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Together Building Imagination, Tbi Re-Defined: The Effects Of Theater On People With A Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, Marcelline Gangl

Honors Theses, 1963-2015

This study investigates the use of theater as a rehabilitation tool for people who have suffered a mild Traumatic Brian Injury (TBI). In this study, two middle aged women agreed to participate in theater workshops once-a-week for a 5 week period. The workshops focused on different areas of communication: eye contact, movement, spontaneity, creativity, diction, and volume of voice. Based on research done on how a TBI affects an individual, it was found that individuals who are living with a TBI say that they have a loss of socialization skills, a loss of social support and a feeling of being …

The Vestibular Contribution To The Head Direction Signal And Navigation, Ryan M. Yoder, J.S. Taube

Psychology

Spatial learning and navigation depend on neural representations of location and direction within the environment. These representations, encoded by place cells and head direction (HD) cells, respectively, are dominantly controlled by visual cues, but require input from the vestibular system. Vestibular signals play an important role in forming spatial representations in both visual and non-visual environments, but the details of this vestibular contribution are not fully understood. Here, we review the role of the vestibular system in generating various spatial signals in rodents, focusing primarily on HD cells. We also examine the vestibular system's role in navigation and the possible …

The Role Of The Hypothalamic Paraventricular Nucleus And The Organum Vasculosum Lateral Terminalis In The Control Of Sodium Appetite In Male Rats, Laura A. Grafe, Anne E. Takacs, Daniel K. Yee, Loretta M. Flanagan-Cato

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Angiotensin II (AngII) and aldosterone cooperate centrally to produce a robust sodium appetite. The intracellular signaling and circuitry that underlie this interaction remain unspecified. Male rats pretreated with both deoxycorticosterone (DOC; a synthetic precursor of aldosterone) and central AngII exhibited a marked sodium intake, as classically described. Disruption of inositol trisphosphate signaling, but not extracellular-regulated receptor kinase 1 and 2 signaling, prevented the cooperativity of DOC and AngII on sodium intake. The pattern of expression of the immediate early gene product cFos was used to identify key brain regions that may underlie this behavior. In the paraventricular nuclei (PVN) of …

Changes In Cerebral White Matter, Vascular Risk And Cognition Across The Adult Lifespan, Andrew Robert Bender

Wayne State University Dissertations

Numerous studies over the past decade have used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to examine associations between age, diffusion and anisotropy measures of cerebral white matter (WM), and cognitive performance. However, few have examined relationships between intra-individual change in DTI measures of WM and cognitive function. It is possible that the extant cross-sectional findings are a poor representation of age-related change in WM and cognition. The present study used latent difference-score modeling (LDM) to assess change over two years in DTI indices fractional anisotropy (FA), radial diffusivity (DR), axial diffusivity (DA) and mean diffusivity (MD). In addition, we examined the effects …

Homing By Path Integration When A Locomotion Trajectory Crosses Itself, Naohide Yamamoto, Jayleen A. Meléndez, Derek T. Menzies

Psychology Faculty Publications

Path integration is a process with which navigators derive their current position and orientation by integrating self-motion signals along a locomotion trajectory. It has been suggested that path integration becomes disproportionately erroneous when the trajectory crosses itself. However, there is a possibility that this previous finding was confounded by effects of the length of a traveled path and the amount of turns experienced along the path, two factors that are known to affect path integration performance. The present study was designed to investigate whether the crossover of a locomotion trajectory truly increases errors of path integration. In an experiment, blindfolded …

Paranoid Schizophrenia In The Media, Sarah Pawlicki

A with Honors Projects

This research paper first gives an overview of the causes of paranoid schizophrenia, the types of schizophrenia, the diagnostic criteria for paranoid schizophrenia, and the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. It then discusses four films' portrayals of paranoid schizophrenia discussing what aspects of the disorder are actually represented and what aspects aren't.

Plugging Up The Leaky Stem Pipeline With A Stereotype Threat Mentoring Intervention, Luiz Xavier

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study compared the effectiveness of different mentoring programs at reducing feelings of stereotype threat experienced by women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Stereotype threat refers to the extra pressure a person feels to disprove a negative stereotype that applies to him or her. Because stereotype threat has been found to undermine performance and interest in stereotyped domains, it may be a key factor contributing to female underrepresentation in STEM fields. Mentors and proteges were placed in either a stereotype threat reduction condition in which mentors and proteges were encouraged to participate in discussions designed to …

Warning! You Are About To Enter "The Friend Zone": College Students' Experiences With The Friend Zone And Perceptions Of Fictional Characters In Friend-Zone Roles, Ashley Chapman

Honors Projects

People are put into “the friend zone” when they want to pursue a romantic relationship with a friend but find that their friend wants only a platonic relationship. With this research I (a) estimated the frequencies of heterosexual college students' having put an opposite-sex friend into the friend zone and having been put into the friend zone by an opposite-sex friend, (b) examined the emotions associated with these friend-zone experiences, and (c) explored college students' perceptions of characters navigating a friend-zone experience as depicted in two short video clips. Discussion focuses on results concerning the ubiquity of friend-zone experiences, the …

Long-Term Trends Of Participation In Physical Activity During Adolescence With Educational Ambition And Attainment, Frances Jillian Priesmeyer

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

Insufficient physical activity is a serious concern for the youth of this nation. In 2008, more than one third of children and adolescents could be classified as either obese or overweight (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011). Poor nutrition and lack of physical activity are two major factors contributing to this epidemic. A physically active lifestyle during youth not only improves physical health, but has also been shown to improve emotional health, behavior, and academic performance. It is important that this area of research is continued and expanded so appropriate educational policies that support the health and well-being of …

The Role Of The Infralimbic Cortex In A Pain Intensity-Graded Rodent Model Of Distraction Analgesia, Christopher T. Mcnabb

Psychology Dissertations - Archive

The misdirection of attention has been used to reduce experimental and clinical pain- a technique known as distraction analgesia (DA). A growing understanding of the important interrelationship between cognition and pain has prompted the need for a deeper understanding of its neural substrates. There is evidence implicating the infralimbic cortex of the rat brain as a putative mediator of DA, but this has never been directly tested. Therefore, this study investigated the role of the infralimbic cortex (IL) in a rat model of DA at high- and low-intensity pain. One hundred fifty two Sprague Dawley rats underwent stereotaxic surgery to …

The Local Field Potential In The Medial Prefrontal Cortex In Respose To Peripheral Nerve Stimulation, Ailing Li

Psychology Dissertations - Archive

Nociceptive stimuli can activate peripheral nociceptors to produce nociceptive signals which can be projected to the spinal cord and further up to the thalamus and many other cortical and subcortical areas through ascending pathways. Nociceptive information can be processed in various brain areas (e.g., somatosensory cortex and anterior cingulate cortex); it can change activities in those brain areas and eventually result in morphological changes following long-term stimulation. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has been proven to be involved in higher cognitive functions and emotional processing. It receives projections from brain areas that are involved in nociception. Morphological changes of the …

Gaining Control: Changing Relations Between Executive Control And Processing Speed And Their Relevance For Mathematics Achievement Over Course Of The Preschool Period, Caron A. C. Clark, Jennifer Mize Nelson, John Garza, Tiffany D. Sheffield, Sandra A. Wiebe, Kimberly Andrews Espy

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Early executive control (EC) predicts a range of academic out comes and shows particularly strong associations with children’s mathematics achievement. Nonetheless, a major challenge for EC research lies in distinguishing EC from related cognitive constructs that also are linked to achievement outcomes. Developmental cascade models suggest that children’s information processing speed is a driving mechanism in cognitive development that supports gains in working memory, inhibitory control and associated cognitive abilities. Accordingly, individual differences in early executive task performance and the irrelation to mathematics may reflect, at least in part, underlying variation in children’s processing speed. The aims of this study …

The Effects Of Mood On Exhibiting And Experiencing Counterproductive Workplace Behaviors And Organizational Citizenship Behaviors From The Perspectives Of Faculty, Staff, And Students, Alaina Rodriguez

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

We examined the extent to which counterproductive workplace behaviors and organizational citizenship behaviors were mood-contingent in a university sample. Sixty-four employees and thirty-nine students participated in online surveys measuring job affective well-being, organizational constraints, internal locus of control, interpersonal conflict at work, mood, counterproductive workplace behaviors (CWBs), and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Mood did not significantly predict OCBs, but students were more likely to engage in CWBs than were employees. The longer an individual was associated with the university, the more OCBs they exhibited, and organizational constraints significantly predicted CWBs. Factors potentially influencing these results are discussed.

The African Conception Of Death: A Cultural Implication, Lesiba Baloyi, Molebogeng Makobe-Rabothata

Papers from the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology Conferences

From an African perspective death is a natural transition from the visible to the invisible spiritual ontology where the spirit, the essence of the person, is not destroyed but moves to live in the spirit ancestors’ realm dead. It signifies an inextricable spiritual connection between the visible and invisible worlds. This chapter focuses on how traditional Africans conceive and deal with the bereavement process. We adopt the African worldview and philosophy as our framework. We dispute the often held view in mainstream psychology that behavior, in this case the concept of death and the bereavement processes have universal applicability, articulation, …

Selections On The Empirical And Theoretical Investigations Of Behavioral Variability: An Introduction To The Special Issue, W. David Stahlman, Aaron P. Blaisdell

Psychological Science Articles

The study of behavioral variability continues to grow in importance and gather interest. A thorough understanding of the fundamental processes by which variation is generated and by which it is adaptive is potentially important to our understandings of a whole host of phenomena, including all types of learning, from basic skills to language and thought (Bateson & Martin, 2013) as well as the antifragility of complex systems (Taleb, 2012). This issue represents a brief look into an important scientific enterprise, extraordinarily vast in scope and implications (Brembs, 2010). Even if we accept a fundamental unpredictability to animal behavior, this does …

A Holistic Aboriginal Framework For Individual Healing, Gus Hill

Lyle S. Hallman Social Work Faculty Publications

This paper offers up an holistic Indigenous model of individual healing that utilizes medicine wheel teachings to break down the four aspects (spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental) of individual wellness. Teachings about each direction are presented followed by practice techniques for each aspect of the individual self. It is bookended by an introduction to the historical trauma faced by Indigenous peoples in Canada, and a conclusion that draws implications for healing.

Present With An Uncertain Future: Dispositional Mindfulness, Covariation Bias, And Event-Related Potential Responses To Emotional Stimuli In Uncertain Contexts, Robert J. Goodman

Theses and Dissertations

Uncertainty represents a robust threat that can amplify aversive experiences and exaggerate negative expectations about uncertain future outcomes. Mindfulness – an open and receptive attention to present moment experiences -- has been shown to facilitate adaptive regulation when faced with a variety of distinct emotional threats. Reduced experiential avoidance and equanimity in the face of unpleasant emotional experiences have been theorized as central to these emotional regulatory benefits. The present study explored whether dispositional mindfulness would promote adaptive responses to uncertainty during the anticipation of, and after exposure to emotional stimuli, as indicated by self-reports and neural (event-related potential) markers …

Misusing Freud: Psychoanalysis And The Rise Of Homosexual Conversion Therapy, Jonathan Barrett

Psi Sigma Siren

Current ideas of conversion therapy often focus on extremist religious groups that wish to cleanse the world of what they view as an immoral abomination, homosexuality. However, conversion therapy started out as mostly scientific curiosity. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic research on human sexuality helped set the standards on psychosexual study in the twentieth century. Unfortunately, his views on homosexuality became distorted in the 1950s when psychoanalysts and psychiatrists used his methods of therapy but ignored his conclusions on homosexuality and sexual nature itself. Such distortions led to the destruction of many lives within the homosexual community.

Reparative therapy on homosexuals exploded …

Animals' Capability To Bond And The Implications That Follow, Falyn Goldfarb

Honors College Theses

This paper explores the ways in which humans have historically viewed animals, with a focus on Descartes theory automata. Further concepts of the problem of different minds, inherent value, empathy, love, friendship, grief, isolation, anthropomorphism, and biochemistry (focusing on oxytocin, cortisol and the prefrontal cortex) are all explored. Numerous literature reviews are used as examples to fight against the argument that animals are merely machines and can therefore be used and abused. Animal social bonds, including parent-child, purely social, and animal-human, are analyzed for their evolutionary and biological purposes in attempt to highlight the relationships that are not obviously valuable …

Modulatory Effects Of Gaba(B) Receptor Facilitation In A Model Of Chronic Inflammation, Michael A. Langhardt, Jefferson Kinney

McNair Poster Presentations

Inflammation within the brain (neuroinflammation) has been associated with a number of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimerʼs disease (AD) (Solito et al., 2012). Within the brain, inflammation is defined broadly as prolonged activation of the brainʼs immune cells, known as glial cells. Excessive activation of glial cells within the brains of AD patients is a hallmark of the disease, however the mechanism by which this contributes to disease pathology is relatively unclear (Jo et al., 2014). Recently, studies have shown that glial cells, known as astrocytes, are able to synthesize and release the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA (Charles et al., 2003). Further, …

Multi-Sensory Integration In Motion Perception: Do Moving Sounds Facilitate/Interfere With Smooth Pursuit Eye Movements?, Clayton D. Rothwell

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Previous experiments have attempted to measure smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM) to acoustic targets with limited success. Some studies found no evidence for SPEM (Gauthier and Hofferer, 1967; Schaefer et al., 1981; Boucher et al., 2004; Berryhill et al., 2006) and other studies found only a sub-set of subjects could produce SPEM, which was poor in quality (Krukowski et al., 2001; Hashiba et al., 1996; Cloninger et al., 2013, 2014). These findings are despite evidence of auditory motion perception and an auditory motion aftereffect in the psychoacoustic literature (Carlile and Best, 2002; Dong et al., 2000). This thesis explored a …

A Review Of The Models Of Schizophrenia: And A Putative Novel, More Unified Model, Michael Vogel Bronstein

Modern Psychological Studies

Schizophrenia is a debilitating disease state which causes immense pain to sufferers and to their families. Although some proximate causes of symptoms of the disease have been identified, no ultimate cause has been uncovered which can explain all of the symptoms. This paper presents a novel theory of the ultimate cause of some forms of chronic schizophrenia with the potential to explain many (if not all) symptomologies associated with the disease. In addition to its explanatory power, this putative model may also give rise to new early diagnostic tools and treatments for schizophrenia. After the model is fully explained, suggestions …

Effects Of Tylenol And Social Rejection On Memory, Karina Ashley Hamamouche

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Individuals tend to describe physical pain and social pain with the same terminology (DeWall & Baumeister, 2006; Eisenberger, et aI., 2003; Way, et aI., 2009). There is a neurobiological overlap between the systems that control physical pain and social pain. During both physical pain and social rejection, the same brain areas (insulae in the central cortical fissure) are active. DeWall (2011) found that individuals who received a dose of acetaminophen had less activity in the bilateral anterior insula and bilateral posterior insula during a social rejection stimulation. Because social rejection also increases memory (Pajkos, et aI., 20 I 1), subjects …

Intention To Screen For Sexually Transmitted Infections: A Terror Management Health Model Perspective, Bernadette Jones

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The present studies assessed intention and willingness to screen for sexually transmitted infections from a Terror Management Health Model perspective. TMHM proposes that when facing a health decision, people tend to cling to what increases their self-esteem rather than behave in a way that would actually minimize the health threat. The first study hypothesized that exposure to a brochure rife with reminders of “creatureliness” would increase death thought accessibility, while a control brochure would not. No significant difference was found. The second study hypothesized that those with low body-esteem would cling more to what todays culture deems an acceptable body …

Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention For Autism: Is It Actually More "Intensive" Than A Typical Child's Day?, Caitlyn B. Sorensen

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by deficits in social interaction, communication, and excessive ritualistic and repetitive behavior. Numerous treatments for autism devised over the last half-century have proven ineffective, or have never been scientifically evaluated. Despite the state of the research, the most demonstrably effective treatment, Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI), has been a target of much criticism, including accusations of being too intense. A large number of learning trials in relatively short periods of time supposedly induce children to have disordered stress responses. To explore the intensity of EIBI, behavior samples from children engaging …

Supporting Toddlers’ Transfer Of Word Learning From Video, Gabrielle Strouse, Georgene Troseth

School of Education Faculty Publications

Young children frequently do not transfer information from video to real-world situations. We provided perceptual and conceptual supports to help children transfer a new word from video to physical objects and photos. An on-screen actress labeled one of two novel objects; then 24-month-olds were asked to identify the ‘modi.’ Children failed to demonstrate word learning after holding the objects while viewing (comparison condition). In a two-step transfer condition, children correctly identified the modi on a test video image but did not identify the real matching object. However, when parents pointed out that the real objects were “the …

Release From Proactive Interference : The Impact Of Emotional And Semantic Shifts On Recall Performance, Hugh Knickerbocker

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Proactive interference (PI) occurs when the recall of newly learned information is blocked by previously learned information (e.g., recalling an old list of food items when trying to recall a current list of food items during grocery shopping). Release from PI occurs when newly learned information is recalled without interference from previously learned information. Release from PI has been observed when making changes to the to-be-remembered items. Experiment 1 found significant release from PI when category shifted from a neutral category to an emotion category or an emotion-laden category. Experiments 2 and 3 compared the release from PI when shifting …

The Role Of Relational And Item Specific Processing In The Survival Advantage Across English And Spanish, Crystal J. Robinson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The current paper examines the effects of survival processing relative to item specific and relational processing on recall for both English monolinguals and Spanish-English bilinguals. It has been suggested that both item specific and relational processing play an important role in the survival advantage (Burns, Hart, Griffith, & Burns, 2012; Burns, Hwang, & Burns, 2011). However, to date, the generalizability of this advantage has yet to be examined cross-linguistically. In two studies, participants were asked to make survival relevance ratings, pleasantness ratings, and to categorize a set of words from either common taxonomic or ad hoc categories. Spanish-English bilinguals performed …

Examining The Relations Between Disgust, Fear, And Eating Disorder Symptomatology, Lisa Marie Anderson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Exposure interventions for eating disorders typically identify fear as a key treatment target (i.e., fear of fat) and integrate a hierarchical list of the patient's fears into treatment. Recently, research has suggested that the disgust emotion may be equally important for exposure efficacy, as it appears to be more resistant to extinction than fear. Currently, the independent contributions of fear and disgust to eating pathology are unknown, which may limit our ability to develop and implement the most effective exposure interventions. Thus, the current study employed hierarchical multiple regression analyses to evaluate each emotion's relative contribution to eating disorder symptoms …

Mediation Of Recurrent Hypoglycemia's Physiological And Behavioral Effects In The Hippocampus By Glucocorticoids, Danielle Osborne

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Recurrent hypoglycemia (RH) occurs with the over administration of insulin resulting in severe hypoglycemia on a repetitive basis. This occurs most commonly among Type I Diabetics who rely on exogenous insulin replacement for management of their disease; however it is becoming increasingly common among Type II Diabetics. Although cognitive deficits are reported during hypoglycemia, the period following restoration of euglycemia has been denoted by improved hippocampally-mediated short-term and working memory in humans and rodents, respectively. RH is also associated with an altered glucocorticoid secretion profile in response to hypoglycemia. In vitro and in vivo approaches were utilized with the goal …