Experimental Analysis of Behavior Commons^™

Volunteer Functions, Satisfaction, Commitment, And Intention To Leave Government Volunteering, Gisela R. Salas

Graduate Student Dissertations, Theses, Capstones, and Portfolios

Traditionally, volunteerism has been deeply embedded in United States history with citizens showing a high level of social participation. In the United States there are 60.8 million volunteers, however, the supply of volunteer labor has been insufficient to meet the demands of organizations with recent reports showing a decrease. Trends as far back as the 1980s indicated that budgetary constraints coupled with increasing demands makes volunteering the logical alternative to sustain service delivery.

Many community, civic, and governmental organizations need and use volunteers to accomplish their missions. One of the greatest challenges, however, is ensuring that the volunteers remain satisfied …

An Expanded Conceptualization And A New Measure Of Compulsive Buying, Nancy Ridgway, Monika Kukar-Kinney, Kent B. Monroe

Marketing Faculty Publications

Drawing on the theoretical foundation of obsessive‐compulsive spectrum disorder, this article develops an expanded conceptualization and new measure of consumers’ proclivity to buy compulsively. Compulsive buying is defined as a consumer’s tendency to be preoccupied with buying that is revealed through repetitive buying and a lack of impulse control over buying. This measure includes dimensions of both obsessive‐compulsive and impulse‐control disorders. By measuring income‐dependent items or consequences of compulsive buying separately from the compulsive‐buying scale, we develop a measure that has a strong theoretical foundation, well‐documented psychometric properties, and an ability to be applied to general consumer populations.

Study Of Executive Functioning Training In Adolescents Diagnosed With Autism, Jessica Postil

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

This study investigated the effectiveness of a manualized executive functioning training program used with adolescents diagnosed with autism. Three male adolescents were trained on executive function activities using a combination of Applied Behavioral Analysis and executive functioning activities. Training programs were administered individually, lasting for 2 hours per day for 20 days. Participants were tested 1 month before training, 1 week before treatment, immediately after training and at a one-month follow-up. Significant improvements were seen in performance on executive functioning tasks that required motor speed, verbal fluency, monitoring, predicting, planning and organization skills. Significant changes in the participant’s adaptive behavior …

Self-Esteem In Relation To Casual Sex Behavior, Attitudes, And Affect., Kathryn Bieda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Casual sex is common on college campuses and is potentially relevant to a person's self-esteem. Unfortunately, data are mixed regarding how self-esteem is influenced by casual sex. This thesis is an attempt to understand how casual sex influences women's self-esteem through a series of questionnaires. Three hypotheses were of interest. The first predicted that sociosexuality and desire would explain casual sex engagement. Second, that casual sex behaviors and attitudes would predict self-esteem. Third, looking only at those who engaged in casual sex; casual sex attitudes and affect would predict self-esteem. Using hierarchical regression, results indicated that there was a curvilinear …

The Use Of Personality Assessments In Designing Environmental Enrichment For Garnett's Bushbabies (Otolemur Garnettii), Lauren Elizabeth Highfill

Dissertations

Recently the study of animal personality has become an important and credible topic of research and a number of studies have revealed personality traits in a variety of species. The consideration of individual animal personality traits is important for animal management and welfare. For example, ensuring inter-individual compatibility in group housing animals may serve to ensure the safety of the whole group. To date, no formal research has been conducted on whether the assessment of individual personality traits could be used as a tool for individualizing environmental enrichment interventions. The goal of environmental enrichment is to increase the rate of …

Evaluation Of A Progressive Model For Identifying Preferred Stimuli For Children With Developmental Disabilities, Amanda M. Karsten

Dissertations

Preference assessments for individuals with disabilities differ along many dimensions, including time requirements for implementation and probability of identifying a hierarchy of relative preferences. Some methods of assessment are also more conducive to use with individuals who exhibit problem behavior or certain prerequisite skills. Inaccurate results and loss of valuable treatment time are among the risks associated with selecting ineffective or unnecessarily lengthy procedures. The purpose of the current investigation was to evaluate a progressive model for conducting preference assessments which incorporates many of the aforementioned considerations. Concurrent-operant reinforcer evaluations were used to verify assessment findings. Based on 17 participants …

Disruptive Effects Of Aβ Oligomers To The Radial-Arm Maze Performance Of Rats, Kineta Lynn Morgan-Paisley

Dissertations

Converging lines of research have implicated a causal relationship between oligomers of amyloid-β and the cognitive impairments associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD); however, very few studies have provided direct experimental evidence of this relationship and none of those studies have used an established model of working memory. The present study used an established model of working memory, the radial-arm maze, to examine the effects of amyloid-β oligomers on the memory of two groups of rats. The experimental group received ICV injections of the culture media (CM) of Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells transfected with a human mutation of APP containing …

Self-Solicited Feedback: Effects Of Hourly Pay And Individual Monetary Incentive Pay, Julie M. Slowiak

Dissertations

The frequency of feedback solicitation under hourly pay and individual monetary incentive pay conditions was examined. A two-group between-subjects design was used with 30 college students in each group. Participants attended three experimental sessions and entered the cash value of simulated bank checks presented on a computer screen. Results indicated that (a) participants who were paid individual monetary incentives did not self-solicit feedback more often than those who were paid an hourly wage, (b) feedback solicitation was not related to individual differences in levels of competition with one's self or competition with others, (c) task performance was higher for individuals …

The Psychophysiology Of Information Processing Differences In Eating Disorders, Kathryn Grace Truitt

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Maladaptive or dysfunctional cognitive factors are believed to be significant contributors to pathology in eating disorders. The emotional Stroop task was used to examine [the] these dysfunctional cognitive factors. A sample of 31 women (14 nonclinical controls, 13 BN, 4 AN) participated in this investigation, after exclusion for ocular and movement artifacts and equipment problems the remaining sample contained 4 women diagnosed with BN, 4 women diagnosed with AN, and 9 matched non-clinical control subjects. Participants completed an Emotional Stroop task comprised of 8 blocks of words. On each trial, a word was presented in one of four colors (black, …

The Influence Of Species And Context On Human-Dolphin Interactions, Deirdre Breen Yeater

Dissertations

Anthropogenic activities pose a threat to marine mammals around the world. Cetaceans that use coastal waters are at particular risk for potential disturbances caused by vessel traffic and human swimmers. Although many cetacean species are found near the coast of Utila, Honduras, little is known about their behavior or the effects of anthropogenic activities on their behavior. Whether the presence of boats and human swimmers led to short-term changes in dolphin behavior was investigated for three commonly sighted species of dolphins; rough-toothed (Steno bredanensis), spinner (Stenalla longirostris), and bottlenose (Turslops truncatus). The dolphins' behavioral activities, with and without other boats …

Characteristics Of Head Mounted Displays And Their Effects On Simulator Sickness, Jason Moss

All Dissertations

Characteristics of head-mounted displays (HMDs) and their effects on simulator sickness (SS) and presence were investigated. Update delay and wide field of views (FOV) have often been thought to elicit SS. With the exception of Draper et al. (2001), previous research that has examined FOV has failed to consider image scale factor, or the ratio between physical FOV of the HMD display and the geometric field of view (GFOV) of the virtual environment (VE). The current study investigated update delay, image scale factor, and peripheral vision on SS and presence when viewing a real-world scene. Participants donned an HMD and …

Cross-Modal Interaction Between Vision And Hearing: A Speed—Accuracy Analysis, Yoav Arieh, Lawrence E. Marks

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Cross-modal facilitation of response time (RT) is said to occur in a selective attention task when the introduction of an irrelevant sound increases the speed at which visual stimuli are detected and identified. To investigate the source of the facilitation in RT, we asked participants to rapidly identify the color of lights in the quiet and when accompanied by a pulse of noise. The resulting measures of accuracy and RT were used to derive speed-accuracy trade-off functions (SATFs) separately for the noise and the no-noise conditions. The two resulting SATFs have similar slopes and intercepts and, thus, can be treated …

Ethics In Experimentation, Donelson R. Forsyth

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Experimentation in the social sciences, by its very nature, requires researchers to manipulate and control key aspects of the social setting so as to determine what effect, if any, these manipulations have on the people in that setting. Such studies, although unmatched in terms of their scientific yield, nonetheless raise questions of ethics: Do researchers have the moral right to conduct experiments on their fellow human beings? What practices are unacceptable and what procedures are allowable? Can standards be established to safeguard the rights of participants?

Does Providing Accurate Information About Slot Machines Alter How Participants Play Them?, Jeffrey N. Weatherly, Ellen Meier

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

It is a commonly held belief that irrational thoughts held by gamblers can pro-mote gambling behavior and ultimately pathological gambling. Some evidence exists to support this view, but little experimental work demonstrates that con-fronting these beliefs will lead to a decrease in gambling behavior. Eighteen non-pathological participants were given the option to play a slot machine for money. After gambling in two sessions, they were given accurate information about the independence of turns programmed by a slot machine, the negative rate of return of a slot machine over time, or both. Participants were then given the option to gamble in …

Commentary - Approaching Gambling As A Verbal Event: A Commentary On Fantino & Stolarz-Fantino (2008), Simon Dymond

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

No abstract provided.

Using Performance Feedback To Teach Video Poker Players To Gamble Better, Mark R. Dixon, James W. Jackson

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

The present investigation reports two studies that examined the performance of non-pathological recreational video poker gamblers. In the first experiment, seven participants played three types of video poker games in a within partici-pants randomized sequence design. The percentage of errors made across games revealed the game variant “Deuces Wild” yielded more frequent mistakes than “Jacks or Better” or “Bonus Poker.” The second experiment consisted of a new sample of 11 participants being exposed to “Deuces Wild” poker to initially assess error percentages. Next, participants were all provided with performance feedback regarding their play, and finally the feedback was removed to …

Investigating Illusion Of Control In Experienced And Non-Experienced Gamblers: Replication And Extension, Lingyuan Wong, Jennifer L. Austin

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

The illusion of control is a phenomenon in which one erroneously believes he or she can exert control over the contingencies of chance events. To date, many of the studies investigating this phenomenon as it applies to gambling have used artificial gambling contexts and participants with no history of gambling beha-vior (i.e., undergraduates). This study replicated the procedures outlined in Di-xon, Hayes and Ebbs (1998) using experienced and inexperienced gamblers in a more natural gambling setting. Participants played 20 rounds of a game of rou-lette in which the default procedure was for the dealer to choose the bets. How-ever, players …

Commentary - Gambling: Not What It May Seem To Be, Jeffrey N. Weatherly

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

No abstract provided.

Do The Risk Factors For Pathological Gambling Predict Temporal Discounting?, Jeffrey N. Weatherly, Adam Derenne, Samantha Chase

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

Weatherly and Dixon (2007) proposed that gambling was related to the increase in how individuals discount delayed (monetary) consequences and that several of the known risk factors for pathological gambling may serve as establishing operations or setting events that lead to such changes. The present study tested these predictions by having participants complete a paper-and-pencil discount-ing task involving hypothetical monetary consequences and determining wheth-er self-reported measures of the known risk factors would significantly predict participants’ rate of discounting. None of the risk factors served as significant predictors of discounting. Interestingly, however, the rate of discounting varied systematically as a function …

Delay Discounting And Pathological Gambling, Mark R. Dixon

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

Over the past decade behavior analysts have paid increasing attention to the clin-ical phenomena of pathological gambling. Explorations have varied from ani-mal models to therapeutic interventions. Perhaps no topic has received greater attention in the behavioral gambling literature than the discounting of delayed consequences. Delay discounting has been noted as both a conceptual frame-work to understand problem gambling as well as a dependent variable by which to deduce level of pathology. Regardless of hypothesized process, discounting appears to be a topic of great interest to those within the behavioral community. This special section of the Analysis of Gambling Behavior brings …

Commentary - Understanding Gambling, Impulsivity, And Decision-Making: Self-Report And Behavioral Considerations, Marc N. Potenza

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

No abstract provided.

Commentary - Gambling, Shaping And Ratio Contingencies, A. Charles Catania

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

No abstract provided.

Slot Machine Preferences And Self-Rules, Terje Fredheim, Kai-Ove Ottersen, Erik Arntzen

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

The present study was a replication and extension of Zlomke and Dixon (2006) investigating the impact of contextually trained discriminations on slot-machine gambling. In each of two experiments, 20 participants were exposed to two con-currently available slot-machines differing only in color. Thus, Experiment 1 was a replication, while in Experiment 2 we included an instruction to ensure that the participants attended to all of the onscreen stimuli. Following a pretest of slot machine preferences, a nonarbitrary relational training and testing proce-dure was used to establish contextual functions of MORE-THAN and LESS-THAN for two cues. After relational training the participants were …

Commentary - Discounting Within The Gambling Context, Gregory J. Madden

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Nicotine On Gambling Behavior Of Smoking And Nonsmoking Undergraduate Students, Ellen Meier, Jeffrey N. Weatherly

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

Gambling and smoking have been linked in the literature. The present study recruited smokers and nonsmokers to gamble on a slot machine after they chewed nicotine or non-nicotine gum. Re-sults showed that gambling behavior, both in terms of persistence and risk taking, did not differ as a function of either smoking status or type of gum the participants chewed. Although the present study has a number of limitations, the results highlight that factors correlated with gambling do not necessarily lead to differences in gambling behavior when people actually gamble.

Impact Of Jackpot And Near-Miss Magnitude On Rate And Subjective Probability Of Slot Machine Gamblers, Jeffrey Dillen, Mark R. Dixon

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

The present study examined the degree to which varying amounts of jackpot size would impact the rate and subjective probability of slot machine play in recrea-tional gamblers. Twenty college undergraduates who reported occasional slot machine playing served as participants. Two groups of 10 participants were utilized with each group exposed to one of two monetary contingencies ($0.50 USD versus $2.00 USD). Various behavioral measures (e.g., inter-response times, subjective probabilities) were measured on each individual trial, and re-sistance to extinction was also examined. A significant difference of trial out-come (following losses and following wins) was found in respect to inter-response time …

Temporal Discounting Predicts How People Gamble On A Slot Machine, Jeffrey N. Weatherly, Joanna M. Marino, Joanna M. Marino, F. Richard Ferraro

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

The gambling research literature suggests that temporal discounting may be as-sociated with problem gambling, but research has not demonstrated that rates of discounting predict differences in actual gambling behavior. Thirty eight indi-viduals of different ages and backgrounds were recruited to complete several questionnaires, including a delay-discounting task. They were then given $10 in tokens with the opportunity to gamble on a slot machine. How steeply partici-pants discounted the delayed (hypothetical) monetary rewards was a significant predictor of they gambled. Gender, age, and reported annual income were not significant predictors. To our knowledge, these data are the first to demonstrate that …

Nicotine Facilitates Trace Fear Conditioning In Normal And Fasd Rats Tested As Adolescents, Mary Elizabeth Levillain

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Hindsight Bias In Insight And Mathematical Problem Solving: Evidence Of Different Reconstruction Mechanisms For Metacognitive Versus Situational Judgments, Ivan K. Ash, Jennifer Wiley

Psychology Faculty Publications

This article presents two experiments that used insight and mathematical problems to investigate whether different factors would affect hindsight bias on metacognitive and situational judgments. In both studies, participants initially rated their likelihood of solving each problem within a certain amount of time (metacognitive judgments) and rated the importance of each component of the problem for finding the solution (situational judgments). Next, participants attempted to solve each problem. In Experiment 1, all participants were given solution feedback information, but in Experiment 2, participants were not given any solution feedback. After 1 week, participants were asked to recall their original judgments. …

Affective Flexibility: Evaluative Processing Goals Shape Amygdala Activity, William A. Cunningham, Jay J. Van Bavel, Ingrid Johnsen Haas

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Although early research implicated the amygdala in automatic processing of negative information, more recent research suggests that it plays a more general role in processing the motivational relevance of various stimuli, suggesting that the relation between valence and amygdala activation may depend on contextual goals. This study provides experimental evidence that the relation between valence and amygdala activity is dynamically modulated by evaluative goals. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants evaluated the positive, negative, or overall (positive plus negative) aspects of famous people. When participants were providing overall evaluations, both positive and negative names were associated with amygdala activation. When …