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Attendance And Restorative Practices, Annie W. Scott

MA Community Psychology Theses

Attendance and Restorative Practices examines the attendance and discipline policies of Portland Public Schools (PPS) as a means to understand the discipline gap. The lead investigator is a former PPS employee that worked directly with chronically absent and truant students. The hypothesis of the study is that there is a link between students with high incidents of school exclusions and those who have chronic attendance issues. The School Refusal Assessment Scale by Kearney (2002) is used to evaluate the function school refusal has for individual students, and in this study aggregated as a whole for three targeted middle schools within …

Emotion Regulation During Threat: Parsing The Time Course And Consequences Of Safety Signal Processing, Kathryn R. Hefner, Edelyn Verona, John J. Curtin

Psychology Faculty Publications

Improved understanding of fear inhibition processes can inform the etiology and treatment of anxiety disorders. Safety signals can reduce fear to threat, but precise mechanisms remain unclear. Safety signals may acquire attentional salience and affective properties (e.g., relief) independent of the threat; alternatively, safety signals may only hold affective value in the presence of simultaneous threat. To clarify such mechanisms, an experimental paradigm assessed independent processing of threat and safety cues. Participants viewed a series of red and green words from two semantic categories. Shocks were administered following red words (cue+). No shocks followed green words (cue‐). Words from one …

Influence Of Social Status On Spatial Attention In African Cichlids (Astatotilapia Burtoni), Rebecca Bang

Theses and Dissertations

The present study used subordinate and dominant African cichlid fish Astatotilapia burtoni to test the hypothesis that social status will influence the perception of spatial cues during startle escape behavior. Our results show escape behavior that imply a focused spatial attention to potential threats in dominant fish.

The Effects Of Including Almonds In An Energy-Restricted Diet On Weight, Body Composition, Visceral Adipose Tissue, Blood Pressure And Cognitive Function, Jaapna Dhillon

Open Access Dissertations

Inclusion of almonds in an energy restricted diet has been reported to enhance or have no effect on weight loss. Their effects specifically on visceral fat stores during energy restriction have not been widely examined. Additionally, almond consumption has been associated with reduced blood pressure, but whether this is linked to or is independent of changes of body composition has not been examined. Moreover, almond consumption during energy restriction may be an effective strategy for reversing the negative effects of dieting on cognitive performance. The unique nutrient profile of almonds also has the potential to influence cognitive function post-prandially. The …

L2 Effect On Bilingual Spanish/English Encoding Of Motion Events: Does Manner Salience Transfer?, Heidi E. Parker

Open Access Dissertations

This study explores the potential effect of a second language (L2) on first language (L1) encoding of motion events. The domain of interest is MANNER and the goal is to investigate if the degree of manner salience can be restructured under the effect of a L2. Slobin (2004, 2006) proposes an expansion of Talmy’s (1985, 1991, 2000) binary typology and observes that the degree of manner saliencevaries cross-linguistically. The two languages investigated in this study, Spanish and English, are at divergent points along the cline of manner salience. In addition, Slobin (1996b) suggests dividing MANNER into tier one (T1) …

Facial Processing And Social Motivation In Psychopathy: An Event-Related Potential Study, Emily Dubose Sherman

Open Access Dissertations

Recent work has urged a shift in the perspective of psychopathy to focus on the interpersonal aspects of the disorder that are often overlooked in the broader literature. Conceptual and empirical overlap with an exemplar interpersonal disorder- autism spectrum disorder- lends support to viewing psychopathy as an interpersonal disorder; however, there are interpersonal dysfunctions associated with psychopathy that cannot be attributed wholly to overlap with autistic traits. The current study examined self-report measures, a lab task, and event-related potentials (ERPs) that are related to social, interpersonal functioning and motivation to help elucidate what aspects of psychopathy and ASD are overlapping …

Reflexivity: A First Demonstration, Melissa Jane Swisher

Open Access Dissertations

Currently, the emergent relation of reflexivity after training a set of baseline relations has not been demonstrated with any animal—human or nonhuman. True reflexivity can only be demonstrated if no identity (i.e., physically matching stimulus) relations are trained. In six experiments, the emergence of reflexivity and its opposite, anti-reflexivity, were explored. Pigeons received concurrent successive matching training on two or three arbitrary tasks: AB hue-form and BC form-hue (and AC hue-hue) matching. Once they had acquired these tasks, they were tested for BB (form-form) reflexivity or BB’ (form-form) anti-reflexivity matching. Most (10 of 13) pigeons that received three arbitrary tasks …

Exploring Animacy As A Mnemonic Dimension, Joshua Edward Vanarsdall

Open Access Dissertations

There is a great deal of evidence across cognitive science that animacy, or more generally, the features that make up what it means to be a living thing, is a foundational dimension of human cognition. In perception, animates both capture attention (Pratt, Radulescu, Guo, & Abrams, 2010) and are relatively immune to change blindness (New, Cosmides, & Tooby, 2007). Developmental work places the animate-inanimate distinction as one of the first categories children learn (Opfer & Gelman, 2011). Work in neuroscience points toward a fundamental role for animacy in semantic memory (Caramazza & Mahon, 2003), and linguists have identified animacy as …

Improving The P300-Based Brain-Computer Interface By Examining The Role Of Psychological Factors On Performance, Samantha A. Sprague

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The effects of neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic-lateral sclerosis (ALS) eventually render those suffering from the illness unable to communicate, leaving their cognitive function relatively unharmed and causing them to be “locked-in” to their own body. With this primary function compromised there has been an increased need for assistive communication methods such as brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Unlike several augmentative or alternative communication methods (AACs), BCIs do not require any muscular control, which makes this method ideal for people with ALS. The wealth of BCI research focuses mainly on increasing BCI performance through improving stimulus processing and manipulating paradigms. Recent research …

An Inquiry Into The Distinction Between Belief And Imagination, Maxwell M. Gatyas

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Theories of mind typically see belief and imagination as distinct cognitive attitudes. While most admit that imagination is belief-like in many ways—e.g. in its capacity to guide action, cause emotional responses, and aid in decision-making processes—the popular view is to separate the two attitudes when constructing a theory of mental architecture. The similarities are not enough for theorists to admit that the two attitudes are indistinct. Imagination, then, is construed as an “analogue” of belief, similar in many ways, but nevertheless fundamentally different. In what follows I examine these methods of distinguishing between belief and imagination. My method of examination …

An Investigation Of Short-Term Plasticity In Human Motor Cortex, Matthew Alan Gannon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) produces a transient magnetic field that activates underlying cortical tissue by eliciting an electrical discharge of the neurons in the targeted area. Repetitive TMS (rTMS) uses patterns of repetitive TMS pulses and has been reliably shown to produce changes in the state of cortical excitability outlasting the time of stimulation. One such protocol that has demonstrated states of increased excitability is intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS). This method applies high-frequency bursts (50Hz) of pulses every 200 ms in trains of ten bursts. The effects of and differences between rTMS protocols have been investigated since gaining popularity …

Reflections: Students' Tribute To Stan Kuczaj (1950-2016), Mark J. Xitco, Heather M. Hill, Marie Trone, Rachel T. Walker, Kymbr Wright, Radhika Macheka, Andrew J. Wright, Erica Hernandez, Deirdre Yeater, Lauren Highfill, Lance Miller, Holli Eskelinen, Courtney E. Smith, Pepper Hanna, Beri Brown, Kelly Winship, Natalia Botero, Erin E. Frick, Lisa Lauderdale, Kelsey Moreno, Kendal Smith, Audra Ames, Ali Taylor, Malin Lilley, Briana Cappiello, Riley Macgregor, Jennifer Vonk, Michael Beran

Psychology Faculty Publications

On April 14th, 2016, Animal Behavior and Cognition lost its Editor-in-Chief. But the scientific community and the friends and colleagues of Stanley ‘Stan’ Kuczaj III lost so much more. As many know, Stan began his career in Developmental Psychology, making enormous contributions in the area of language development, but became best known for his many innovative contributions in the area of marine mammal behavior. Stan founded Animal Behavior and Cognition because he was deeply passionate about research with a broad range of topics concerning animal behavior, animal cognition, and animal welfare. He was equally passionate about the idea that science …

Global/Local Processing In Incidental Perception Of Hierarchical Structure, Mark S. Mills

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The goal of the current thesis is to provide a framework for investigating and understanding visual processing of hierarchical structure (i.e., local parts nested in global wholes, such as trees nested in forests) under incidental processing conditions—that is, where processing of information at global and local levels is both uninformative (cannot aid task performance) and task-irrelevant (need not be processed to perform the task). To do so, a novel method combining two widely-used paradigms (spatial cueing and compound stimulus paradigms) is used for implicitly probing observers’ perceptual representations over the course of processing. This compound arrow cueing paradigm was used …

Discriminative Stimulus Effects Of 3,4-Methylenedioxypyrovalerone And 4-Methylmethcathinone, Michael D. Berquist

Dissertations

Recent escalation in the popularity of recreational synthetic cathinone (“bath salts”) use has prompted numerous scientific investigations of the neurochemical and behavioral effects of 3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) and 4-methylmethcathinone (4-MMC), two of the more common chemical constituents of these illicit “bath salts”. Previous neurochemical and electrophysiological studies have revealed that MDPV functions as a blocker, and 4-MMC as a substrate, at monoamine transporters, and both produce transient increases in extracellular monoamines. In addition, previous research has demonstrated that MDPV and 4-MMC support self-administration in nonhuman experimental subjects, and their rewarding effects are observed when paired with contextual cues in nonhuman models …

Assessing Change In Attachment Security Of Adolescents At Residential Therapeutic Programs, Laura Santa Thum

Dissertations

Adolescents with significant, persistent behavioral and mental health problems are increasingly being treated in private residential treatment programs (RTPs). Recent research at such programs shows that adolescents’ symptoms improve over the course of treatment and that such positive results persist up to a year post discharge. This study attempts to address what is occurring below the symptom level by exploring if attachment security increases as symptoms improve over the course of treatment in private RTPs. The level of attachment security was assessed along the dimensions of attachment avoidance and anxiety as a general construct and according to specific relationships (with …

Establishing And Testing Conditioned Reinforcers: Evaluating The Effects Of The Discriminative Stimulus Procedure Using Intermittency With Individuals With Developmental Disabilities, Yannick A. Schenk

Dissertations

A common characteristic of individuals with developmental disabilities is a restricted range of interest. Developing procedures to establish new reinforcers for such individuals can promote the acquisition of new skills and ameliorate decreases in motivation related to satiation. Several procedures for conditioning reinforcers have shown to be effective in the research literature for establishing neutral stimuli as conditioned reinforcers. Most of this literature is basic research with animal subjects (e.g., rats, pigeons). Few applied studies have directly evaluated the use of these procedures. Additional research is necessary to determine their effectiveness. The purposes of this study were to: (a) evaluate …

An Evaluation Of The Acceptability And Effects Of A Computer-Delivered Values-Based Behavioral Activation Treatment For Depression Among Older Adults, Kellie Reynolds

Dissertations

Depression is a common psychological disorder among older adults and is associated with serious secondary effects to health and social well-being. Behavioral activation has been found to be an efficacious treatment for depression. However, there is limited research on the treatment effects of behavioral activation with older adults. In general, older adults under-utilize mental health treatments. Computer-delivered treatments have been developed to address access and under-utilization. The purpose of this dissertation was to evaluate the acceptability and effects of a computer-delivered values-based behavioral activation treatment for depression in older adults. This study consisted of two phases. Phase I consisted of …

A Functional Analysis Of Leader Behavior In A Behavioral Health Setting, Jason White

All Theses And Dissertations

A requirement for Maine behavioral health organizations to provide all employees with evaluations lacks guidelines on how to evaluate leader behavior; best practices are to provide a multifaceted evaluation process that includes direct observation. A single-case research design and continuous partial interval recording procedures were conducted on a male behavioral health clinician leading clinical supervision in which the dependent variable was the clinician’s delivery of positive reinforcement and the independent variable was the provider’s increased discussion of case shares. The basic findings showed that leader behavior changed as follower behavior changed to manage the group and meet group goals. The …

Increasing Caregiver Supervision Of Young Children: Teaching Scanning, Predicting Behavior, And Modifying For Safety, Natalie Truba

Dissertations

Unintentional injuries account for a significant number of child deaths and visits to the emergency department. Although increased supervision is routinely shown to be an effective method of preventing unintentional childhood injuries, few interventions systemically teach caregivers behavioral skills to supervise their children appropriately. The present study utilized a multiple baseline design to pilot test an intervention designed to increase caregiver supervision and decrease unintentional childhood injuries by training caregivers how to provide appropriate levels of supervision for their young children (ages 6 to 36 months). Specifically, caregivers were taught in the present study include: (1) scanning the environment (for …

The Lived Experience Of Individuals With Chronic Back And Neck Pain, Depression, And/Or Anxiety, Tara L. Palmeri

Dissertations

More than 1.5 billion people worldwide suffer from chronic pain (CP). People who experience chronic pain are 20 to 40% more likely to meet criteria for an anxiety disorder, and three to four times more likely to be clinically depressed than their pain-free counterparts. The relationship between CP and mental health has been studied quantitatively; however, few researchers have investigated co-morbid CP and mental health through a phenomenological lens. The subjective nature of the relationship is not comprehensively addressed within the literature.

This qualitative phenomenological study explored (a) how individuals with chronic back and/or neck pain (CBNP) experience, understand, and …

Behavioral Effects Of Phencyclidine On Nicotine Self- Administration And Reinstatement In The Presence Or Absence Of A Visual Stimulus In Rats, Natashia Swalve, Steven T. Pittenger, Rick A. Bevins, Ming Li

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Rationale—Tobacco use is a serious health problem in the United States and this problem is potentiated in patients with schizophrenia. The reward system is implicated in schizophrenia and may contribute to the high comorbidity between nicotine use and schizophrenia but very little research has been done on the topic. The reward-enhancement effect of nicotine has been shown to be important in nicotine use, but there have been no studies on this effect in animal models of schizophrenia.

Objectives—This study was designed to determine the effects of phencyclidine, used to model negative symptoms of schizophrenia, on self-administration of nicotine with or …

Implementing A Positive Variation Of The Good Behavior Game With The Use Of A Computer-Based Program, Shauna Lynne

Dissertations

The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is an interdependent group contingency designed to address behavioral concerns. The vast majority of published findings on the GBG have supported its effectiveness in decreasing disruptive behavior in classroom settings. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness and the social validity of a positive variation of the GBG in which teachers were asked to use ClassDojo to manage each team’s progress. ClassDojo is a computer-based program that enables teachers to track student behavior and monitor progress by way of a virtual system. Dependent variables included class-wide disruptive and academically engaged behavior (AEB), …

The Effect Of Auditory Stimulation On Sleep Disruption In West Indian Manatee (Trichechus Manatus Latirostris), Natalija Lace

Dissertations

Florida manatees inhabit waterways where motorized boats are common. Although manatee mortalities resulting from boat strikes are well documented, the effect of boat noise on some manatee behaviors, including rest, has not been investigated. This study focuses on rest behavior and used a playback experiment with four manatees at the Lowry Park Zoo in Florida. We tested their responses to playback stimuli of either boat noise, silence, or manatee calls. A playback trial was initiated when the focal animal showed behavioral characteristics of rest.

Results showed that rest was interrupted in response to the playback of boat noise for each …

Perceiving Hierarchical Musical Structure In Auditory And Visual Modalities, Jessica Erin Nave-Blodgett

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

When listening to music, humans perceive underlying temporal regularities. The most perceptually salient of these is the beat, what listeners would tap or clap to when engaging with music, and what listeners use to anchor the events in the musical surface to a temporal framework. However, we do not know if people perceive those beats in hierarchically ordered relationships, with some beats heard as stronger and others as weaker, as proposed by musical theory. These hierarchical relationships would theoretically be advantageous in orienting attention to particular locations in musical time, and facilitate synchronizing musical behavior such as performing or dancing. …

Sex, Sexuality And Sexual Practice For Trans Individuals And Their Romantic Partners., Kinton Rossman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Transgender populations demonstrate significant sexual diversity, with over three-fourths (77%) of transgender individuals identifying as sexual minorities (Grant et al., 2011); however, a majority of research on sex, sexuality, and sexual practice has focused exclusively on cisgender and heterosexual individuals and, perhaps more importantly, addressed these issues a heteronormative and cisnormative perspective (Nichols, 2014). Such frameworks have created significant gaps in research about sex, sexuality, and sexual practice for trans individuals including understanding how gender transition influences sex and sexuality and how trans individuals and their partners engage in sexual practice. The current study addressed these omissions in the literature …

Children’S Peer Relationship Quality And Changes In Peer Victimization: The Search For Viable Intervention Targets, James Thomas Craig

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Stable peer victimization during childhood and adolescence has been linked to both concurrent and future Social and psychological maladjustment (e.g., Hawker & Boulton, 2000; Juvonen, Graham, & Schuster, 2003; Kaltiala-Heino, Rimpela, Rantanen, & Rimpela, 2000; Reijntjes, Kamphuis, Prinzie, & Telch, 2010). Currently, there is evidence to suggest the quality of children’s peer relationships is associated with the level and course of their victimization experiences (e.g., Fox & Boulton, 2006; Schwartz, McFayden-Ketchum, Dodge, Petit, & Bates, 1999; Wolke, Woods, & Samara, 2009). Although the link between peer relationship quality and victimization has been well-documented in the literature; lacking is a thorough …

Familiarity Bias: Examining A Cognitive-Affective Mechanism Underlying Ideological Support For The Status Quo, John C. Blanchar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

It is well established that people like familiarity over novelty. Because that which is most familiar is frequently indicative of the way things are, favoring familiarity should create a psychological advantage for the status quo. In two studies, I tested the hypothesis that familiarity bias—susceptibility to the mere-exposure effect whereby attitude objects receive increasingly favorable evaluations due to repeated sensory experience—is foundational to ideological support for the status quo. In Study 1, individual variation in familiarity bias predicted greater Right-Wing Authoritarianism. Existential threat was experimentally manipulated via the salience of international terrorism in Study 2, but was unsuccessful due to …

Cross Validation Of The Caregiving Helplessness Questionnaire: Associations With Maternal History Of Maltreatment And Intimate Partner Violence, Maegan Calvert

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Disorganized caregiving has been associated with both maternal childhood history and current experiences of trauma. However, the methods by which disorganized caregiving has been studied have been time intensive and costly. The current study aimed to extend previous research with the Caregiving Helplessness Questionnaire (CHQ; George & Solomon, 2011), which is a self-report measure designed to assess aspects of disorganized caregiving such as caregiving helplessness, role reversal, and frightened/frightening caregiving experiences. Participants (N = 156) were a community sample of mothers of children ages 5 to 10 who were primarily white and who reported a range of traumatic experiences. It …

The Social Brain In Human And Religious Evolution: Elucidating The Role Of Theory Of Mind In (Non)Religious Belief, Thomas J. Coleman Iii

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Contemporary theorists of religion have argued that religious beliefs are “natural” because they arise from normally functioning social cognitive capacities, especially Theory of Mind (ToM). Hence, attempts to explain atheism have relied heavily on the assumption that nonbelievers may have a malfunctioning ToM and other traits associated with the autism spectrum continuum (ASC). However, few studies currently address this topic and the evidence either way remains ambiguous. The current research narrows this empirical gap, addressing these claims with a two-fold approach. First, a near comprehensive review of ToM is provided. Second, this study is exploratory, employing a unique methodology and …

Establishing A Link Between Personality And Social Rank In A Group Of Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus), Erin Elizabeth Frick

Master's Theses

Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) have been documented to possess personality traits that remain consistent over time (Highfill & Kuczaj, 2007) and across contexts (Kuczaj, Highfill, & Byerly, 2012). Such individual differences are thought to play an important role in various social contexts such as hierarchical dominance (Highfill & Kuczaj, 2010). The present study investigated the relationship between personality and social rank within a captive group of bottlenose dolphins housed at the Roatan Institute for Marine Science (RIMS). Social rank was established using questionnaires distributed to the RIMS experienced staff. Personality traits were derived from behavioral coding using context-specific …