Psychology Commons^™

Attachment Theory As A Predictor Of Communicative Responses To Infidelity, Sandra Donovan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study set out to determine one’s communicative responses to infidelity as predicted by attachment style. Three hundred and ninety-two participants responded to a measure of attachment and were then randomly assigned to one of three scenarios: imagining a partner’s sexual infidelity, imagining a partner’s emotional infidelity and imagining a partner’s combined sexual and emotional infidelity. Participants then responded to a communicative response scale in reaction to the scenario. Results showed moderate support for attachment theory. Additional analysis revealed responses differed by infidelity type. Limitations and implications are discussed.

“You Can’T Change What You Don’T Acknowledge”: A Content Analysis Of The Dr. Phil Show And Implications For Marriage And Family Therapists, Barbara Ann Spanjers

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Marriage and family therapists work from an ecological perspective, which includes the influence of mass media. The current study, a quantitative content analysis of The Dr. Phil Show, draws from communication studies, specifically cultivation theory. A content analysis is a first step to understanding how television messages affect client expectations of psychotherapy. Coding categories adapted from the common factors of psychotherapy literature are employed to determine how well the messages of The Dr. Phil Show correspond with practices related to positive psychotherapeutic outcomes. Common factors specific to the field of marriage and family therapy are utilized. The Dr. Phil …

Evaluation Of Guided Visualizations And The Relationships Among Perceived Stress, Differentiation Of Self, Sense Of Coherence, Dyadic Satisfaction And Quality Of Life, Kim R. Rogers

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study focused on three main areas. These areas involved (1) the relationship among perceived stress, global orientation to life and indicators of physical, psychological and dyadic relational distress, (2) the effect of a brief CBT-based relaxation/guided visualization intervention on these outcome indicators of distress, and (3) changes in physiological indicators during the intervention sessions. The study population was drawn from couples who perceived themselves as living highly stressed lifestyles.

Results suggested that global orientation to life as reflected by differentiation of self inventory (DSI) and sense of coherence scale (SOCS) scale scores mediated the relationship between stress and distress. …

The Role Of Creativity In Naturalistic Decision-Making Environments: A Systems Approach, Richard Hendrik Feenstra

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of creativity in
problem solving situations. Previous research suggested that both
background knowledge and the inability to transfer knowledge across
contexts are important factors in how a problem is ultimately resolved.
Given these findings, the researcher undertook a study on the role
creativity might play when individuals lacking sufficient background
knowledge are faced with a novel real world problem. A question raised
by the researcher whether an absence of background knowledge might
encourage novices to be more creative than their more experienced
counterparts in novel problem solving situations.

Findings of …

Commercial Sex Workers: Lives And Practices, Sarah J. Knowles

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Commercial sex workers epitomize a population who is both stigmatized and underrepresented in marriage and family therapy research. Through this research I hope to gain understanding about the gains of being a commercial sex worker, which many people may overlook due to their moral opposition to the occupation. I will also be exploring some of the challenges that commercial sex workers face that are unique to their line of work, especially in regards to their relationships, as many aspects of this may have been generalized or disregarded. Finally, I plan to address any implications for therapists who work with commercial …

Verbal Cues: Producing The Same Results In Stereotype Threat Research?, Tarryn E. Mcghie

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examined the notion that stereotype threat experiments can be influenced through linguistic manipulation. The cueing of a phrase (whether stereotypical or non-stereotypical) can produce performance differences between groups, rather than cueing of a stereotype, as used in previous research. Participants (n=95) mostly Caucasian females (68%) ranging in age from 18-45 (M=22.7). The design involved three groups and participants were randomly assigned in order to control for consequential affects. The control group received no verbal cues. The stereotypical group received a stereotypical cue (i.e. men tend to do better on this test than women). The counter-stereotypical group received a …

Predictors Of Recall And Reading Time For Seductive And Nonseductive Text Segments, Ivan V. Ivanov

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This correlational study explored how concreteness, relevance, importance, and interestingness related to the recall of seductive details and base text, while controlling for text coherence, and student background knowledge. Previous research has provided evidence for the significant relationship between these variables and the seductive details effect in particular and text recall in general. However, this is the first study to consider all these variables simultaneously. A group of 68 undergraduates read an expository text on lightning formation, performed an immediate test on free recall, and rated each text sentence for concreteness, relevance, importance, and interestingness. A simple regression analysis revealed …

The Multiple-Choice Concept Map (Mccm): An Interactive Computer-Based Assessment Method, Ioan C. Sas

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This research attempted to bridge the gap between cognitive psychology and educational measurement (Mislevy, 2008; Leighton & Gierl, 2007; Nichols, 1994; Messick, 1989; Snow & Lohman, 1989) by using cognitive theories from working memory (Baddeley, 1986; Miyake & Shah, 1999; Grimley & Banner, 2008), multimedia learning (Mayer, 2001), and cognitive load (Chandler and Sweller, 1991, 1992; Cerpa, Chandler, & Sweller., 1996) to identify potential design weaknesses of traditional select-and-fill-in (SAFI) concept map assessment and then to guide the design of the new and improved multiple-choice concept map (MCCM) assessment method. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the …

Altering Explicit And Implicit Racial Prejudice Towards African American Males, Veronica A. Glover

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Researchers tested 281 undergraduates to determine if positive behavior messages about African American males presented during a learning task affected scores on explicit and implicit racial prejudice measures. During the learning task, we manipulated how many positive messages the participant viewed (100 vs. 150 or none) and the amount of African American males these messages applied to (1 vs. 3). Participants who viewed 150 positive messages about one African American male displayed more explicit prejudice than participants in control groups or participants learning 100 messages about one person. Results for the implicit measure indicated that participants who learned about three …

Therapist-Initiated Addiction Assessment Procedures Of Marriage And Family Therapists In The Southwest United States, Emire Olmeztoprak

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study was to examine the addiction assessment procedures of marriage and family therapists. Addiction prevalence rates are growing therefore it is likely that marriage and family therapists will have clients affected by addiction. Undetected addictions can impede treatment and/or prevent the therapist from making appropriate treatment related decisions. Marriage and family therapists in Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico were invited to complete a web-based survey containing a series of questions about their assessment procedures for addiction as well as a series of demographics questions. The data from the completed surveys was collected and analyzed. The data …

Contemporary Children’S Literature Recommendations For Working With Preadolescent Children Of Divorce, P. S. Mcmillen, Dale-Elizabeth Pehrsson

Library Faculty Publications

Bibliotherapy, defined most basically, is helping with books (Hynes & Hynes-Berry, 1994). Derived from the Greek words meaning book and therapy, bibliotherapy goals fall usefully into two categories. Clinical bibliotherapy, using books to facilitate specified therapeutic goals with those experiencing significant emotional or behavioral problems, involves trained health and mental health professionals such as psychologists, counselors, psychiatric nurses, or social workers. Developmental bibliotherapy, using books to address situational, transitional, and normal developmental issues, can be implemented by others, like educators or librarians, who work in helping roles. Books provide solace, reassurance, and even escape; they also provide new ideas for …

Taking The Points: The Socialization Process Of A Sports Book “Regular”, Frederick W. Krauss Ph.D.

Occasional Papers

Patrons of a casino sports book use the environment for much more than the instrumental task of sports betting. It is also a place to congregate with other like-minded patrons and through this process complex interactional dynamics develop over time. The social world of the sports book emerges in a designated space for the betting act where patrons meet, interact, and establish a culture to which they adhere.

Examining The Inner Experience Of Left-Handers Using Descriptive Experience Sampling, Aadee Mizrachi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Research suggests that there are anatomical asymmetries of the human brain in relation to hand preference. In addition, left-handedness has been related to a wide range of psychological and physical problems. Despite these relationships, little is known about the inner experience of left-handers. The present study used Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) to explore the inner experience of 6 left-handed participants. Descriptive Experience Sampling is a nonquantitative sampling method designed to explore and describe inner experience. Undergraduate psychology students were recruited from UNLV to participate in the study. Recruitment consisted of three phases: screening, qualification, and sampling. Students who reported writing …

Initial Development Of A Healthy Living Curriculum Within Family Behavior Therapy For Substance Abuse, Holly B. Lapota

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A mother referred for child maltreatment and substance abuse treatment after her son tested positive for methamphetamines at birth participated in an in-home Family Behavior Therapy-Healthy Lifestyle intervention to eliminate substance use, improve parenting behaviors, lose weight, and develop better exercise habits. Twenty sessions were completed in 6 months that targeted familial communication, self-control, goal setting with contingency management, job getting skills, and stimulus control techniques. Upon termination from treatment, the participant’s self-report and urine testing was consistent with substance cessation, and she evidenced substantial improvements in her level of stress, family communication and relationships, and child maltreatment potential. She …

Inferring Rules From Sound: The Role Of Domain-Specific Knowledge In Speech And Music Perception, Aaronell Shaila Matta

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Speech and music are two forms of complex auditory structure that play fundamental roles in everyday human experience and require certain basic perceptual and cognitive abilities. Nevertheless, when attempting to infer patterns from sequential auditory input, human listeners may use the same information differently depending on whether a sound is heard in a linguistic vs. musical context. The goal of these studies was to examine the role of domain-specific knowledge in auditory pattern perception. Specifically, the study examined the inference of "rules" in novel sound sequences that contained patterns of spectral structure (speech or instrument timbre) and fundamental frequency (pitch). …

Verbal And Visual Learning And Memory Deficits As Trait Markers For Psychosis In Bipolar Disorder, Griffin P. Sutton

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The presence of neurocognitive deficits in the affective and psychotic psychiatric disorders (i.e., bipolar disorder with psychotic features, bipolar disorder without psychotic features, and schizophrenia) has been well documented, with such these deficits having been found to overlap across these diagnostic categories to a degree. Along with other types of evidence reported, these findings suggest that bipolar disorder and schizophrenia may not be isolated disorders as suggested by the current diagnostic criteria outlined in the DSM-IV (APA, 1994), but rather may be related disorders on a spectrum marked by bipolar disorder without psychosis on one end and by schizophrenia on …

Use Of Task-Value Instructional Inductions For Facilitating Engagement And Conceptual Change, Marcus L. Johnson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this study, 166 undergraduates from an Educational Psychology subject pool were randomly assigned to different task value instructional inductions (utility, attainment, and control) to determine whether inducing students with differing task values would be effective and result in different degrees of engagement for a learning task, as well as result in different degrees of conceptual change on the topic of the causes of the common cold. It was hypothesized participants would adopt characteristics that were consistent with the task value with which they were induced, that the participants in the utility, attainment, and control conditions would differ in their …

The Experience Of Feelings In Depression, Noelle L. Lefforge

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Emotions, such as sadness, guilt, and irritability, are at the core of depressive symptoms and suggest a need for an in-depth understanding of feelings, the experiential component of emotion, during depression. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to describe the experience of emotion in depressed participants and find out if these experiences are similar to those of nondepressed participants. Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) was used to sample five depressed and four nondepressed participants for four days and then in a controlled setting while watching positive, negative, and neutral film clips. Due to the limited sample size, this study was …

The Advisor-Advisee Relationship: A Qualitative Study Of Advisee Perspectives, Paula M. Emke-Francis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Attempts to understand the nature and course of advising relationships in clinical psychology doctoral training have been limited in number and scope. Furthermore, they have almost universally applied theoretical models derived for the explanation of different types of relationships, with very little empirical inquiry aimed at examining the advising relationship as it actually exists. The present study sought to better understand advisory relationships in clinical psychology doctoral training and propose a theoretical model related to the dimensions of the relationship that emerged.

This was accomplished via semi-structured interviews with 18 clinical psychology Ph.D. candidates from training programs across the United …

The Effects Of Cultural Experience And Subdivision On Tapping To Slow Tempi, Sangeeta Ullal

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Our ability to accurately synchronize with rhythmic patterns is constrained by two factors: temporal length and interval structure. By using strategies such as subdivision, we can improve synchronization accuracy at slow tempos, but our ability to utilize subdivisions is constrained by the nature of interval ratios contained in culture-specific subdivision types. Western music falls within a restricted temporal range and its metrical subdivisions contain simple ratios, but Indian music violates these constraints. The present study examines the effects of culture-specific experience on these constraints. American and Indian listeners were asked to perform synchronous tapping to a stimulus with a slow …

Neuropsychological And Emotion Processing Abnormalities In Bipolar Disorder I And Ii, Carol Randall

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Bipolar disorder illness is marked by emotional lability and mood disturbance, as well as various neuropsychological deficits, and the neuroanatomical correlates of many of these deficits are beginning to be identified. Numerous studies have implicated specific cortical and sub-cortical abnormalities in areas associated with executive function, memory, motor function, and the processing of emotion. Although a large body of research has been devoted to the investigation of cognitive and emotion-processing deficits in bipolar disorder, relatively few studies have been devoted to the investigation of how these deficits differ among bipolar disorder subtypes. This is surprising in light of known symptomatological …

The Effect Of Self-Efficacy Manipulation On The Efficiency, Rate Of Perceived Exertion, And Affective State Of Runners, Isabelle Stoate

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Objectives: To determine the effect of self-efficacy manipulation on the movement efficiency, rate of perceived exertion (RPE), and affective state of runners while running on the treadmill at a constant submaximal pace.

Methods: 20 trained male and female runners were randomly assigned to experimental (self-efficacy manipulation) and control groups. Participants first filled out a pre self-efficacy questionnaire and the positive affect negative affect schedule (PANAS), and then completed a 20 minute run on the treadmill running at 75% of their peak treadmill running speed. After 10 minutes, their oxygen consumption (VO2), heart rate (HR), and RPE was recorded. Participants (n=10) …

The Influence Of Perspective And Gender On The Processing Of Narratives, Jeremy A. Houska

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The overarching aim of this research was to examine potential boundary conditions to situation model construction (Experiment 1) and narrative-based persuasion (Experiment 3). Variables such as narrative perspective (i.e., 2nd or 3rd person) and matched characteristics with the reader (i.e., participant-protagonist gender match) were first examined using situation model updating (Experiment 1) and behavioral measures (Experiment 3) as dependent measures. It was expected that situation model updating would be more likely for narratives written in the 2nd person perspective and with a participant-protagonist gender match. It was uncertain, however, for health promotion narratives, whether these manipulations would increase the likelihood …

Exploring The Phenomena Of Inner Experience With Descriptive Experience Sampling, Janell M. Mihelic

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study provides a survey of the phenomena of normal, everyday inner experience using the Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) method. Results demonstrated that five types of inner experience (sensory awareness, feeling, unsymbolized thinking, inner seeing, and inner speech) occurred in approximately one-quarter of sampled moments and that there were significant individual differences regarding the frequency with which subjects experienced these phenomena. Three new dimensions (richness of inner experience, the number of experiences present, and the overall valence of the experience) along which inner experience could be characterized were identified and used reliably to characterize moments of experience. Finally, although there …

Mediating And Moderating Variables Between Discretionary Purchases And Happiness, Rebecca L. Thomas

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Media and societal images suggest that the accumulation of objects, possessions, and wealth will produce happiness. However, research has found higher rates of materialism are associated with lower levels of happiness. The current studies explored the relationship between different types of purchases and happiness. Specifically, experiential purchases are distinguished from material purchases in terms of goal; experiential purchases have the goal of acquiring a life experience, while material purchases have the goal of acquiring an object. Several studies have found that experiential purchases are associated with more happiness than material purchases. A number of variables that mediate and moderate the …

Taking Charge Of Adult Adhd, P. S. Mcmillen

Library Faculty Publications

Barkley is one of the leading researchers and most prolific writers on attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) across the life span, having produced materials for mental health professionals and self-help books like this volume.

Characteristics Of Adolescent Females Sexually Exploited Through Prostitution, Alanna Robinson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Adolescent females are becoming the fastest growing population amongst juveniles being held in detention and referred to juvenile courts. Unfortunately such increases are linked to a lack of alternative services available for youths during the adjudication process. Upon being arrested, delinquent girls are suffering from a host of health, emotional and social issues for which there is also a lack of programming and detailed research. However, emerging evidence indicates that female delinquency is characterized by a multitude of overlapping problems that distinguish them from male delinquents. Issues include poor mental health, history of child abuse, substance abuse among parents and …

Principal Stress: Working In Conflicting Paradigms From Newtonian To New Science, Shelley Kresyman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Shortages of qualified principal candidates and retention of motivated principals, combined with the evidence that the principal is a vital part of effective school improvement, has ominous implications for the future quality of education. A body of research exists describing school administrators' stress over the last 25 years; yet, limited research reflects the impact the changing role of the principal in the accountability era of No Child Left Behind has had on principal stress and the possible connections to the shifting paradigms in organizational leadership.

If principals perceive themselves to be overstressed and unprepared to meet the current expectations and …

Enhanced Food Marketing To Children On The Internet: A Content Analysis, Sarah A. Ochsner

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In light of the continuing epidemic of childhood obesity, aggressive food marketing strategies have come under increased scrutiny as a possible contributing factor. It has been acknowledged in numerous studies, that poor nutrient quality of food and beverages dominate children's programming. The growth in child-specific media envoys has further increased favorable opportunities to market food and beverages to children, notably less regulated and parentally unsupervised. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 65% of children aged 6-11 have home access to the Internet; and today, the majority of food manufacturers operate websites appealing to children. The Institute of Medicine issued a …

Narrative Comprehension For Functional Survival Spatial Relations, Paul James Schroeder Iii

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Spatial situation models are mental representations of the relationship between characters and objects in the narrative environment. Functional spatial relationships describe an interaction (or potential interaction) between characters and objects in the narrative environment. Although functional relations tend to produce stronger representations as compared with nonfunctional ones (Radvansky & Copeland, 2000), recent data also suggest that specification of causal information, specifically, survival-based scenarios in which characters are described as in immediate danger, may contribute to the construction and maintenance of spatial situation models (Jahn, 2004). For the current study, this idea was tested by comparing reading times and comprehension for …