Psychology Commons^™

The Relationship Between Young Adult Attachment And Loneliness Factors With Their Childhood Social Media Usage Patterns, Kenneth Walter Mark

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Social media use has become an integral and often ignored part of children’s lives because it is rationalized not to be detrimental to their future development. However, childhood social media use was associated with insecure attachment styles and possible loneliness issues emerging in young adulthood. Past research examined social media use and secular attachment in the present only, without examining spiritual attachment or loneliness levels. This is the first research study to explore longitudinally the relationship between past childhood social media use and current young adult (aged 18-24) secular attachment, spiritual attachment, and loneliness levels. The population (N = 149) …

Context-Specific Conceptualizations Of Death In Early Childhood, Spencer Hart Winter

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Despite cultural myths and social taboos, young children are capable of understanding death and death concepts. Previous research has demonstrated that children have a varied and complex understanding of death that is influenced by their age, family culture, and previous experience. This study aims to differentiate children’s death concept depending on context, including children’s magical thinking, namely the difference between the deaths of a human, an animal, and an electronic toy. Using a modified version of the Death Concept Questionnaire, preschool-aged (3 to 5 years old) children (n=7) were presented with short video clips of a human, a dog, and …

Childhood Adversities And The Impact On Development, Karey Womack Dulaney

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Experiences in life are crucial in determining how one’s development will progress throughout their lifespan, with many of the factors occurring in early childhood. The factors include but are not limited to adversities experienced at an early age, toxic stress, and childhood trauma. Childhood adversities can impact a child’s cognitive development and biological systems. Children living in adverse situations are at a greater risk of not reaching their full developmental potential in life. Although previous research and literature discuss and demonstrate the cruciality of early childhood interventions to mitigate adverse childhood experiences, gaps in the research exist for individual interventions, …

The Proximal Zone Of Intercultural Development (Pzid), Rachid Oulahal

Papers from the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology Conferences

This article presents results from a comparative analysis of intercultural experiences between French and Singaporean participants. A set of questions was proposed online in order to identify temporalities of an intercultural experience (early and late interculturation) as well as the level of this experience (intrapsychic, intersubjective and intergroup interculturation). Our sample consists of 246 participants (144 in France and 102 in Singapore). France and Singapore were chosen as research fields because of their difference in terms of cultural difference management: a universalist cultural model for France and a pluralist cultural model for Singapore.

A quantitative analysis allows us to identify …

Terminal Field Volume Of The Glossopharyngeal Nerve In Adult Rats Reverts To Prepruning Size Following Microglia Depletion With Plx5622, Andrew J. Riquier, Suzanne I. Sollars

Psychology Faculty Publications

Programmed reduction of synapses is a hallmark of the developing brain, with sensory systems emerging as useful models with which to study this pruning. The central projections (terminal field) of the gustatory glossopharyngeal nerve (GL) of the rat are a prime example of developmental pruning, undergoing an approximate 66% reduction in volume from postnatal day 15 (P15) to P25. Later in adulthood, developmental GL pruning can be experimentally reversed, expanding to preweaning volumes, suggesting mature volumes may be actively maintained throughout the life span. Microglia are central nervous system glia cells that perform pruning and maintenance functions in other sensory …

Moderating Factors In The Relationship Between Bully Victimization And Psychosomatic Symptoms, Tonya Paulson

Theses and Graduate Projects

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between bully victimization and psychosomatic symptoms, and to examine the protective influence of perceived parent and peer support across developmental age groups. Bully victimization frequency, somatic symptom severity, perceived parent support, and perceived peer support were assessed using archival data from 7,304 youth who participated in the 2009-2010 Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) U.S. survey, excluding perpetrators of bullying. Bully victimization and somatic symptoms were significantly positively correlated. Older adolescents consistently reported more severe somatic symptoms, but age did not moderate the relationship between bullying and somatic symptoms. Higher …

Early Life Exposure To Unpredictable Parental Sensory Signals Shapes Cognitive Development Across Three Species, Elyssia Poggi Davis, Kari Mccormack, Hina Arora, Desiree Sharpe, Annabel K. Short, Jocelyne Bachevalier, Laura M. Glynn, Curt A. Sandman, Hal S. Stern, Mar Sanchez, Tallie Z. Baram

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Exposure to early life adversity has long term consequences on cognitive function. Most research has focused on understanding components of early life adversities that contribute to later risk, including poverty, trauma, maltreatment, and neglect. Whereas these factors, in the aggregate, explain a significant proportion of emotional and cognitive problems, there are serious gaps in our ability to identify potential mechanisms by which early life adversities might promote vulnerability or resilience. Here we discuss early life exposure to unpredictable signals from the caretaker as an understudied type of adversity that is amenable to prevention and intervention. We employ a translational approach …

Consistency Of Sleep Across Development And Relations To Executive Functions; Applications To Emerging Adults Transitioning To College And Adolescents With Spina Bifida, Laura Nicholson

Dissertations

College Students, Development, Executive Functioning, Inhibition, Sleep consistency, Spina Bifida

Auditory Affective Processing, Musicality, And The Development Of Misophonic Reactions, Solena Mednicoff, Sivan Barashy, Destiny Gonzales, Stephen D. Benning, Joel S. Snyder, Erin Hannon

Psychology Faculty Research

Misophonia can be characterized both as a condition and as a negative affective experience. Misophonia is described as feeling irritation or disgust in response to hearing certain sounds, such as eating, drinking, gulping, and breathing. Although the earliest misophonic experiences are often described as occurring during childhood, relatively little is known about the developmental pathways that lead to individual variation in these experiences. This literature review discusses evidence of misophonic reactions during childhood and explores the possibility that early heightened sensitivities to both positive and negative sounds, such as to music, might indicate a vulnerability for misophonia and misophonic reactions. …

Reduced Social Contact And Attachment Insecurity As Predictors Of Loneliness During Covid-19: A Two-Month Experience Sampling Study, Katie C. Lewis, Michael J. Roche, Fiona Brown, Jane G. Tillman

Psychology Faculty Publications

The impact of reduced social contact on mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic has been identified as a major public health concern. While personality factors such as attachment style have been associated with psychological distress during the pandemic, the longitudinal relevance of these factors and the role of daily social contact in mitigating distress remains poorly understood. This study evaluated the impact of social contact and attachment style on changes in loneliness over an 8-week experience sampling period during the COVID-19 pandemic. A general adult sample (n = 184) recruited online completed measures of psychological distress, attachment, and loneliness via …

Examining The Relationships Between Socio-Cognitive Factors And Neural Synchrony During Movie Watching Across Development, Kathleen M. Lyons

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

While different cognitive abilities mature, the conscious experiences of children likely become richer and more elaborate. A challenge in investigating relationships between cognitive development and real-world experiences is having measures that assess naturalistic processing. Movie watching offers a solution, since following the plot of a film requires cognitive processes that are similar to real-world experiences. When different adults watch the same film, their brain activity begins to align (known as neural synchrony). The strength of this alignment has been shown to reflect the degree to which different individuals are having a similar experience of the movie. While this phenomenon has …

The Front Lines Of Student Success: A Phenomenography Exploring The Background And Knowledge Of Primary Role Academic Advisors In Higher Education, Alicia N. Abney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenographic study was to understand the experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives of new, primary role academic advisors at four-year public institutions in the United States. Research on advising has provided insight into advising best practices and the student perceptions of academic advising; however, there is little research illustrating current primary role academic advisors and their experience, or perhaps lack thereof.

To receive highly coveted federal and state funding, higher education institutions must show growth in student success. Academic advisors are on the front lines of student success because they are tasked with the responsibility of retaining …

Developmental Differences In The Learning And Consolidation Of Linguistic Regularities, Sarah Berger

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Relative to adults, children have a well-known advantage for learning linguistic regularities, which could be partially driven by their deeper sleep. To examine the relationship between consolidation and language learning across development, children and adults learned a novel article system with an implicit grammatical rule. Participants performed a judgment task on phrases containing the novel articles before and after a night of EEG-monitored sleep. We found that rule sensitivity emerged rapidly in children, whereas it did not emerge until the second session in adults. Children demonstrated better generalization of the rule than adults. Consolidation effects showed a developmental double dissociation, …

On The Catholic Identity Of Students And Schools: Value Propositions For Catholic Education, Daniel Lapsley, Katheryn Kelley

Journal of Catholic Education

The Catholic school sector is under significant stress with declining enrollments and schools closing in virtually every diocese in the United States. This paper examines two value propositions for Catholic education. One is its role in providing foundational support for the development of personal spiritual identity in emerging adulthood and across the lifecourse. The second is the contribution of Catholic education to moral-character formation. Both propositions are relatively underdeveloped. The question of students’ personal spiritual identity is overshadowed by the understandable concern with the Catholic identity of schools. The question of moral-character formation is subsumed by catechesis and liturgy but …

On The Roles Of Trait Anxiety And Toll Like Receptor 4 In Amphetamine Sensitization In Adolescent Male Rats, Corey A. Calhoun

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Mammalian adolescence can be a difficult transition from childhood to adulthood, where increases in impulsivity and novelty- and risk-seeking are combined with heightened affect and elevated sensitivity to stress. Indeed, during adolescence, first drug use patterns emerge and in the continental United States, increasing misuse of amphetamines has been observed in adolescent youth. Myriad neural mechanisms underlie this shift in adolescence, including the dynamic remodeling of the mesocorticolimbic (MCL) pathway. Repeated drug administration affects neuroimmune substrates within the MCL circuit including toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4)Advances in addiction neuroscience indicate that drugs of abuse activate neural TLR4 and implicate glial TLR4 …

The Fable Of Neuroplastic Lyra, Ricardo Twumasi

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This paper tells a folktale of two tribes and the neurodivergence that brought them together, through language and the patterns of the sounds that surrounded the tribes.

Acknowledgements:

Thank you to Alex Higson for editing an early version of this article. Thanks to Maximin Lange, Lewis Burton, Juliet Foster, Sukhi Shergill and Oliver Runswick for your comments.

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 Effects Of Executive Function Between Anxiety And Math Achievement In Adolescents, Mckenzie Hall

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Anxiety in Children can develop into pervasive disorders in adulthood if not treated. Research shows dysfunctional Executive Function (EF) and anxiety are both shown to have a negative impact on math achievement in children and adolescents (Trezise & Reeve, 2018; Kalaycioglu, 2015; Owens, Stevenson, Hadwin & Norgate, 2012). Chung, Weyandt, and Swentosky (2014) found biological and neuropsychological support for EF as a unitary and multifaceted processor for regulating our emotional states as well as our daily procedures. Anderson’s (2002) model of Executive Control System (ECS) allows the factors of EF to be examined using a developmental approach towards EF processes. …

Sex And Age Differences In Approach Behavior Toward A Port That Delivers Nicotine Vapor, Veronika Evangelina Espinoza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The goal of our laboratory is to study the mechanisms that promote nicotine use, particularly in vulnerable populations such as adolescents and females. Thus, the purpose of this thesis was to characterize age and sex differences in the motivational/rewarding effects of nicotine (Aim 1) and withdrawal behavior (Aim 2). To more closely model human use patterns, the present study employed nicotine vapor methods involving passive exposure for 14 days in adolescent and adult female and male rats. Age and sex differences in approach behavior (nosepokes) were assessed in a port that delivered nicotine plumes on Day 1 and 14. Controls …

Thalamic Shape Abnormalities Differentially Relate To Cognitive Performance In Early-Onset And Adult-Onset Schizophrenia, Derin J. Cobia, Chaz Rich, Matthew J. Smith, Pedro Engel Gonzalez, Will Cronenwett, John G. Csernansky, Lei Wang

Faculty Publications

Early-onset schizophrenia (EOS) shares many biological and clinical features with adult-onset schizophrenia (AOS), but may represent a unique subgroup with greater susceptibility for disease onset and worsened symptomatology and progression, which could potentially derive from exaggerated neurodevelopmental abnormalities. Neurobiological explanations of schizophrenia have emphasized the involvement of deep-brain structures, particularly alterations of the thalamus, which have been linked to core features of the disorder. The aim of this study was to compare thalamic shape abnormalities between EOS and AOS subjects and determine whether unique behavioral profiles related to these differences. It was hypothesized abnormal thalamic shape would be observed in …

Infant Language Development: The Consequences Of Trauma, Janna Pickett

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

Infants between 0 and 36 months who experience physical and emotional trauma are at risk for severe social, emotional, cognitive, and physiological developmental deficits (Carpenter & Stacks, 2009; Jacobsen et al., 2013). As researchers search for protective factors against these deficits, productive language acquisition (the words an infant can verbally produce) has emerged as a potential predictor of resilience (Bellagamba et al., 2014; McCabe & Meller, 2004). This review proposes that infants who have acquired more advanced language, such as emotion descriptors, are able to define their experiences, learn how to respond to those experiences, and feel in control of …

A Marginal Identity Model For Those In The "In-Between", Francine S. Singson, Sonia Meyer, Christine A. Reid

Graduate Research Posters

1. Background

In existing models exploring the formation cultural identity, there is emphasis on development from the perspective of race or country of origin. While these models have made significant contributions to the study of identity development in the fields of counseling and psychology, research on the identity development of people who exist within the spectrum between traditionally acknowledged identities (Deaf/Hearing, LGBTQIA+, first/second generation) is lacking.

1. Methods

To explore the merit of establishing a distinct theory exploring development of individuals whose identities exist between the existing binaries of identity, a systematic review and analysis of current literature was performed. Subsequently, a …

The Intended Heroic Behavior Scale: Creation And Validity Of A Scale Predicting Heroism To Advance Developmental Research On Heroes, Brian R. Riches

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Heroism – the phenomenon of individuals putting themselves at risk for the benefit of others – is a topic of increasing empirical interest (Franco et al., 2017). Applied heroism training programs have emerged with the goal of fostering heroism (Heiner, 2018). Psychologists have examined the characteristics of heroes (e.g., Midlarsky et al., 2005) and the power of the situation to drive ordinary people to heroic action (Franco et al., 2017). These studies have raised important questions, such as how can heroism be predicted? Does heroism training work? And how do heroes develop? Current methods of studying heroism, including exemplar studies, …

Infant Motor Development Predicts The Dynamics Of Movement During Sleep, Aaron Demasi, Melissa N. Horger, Anat Scher, Sarah E. Berger

Publications and Research

The characteristics of infant sleep change over the first year. Generally, infants wake and move less at night as they grow older. However, acquisition of new motor skills leads to temporary increases in night waking and movement at night. Indeed, sleep-dependent movement at night is important for sensorimotor development. Nevertheless, little is known about how movement during sleep changes as infants accrue locomotor experience. The current study investigated whether infant sleep and movement during sleep were predicted by infants' walking experience. Seventy-eight infants wore an actigraph to measure physical activity during sleep. Parents reported when their infants first walked across …

The Role Of Caregiver-Reported Emerging Social Attention In Predicting Duration Of Orienting And Social Communication, Casey E. Swick

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Early identification of atypical development could lead to opportunities for earlier intervention, ultimately improving developmental outcomes. Early signs of atypical attention, social attention, and social communication development emerge in infancy, yet age at diagnosis of neurodevelopmental difficulties does not typically occur until well after the first year of life. In order to achieve this goal of early identification, sensitive and accessible tools are needed to identify infants at risk for atypical development. This study examined whether caregivers could report on emerging social attention behaviors in the first days to weeks of life with a novel, experimental scale (PediaTrac SSIP). This …