluated a series of text vignettes depicting …

The Bright And Dark Sides Of Upward Social Comparison: Knowledge Sharing And Knowledge Hiding Directed At High Performers, Soohyun (Ashley) Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present research investigated when and why employees might share or hide their work information from coworkers who perform better than themselves. Drawing from social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954) and social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), I predicted that upward social comparison would lead to both pleasant reactions (inspiration, perceived gain of work resources) and unpleasant reactions (envy, perceived loss of work resources), which in turn would differentially affect knowledge sharing/hiding behaviors targeting high-performing coworkers. I further predicted that individual differences in directing behaviors toward goals (goal orientation) and task structures requiring reliance on coworkers (task interdependence) would moderate the relationships …

Coercive Control And Trauma-Coerced Attachment In Commercial Sexual Exploitation: A Mixed-Method Examination, Kendra Doychak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Commercial sexual exploitation (i.e., sex trafficking) can lead to myriad negative consequences for its victims, including exposure to coercive control and the development of trauma-coerced attachments. Scholars have offered theoretical conceptualizations of the relation between coercive environments and traumatic attachments, but this relationship is rarely empirically examined. The current study used data from 68 semi-structured interviews with former victims of sex trafficking to first, formally identify coercive control and second, empirically classify trauma-coerced attachment in this population. Mixed-method analysis were used to identify associations between coercive control and TCA in order to better explain how this abuse dynamic leads to …

Serial Position Effect Profiles And Their Neuroanatomical Correlates: Predictors Of Conversion To Alzheimer's Disease, Isabelle K. Avildsen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The current study was designed to determine whether targeted, premorbid, neuropsychological measures of the serial position effect (SPE) can detect and explain risk for later development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The study tested the utility of SPE measures in healthy controls (HC) and individuals already diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or AD. Aim 1 was to determine whether these sensitive, valid neuropsychological measures can explain disease risk. SPE of list-learning are highly sensitive cognitive markers that capture important elements of both linguistic and amnestic mechanisms of encoding, learning, and retrieval. Using the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), we …

Ssri-Induced Emotional Blunting: A Study Of Cognitive Changes In Pharmaceutically Treated Depression, Carly Tocco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Objective: In recent years, approximately 12.7% of the American population are on a prescribed antidepressant medication. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) are a widely used pharmacological treatment for depressive and anxiety disorders, primarily due to their tolerance levels, mild side effects in comparison to other antidepressants, and broad range of clinical indications. However, there are still numerous concerns about SSRIs’ ability to improve depressive symptoms without adding side effects such as sexual dysfunction, gastrointestinal upset, and a restricted range of emotions. Although patients typically claim that they have less emotional pain while on SSRIs than they do during a depressive …

An Interdisciplinary Approach To The Epistemic Value Of Moral Ambiguity, Jordan Wylie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Morality is a critical aspect of life––it influences how we think, design political and legal systems, who we connect with, our norms, and the types of stories we tell. Yet, even with the well documented influence of morality on many aspects of life, exactly what makes moral themes so fascinating remains elusive. This dissertation aims to introduce Moral Worldbuilding as a theory for understanding our epistemic drives toward morally ambiguous and morally bad content.

In Chapter I, we introduce the problem of moral badness, which is not well handled by extant moral literature. To combat this, we offer a new …

The Social Construction Of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (Pmdd), Raya Balabanova

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The creation of psychiatric diagnoses, otherwise known as psychiatric nosology, is a complex endeavor, one involving a great deal of social construction. One diagnosis in particular, premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), exemplifies the different factors that go into the creation of psychiatric labels. After decades of research, activism, and debates, PMDD was included in the diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM-5), which is widely used by clinicians in the U.S. This thesis aims to describe how the symptoms described by PMDD caught the attention of the medical profession and how PMDD was shaped into the diagnosis it is today. The introduction of …

The Differential Effects Of Acoustic Discriminations On Operant Learning Performance And Neurogenesis In Male And Female Zebra Finches, Kristena L. Newman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Adult neurogenesis, the creation of new neurons, occurs throughout the lifespan in most organisms. However, though neuronal proliferation occurs daily, most of these neurons do not survive to become incorporated into preexisting neural circuitry and become fully functioning neurons. In the mammalian brain, adult neurogenesis occurs within the hippocampus, a brain region known to be important in learning and memory. In rats, successful acquisition of certain learning tasks increased new neuron numbers when the learning was sufficiently challenging (Curlik and Shors, 2011). It has also been demonstrated that a spatial discrimination task requires new neurons when the discrimination is more …

Linguistic Abstractions In Children’S Very Early Utterances, Qihui Xu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

How early do children produce multiword utterances? Do children's early utterances reflect abstract syntactic knowledge or are they the result of data-driven learning? We examine this issue through corpus analysis, computational modeling, and adult simulation experiments. Chapter 1 investigates when children start producing multiword utterances; we use corpora to establish the development of multiword utterances and a probabilistic computational model to account for the quantitative change of early multiword utterances. We find that multiword utterances of different lengths appear early in acquisition and increase together, and the length growth pattern can be viewed as a probabilistic and dynamic process.

Chapter …

Retrieval Practice Promotes Learning Of Turkish As A Foreign Language: A Computer-Assisted Language Learning Study, Maya C. Rose

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Adults generally find it difficult to learn a new language, yet exhibit remarkable individual differences in outcomes. Variation in second language (L2) learning is associated with input conditions (Morgan-Short et al., 2010) as well as learners’ aptitude (Dörnyei, 2005). Recent work has demonstrated benefits of retrieval practice in promoting L2 learning of grammatical patterns and vocabulary in both artificial and natural languages (Hopman & MacDonald, 2018; Keppenne et al., 2021). With that said, when retrieval practice is based on oral recall as opposed to a recognition test, it confounds potential benefits of repeated testing (Rowland, 2014) with those associated with …

A Survey Study Of Speech-Language Therapists’ Experiences With Teletherapy At The Onset Of The Covid-19 Crisis, Jason A. Rosas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study aimed to understand how delivering pediatric treatment services via ‘teletherapy’ affected speech-language therapists (SLTs) during the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in 2020. SLTs reported on their experiences with the change from in-person to remote service delivery via two national surveys distributed at the start of the pandemic between April 2020 and July 2020. To explain SLTs’ survey responses, this dissertation introduced the Professional Adaptation Model (PA Model). The PA Model facilitated evaluation of the SLTs’ professional environment and the psychological constructs of their professional identity believed to influence the transition to speech-language teletherapy. Specifically, …

Exploring Social And Emotional Functioning In Emerging Adult Survivors Of Adverse Childhood Experiences, Sara Babad

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As many as two thirds of adults in the United States have experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and 60% of these individuals have experienced multiple, or cumulative ACEs. ACEs are associated with a range of outcomes, including social, emotional, and cognitive changes, health risk behaviors, psychopathology, worse physical health, and early death. Although some ACEs effects have been well-researched, social and emotional changes have received minimal attention in the literature in general. Research on ACEs effects in emerging adults (ages 18 to 25), an already vulnerable population, is also limited. Furthermore, there is debate in the field as to which …

Countertransference And The Patient's Experience: Exploring How Engagement With Affect Is Related To Short-Term Psychotherapy Outcomes, Ariel R. Westerman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Therapist focus on affect in the here-and-now can facilitate a patient’s emotional experience as well as expression of affect, both of which are associated with better outcome over the course of treatment (Diener et al., 2007). A therapist’s use of her own experience of the patient can serve as a signal to intervene in the here-and-now. While “countertransference” was historically seen as an obstacle to a therapist’s neutrality and therefore efficacy (Freud, 1910), shifts in the field toward a two-person psychology model led some to reconsider it as a potential source of clinical data (Winnicott, 1947; Heimann, 1950; Racker, …

Relationships Between Sensory Reactivity, Restricted And Repetitive Behaviors, And Autonomic Nervous System Activity In Autistic And Non-Autistic Individuals, Sapir Elimaliah

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The current dissertation includes seven chapters. Chapter 1 includes my professional background and describes the experiences that led me to study restricted and repetitive behaviors. It also briefly describes my personal journey as an international graduate student. Chapter 2 is devoted to the rich literature that this dissertation is based on. The literature review covers both the foundational and most recent findings in the fields of sensory reactivity, restricted and repetitive behaviors, and autonomic activity, as well as the known relationships between these areas in autistic and non-autistic individuals. In Chapter 3, I describe in detail the methodology used in …

Microaggressions, Imposter Phenomenon, And People Of Color: A Quantitative Analysis, Rukiya King

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research has demonstrated the impact of racial and ethnic microaggressions on marginalized groups. However, research has not established the presence of imposter phenomenon as a consequence of microaggressions. Imposter phenomenon has been described as intense and pervasive self-doubt experienced by individuals of marginalized identities. Although imposter phenomenon was first conceptualized as an experience among high achieving women, researchers have demonstrated its presence in other marginalized groups, particularly people of color. However, research on imposter phenomenon has mostly focused on perceived racism and racial identity within people of color. The current study examined the relationship between microaggressions, imposter phenomenon, and mental …

Problematic Social Media Use, Social Comparison, And Defeat: An Intensive Longitudinal Investigation, Natalia Macrynikola

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs) have steadily risen over the past two decades. The simultaneous dramatic increase in social media use has fueled concerns that using social media may be contributing to suicide risk. Although an emerging body of evidence reveals associations between certain patterns of social media use and SITBs, most research studies have not been designed to assess the temporal order of these variables and have neglected to investigate mechanisms underlying such associations. As a result, whether and how social media use may be conferring suicide risk remains unclear. To address this gap, the present study examined 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 …

Investigating Young Adult Cancer Survivors' Perspectives On Their Future And Interpersonal Relationships, Zeba N. Ahmad

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For many young adults (YA, aged 18-39) who have recently survived cancer, planning and working towards goals for the future is a fraught process. Prior research consistently identifies the challenges of survivorship, including: rebuilding personal identity, accepting the impact of cancer-related interruptions on personal goals, navigating new roles in significant close relationships, and initiating new relationships as a survivor. However, there is limited research describing the mechanisms underlying these persistent challenges, which poses difficulties when tailoring evidence-based psychological intervention. The present study consolidates both established and newly hypothesized survivorship challenges into a novel conceptual model, hypothesizing that they are interrelated, …

Fathers Are Fathers Are Fathers: How Sociocultural Context And Sexual Orientation Influence The Gendering Of Children, Sarah M. Frantz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Though the body of literature on gay father-headed families indicates there is no significant differences on measures of gender normativity and well-being between children raised with two dads and their peers raised by heterosexual parents, there is a proliferation of anti-LGBTQ+ policies throughout the United States aimed at limiting this community’s rights and silencing their lived experiences. Given that sociocultural and political environments vary greatly state-to-state, it is important to see how the specific context in which fathers live may impact their differential parenting of sons and daughters, their gender beliefs, and the way they feel they would navigate gender …

Intelligence Testing In The New (Langu)Age: Effects Of Item-Type And Assessment Medium Features On Fluid Intelligence Test Linguistic Group Score Differences, Paige R. Alenick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As fluid intelligence tests are an integral part of modern employee selection protocols, assessment designers are tasked to ensure the construct is measured accurately for all test-takers regardless of their demographic traits. Disparities in bilingual and monolingual working memory capabilities, which are critical for successful fluid intelligence test performance, might make it challenging for test designers to accomplish this goal. Best design practice in such cases is to identify assessment conditions that allow for equitable expression of the test construct. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine whether the content of items present on a fluid intelligence test …

The Impossible Situation? Impasse As Psychotherapeutic Paralysis, Possibility, And Progress, Leo Cancelmo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Psychotherapeutic impasse has long been understood in the clinical literature as treatment stagnation and even failure, both from one-person and two-person psychodynamic perspectives. However, there is a dearth of empirical research that delves deeper to understand this complex and rich phenomenon. Using semi-structured interviews with nine psychodynamic therapists speaking about individual adult patients, this study examined experiences of impasse to better understand treatments that become embroiled in a kind of paralysis. Qualitative analyses revealed dyads where patients were conceptualized as struggling chronically with negative feelings about themselves and others, and who experienced traumatic personal histories. Impasse in and of itself …

The Impact Of Cannabis Use On Neuropsychological And Neural Biomarkers Of Treatment Response In Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders, Melanie B. Thies

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cannabis use among patients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (SSD) is at significantly greater levels than in healthy populations but the impact of cannabis on neural mechanisms of clinical improvement is poorly understood. Cognitive functioning and neural connectivity are disrupted as a result of both SSD and cannabis use, and research indicates that neuropsychological capacity and connectivity of the striatum, a region involved in salience and reward processing, may be integral to effective antipsychotic drug (AP) treatment response. Despite this overlap, no previous research has investigated the effect of cannabis on the brain functions implicated in AP treatment response. The present study …

Anomalous Self-Experiences And Aberrant Salience In Schizotypy, Victoria Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Within this investigation, the self-disorder hypothesis of schizophrenia was assessed via an illusory perceptual paradigm. It has been proposed that alteration of basic (minimal) selfhood may underlie cognitive and perceptual disturbances in psychosis (Sass, 2014). Disturbed corporeality (i.e., anomalous experience of one’s body) is an identified component of basic self-disturbance. As it is difficult to empirically capture the spontaneous occurrence of anomalous bodily experiences as they arise, the Pinocchio Illusion (PI) has been employed to capture variations in the plasticity of bodily self-experience (specifically, body boundary plasticity) (Michael & Park, 2016). The PI paradigm provides for the sensations of arm …

Competitive And Facilitative Interactions Between Pavlovian Cues In Human Associative Learning: A Behavioral And Neural Analysis, Fahd Alhazmi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Learning to anticipate significant events accurately is a crucial element of survival for all species. The process by which animals acquire this knowledge has been a central question of psychological research. A fundamental assumption of many learning theories is that the predictive value assigned to cues is not simply determined by their probability of reinforcement but rather by their ability to compete with other cues present during learning. The assumption of cue competition has significantly contributed to the development of behavioral and neuroscience research for decades, as it has opened the door to new empirical and theoretical advances on the …

Neuroanatomy In Mild Cognitive Impairment: Relationship To Functional Skills, Treatment Expectancy, And Comorbid Depression, Sara Rushia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a neurocognitive disorder defined by cognitive decline in older adults. Although MCI has been studied for decades, there remain important areas to be explored in order to adequately characterize aspects of this disorder that provide information valuable for possible interventions and disease progression to dementia, including a better understanding of the neuroanatomical variables relevant to this disorder. Such neuroanatomical variables include cortical thickness, hippocampal volume, and white matter hyperintensities (WMHs). This dissertation consists of three separate studies aimed at addressing gaps in the literature on MCI in relation to brain morphometrics and under-studied characteristics involved …