Behavior and Behavior Mechanisms Commons^™

New Approaches To Melanoma Prevention, June K. Robinson, Katie Baker, Joel J. Hillhouse

All ETSU Faculty Works

Skin cancer is a major public health concern, and tanning remains a modifiable risk factor. Multidimensional influences, including psychosocial, individual, environmental, and policy-related factors, create the milieu for individuals to engage in tanning. Parents and physicians can modify the behavior of teens and young adults using strategies based on harm reduction. Environmental and policy-related factors similar to those used to limit smoking by restricting access of minors to cigarettes in the United States in the 20th century need to be created. Federal regulations can restrict direct advertising and the excise tax can be increased to a prohibitive amount. Social networking ...

Exploring The Relationship Between Occupational Burnout And The Behavioral Well-Being Of Social Workers, Damian A. Pisapia

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a relationship between occupational burnout and the behavioral well-being of social workers. Burnout is a multidimensional syndrome where workers experience feelings of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment as a consequence of work related stress and overwhelming job demands. Burnout can negatively affect organizational functioning, work performance, and pose significant health risks to workers. There are a limited number of studies focusing on the impact of occupational burnout on the behavioral well-being of workers. The findings of this study indicated that there was a significant relationship between burnout ...

Git R Done: Analysis Of Motivation In Relation To Exercise And Determining Factors, Britton L. Rice

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Exercise provides many physical, emotional and mental health benefits (Facts about Physical Activity, 2014). Despite this, only 21% of American adults exercise regularly. One way of increasing this is to encourage better understanding of motivation and how to control it. Since intrinsic motivation towards exercise is not easily created or changed, most of the focus is placed on extrinsic motivation in its varying degrees. This summary isolates a few factors in exercise that play crucial roles in deciding motivation such as:

• Climate and Goal Orientation

• Influence of peers and teammates

• Influence of coaches

Drunkorexia And The Motives Behind Substance Abuse And Eating Disorder Pathology Amongst College Culture, Nicole Caron, Ginette Gosselin Ferszt

Senior Honors Projects

Amongst college campuses throughout the United States, binge drinking has become a major concern. It seems to be integrated into campus culture, and considered “normal behavior”. However, binge drinking is not without its consequences. There are programs and educational materials which warn about the dangers of binge drinking. While binge drinking behaviors are common, there are other troublesome behaviors that are experienced amongst college students which are not discussed as often. In addition, there is an increase in the integration of binge drinking and eating disorder behaviors. This behavior is referred to as “drunkorexia”. Drunkorexia involves the exhibition of eating ...

Mobile Application To Promote Adherence To Oral Chemotherapy And Symptom Management: A Protocol For Design And Development, Joel N. Fishbein, Lauren E. Nisotel, James J. Macdonald, Nicole Amoyal Pensak, Jamie M. Jacobs, Clare Flanagan, Kamal Jethwani, Joseph A. Greer

Psychology and Neuroscience Graduate Contributions

Background: Oral chemotherapy is increasingly used in place of traditional intravenous chemotherapy to treat patients with cancer. While oral chemotherapy includes benefits such as ease of administration, convenience, and minimization of invasive infusions, patients receive less oversight, support, and symptom monitoring from clinicians. Additionally, adherence is a well-documented challenge for patients with cancer prescribed oral chemotherapy regimens. With the ever-growing presence of smartphones and potential for efficacious behavioral intervention technology, we created a mobile health intervention for medication and symptom management.

Objective: The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate the usability and acceptability of a smartphone app ...

Stress And Sleep Quality: Mediating Effects Of Social Support, Felisha L. Younkin, Elizabeth A. Axtell, Chelsea R. Anderton

The Research and Scholarship Symposium

Stress is defined as the “nonspecific response of the body to any demand made upon it” (Kohn & Frazer, 1986). Stress is among the top five threats to academic performance among college students (Pettit & DeBarr, 2011). The purpose of the study was to investigate whether stress affects perceived sleep quality, as mediated by social support, and to determine whether stress levels vary based on academic major. Using ANOVA in SPSS 24, we tested three hypotheses: stress and sleep quality are negatively correlated, social support mediates the relationship between stress and sleep quality, and stress levels will vary by academic major (specifically ...

Mental Disorder And Criminal Justice, Stephen J. Morse

Faculty Scholarship

This paper is a chapter that will appear in ACADEMY FOR JUSTICE, A REPORT ON SCHOLARSHIP AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM (Erik Luna ed., forthcoming 2017). The criminal law treats some people with severe mental disorders doctrinally and practically differently at virtually every stage of the criminal justice process, beginning with potential incompetence to stand trial and ending with the question of competence to be executed, and such people have special needs when they are in the system. This chapter begins by exploring the fundamental mental health information necessary to make informed judgements about how the criminal justice system should respond ...

Reward Vs. Punishment: An Fmri Analysis Approach To Identifying The Neural Substrates Of Motivation And Cognitive Control, Ya'el Courtney, Todd Braver Phd, Debbie Yee

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Every day, humans face the complex cost-benefit analysis of integrating numerous different incentives to pursue behavioral goals. Impairments in cognitive control (and particularly an abnormal response to motivation) underlie disorders such as schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and addictions; as such it is important to illustrate how differing motivational cues are processed in healthy humans. Research has made great progress in discovering the behavioral and neural mechanisms that underlie motivation and cognitive control. However, a significant question that remains to be addressed is whether rewards and punishments utilize the same or different neural substrates to yield motivational effects. In the ...

Diet And Cognition: Data, Theory, And Some Solutions From The Playbook Of Psychology, Aaron P. Blaisdell

Journal of Evolution and Health

No abstract provided.

Neuroscience Evidence In Forensic Contexts: Ethical Concerns, Stephen J. Morse

Faculty Scholarship

This is a chapter in a volume, Ethics Dilemmas in Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology Practice, edited by Ezra E. H. Griffith, M.D. and to be published by Columbia University Press. The chapter addresses whether the use of new neuroscience techniques, especially non-invasive functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and the data from studies employing them raise new ethical issues for forensic psychiatrists and psychologists. The implicit thesis throughout is that if the legal questions, the limits of the new techniques and the relevance of neuroscience to law are properly understood, no new ethical issues are raised. A major ethical lapse ...

Diagnostic Performance And Optimal Cut-Off Scores Of The Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument-Second Version In A Sample Of Swiss Youths In Welfare And Juvenile Justice Institutions, Claudia Dolitzsch, Laura E. W. Leenarts, Klaus Schmeck, Jorg M. Fegert, Thomas Grisso, Marc Schmid

Psychiatry Publications and Presentations

BACKGROUND: There is a growing consensus about the importance of mental health screening of youths in welfare and juvenile justice institutions. The Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument-second version (MAYSI-2) was specifically designed, normed and validated to assist juvenile justice facilities in the United States of America (USA), in identifying youths with potential emotional or behavioral problems. However, it is not known if the USA norm-based cut-off scores can be used in Switzerland. Therefore, the primary purpose of the current study was to estimate the diagnostic performance and optimal cut-off scores of the MAYSI-2 in a sample of Swiss youths in welfare ...

Understanding Alcoholics’ “Difficulty In Life”: An Empirical Comparison Of Alcoholics And Nonalcoholics, Keiko Ito

Asian/Pacific Island Nursing Journal

The Japanese success rate for alcoholism treatment is approximately 30%, indicating high relapse rates. Although “difficulty in life” is thought to contribute to alcoholics’ relapse, the characteristics of the phenomenon are unknown. This study examined the factors contributing to alcoholics’ difficulty in life. Alcoholic self-help group members, who indicated the extent of their difficulty in life and described the factors that contributed to this difficulty, completed a self-administered questionnaire. Participants’ hypersensitivity/grandiosity traits were also examined. A control group of nonalcoholic men also completed the questionnaire. Simple tabulation, descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U tests, and multivariate analyses were used to compare ...

The Effect Of Two Modes Of Aerobic Assessment On Fifth Grade Students' Self Efficacy, Debra Roth

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Declining youth physical activity levels and lack of aerobic fitness have been well documented with a corresponding rise in obesity levels and health issues. Based on Bandura's social cognitive theory, healthy physical activity levels and aerobic fitness are strongly connected to positive physical activity self-efficacy beliefs. This study examined whether student physical activity self-efficacy, motivation, and effort were different for the FitnessGram® (FG) 1-Mile Run when compared to the 15-minute Aerobic Assessment Based on Improvement (AABI). A concurrent mixed method quasi-experimental approach measured 5th grade students' physical activity self-efficacy beliefs through a pretest and posttest survey while aerobic assessment ...

Addiction, Choice And Criminal Law, Stephen J. Morse

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter is a contribution to a volume, Addiction and Choice, edited by Nick Heather and Gabriel Segal that is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Some claim that addiction is a chronic and relapsing brain disease; others claim that it is a product of choice; yet others think that addictions have both disease and choice aspects. Which of these views holds sway in a particular domain enormously influences how that domain treats addictions. With limited exceptions, Anglo-American criminal law has implicitly adopted the choice model and a corresponding approach to responsibility. Addiction is irrelevant to the criteria for the prima ...

The Poverty Of The Neuroscience Of Poverty: Policy Payoff Or False Promise?, Amy L. Wax

Faculty Scholarship

A recent body of work in neuroscience examines the brains of people suffering from social and economic disadvantage. This article assesses claims that this research can help generate more effective strategies for addressing these social conditions and their effects. It concludes that the so-called neuroscience of deprivation has no unique practical payoff, and that scientists, journalists, and policy-makers should stop claiming otherwise. Because this research does not, and generally cannot, distinguish between innate versus environmental causes of brain characteristics, it cannot predict whether neurological and behavioral deficits can be addressed by reducing social deprivation. Also, knowledge of brain mechanisms yields ...

A Secondary Analysis Of Survey Data Evaluating The Lifelines Suicide Prevention Program Among Middle School Students, Nicki Sullivan

DNP Projects

Abstract

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate student feedback of the 2015 Lifelines Suicide Prevention Program at Jessie Clark Middle School. Student feedback was examined by assessing students’ knowledge of suicide, attitudes toward suicide, knowledge of when and from whom to seek help if feeling suicidal or told by a friend that they are suicidal, and impressions of the educational presentation following participation in the Lifelines Suicide Prevention Program.

METHODS: In this secondary analysis, anonymous student responses (N=269) from a 2015 middle school survey were examined by using a mixed method design with the quantitative study ...

Role Of Food Preoccupation And Current Dieting In The Associations Of Parental Feeding Practices To Emotional Eating In Young Adults: A Moderated Mediation Study, Natalie A. Williams, Dipti Dev, Maren Hankey, Kimberly A. Blitch

Faculty Publications, Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies

Parental feeding practices reflecting coercive control are related to children’s later eating behaviors, but the mechanisms underlying these effects remain poorly understood. This study examined the relationships between recalled childhood experiences of parental pressure to eat and restriction and current food preoccupation, dieting, and emotional eating in a racially diverse sample of college students (N = 711). Results revealed that parental restriction, but not pressure to eat, was associated with more emotional eating (r = 0.18, p < 0.0001). Food preoccupation mediated the association between restriction and emotional eating (95% CI [3.6495–7.2231]); however, a moderated mediation model revealed that the strength of the indirect effect of restrictive feeding on emotional eating through food preoccupation was significantly different for dieters and non-dieters (index of moderated mediation = 1.79, Boot SE = 0.79; 95% bias-corrected bootstrap CI [–3.5490 to –0.4515]). These findings provide unique insight into the mechanisms linking parental feeding practices with emotional eating in young adulthood. Future studies attempting to clarify the processes through which child feeding practices impact later eating behaviors should consider the role of current dieting.

Backward Masking With Simultaneous Early, Middle And Late Evoked Potentials, Silas Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Auditory processing disorders (APDs) affect a diverse range of people. These types of disorders impair auditory function, despite the outer, middle and inner ear maintaining proper function and health. APD is not necessarily related to auditory thresholds. When people with APD have difficulty discriminating sounds in connected speech, it may be due in part to an effect called Backward Masking (BM). Masking occurs when one stimulus inhibits another, which can lead to a variety of impairments. The neural locus of APDs is for the most part unknown, including the specific conditions which cause BM. A better understanding of these processes ...

Urine Cotinine In Children And Parental Behavior Modification: A Pilot Study, Teresa Lachance

Muskie School Capstones

“Urine Cotinine in Children and Parental Behavior Modification” was designed by Dr. Deirdre Burns, a pediatrician at the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital (BBCH). It was implemented as a pilot study to determine whether urine cotinine testing in children who are admitted to the hospital for respiratory illness and tracking parental smoking behaviors over time was feasible. Parents were given a brief survey to assess their current smoking behaviors and to understand their readiness to quit smoking. They received smoking cessation materials provided by the Breathe Easy Coalition of Maine. These materials outline information about second-hand and third-hand smoke, and ...

Implementation Of A Computerized Screening Inventory: Improved Usability Through Iterative Testing And Modification, Edwin D. Boudreaux, Andrew Christopher Fischer, Brianna Haskins, Zubair Saeed Zafar, Guanling Chen, Sneha A. Chinai

Edwin D. Boudreaux

BACKGROUND: The administration of health screeners in a hospital setting has traditionally required (1) clinicians to ask questions and log answers, which can be time consuming and susceptible to error, or (2) patients to complete paper-and-pencil surveys, which require third-party entry of information into the electronic health record and can be vulnerable to error and misinterpretation. A highly promising method that avoids these limitations and bypasses third-party interpretation is direct entry via a computerized inventory.

OBJECTIVE: To (1) computerize medical and behavioral health screening for use in general medical settings, (2) optimize patient acceptability and feasibility through iterative usability testing ...