Applied Behavior Analysis Commons^™

The Bottom Two Percent: Using Positive Psychology To Create Change Among Convicts, Katie Wittekind

Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) Capstone Projects

We can turn convicted individuals into thriving members of the community. An empowering approach with the convicted will improve rehabilitative outcomes by creating behavior change. There exists a model that successfully rehabilitates the convicted by teaching the skills necessary to reenter society. This capstone uses the Delancey Foundation as a case study of this model. Delancey provides housing, job training, and education to convicts, addicts, and the homeless. Delancey uses social entrepreneurship and peer mentorship to empower residents. This capstone uses the research of positive psychology to demonstrate how Delancey converts takers into givers using peer mentorship, which develops the ...

Best Integrated Writing 2018 - Complete Edition

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University. The journal is published annually by the Wright State University Department of English Language and Literatures.

A Multimodal Assessment Of Disgust In Response To Traumatic Event Reminders Among Adolescents, Teah-Marie R. Bynion

Theses and Dissertations

The majority of youth will report traumatic event exposure by the time they reach adulthood.

Research suggests exposure to such events is linked to myriad negative outcomes. Not all

traumatic events are alike, however; evidence suggests that, compared to non-interpersonal

events, interpersonal events in which another person intentionally perpetrates harm are linked to

elevations in the likelihood of negative outcomes, including posttraumatic stress disorder

(PTSD). One reason for this discrepancy is that interpersonal traumatic events may elicit greater

levels of disgust. However, this is a very under-developed research base, no study has examined

this question among youth. The current study ...

Living Your Calling In The Social Sector: A Theory About How To Thrive And Have A Lasting Impact In The World., Ilaina Rabbat

Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) Capstone Projects

An important and overlooked group in the topic of calling is that comprising individuals who work in the social sector, defined as individuals devoted to advancing human dignity and social justice through advocacy, service, policy research, and/or impact investing at a local, national, and global level (Tirmizi & Vogelsang, 2016). Among this group, it is possible to distinguish between those that are experiencing mainly positive outcomes because of their calling—called calling thrivers—and those who are experiencing a combination of negative and positive outcomes, called calling survivors. The aim of the study is to understand the main differences between ...

Yatros.Thesis.2018.Docx, Nicolette Yatros

Nicolette Yatros

What Are The Overall Benefits Of Dance Improvisation, And How Do They Affect Cognition And Creativity?, Carley Wright

Honors College Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to define the terms improvisation, cognition, and creativity, and therefore find the direct correlation between all three, and how they can all be involved within dance. The main intention is to determine whether or not improvisational dance can positively influence one’s creative mindset, thus improving the cognitive learning process. Furthermore, it is to discover if the development of a creative mindset can be established through dance improvisation at an early age. In this exploration, the majority of my research will come from the examination of previously conducted experiments, as well as guiding and ...

Enhancing A Middle School Student's Self-Management Skills In The Classroom, Lanie Jean Rudisill

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Self-regulation (SR) and executive functioning (EF) are important factors for successful student outcomes. Research suggests that executive skills facilitate the process of behavioral self-regulation. Well-developed SR and EF skills make learning more likely. Proper SR has the ability to improve attention levels and EF includes the use of working memory, both of which are essential components of the information processing system that students use continuously. One type of SR, referred to as self-management, involves a cycle of observing and recording one’s own behavior, then evaluating one’s self-assessments against those of an external observer. Self-management interventions have previously been ...

Exploring The Clinical Utility Of Mobile Applications For Promoting Affect Regulation Among Clients With Behavioral Health Problems, Caroline Fenkel

Doctorate in Social Work (DSW) Dissertations

Nearly 25 percent of adults in the United States are diagnosed with a behavioral health condition, most commonly depression, anxiety disorders and substance use disorders. Each of these diagnoses is associated with significant disruptions in affect regulation which encompasses the capacity to up and down regulate emotions. Best practice treatment for these conditions includes psychotropic medications combined with individual or group-based psychotherapeutic modalities which regardless of the therapist’s theoretical orientation attempt to promote affect regulation through skill transfer and strategies for observing one’s ability to regulate emotions. Similarly, attention to regulatory capacity is central to many emerging self-help ...

Pornography Use: The Lesser Of Two Evils For Religious Emerging Adults, Lea A. Garcia

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Pornography use has become the norm instead of the exception among emerging adults (18 – 26-year-olds) and has been found to be associated with increased sexual permissiveness and sexual shame outcomes among the general population, but does the same hold true for religious emerging adults who maintain a moral opposition to viewing pornography? Within the context of recent developmental theory research among emerging adults, this study examined associations between pornography use, sexual permissiveness, and sexual shame. This research hypothesized that religiosity and age would moderate the relationships between pornography use and sexual permissiveness, and pornography use and sexual shame. The results ...

Parents Supporting Their Adolescents’ Independent Remedial Math Practice: The Effects Of A Multi-Component Intervention Package On Math Academic Performance, Mackenzie Sommerhalder

Public Access Theses and Dissertations from the College of Education and Human Sciences

This dissertation examined the effects of high school students’ independent, remedial, home-based math practice while receiving parent support on math computation fluency. The multi-component intervention package encompassed both home-based remedial practice and parent support. Teacher interviews, normative assessments, and a performance-deficit analysis were conducted to identify high-school students who displayed math academic skill deficits. Next, identification and analysis of individual skills (e.g., multiplication, division) to be targeted for intervention occurred for each participant included in the study. A multiple-baseline across participants design was used to examine teaching high school students to choose effective instructional components for math computation and ...

What Motivates Children To Respond? Functional Analysis And Intervention Of Math Computation Fluency, Catherine Rose Lark

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

An abundance of research exists supporting the use of functional analyses to assess and treat problem behavior. In contrast, little research has been conducted on the application of functional analysis (FA) procedures to academic behaviors. The current study attempted to fill this research gap by conducting an FA of academic responding for five elementary students with low math fluency. Sessions were conducted using both a traditional reinforcement schedule of a fixed ratio of one (FR-1) as well as a more practical reinforcement schedule of a fixed ratio of ten (FR-10) to examine the effects of the reinforcement schedule on the ...

Behavioral Skills Training To Teach Correct Heading Skills To Youth Soccer Players, Laura Quintero

Master's Theses

Recently, concerns regarding sport-related concussions have increased within the research literature, the media, and popular culture. It is unknown to what degree purposefully striking the ball with one’s head (i.e. heading) contributes to concussions within youth soccer. There is currently limited research on an effective teaching method to improve heading technique. Due to the numerous applications of Behavioral Skills Training (BST) to teach a wide variety of behaviors, the purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effectiveness of BST to teach correct heading techniques to youth soccer players. A task analysis was produced to score each ...

Improving Interview Skills In College Students Using Behavioral Skills And In Situ Training, Laura-Katherine Barker

Master's Theses

Successful interviewing skills help maximize the probability that a job candidate will make a positive impression upon a prospective employer. An area of continued concern related to potential employee readiness involves performance in interviews. Questions remain regarding the effectiveness of higher educational systems to develop the variety of efficient skills necessary for students to showcase the full array of their qualifications within an interview. Behavioral Skills Training (BST) is a behavior analytic training package that has been shown to increase appropriate interview skills. In situ training (IST), also known as in-the-moment-training, has been offered as a method to improve the ...

Computing Tools For The Psychological Study Of Choice Behavior, Cheryl Limer

Senior Honors Theses

The computing tools described here were developed with the help of Daniel Rogers for Dr. Lori-Ann Forzano’s psychology lab at The College at Brockport, and were designed to aid in the study of choice behaviors, such as self-control and impulsivity, across age ranges. Impulsivity can be defined as the choice of a smaller, less delayed reward over a larger, more delayed reward, with self-control as the opposite. These two concepts are often studied in psychological contexts, and computer programs such as these allow for the study of self-control in regards to video reinforcers. The current programs recreate and expand ...

Behaviors And Perceptions Of Environmental Decision Making: The Role Of Information Dissemination Through Public Disclosures And Labels, Jordan R. Anthony

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Environmental decision making may be influenced by information and how this information has been disseminated. By recognizing that information needs to be salient to the individual (Cash et al., 2003, 2006), tailored and framed to the individual (Pelletier & Sharp, 2008), and recognizing that the information must be presented in a way that the individual is ready and able to accept the information (Teisl, Rubin, & Noblet, 2008) all serve as a means to improve the effect information has on environmental decision making. Through this work, two studies of contextual examples of how information dissemination affects environmental decision making are presented.

The first study seeks to learn about how safety information disclosures affect the perception of risk. Coastal water quality may be threatened by natural and human process; it is important to understand how coastal water users perceive the risk to human health associated with these threats (Hlavsa et al., 2011; Lewis & Miller, 2016). I use data collected by the New England Sustainability Consortium’s Safe Beaches & Shellfish Project 2015 mail survey conducted in Maine and New Hampshire on coastal residents (Fox et al., 2017). I investigate how information through public disclosures at either beaches or shellfish harvesting areas influence risk perceptions associated with entering the water (or eating shellfish) under an advisory or closure. Further, we test to see if the frames of marine environment or public health may be more appropriate to communicate information to the public and how it influences risk perception. The findings suggest that disclosures of poor coastal water quality at these areas do not influence risk perception nor do specific messages appear to alter risk perceptions.

The second study seeks to better understand consumer information seeking behavior and use of product labels for aquaculture products and how these behaviors change when the heterogeneity in preferences is considered. Despite aquaculture’s stance as a rapidly growing sustainable food technology, public opinion about aquaculture is still relatively unformed (Murray et al., 2017). Labeling of aquaculture products is an opportunity to provide information that is salient and messages that bridge the gap between the individual and the information presented on labels at the time of purchase (Cash et al., 2003, 2006; Pelletier & Sharp, 2008; Teisl et al., 2008). We use data from a 2017 national survey collected by the Sustainable Ecological Aquaculture Network Human Dimensions Team to capture behaviors and perceptions of aquaculture. To approach our unique problem, audience segmentation methods ...

Using Response Card Technology To Reduce Disruptive Behavior In The College Classroom, Meera Aggarwal

Thesis Projects

The purpose of this experiment was to determine if response-card technology would decrease disruptive behavior (e.g., texting, surfing the Internet, sleeping) in the college classroom. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, a graduate classroom of 14 students from a small liberal arts college in the southeast participated. An alternating-treatments design was implemented comparing baseline (standard lecture) to Nearpod™ (an online question-feedback platform) and response cards. Results indicated neither intervention had a meaningful effect on disruptive behavior; however, the majority of students indicated a preference for Nearpod™. In Experiment 2, three participants were selected from an undergraduate class for ...

Pearce's "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy For Christians With Depression: A Practical Tool-Based Primer" (Book Review), Kenneth D. Litwak

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Napping On Sleep Quality And Quantity In Healthy And Concussed Collegiate Athletes, Katie Stephenson-Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Clinicians are increasingly prescribing a regulated sleep schedule to athletes post injury; however, baseline sleep habits of collegiate athletes are unknown. Moreover, the connection between napping and sleep quality and quantity has not been studied in collegiate athletes. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate napping behaviors and their effects on sleep quantity and quality in concussed and non-concussed collegiate athletes. In a sample of 233 non-concussed collegiate athletes, 74% (172/233) of participants reported napping. Napping was not significantly associated with sleep quantity (χ 2 (2) = .23, p = .64) or quality (χ 2 (1) = .42, p =.52 ...

Social Support And Adherence To Recommendations Following Asd Diagnosis, Morgan Reiss

Honors Scholar Theses

This experiment aimed to look at how social supports effected adherence to recommendations following a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. We hypothesized that families with higher levels of structural social support, as defined as more adults living in the home, help with child care, presence of a co-parent, and day care utilization, would also report higher levels of adherence to intervention recommendations. The participants (n=8) were caregivers of children diagnosed with ASD at either the University of Connecticut or Drexel University. These children were screened for ASD during a well-visit to their pediatrician, and upon failing the M-CHAT-R, were ...

The Greatest Basketball Player Of All Time: Lebron Vs. Jordan, Austin Jacobson

Senior Honors Theses

LeBron James is one of the greatest athletes of this generation. I am seeking to determine what he needs to do to surpass Michael Jordan as the greatest of all time. Considering individual statistics, team success, and personal achievements as well as factors such as political and racial activism and involvement, media coverage (including social media), and generational difference, I am hoping to show what is left to accomplish for LeBron to reach and surpass Jordan.