Digital Commons Network^™

Who Cares? Attitudes Of High School Students From Various Countries Towards Global And Domestic Environmental Issues, Kseniya Fomichova, Taku Misonou

Papers from the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology Conferences

This study focused on attitudes of 16 year-old students from six countries towards environmental issues on domestic and global scales. Male and female students from China, Guinea, Japan, Malaysia, Ukraine and Vietnam expressed their level of concern about the following in regard to their country and the world: (a) air quality, (b) drinking water quality, (c) pollution caused by atomic power plants, (d) clearing of forests, (e) extinction of plants and animals, (f) climate change and (g) global disaster. This research focused on gender and cultural variability and invariance under diverse conditions of students’ backgrounds.

The most pronounced intercultural regularity …

Categorical Change: Exploring The Effects Of Concept Drift In Human Perceptual Category Learning, Andrew Wismer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Categorization is an essential survival skill that we engage in daily. A multitude of behavioral and neuropsychological evidence support the existence of multiple learning systems involved in category learning. COmpetition between Verbal and Implicit Systems (COVIS) theory provides a neuropsychological basis for the existence of an explicit and implicit learning system involved in the learning of category rules. COVIS provides a convincing account of asymptotic performance in human category learning. However, COVIS – and virtually all current theories of category learning – focus solely on categories and decision environments that remain stationary over time. However, our environment is dynamic, and …

Atheism And The Effects Of Mortality Salience And Limited Analytic Processing Ability On Religious Faith And Teleological Thinkin, Brett Jordan Waggoner

ETD Archive

The scenario of the atheist in the proverbial foxhole has been a topic of discussion in religious circles for centuries. Building on prior research utilizing terror management theory (TMT), a dual process model of cognition, and previous work suggesting that humans are intuitively wired for teleological and religious concepts, the researchers set out to examine atheist’s religiosity when confronted with the reality of one’s impermanence. To explore this idea, the present experiment recruited a sample of atheists, manipulated their awareness of mortality, manipulated their ability to employ analytic thinking, and measured various intuitive cognitions (e.g., teleological reasoning) alongside religious belief. …

Recognition Memory Revisited: An Aging And Electrophysiological Investigation, Elliot C. Jardin

ETD Archive

This study provides a better understanding of contributing factors to age differences in human episodic memory. A recurrent finding in recognition memory is that older adults tend to have lower overall accuracy and tend to make fewer false-alarm errors in judging new items, relative miss errors (Coyne, Allen & Wickens, 1986; Danziger, 1980; Poon and Fozard 1980). Two possible causes for decline in these abilities include an age-related decrement in speed of processing (Salthouse 1991) and changes in information processing ability due to entropy (Allen, Kaufman, Smitch, & Propper 1998a; Mallik et al., in preparation). Additionally, age differences may be …

Terror Management Theory: The Effect Of Death On Criminogenic Thought Patterns, Zachary J. Kyle

Modern Psychological Studies

Terror Management Theory has been applied with judges and juries in the courtroom, but not yet with criminals themselves. The current study looks for an association between criminogenic thought patterns and worldviews of criminal behavior. Thought patterns were assessed with the Measure of Criminogenic Thinking Styles (MOCTS), while worldviews were measured with the associate section of the Measures of Criminal Attitudes and Associates. Results indicated that mortality salience did not increase criminogenic thinking. However, criminogenic thinking scores from the MOCTS were correlated with scores on the associate scale under mortality salience. These findings may suggest that participants with a worldview …

The Metamodern Man, Nathan R. Arrowsmith

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Abstract The first time I heard the term, “Metamodern Age,” I was actively involved in a discussion about the various themes in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The setting was a Master of Liberal Studies class (Rollins College, MLS 604), entitled “Modernity” taught by Dr. Tom Cook. It was October of 2015. Frankenstein, also known as The Modern Prometheus, is a masterpiece and a solid sample from the Modern Era. Following approximately fifty years of Postmodern Era sludge, we are now in what could be identified as the Metamodern Era. Our Modernity class speculated confidently that the current Age of Metamodernism is …

The Impact Of Neonatal Pain And Reduced Maternal Care On Brain And Behavioral Development, Sean Michael Mooney-Leber

Wayne State University Dissertations

In the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) preterm infants are exposed to a multitude of stressors, which include both neonatal pain and reduced maternal care. Clinical and preclinical research has demonstrated that exposure to neonatal pain and reduced maternal care has a profound negative impact on brain and behavioral development. Currently, the biological mechanism by which both of these stressors impacts brain and behavioral outcomes remains widely unknown. To uncover a potential biological mechanism, the current dissertation project utilized a preclinical model of repetitive needle pokes and developed a novel model of reduced maternal care through tea-ball encapsulation. Briefly, rat …

Social Contact Patterns Can Buffer Costs Of Forgetting In The Evolution Of Cooperation, Jeffrey R. Stevens, Jan K. Woike, Lael J. Schooler, Stefan Lindner, Thorsten Pachur

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

Analyses of the evolution of cooperation often rely on two simplifying assumptions: (i) individuals interact equally frequently with all social network members and (ii) they accurately remember each partner's past cooperation or defection. Here, we examine how more realistic, skewed patterns of contact—in which individuals interact primarily with only a subset of their network's members—influence cooperation. In addition, we test whether skewed contact patterns can counteract the decrease in cooperation caused by memory errors (i.e. forgetting). Finally, we compare two types of memory error that vary in whether forgotten interactions are replaced with random actions or with actions from previous …

Mesotocin Influences Pinyon Jay Prosociality, Juan Duque, Whitney Leichner, Holly Ahmann, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

Many species exhibit prosocial behavior, in which one individual’s actions benefit another individual, often without an immediate benefit to itself. The neuropeptide oxytocin is an important hormonal mechanism influencing prosociality in mammals, but it is unclear whether the avian homologue mesotocin plays a similar functional role in birds. Here, we experimentally tested prosociality in pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus), a highly social corvid species that spontaneously shares food with others. First, we measured prosocial preferences in a prosocial choice task with two different payoff distributions: Prosocial trials delivered food to both the subject and either an empty cage or a partner …

Ubiquitous Emotion Analytics And How We Feel Today, Susan Currie Sivek

Faculty Publications

Emotions are complicated. Humans feel deeply, and it can be hard to bring clarity to those depths, to communicate about feelings, or to understand others’ emotional states. Indeed, this emotional confusion is one of the biggest challenges of deciphering our humanity. However, a kind of hope might be on the horizon, in the form of emotion analytics: computerized tools for recognizing and responding to emotion. This analysis explores how emotion analytics may reflect the current status of humans’ regard for emotion. Emotion need no longer be a human sense of vague, indefinable feelings; instead, emotion is in the process of …

If Nonhuman Animals Can Suicide, Why Don’T They?, C. A. Soper, Todd K. Shackelford

Animal Sentience

An evolutionary analysis suggests that selection is unlikely to have tolerated the capacity for intentional self-killing in nonhuman animals. The potential to escape pain by suicide would have presented a recurrent and severe adaptive problem for an animal with a reproductive future to protect. If the potential for suicide arose in the evolutionary past, anti-suicide mechanisms may have co-evolved, as we believe they have in adult humans. Peña-Guzmán’s (2017) argument that some nonhuman animals can suicide is incomplete without an account of the defences that result in the vast majority opting not to.

Variables Influencing Misogyny, Rachel E. Mcpherson

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Misogyny, a hatred against women, is an attitude that causes emotional distress and can negatively affect women's psychological and physical health. It has shown itself in extreme ways and can be crippling to women. Studies have shown that psychological distress is heightened when women are subjected to sexist events. Misogyny exists in the classroom, workplace, and politics, and is virtually inescapable from women. It is not uncommon for women in positions of power are often unjustly branded with cruel epithets. Despite the modernity of today's culture, misogyny is still a prevalent issue. This study seeks to assess the underlying predictors …

Reduced Orexin System Function Underlies Resilience To Repeated Social Defeat Stress, Laura A. Grafe, Darrell Eacret, Jane Dobkin, Seema Bhatnagar

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Exposure to stress increases the risk of developing affective disorders such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, these disorders occur in only a subset of individuals, those that are more vulnerable to the effects of stress, whereas others remain resilient. The coping style adopted to deal with the stressor, either passive or active coping, is related to vulnerability or resilience, respectively. Important neural substrates that mediate responses to a stressor are the orexins. These neuropeptides are altered in the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with stress-related illnesses such as depression and PTSD. The present experi- ments used a rodent …

Extracurricular Activities And Disadvantaged Youth: A Complicated - But Promising - Story, Ryan D. Heath, Charity Anderson, Charles M. Payne, Ashley Cureton Turner

Social Work - All Scholarship

Increased political and research interest in extracurricular activities stems, in part, from the claim that these programs especially benefit disadvantaged youth. However, little literature has synthesized studies across types of disadvantage to assess this claim. This article reviews research on disadvantaged youth in extracurricular programs, including differences by gender, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and immigrant status. Our review reveals a promising, if complicated, picture. Although disadvantaged youth are less likely to participate in extracurricular activities, they often experience greater benefits, depending on the risk status and activity type. Evidence clearly supports expanding access to extracurricular programs for disadvantaged youth.

Chicken Minds And Moral Standing, Kristin Andrews

Animal Sentience

Some of the cognitive traits that Marino reviews are not in themselves relevant to ethics, either for chickens or human infants, but affective traits are, among them desires.

The Impact Of Caseworkers' Educational Background And Placement Outcomes For Foster Children, Katrina Haynes

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Decades of data document that permanent placements of children in the welfare system has been a concern in Mississippi. As foster care rates increase, more children are awaiting placement. Researchers have linked child welfare workers' educational background to placement outcomes for foster care children; however, researchers have not addressed the relationship between child welfare workers' educational backgrounds and foster care placement outcomes in Mississippi. This quantitative study examined the educational backgrounds of social work and nonsocial work child welfare caseworkers and other factors such as children's gender and race as predictors in placement outcomes for children in welfare custody. Attachment …

The Relationships Between Older, Physically Impaired Men And Their Pets., Jennifer Hughes Williams

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The present study examined older male adults' lived experiences with pet ownership. There is robust literature on older adults and the human-animal bond, but presently there are no qualitative phenomenological studies that focus solely on older physically impaired males who live alone and the relationships they have with their pets. With the guiding framework of biopsychosocial theory and using intensive interviews, 10 older males (65+) who suffered from some physical impairment discussed the relationships they have with their pets, and how their companion animals affect their physical, emotional, and social health. All interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed for themes. …

The Effects Of Nicotine On Maladaptive Alcohol Drinking, Isabella Stuart

Research on Capitol Hill

• Impulsivity is defined as choosing a smaller-sooner choice over a more rational larger-later choice.
• Most delay discounting studies only investigate magnitude differences in the same reward.
• Cross-commodity discounting consists of providing the opportunity for subjects to choose between a low quality reward that is available almost immediately and a higher quality reward that is available at a time delay. We will model this in an animal model with rats who have a choice between a relatively small amount of alcohol immediately and a relatively large amount of food at a delay.

Olfaction, Memory, And Presence In Warfighters: Do The Scents Of War Matter?, Benson Munyan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Background: Exposure therapy (EXP) is a first-line intervention for combat-related PTSD. EXP works by repeatedly exposing the patient to the feared stimuli, situation, or physical sensations in the absence of actual danger until the stimuli no longer evoke maladaptive responses. Over the past decade, multiple technologies have been introduced to augment the EXP process by presenting multi-sensory cues (e.g., sights, smells, sounds) to increase patients' sense of presence. Exploratory research has only broadly examined the effect of odorants on the patient's sense of presence during simulated exposure tasks. This study hypothesized that those with autobiographical memories similar to the virtual …

Autism Spectrum Disorder (Asd) And Equine Assisted Therapy: An Integrative Review Of The Literature, Brittany R. Selzer

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The purpose of this integrative review of the literature is to examine the effectiveness of equine assisted therapy with individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). An extensive review of the literature was conducted regarding children diagnosed with ASD who received equine therapy, equine psychotherapy, therapeutic horseback riding, or horse therapy. Inclusion criteria include articles written in the English language, articles that were peer-reviewed, and had a publication date from 2006 to present. Fourteen articles were analyzed regarding children with ASD who participated in different types of equine therapy. The majority of the studies found individuals with ASD who participated …

Who's That Knocking At My Door? Neural Bases Of Sound Source Identification, Guillaume Lemaitre, John A. Pyles, Andrea R. Halpern, Nicole Navolio, Matthew Lehet, Laurie M. Heller

Faculty Journal Articles

When hearing knocking on a door, a listener typically identifies both the action (forceful and repeated impacts) and the object (a thick wooden board) causing the sound. The current work studied the neural bases of sound source identification by switching listeners' attention toward these different aspects of a set of simple sounds during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning: participants either discriminated the action or the material that caused the sounds, or they simply discriminated meaningless scrambled versions of them. Overall, discriminating action and material elicited neural activity in a left-lateralized frontoparietal network found in other studies of sound identification, wherein …

Human Factor Effects Of Simulating Battlefield Malodors In Field Training, William Pike

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In order to explore how to better utilize simulated odors for live training, a study of 180 United States Military Academy at West Point cadets was undertaken to determine whether pre-exposure to a simulated malodor may result in an amelioration of performance issues, as well as improving performance of a complex task. Exposure to malodors has long been shown to increase stress and escape behavior, and reduce performance of complex tasks, in addition to degrading other human factor areas. However, desensitization to a particular odor through a process known as olfactory adaptation, could ameliorate these performance issues. In this study, …

Utilizing Animal Metaphors In Child Psychotherapy: An Integrative Approach For Therapists, Tricia J. Gordon

The Graduate Review

Despite a plethora of therapeutic approaches utilized when working with children, there is still a need for empirically based, child-centered, developmentally appropriate methodologies. This research aims to provide a greater understanding of the use of action-based metaphors when working with clients in early to middle childhood, while integrating various treatment modalities. While there are a countless number of metaphorical possibilities, there is a lack of research with a focus on the specific use of animal metaphors in child therapy. This child-friendly integrative approach proposes that therapists adjust their current working model to see the client as a whole, while integrating …

The Sweet Truth: Initial And Post-Ingestive Effects Of Sugar And Protein On Taste Preferences In Rats, Katrina Prantzalos

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

The purpose of this study is to investigate the food preferences of rats when given food with either a high protein or a high sugar content. We hoped to compare initial preferences and long-term exposure to determine the role of taste, and then post-ingestive effects, to examine if taste preferences are formed on the basis of taste alone or caused by the body's absorption of nutrients. To achieve this goal, we studied rats' food choices when presented with high protein yogurt or yogurt with a high sugar content. For half the rats two dishes were placed into the home container …

The Impact Of Higher Education, Ethnicity, & The Intersection Of Both On Perceptions Of People With Mental Illness, Natalie Crocker

MA Community Psychology Theses

The purpose of this study was to explore how higher education and ethnicity may individually impact perceptions of people with mental illness, as well as to explore the intersection of higher education and ethnicity on such perceptions. Descriptive phenomenological in design, this study explores the experiences of ten students at a university in Portland, Oregon. In semi-structured, open-ended interviews participants recalled experiences in which higher education, ethnicity, and the intersection of both impacted how they thought about mental illness. Interview transcripts were coded and analyzed using Colaizzi’s (1978) seven-step process. The analysis resulted in several themes supporting the current literature …

The Use Of Response Interruption And Redirection (Rird) With Stimulus Control Training For Motor Stereotypy In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder (Asd), Ambreen Shahabuddin

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Gait Development In African Elephant Calves, Brandon Austin-Elizondo Knepper

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Most descriptions of elephant locomotion recognize only one gait: the lateral sequence walk. In contrast, several studies on African elephants (Loxodonta africana) have indicated that elephants use at least two other gaits: an amble and a trot. Other animals modify their gaits over the lifespan, but there is no published research on the gaits of elephant calves. The present study examines gait development in African elephant calves born at the Indianapolis Zoo between 2000 and 2015. I conducted frame-by-frame analysis on the gait samples of six calves across two time periods: Early (zero to six months of age) and Late …

The Sovereign Signifier: Agamben And The Nonhuman - Chapter, Paul Eisenstein

Faculty Books

This book initiates the discussion between psychoanalysis and recent humanist and social scientific interest in a fundamental contemporary topic – the nonhuman. The authors question where we situate the subject (as distinct from the human) in current critical investigations of a nonanthropoentric universe.

Analogical Reasoning, Stella Christie

Psychology Faculty Works

Analogical reasoning is the ability to perceive and use relational commonality between two situations. Most commonly, analogy involves mapping relational structures from a familiar (base situation to an unfamiliar situation (target). For example, solving the analogy “chicken is to chick like tiger is to___?” requires perceiving the relation parent–offspring in the base domain (chicken:chick) and mapping the same relation to the target (tiger:__?) to get to the answer cub. Relational similarity is the crux of analogical reasoning; what is crucial here is the sameness of the relation, not of other similarities—chickens and tigers do not look alike.

Setting The Stage: Gender, Sex, And Sexualities In Psychology, N. Dess, Jeanne Marecek, L. Bell

Psychology Faculty Works

No abstract provided.