Digital Commons Network^™

The Relationship Between Oxidative Stress And Partner Opposition In Conflict Resolution, Jenna Thomas

Biological Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

Given the inevitability of conflict in romantic relationships, understanding its biological impact is crucial for developing conflict resolution strategies that promote physical health. While many studies highlight relationship conflict’s negative effects on bodily systems, few examine how specific facets of conflict, such as opposition, impact the body. Partner opposition may contribute to oxidative stress, a biological marker associated with poor physical health, by activating the amygdala. This study investigated the association between partner opposition and oxidative stress in 126 couples expecting their first child. Participants attended a lab session where problem-solving discussions were recorded to assess oppositional behavior and urine …

Investigating The Effects Of Sod1 Knockout On Oxidative Stress And Stress Coping Styles In Zebrafish Using Crispr Technology, Tai Prauner, Ryan Wong

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Reactive oxygen species are byproducts of cellular metabolism that, when not efficiently neutralized, can damage DNA, proteins, and lipids. Superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) is an antioxidant enzyme that converts superoxide radicals into less harmful molecules. While its molecular function is well documented, the role of SOD1 in shaping stress-related behavior remains underexplored. This project aimed to establish foundational tools for studying the behavioral impact of SOD1 knockout across proactive and reactive stress-coping styles in zebrafish.

To support future gene-editing experiments, microinjection and breeding protocols were refined across wildtype AB, proactive, and reactive zebrafish lines. No embryos were injected with CRISPR-Cas9 …

Influence Of Smartphone Notifications On Behavior And Eye Movement Parameters Of Emotional Attention, Joshua Daniel Upshaw

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined how smartphone notifications interact with emotional facial expressions to influence behavioral and physiological eye movement parameters of attentional orientation. Using a dot-probe paradigm, participants viewed mixed emotional face pairs (angry, happy, or neutral) following an auditory stimulus (smartphone notifications, control tones, or silence). Angry faces elicited greater behavioral accuracy and delayed initial fixations, consistent with heightened threat-related attentional engagement. Notifications disrupted attentional stability, reflected in increased fixations and pupil size variability. The combined effect of smartphone notifications preceding angry faces intensified attentional modulation—evidenced by slower responses, increased blinking, greater pupil constriction, less pupil variability, and faster initial …

Interconnections Among Self-Awareness Constructs In Schizotypy: The Importance Of Interoceptive Sensibility, Kendall Beals

Master's Theses

Interoception involves the sensing, interpreting, and integrating of signals from within the body and mind. Interoception is a central concept to our awareness of bodily sensations and thus can be classified as one form of self-awareness. Differences in other forms of self-awareness, such as alexithymia, cognitive insight, and introspective accuracy, have been observed between those with high and low schizotypy. Given the conceptual similarity in these constructs, understanding inter-relationships across measures of self-awareness will serve to advance our understanding of the concept and its various facets for people with high schizotypy. This study examined the relationships between interoceptive sensibility and …

Top-Down Control And Bottom-Up Salience Guide Attention During Visual Search, Christopher Ahn

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

We search the visual world using different strategies, some of them relying on bottom-up salience, others on top-down expectations. However, little is known about how we arbitrate between them. Here, we report a study investigating whether people are sensitive to environmental regularities that incentivize different strategies with differential effort requirements. To test this, we used a visual search task in which people need to search a target in a field of items, each of which is printed in one of two colors. This task allows us to parametrically manipulate bottom-up salience by varying the number of items with the less …

Associations Between Prenatal Inflammation And Dimensions Of Depressive Symptoms Across The Perinatal Period, Margaret M. Redic

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Risk for depression increases during the perinatal period due to several biological and physiological changes, including fluctuations in inflammation. However, the timing and cytokine-specific effects on depressive symptoms during and after pregnancy are unclear. In this study, we examined relations between four cytokines (IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, and TNF-α) and depression at multiple time points throughout the perinatal period and investigated the role of dimensions of depressive symptoms in these relationships. We used longitudinal data of 314 mothers in the Early Life Adversity and Biological Embedding Study from the first trimester of pregnancy to the end of the first year postpartum. …

Better Together – Maximising Group Creativity Through Co-Design, Sophie Tversky

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The complexity and systems-level nature of organisational and societal challenges have called for engaging team creativity, benefiting from differing perspectives and experiences to drive impactful solutions. Surveying the co-design and group creativity literature, it is suggested that creative potential of a group is only realised when several polarities are leveraged by facilitators and orchestrators of the process. This concept was validated and extended through conducting a thematic analysis of a series of exploratory interviews, resulting in the identification of interdependent themes comprising stacks of polarities and a key problem to solve. The themes identified were: Determining Whether Co-Design is Appropriate, …

Emotion Regulation, Reasoning, And Procedural Safeguards In Politically-Polarized Moral Dilemmas., Alanea Graci

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Societal disputes often stem from polarized moral dilemmas. Procedural justice and self-determination (PJSD) afforded by societal decision-making processes may influence cooperation and acceptance in these dilemmas. However, moral conviction can sometimes overshadow PJSD, causing morally-opposed individuals to avoid deliberation, become uncooperative, or reject decision outcomes. I conducted two experiments to explore the role emotions (emotion regulation) and procedural safeguards for democratic deliberation (e.g., equal discussion time, rules for civility) play in these situations. I examined the topic of abortion in the U.S. after the Supreme Court’s June 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade. Undergraduates at a large, urban Midwestern university …

Associations Between Community Based Learning And Openness To Diversity Among Ur Undergraduate Students, Shea T. Baker

Honors Theses

This study examined the relationship between the quality of community based learning (CBL) experiences and students’ openness to diversity, and the potential moderating effects of student identity. Prior research indicates that CBL can have positive diversity-related outcomes, but other studies show CBL can perpetuate biases and white supremacy. I surveyed 152 University of Richmond undergraduate students who completed a CBL course in Fall 2024. Measures included a modified version of the Service Learning Quality Assessment Tool (SLQAT), the Openness to Diversity and Challenge scale, and demographic information. Results indicate that higher quality CBL is positively associated with openness to diversity, …

The Ripple Effects Of Belonging: How Faculty–Student Connections May Drive Mutual Success, Marissa Burton

Honors Theses

Experiencing a sense of belonging on a college campus is predicted to increase academic success, classroom engagement, and greater well-being for students. Less central to the belonging conversation is faculty belonging; since faculty play an instrumental role in the development of student belonging, we hypothesize that faculty belonging may increase positive student outcomes inside and outside the classroom. Study 1 examines faculty experiences of and beliefs about belonging at a Predominantly White Institution (PWI), with the aim of identifying patterns and indicators of heterogeneity. Results revealed that significant burnout is central to a lack of faculty belonging and stronger desires …

Man Versus Machine: Investigating The Likelihood Of Improvement And Perceptions Based On Ai Generated Versus Human Generated Feedback On Writing Assignments, Catherine Cummins

Honors Theses

With AI use becoming more common every day, it is important to test how technology can help us. Feedback is an integral part of the writing process, so we decided to test how well AI can generate feedback for an assignment. Additionally, we examined perceptions people held towards AI & if AI can help student essay scores improve. Overall, no difference of the rate of improvement from the first draft to the second draft was found between AI and humans. Additionally, perceptions of AI are still on the negative side. Finally there was no difference in quality of AI feedback …

Adaptation Challenges In Scene-Specific Visual Search For Individuals With Asd, Carmen Ovalle

Honors Theses

This research investigates how individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) process category information and adapt to changing visual environments during search tasks. Drawing on Enhanced Perceptual Functioning and Weak Central Coherence theories, the study examines whether individuals with ASD rely more on detailed, exemplar-based templates compared to neurotypical individuals. Two experiments manipulated category-color associations within real-world scene contexts using match and mismatch conditions to assess visual search efficiency and cognitive flexibility. While no statistically significant group differences were found, a trending effect suggested that neurotypical participants may engage in more scene-based processing. These findings contribute to a growing body of …

Hegemony And Homophobia Drive Conservative Men’S Heightened Endorsement Of Adverse Relationship Conflict Responses, Abigail Smith

Honors Theses

Conflict is inevitable in romantic relationships, and men vary widely in the strategies they use to resolve such conflict. The present study tested the roles of sexual orientation, political orientation, and masculine norm conformity in predicting men’s endorsement of adverse conflict responses in romantic relationships. In this pre-registered experiment, 403 cisgender men (200 straight, 203 queer-identifying; 44% racial/ethnic minority) first indicated their conformity to stereotypical masculinity norms then were presented with four randomly-ordered vignettes of a couple in an argument—each depicting a target man engaging in one of four conflict responses (physical violence, psychological aggression, withdrawal, compromise). After each vignette, …

Technical Difficulties: An Investigation Of Problematic Social Media Usage And Well-Being Of Emerging Adults, Sarah Swan

Honors Theses

Grounded in previous scholarship investigating the relationship between social media use and psychoemotional outcomes, this study conceptualizes and tests a comprehensive model that constellates predictive factors (i.e., time spent, platforms selected, purposes of use, and emotional regulation abilities) and negative behavioral and emotional outcomes (i.e., addiction and emotional affect), specifically among emerging adults (ages 18-29). A survey of 591 respondents revealed that high usage of certain platforms (i.e., Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook), alongside individual emotional regulation abilities and passivity of social media use, predicts higher levels of addiction and negative emotional outcomes. Additional findings indicate significant differences in social media …

The Drawing Effect: Evaluating Drawing Method And Strategic Implementation On Recall Accuracy, Jacob M. Namias

Dissertations

Drawing images of to-be-remembered word’s reference often improves memory for the word relative to a control in which the word is written or read silently, a pattern dubbed the drawing effect. Drawing effects have been recorded in a variety of contexts and are generally more beneficial than other deep/elaborative encoding tasks. My dissertation compared recall for words that are drawn by copying a given image versus generating a drawn image without copying, and in study contexts in which the proportion of drawn items is disproportionally skewed. Experiment 1 gauged whether drawing effects differ relative to writing when participants draw an …

Identifying And Addressing Current Gaps In Knowledge And Treatment Dissemination For Individuals With Trichotillomania, Leila K. Capel

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Trichotillomania is an impairing and debilitating mental health condition, and while the research in this area is growing, this population is underserved. The aim of this project was to identify gaps in the research that may be contributing to lack of treatment access and begin filling those gaps. The first gap is knowledge of how treatments work and for whom they work best. While there are a variety of treatment options and ways of delivering treatment, individual factors that predict who will benefit most are not well investigated. We explored the individual factors, and aspects of treatment that we believe …

Semantic Context Boosts Word Learning From Low-Informative Events, Wilona Boafo, Sumarga Suanda

Honors Scholar Theses

When a toddler hears a new word, its meaning is rarely transparent from the situational context in which the word occurred. Prior work has illustrated the challenge of learning from these low informative naming events (Cartmill et al., 2013; Medina et al., 2011). We investigate whether another feature of the learning environment – the rich semantic structure in which words occur (Tamis-LeMonda et al. 2019; Custode & Tamis-LeMonda 2020) – may help learners overcome low informativity of individual naming events. To test this, we designed a modified version of the Human Simulation Paradigm (HSP) in which adult participants (N = …

The Examination Of Teacher Mentorship Design For Mentees, Cagla Cobek

Dissertations

Teacher stress has been documented as a problem for today’s educators. Improving teachers’ well-being through mentorship programs is promising in the literature. Therefore, this study examined a daily check-in mentorship program for teachers experiencing moderate stress. The researchers examined the changes in mentees’ daily stress levels, perceived stress, sense of self-efficacy, and use of proactive classroom management strategies. Mentees and mentors were also asked to complete ratings of the social validity of the mentorship program. Three mentees and mentor dyads working in an elementary and middle school in a Southeastern school district in the USA participated. A nonconcurrent Multiple Baseline …

Cultural And Social Factors In Postpartum Depression: A Study Of Latina And White Mothers, Juana Gutierrez-Fuentes

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Postpartum depression is a prevalent mood disorder that impacts 10-20% of women annually in the United States following childbirth. While all pregnant women are at risk of PPD, existing literature suggests that Latina mothers report PPD and seek treatment at lower rates than White mothers. Prior studies have identified risk factors and barriers that impact reporting and treatment among Latinas. The aim of this study is to investigate the interplay of race, depression, marital status, education, poverty level, and social support among White and Latina mothers. Using combined data from the 2017 and 2018 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), we …

Precarious Manhood: Masculinity Threats In Gay Men, Andrew S. Rivera

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Manhood is a precarious state that is both sought and easily undermined and demands continual validation from public perceptions. Previous research shows that threats to one's masculinity often coerces reactions of bravado, aggression, and sexual risk-taking behaviors in men in an attempt to reestablish their manhood. However, little empirical attention is paid to deviations of such reactions as a result of varying self-concepts of masculinity and femininity, such as in gay men. In the current study, I explored the different ways in which self-identified masculine and feminine gay men navigate the volatile state of manhood, particularly when confronted with masculinity …

Effect Of Emotional Expression And Teeth Visibility On Facial Processing, Alexandra Ackerman

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The N170 is an event-related potential (ERP) component commonly associated with its sensitivities to face stimuli. While mixed literature exists, the N170 has been repeatedly demonstrated to be modulated by emotion. In a highly cited study, Blau et al. (2007) found that the N170 is heavily modulated by emotional expression, with fearful expressions eliciting larger N170 amplitudes than neutral expressions. In their study, however, analysis did not account for variability in mouth positioning in fearful and neutral expressions and how this variability might influence differences observed in amplitudes of the N170. A distinctive feature in the fearful condition was the …

The Moderating Effects Of Duration On The Relationships Among Adverse Childhood Experiences, Perceived Social Support, And Adult Mental Health, Jessica M. Templeton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Childhood adversity is a significant predictor of negative mental health outcomes, with prior research primarily focusing on cumulative risk models of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). This study examines whether the duration of ACE exposure moderates the mediating effect of perceived social support on the relationship between ACEs and adult mental health outcomes, specifically anxiety and depression symptomatology. Using archival data from the Correlates of Adversity and Temperament in Childhood (CATCH) dataset, responses from 230 participants were analyzed. Mediation analyses revealed that perceived social support mediates the relationship between ACEs and both anxiety and depression. Moderated mediation analyses further indicated that …

The Moderating Role Of Social Support For Lgbtq People In South Central Appalachia: Present Yet Unimpactful?, Paige Henry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) minority stress theory states that LGBTQ people experience stressors specific to their identity that result in negative mental health outcomes. Social support has been shown to protect against these negative outcomes, but South Central Appalachia is known to be high stigma and low resource for this population. The present study examined the potential moderating impact of four sources of social support (family, friends, partners, and pets) on the relationship between minority stress experiences and psychological distress for LGBTQ people living in South Central Appalachia. Participants included 116 LGBTQ adults living in South Central …

Nature Of Smartphone Use: The Underlying Mechanisms Between Nature Exposure And Urge To Use Social Media, Jia Yi Aw

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The urge to use social media is prevalent and costly in modern society. However, little has been researched on how nature exposure can manage urge to use social media to combat its negative consequences. It was hypothesized that nature exposure through Instagram posts in Study 1 and nature park in Study 2 reduces urge to use social media. The underlying mechanisms were tested in a theory-driven serial mediation model, in which positive emotions, attention restoration and self-regulation served as serial mediators. Study 1 employed Instagram experimental manipulation in a laboratory setting by randomly assigning 206 undergraduates to view Instagram accounts …

Understanding Attitudes And Burnout Among Juvenile Justice System Professionals, Madison Liechti

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Juvenile offending is a consistent issue in the United States. On any given day in the United States, up to 50,000 juveniles are in custody (Leitch,2019). Many juvenile offenders have faced a wide range of adversity in their lives leading up to delinquency and detention. Many therapies have been put into place to help prevent juveniles from reoffending, and while these therapies and treatments can be helpful, we still see consistent rates of recidivism (Narvey et al., 2024).

This study will aim to look inward towards the professionals who work with juveniles to try to discover what attitudes they have …

Sleep Restriction And Its Effects On Mood, April M. Rummery Lamb

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Sleep plays a fundamental role in the human body being able to function effectively, in particular it plays an essential role in mood regulation. Previous research on sleep and mood has found that there is a correlation between receiving an inadequate amount of sleep and having a negative mood. However, the current field has mostly looked at the relationship between disordered sleep and mood disorders as opposed to everyday sleep patterns and daily mood. The present study aims to look at how sleep restrictions which occur naturally (not caused by sleep disorders such as insomnia) effect daily mood. To conduct …

Literature As A Tool For The Introduction Of Mental Health To Children, Kira Ott

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In childhood, literature is a quintessential learning tool, so it is imperative it is used in the introduction of mental health. Around the ages of seven to nine children begin to become aware of their own needs and comprehend others' perspectives (Short et al., 2017, p. 13). At this time non-fiction books can be used to present information when it is organized, accessible, and informative (Short et al., 2017, p. 13). This can be effectively paired with fiction which can help contextualize abstract ideas, and develop self-monitoring skills (Gunawardena, 2023; Short et al., 2017). Mental health, which encompasses thoughts, feelings, …

Interventions Of Eating Habits And Healthy Behaviors, Diego Armando Mazariegos Espinosa

Undergraduate Honors Theses

About thirty to fifty percent of college students report having negative emotions such as anxiety, depression, sadness, anger, hopelessness, shame, fear, and more. And over seventy percent feel exhausted or overwhelmed by schoolwork. According to scholarly research, these emotions pose obstacles during college life impacting the eating habits and healthy behaviors of college students. These habits can have a possibility of bringing lifelong issues in social, educational, and self-esteem aspects. Technology has revolutionized the world in a spectacular way in a short period of time. As students today have access to all sorts of technology like phones and computers, the …

Investigating Prefrontal Cortex Neuronal Signatures Of Opioid-Induced Risk-Taking Behavior, Cana Quave

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Opioid use disorder occurs alongside impaired risk-related decision-making, but the underlying neural correlates are unclear. We developed an approach-avoidance conflict task using a modified conditioned place preference procedure to study neural signals of risky opioid seeking in the prefrontal cortex, a region implicated in executive decision-making. Following morphine conditioned place preference, rats underwent a conflict test in which fear-inducing cat odor was introduced in the previously drug-paired side of the apparatus. While the saline-exposed control group avoided cat odor, the morphine group included two subsets of rats that either maintained a preference for the paired side despite the presence of …

The Promotion Of Native American Boarding School Archives For Truth And Healing, Emma Schuele

Celebrating Scholarship and Creativity Day (2018-)

Native American Boarding Schools were federally funded programs of forced assimilation that involved family separation. There is a lack of community access to the records and archives about these boarding schools. The Niibi Center, our community partner, is working to create an online database to make this information available to the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. Our proposal includes assisting the Niibi Center by sorting through letters, photographs, and artifacts from these boarding schools and helping to digitize them. The aim of this proposal is to promote further truth and healing to the White Earth Band of Ojibwe by providing …