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Full-Text Articles in Psychology

A Preliminary Assessment Of Compassion Fatigue In Chimpanzee Caregivers, Mary Lee A. Jensvold Dec 2022

A Preliminary Assessment Of Compassion Fatigue In Chimpanzee Caregivers, Mary Lee A. Jensvold

Anthropology and Museum Studies Faculty Scholarship

Compassion fatigue is defined as “traumatization of helpers through their efforts at helping others”. It has negative effects on clinicians including reduced satisfaction with work, fatigue, irritability, dread of going to work, and lack of joy in life. It is correlated with patients’ decreased satisfaction with care. Compassion fatigue occurs in a variety of helping professions including educators, social workers, mental health clinicians, and it also appears in nonhuman animal care workers. This study surveyed caregivers of chimpanzees using the ProQOL-V to assess the prevalence of compassion fatigue among this group. Compassion satisfaction is higher than many other types of …


Examining Environmental Use By Captive Lemur Catta And Varecia Rubra, Rhiannon Belcher Jan 2020

Examining Environmental Use By Captive Lemur Catta And Varecia Rubra, Rhiannon Belcher

All Master's Theses

There are over 100 named species of lemurs, of which 94% are considered threatened with extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). They live in increasingly fragmented forests. To understand how best to protect them in their natural habitats, we can observe how they manipulate the environment and how they use objects, both natural and humanmade, around them. Understanding their behavior is a critical component of conservation, and observing behavior in a captive setting allows us to study lemur-environment relationships without disrupting what little habitat is left in Madagascar. In this study I investigated whether the …


Effect Of Group Size On The Activity Budget Of Two Captive Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes), Kaeley Sullins Jan 2019

Effect Of Group Size On The Activity Budget Of Two Captive Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes), Kaeley Sullins

All Master's Theses

Captive facilities housing chimpanzees are required to provide adequate care and provisions such as dietary, social, and environmental enrichment to promote the psychological well-being of the apes in their care. Chimpanzees are social creatures and changes in groups as well as relocation to a facility with new social partners, can impact each individual chimpanzee’s welfare. By tracking each chimpanzee’s activity budgets, managers can assess welfare and make improvements or adjustments if necessary. I looked at the activity budgets of two captive chimpanzees after the death of a group member and the two chimpanzees’ subsequent relocation to a novel, more socially …


Response Of Three Species Of Monkeys To Caregiver Use Of Species-Typical Behavior, Lillian Anna Stolar Jan 2018

Response Of Three Species Of Monkeys To Caregiver Use Of Species-Typical Behavior, Lillian Anna Stolar

All Master's Theses

Caregivers are a primary part of captive monkey environments. When addressing psychological well-being of captive nonhuman primates, social environment should be considered. Chimpanzees, gorillas, New World monkeys, and Old World monkeys responded positively to interactions with caregivers. Some species showed increased affiliative behaviors and decreased abnormal or self-directed behaviors after interactions. These studies showed that caregivers can affect the behavior of nonhuman primates. Caregivers are underutilized as a source of social interaction for captive nonhuman primates. Utilizing species-typical behaviors during interactions, caregivers and nonhuman primates can communicate and interact in different ways that may be beneficial to both caregiver and …


Re-Evaluating Captive Chimpanzee “Dominance”: Dominance Hierarchy And Chimpanzee-Caregiver Relationships At Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, Jake Funkhouser Jan 2018

Re-Evaluating Captive Chimpanzee “Dominance”: Dominance Hierarchy And Chimpanzee-Caregiver Relationships At Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, Jake Funkhouser

All Master's Theses

This thesis is composed of two journal-ready articles and an accompanying appendix with additional data and interpretation. Overall, this thesis describes and statistically analyzes dominance relationships in two nonhuman primate groups with novel methods, possible correlations between dominance and testosterone, and uncovers the prominent connection of caregivers to captive chimpanzee social networks. Chapter I addresses current and past variability in behavioral measures and statistical methods to derive dominance rankings. I propose a novel approach to using existing statistical techniques to analyze dominance ranks, context-dependent dominant structures (agonistic competitions, lack of agonism, privileged role, priority access to resources), the reliability of …


Use Of Vertical Enclosure Space And Species-Typical Locomotion By A Rehabilitating Spider Monkey (Ateles Fusciceps), Jake Funkhouser Jan 2017

Use Of Vertical Enclosure Space And Species-Typical Locomotion By A Rehabilitating Spider Monkey (Ateles Fusciceps), Jake Funkhouser

Undergraduate Honors Theses

With wild spider monkey populations in decline, investigations contributing to captive welfare, and successful rehabilitation and reintroduction knowledge is increasingly pressing. Quantifying and analyzing the appropriateness of naturalistic enclosure designs to foster species-typical behaviors is an effective way to address both of these needs. This study investigates enclosure space use, vertical space preference, substrate use, positional/postural modes, and interactions with human caregivers of a wild-caught, pet-trade rehabilitant Columbian black spider monkey (Ateles fusciceps rufiventris, N = 1). Video data collected daily from August to October 2015 via focal animal sampling (from 08:00 to 10:00) at Alouatta Sanctuary, Panama …


Play In Immature Tibetan Macaques (Macaca Thibetana): Location, Use Of Play Signals, And Play Bout Termination At Mt. Huangshan, China, Kaitlin R. Wright Jan 2016

Play In Immature Tibetan Macaques (Macaca Thibetana): Location, Use Of Play Signals, And Play Bout Termination At Mt. Huangshan, China, Kaitlin R. Wright

All Master's Theses

In this study, I examined the relationship between play behaviors, play location, the frequency of selected play signals, and play bout termination in Tibetan macaques (Macaca thibetana) during immature social play. I gathered video data at the Valley of the Wild Monkeys, Mt. Huangshan, China, and focused on 21 juvenile and infant macaques (zero to five years of age). I used an all occurrence sampling method to score play behaviors and play signals with an ethogram. I hypothesized that play groups would use play signals in functionally appropriate ways based on the location of the play bout, the …


Javan Gibbon (Hylobates Moloch) Non-Vocal Social Communication And Gesture Use With Conspecifics, Melanie Bell Jan 2015

Javan Gibbon (Hylobates Moloch) Non-Vocal Social Communication And Gesture Use With Conspecifics, Melanie Bell

All Master's Theses

I explored gestures used by captive Javan gibbons (Hylobates moloch) at the Gibbon Conservation Center (Santa Clarita, CA). I hypothesized that a sender gibbon’s gesture modality would vary with the recipient gibbon’s attentional state and the sender would be equally likely to use all modalities (tactile, visual, actions, and facial expressions) when the recipient was attending (facing the sender), but would use more tactile gestures and actions when the recipient was non-attending (oriented away from the sender). I collected data from 10 individuals using all-occurrences sampling and an ethogram to score behaviors from video recordings. In 1,143 interactions, …


A Comparison Of Chimpanzee (Pan Troglodytes) Responses To Caregiver Use Of Positive Reinforcement Training (Prt) And Species-Specific Behaviors (Ssb), Whitney D. Emge Jan 2015

A Comparison Of Chimpanzee (Pan Troglodytes) Responses To Caregiver Use Of Positive Reinforcement Training (Prt) And Species-Specific Behaviors (Ssb), Whitney D. Emge

All Master's Theses

The present study compared the effects of positive reinforcement training (PRT) and unstructured interactions (UI) on chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) behavior. In the PRT condition, a caregiver interacted with a chimpanzee to condition behaviors for 10 min. In the UI condition, a caregiver interacted without PRT for 10 min. Participants were five chimpanzees in a sanctuary setting. Chimpanzees were also videotaped for 10 min after trials (PTP) and for 10 min in a matched control (MC) period on a different day. From these videotapes experimenters coded chimpanzee behaviors and calculated durations in behavioral contexts. Chimpanzees spent a significantly higher …


Sustainability Policy’S Inherent Dilemmas – Exemplified Via Critical Examination Of The Las Vegas Metropolitan Sustainability Campaign, Kathryn A. Zimmerman Jan 2014

Sustainability Policy’S Inherent Dilemmas – Exemplified Via Critical Examination Of The Las Vegas Metropolitan Sustainability Campaign, Kathryn A. Zimmerman

All Master's Theses

In response to a dual problem of critical water scarcity and rapid population growth, leaders of metropolitan Las Vegas implemented a region-wide, internationally marketed sustainability campaign. Preliminary studies found that, while sustainability policy attains its rhetorical goals, solutions initiated not only perpetuate but also purposefully expand the original dual problem to justify continuous water resource acquisitions. To examine this sustainability conundrum constructed by leadership—problem-perpetuation rather than problem-resolution—a critical examination in resource management asked two basic questions: what is being sustained and by what means? Via this inquiry, specific processes by which leaders perpetuate problems can be identified; and, so-informed, new …


Chimpanzee Signing: Darwinian Realities And Cartesian Delusions, Roger S. Fouts, Mary Lee A. Jensvold, Deborah Fouts Jan 2002

Chimpanzee Signing: Darwinian Realities And Cartesian Delusions, Roger S. Fouts, Mary Lee A. Jensvold, Deborah Fouts

Anthropology and Museum Studies Faculty Scholarship

Truly discontinuous, all-or-none phenomena must be rare in nature. Historically, the great discontinuities have turned out to be conceptual barriers rather than natural phenomena. They have been passed by and abandoned rather than broken through in the course of scientific progress. The sign language studies in chimpanzees have neither sought nor discovered a means of breathing humanity into the soul of a beast. They have assumed instead that there is no discontinuity between verbal behavior and the rest of human behavior or between human behavior and the rest of animal behavior—no barrier to be broken, no chasm to be bridged, …