Psychology Commons^™

Evaluation Of Video Modeling To Teach Children Diagnosed With Asd To Avoid Poison Hazards, Shannon Eileen King

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Accidental poisonings are one of the leading safety threats for young children, so it is important to teach children to avoid ingesting poisonous substances. Research has shown that behavioral skills training (BST) and in situ training (IST) are effective in teaching children safety skills to prevent gun play, abduction, and poison ingestion. However, little research on safety skills has been conducted with children with autism. Video modeling has been shown to be effective in teaching abduction prevention skills to children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of video modeling to …

Striving For Success In An Uncertain Environment, Sandra Stershic

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using one's success and failure experiences can be an indicator of how well risk is being managed in uncertain situations, particularly because exact probability information about outcomes is often missing. Experience-based paradigms include this more real-world aspect of a lack of information when studying risk taking behavior. This thesis builds upon experience-based paradigms to include the element of skill.

A puzzle task was developed. A goal was given to participants to try to discern a pattern in each puzzle that would yield consistently positive outcomes. Participants were randomly assigned to a high or low success rate, but told that skill …

Can Cognitive Priming Influence The Reinforcing Efficacy Of Alcohol Within A Behavioral Economic Framework?, Lauren J. Adams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A considerable body of research supports the application of behavioral economic principles to study the relative reinforcing efficacy of drug and alcohol use. One self-report measure, the Alcohol Purchase Task, is thought to account for individual differences in the subjective valuation of alcohol consumption. To date, however, behavioral economic approaches have not evaluated the possible influence of memory-based expectations regarding the cognitive and behavioral effects of substance use on their measures. Alcohol expectancy research has found that more positive expectancies about the effects alcohol directly mediate drinking behavior and are associated with a number of alcohol-related outcomes. Given the importance …

The Effect Of Ovulation As A Male Mating Prime On Drinking And Other Mating Behaviors, Robin Tan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A recent line of research grounded in evolutionary theory has shown that exposure to women's fertility cues affects men's mating cognition and behavior. This area of research has not yet been examined in relation to alcohol. As alcohol has also been shown to facilitate the formation of sexual connections for males, establishing the intersection between these two lines of research seems necessary to understand the impetus behind human behavior. Ninety-eight male participants were primed with either the scent of a fertile woman or the scent of nonfertile woman and then completed measures assessing their level of attraction to pictures of …

Exploring The Energy Link Between Emotion Regulation At Work And Health Behaviors, Ryan Christopher Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The present study explores the process through which the regulation of emotions at work, also known as emotional labor, depletes self-regulatory resources, specifically energy, and distally impacts health behaviors in the form of less physical activity and more unhealthy eating. Differences in relationships between two forms of emotional labor, surface acting and deep acting, as well as differences between psychological and physical energy depletion, are explored. Additionally, the roles of trait mindfulness and future temporal focus are examined as between-individual differences moderating the proposed relationships.

Multi-level analysis of daily diary data collected from participants (N = 108 participants) over ten …

Comparing Two Perspectives For Understanding Decisions From Description And Experience, Sandra S. Kauffman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When trying to make sense of uncertain situations, we might rely on summary information from a description, or information gathered from our personal experience. There are two approaches that both attempt to explain how we make risky decisions using descriptive or experiential information—the cognitive-based explanation from the description-experience gap, and the emotion-based explanation from the somatic marker hypothesis (SMH). This dissertation brings together these two approaches to better understand how we make risky decisions.

Four options were presented, with options differing in terms of advantageousness and riskiness. How easy or difficult it was to consciously comprehend the reward structure, or …

Communication Behavior Study Of Support In The Arts Using The Situational Theory Of Publics And The Theory Of Reasoned Action, Ashleigh Gallant

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Arts in the United States has been a thoroughly studied topic, largely trying to substantiate its value to society, resulting in a plethora of research that positively correlates the arts and a more healthy and successful society. Findings from various studies over the years have shown declines in arts support in the form of funding, advocacy, education, and participation (National Endowment for the Arts, 2009). Additional studies have suggested that millennials are redefining what participation means in the arts, and even the definition of the arts. The primary research question of this study is why are support for the …

Reconceptualizing The Role Of Essentialism In Attitudes Toward Gays And Lesbians: The Intersection Of Gender And Sexual Orientation, Vanessa Hettinger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social psychology researchers have become increasingly interested in the role of essentialist beliefs in predicting attitudes toward social groups. However, there is little agreement about what the term actually means, whether it means different things for different groups, what endorsement of essentialism (or its sub-components) means for attitudes, and how much this varies depending on the relevant social context. This underlying lack of clarity helps to explain some of the difficulty in understanding the relationships between essentialist beliefs about sexual orientation and attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. In the current project, I suggest a fundamental shift in the approach …

Assessing Attachment Process Among Early Institutionalized Orphans In Burkina Faso, Africa, Clarisse Barbier

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

The focus of this thesis is early attachment among institutionalized infant orphans. Previous research has pointed towards attachment problems in dysfunctional institutions, but did not take a comparative approach to understanding attachment. The present research was conducted in an orphanage in Kaya, a little town located in the Center North Region of Burkina Faso, Africa. The 22 children at the institution were aged four months to five years and were mostly from the Mossi ethnicity. Using mixed psychological and anthropological methods such as behaviors checklist, attachment questionnaires, and participant observation, this research indicates that orphans do not display evident …

Examining A Novel Set Of Executive Function Measures Using Event Related Potentials, Danielle Cara Blinkoff

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The nature and assessment of executive function are areas of active research. Many current assessments of executive function are complex, have limited reliability and validity, and suffer from task impurity, meaning other cognitive processes may indirectly influence task performance. Additionally, measures may be culture, language, or education bound limiting their use in certain populations (Miyake, Emerson, & Friedman, 2000; Miyake, Friedman, et al., 2000; Strauss, Sherman, & Spreen, 2006; Stuss, 2007). The purpose of this project was to develop a novel set of executive function measures to address issues with current clinical measures. The new measures 1) can be used …

Do Social Biases Impede Auditor Reliance On Specialists? Toward A Theory Of Social Similarity, Rina Maxine Limor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Does social similarity between the auditor and a specialist induce social biases that impair the auditor's reliance on the specialist? It is important to examine potential impairments to reliance since auditors do not possess expertise in many of the areas examined during the audit. One type of specialist that is increasingly relied upon by the auditor is the IT specialist.

Since firms have two approaches to the organization of IT personnel (decentralized vs. centralized) and often use professional designations as a hiring criteria for specialists, I examine two dimensions of social similarity: domain knowledge distinctiveness and spatial distance. Using a …

Relationships Between Parenting Self-Efficacy And Distress In Parents With And Without Cancer, Julie Marie Cessna

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite the relatively large number of parents with cancer, relatively little is known about the extent to which having cancer affects the parenting experience. Qualitative studies have identified issues and concerns that create distress among parents with cancer, but quantitative studies have yet to be conducted. Studies demonstrate that parents with cancer experience psychological distress, and that parenting self-efficacy is related to psychological distress among parents without cancer. However, no study to date has examined the relationships between parenting self-efficacy and psychological distress among parents with cancer. This study sought to address these gaps in the literature by comparing parents …

Clarifying The Nature Of Resilience: A Meta-Analytic Approach, Matthew Robert Grossman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Psychological resilience, conceptualized as the ability to bounce back from stress (Tugade, 2011), has garnered increased attention across various fields of psychology and related disciplines. Despite its popularity, researchers have yet to come to a consensus regarding the nomological network of this construct, as well as its distinctiveness from conceptually similar constructs (i.e., hardiness, grit). In this paper, I use meta-analytic techniques (Hunter & Schmidt, 2004) to quantitatively synthesize three decades of previous empirical work on resilience and related-constructs and their correlates, integrating findings from more than 400 studies. Results show that resilience overlaps substantially with big-five personality traits as …