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Race And Recall: The Effect Of A Patient's Skin Tone On The Ability Of A Psychologist In Training To Recall Clinical Data, Cheryl Ann Notari

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Front Matter

Modern Psychological Studies

No abstract provided.

Body Image Distortion In College Females: Effects On Exercise Identity And Commitment, Marie Schroder, Lauren Leslie, Mary Leigh Gregory

Modern Psychological Studies

Body image concerns have been related to behavioral aspects of exercise. This study examined the psychological aspect of exercise on role identity. It was hypothesized that college females who overestimated percentage body fat were more likely to identify exercise as an integral self-concept and commit strongly to exercise than correct or underestimators. Twenty-five undergraduate females, never diagnosed with an eating disorder, completed an Exercise Identity Scale and a Commitment to Exercise scale. Body fat was assessed using calipers at three body sites. Body image distortion is prevalent among normal populations but shows no significant relation to exercise identity and commitment. …

Divorce In The Family: How Does It Affect Personality And Views Of Love And Marriage?, Kymberley K. Bennett

Modern Psychological Studies

This study was conducted to investigate the impact of parental divorce on such personality variables as global optimism and self-esteem, and attitudes toward love and marriage. Eighty-seven women and 48 men enrolled in a small, private university participated in this study. A questionnaire was developed specifically for this study which included Sheier and Carver's (1985) Life Orientation Test, Rosenberg's (1965) Self-Esteem Scale, and several other established measures. In addition, participants read five scenarios depicting couples on the verge of divorce and were asked to rate each impending divorce for its likelihood and its acceptability. Results indicated that all participants were …

Behavioral Self-Handicapping Among Male And Femal Athletes, Richanne C. Sniezek

Modern Psychological Studies

Self-handicapping is a term used to refer to the strategic creation of obstacles that interfere with successful performance of a task. Self-handicapping allows a person to credit failure to an external cause (the handicap) or to credit success to an internal cause (e.g., ability to overcome an obstacle), thereby protecting self-esteem in either case. The general consensus among researchers has been that women do not behaviorally self-handicap. The goal of the present study is twofold. The first goal is to explore possible paradigms in which females behaviorally selfhandicap. It is proposed that self-handicapping women do choose behavioral handicaps in high …

Sex: The Defining Variable In Mate Selection, Shirley A. Forbes, Tanacha Brown, Timothy Adams, Lenore Davis

Modern Psychological Studies

The evolutionary hypothesis of mate selection was tested by combining traits deemed as evolutionarily valued (Cramer, Schaeffer Et Reid, 1996) with pictures showing facial features deemed as physically attractive according to the evolutionary hypothesis (Buss, 1989; Singh, 1995). Traits and pictures not congruent with the evolutionary hypothesis were also presented. Four stimulus persons were presented to ninety-one male subjects and 114 female subjects who were asked to rate their desirability as a mate. The results showed a main effect for stimulus condition, with the physical attractiveness pictures receiving the highest ratings when combined with the valued evolutionary traits, F (3, …

The Relationships Between Acting Experience, Self-Esteem, And Self-Monitoring, Tamara C. Peters

Modern Psychological Studies

This study is an investigation of whether relationships exist to link acting experience with self-esteem and/or self-monitoring. Participants included 30 undergraduate students with acting experience and 30 without acting experience. The participants completed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and the Self-Monitoring Scale. Individuals with acting experience were expected to indicate having a higher self-esteem than those without such experience. However, no significant relationship between self-esteem and acting experience was found. It was also hypothesized that students who had experience in acting would score higher on the Self-Monitoring Scale than students who had not. A significant positive relationship did exist between acting …

The Relationship Between Adolescent Self-Esteem And Delinquent, Extracurricular, And Employment Behaviors, Tina M. Lane, Ann N. Elliott

Modern Psychological Studies

This study investigated the relationship between level of self-esteem, delinquent behavior, participation in extracurricular activities, and part-time employment in adolescents. The study consisted of 157 ninth and tenth grade students who attended rural Appalachian high schools in Southwest Virginia. Adolescents with higher self-esteem were significantly less likely to engage in delinquent behaviors than adolescents with lower self-esteem. Students with higher self-esteem also participated in a greater number of extracurricular activities. Finally, self-esteem was positively correlated with the number of hours worked by male adolescents, but negatively correlated for female subjects.

Occupational Ego Identity Statuses In College Students, Nicole Surething, Kathleen Crowley-Long

Modern Psychological Studies

The purpose of this study was to investigate college students who were in the process of deciding on a career, and to then classify them according to the identity statuses described by Marcia (1980). The occupational identity statuses used were achieved, foreclosed, moratorium, diffused, and finally undecided was used for participants not meeting the full criteria for the other statuses. Participants, from The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY, were given the Deltas Identity Status Inventory for Occupation. A total of 159 participants completed the survey, 109 females and 50 males. The participants included 66 freshmen, 41 sophomores, 34 …

Walk In My Shoes: College Students' And Their Parents' Predictions Of Their Own Health Practices If They Were Each Others' Age, Amy B. Clineff, Colleen Frantz, Charles I. Brooks, Jean P. O'Brien

Modern Psychological Studies

College students and their parents completed a survey of their present health practices. They then completed the same survey for health behaviors they thought they would practice if they were either between the ages of 18 - 22 (for the parent respondents) or 45 - 55 (for the student respondents). The results generally showed the students predicted they would lead healthier lifestyles if older than their parents actually do, and the parents would lead less healthy lifestyles if younger than their children actually do. This distortion of each others' health practices, however, depended to some extent on the specific health …

Deception In Research: How College Students View Deception, David Devries

Modern Psychological Studies

This study asked college students to evaluate the use of deceptive techniques in psychological research. Ninety-two undergraduates evaluated via a three-point Likert Scale four classic deceptive studies in psychology. Students were asked to rate each study as to how deceptive and harmful it was, how valuable it was, and the cost-benefit to science of the study. Respondents generally believed these studies worth doing; however, around 20 percent felt the cost to the subjects was too high.

Effects Of Gender And Position Of Test Stimuli On Undergraduates ' Spatial Task Performance, James Brenton Curley

Masters Theses

This study predicted that sex differences in performance can occur where the sense of touch serves as vision, and that the position of the test array may significantly affect performance. Sixty-four college undergraduates (32 males and 32 females), with ages ranging from 18-27 (M = 20.06, SD = 1.82) were recruited from the psychology subject pool of Eastern Illinois University for participation. Apparatus consisted of templates with raised line drawings of tilted jars containing water drawn on them. The subjects were blindfolded and instructed to interpret four jar drawings at a time. The task consisted of identifying the jar with …

The Construct Validity Of The Behavior Assessment System For Children (Basc) And The Preschool And Kindergarten Behavior Scale (Pkbs), Lindsay A. Barton

Masters Theses

The Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC) and the Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scales (PKBS) are two relatively new behavior assessment scales that measure emotional and behavioral problems of children. The BASC is designed to evaluate the behavior and self-perceptions of children aged two and a half to eighteen years old. The PKBS is designed to evaluate social skills and problem behavior patterns of preschool and kindergarten aged children including the ages of three, four, five, and six years old. There are no studies in the empirical literature comparing the preschool form of the BASC and the PKBS behavior rating …

Levels Of Acculturation Of Children Of Mexican Descent As Perceived In Their Kinetic Family Drawings, Kevin Adolfo Rosado

Dissertations

Problem. Information on Hispanic children and their families is limited. More research activity is crucial in the light of the rapidly expanding population of Latino/Hispanics. Mexican families present a particular challenge to clinicians and to treatment settings, as well as to researchers. The impact of acculturation on psychological assessment instruments is largely unknown. This study sought to use the Kinetic Family Drawing (KFD) as a tool to gain information about how differences in acculturation are reflected through drawings done by children of Mexican descent.

Method. Private and public schools with representation of Mexican-American and Caucasian children from rural, semi-rural, small …

Stress In 1st-Year Women Teachers: The Context Of Social Support And Coping, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

The effects of adverse work environments were examined in the context of other risk/protective factors in this extension of a short-term longitudinal study involving 184 newly appointed women teachers. Regression analyses revealed that, adjusting for preemployment levels of the outcomes and negative affectivity, social support and adversity in the fall work environment were among the factors that affected spring depressive symptoms, self-esteem, job satisfaction, and motivation to teach. Support from nonwork sources was directly related to future improved symptom levels and self-esteem; supervisor and colleague support were directly related to future job satisfaction. Effects of occupational coping, professional …

Mental Health Needs And Resources In Christian Communities Of South Korea, Lisa Graham Mcminn

Faculty Publications - Department of Sociology

In an effort to understand the mental health needs and resources of Korean Christians, we collected quantitative and qualitative data through surveys and interviews with Korean pastors and Christian educators. Several mental health concerns were identified: the high level of daily stress faced by many Koreans, marriage and family concerns, conflicts between Korean culture and the teachings of the church, and a tendency to keep emotional discomfort suppressed. Mental health resources include deep spiritual commitment to a life of prayer, high levels of commitment to family and community, cultural values of persistence and patience, and reliance on Christian communities for …

Playing “Sherlock Holmes”: Enhancing Students’ Understanding Of Prejudice And Stereotyping, Ellen N. Junn, L. Grier, D. Behrens

Office of the Provost Scholarship

A very simple, innovative classroom exercise designed to heighten students' understanding of stereotyping and prejudice is described. Students' evaluation of the exercise was very positive. Students reported greater awareness and understanding of their own and others’ stereotypes and prejudice and of the negative effects of prejudice, with females more than males reporting enhanced awareness of others’ stereotyping. Students also rated the exercise as very enjoyable. There was a trend among Non-White more than White students to report that the exercise helped show them how to reduce stereotypes and more Non-White than White students offered solutions for reducing prejudice that involved …

Long-Term Working Memory In Text Production, Ronald Thomas Kellogg

Psychological Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In reading and other high-level cognitive tasks, Ericsson and Kintsch (1995) proposed that the limited capacity of short-term working memory (STWM) is supplemented by long- term working memory (LTWM) for individuals with a high degree of domain-specific knowledge. In Experiment 1, college students (N = 80) wrote persuasive and narrative texts concerning baseball; domain-specific knowledge about baseball and verbal ability was assessed. The results showed that verbal ability and domain-specific knowledge independently affected writing skill, supporting the view that literacy depends on both knowledge sources and refuting one argument raised in support of the LTWM hypothesis. Experiment 2 (N = …

Linguistic Gender Is Related To Psychological Gender: The Case Of Chinese Characters, Yuk-Yue Tong, Chi-Yue Chiu, Ho-Ying Fu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Past research (Ervin, 1972; Konishi, 1993) suggests that a noun's linguistic gender is not just an arbitrary, semantically-empty linguistic category. Rather it may connote masculine or feminine properties, and thus can subtly influence responses to the noun and its referent. The present study extended this research by exploring how gendered radicals of nonsense Chinese characters might affect the characters' connotations. The results showed that when an unfamiliar Chinese character is encountered, meaning interpretation can be affected by the meaning of the radicals. Moreover, since gendered Chinese radicals are linked to share representations of psychological gender, such as representation may then …

Probabilistic Principles In Unsupervised Learning Of Visual Structure: Human Data And A Model, Shimon Edelman, Benjamin P. Hiles, Hwajin Yang, Nathan Intrator

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

To find out how the representations of structured visual objects depend on the co-occurrence statistics of their constituents, we exposed subjects to a set of composite images with tight control exerted over (1) the conditional probabilities of the constituent fragments, and (2) the value of Barlow's criterion of "suspicious coincidence" (the ratio of joint probability to the product of marginals). We then compared the part verification response times for various probe/target combinations before and after the exposure. For composite probes, the speedup was much larger for targets that contained pairs of fragments perfectly predictive of each other, compared to those …

Clinical Process Related To Outcome In Psychodynamic Psychotherapy For Panic Disorder, Cara F. Klein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study identified psychotherapeutic processes that relate meaningfully to psychotherapeutic outcome for patients with panic disorder undergoing Panic-Focused Psychodynamic Psychotherapy ([PFPP]; Milrod, Busch, Cooper, & Shapiro, 1997). Subjects were 21 patients who participated in an open clinical trial of PFPP (Milrod et al., in press; Milrod et al., 2000). Patients received 24 sessions over approximately 12 weeks. Each patient was diagnostically screened by an independent evaluator and completed a battery of outcome assessments at baseline, termination and 6-month follow up.

The present study utilized two process measures: the Interactive Process Assessment ([IPA]; Klein, Milrod, Busch, 1999), developed specifically to identify …

Seismic Adjustments: The Influence Of Inconvenience And Efficacy Perceptions, State Of Residence, And Demographic Factors, Nicole Elise Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

Theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that peoples' perceptions of household seismic adjustments, in addition to their perceptions of earthquakes themselves, should predict the likelihood that seismic adjustments are performed. However, little research has been done to address this issue. While recent research has found peoples' perceptions of the effectiveness of household adjustments to influence adjustment levels, people's perceptions of inconvenience of household seismic adjustments - namely the cost, time effort, required cooperation and required knowledge involved in making these adjustments - have been found to not influence seismic adjustment. However, this study did find that the higher the perceived inconveniences …

Syllable Structure Development Of Toddlers With Expressive Specific Language Impairment, Aimée Baird Pharr, Nan Bernstein Ratner, Leslie Rescorla

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

A total of 35 children - 20 with expressive specific language impairment (SLI-E) and 15 typically developing (TD) peers - were compared longitudinally from 24 to 36 months with respect to their production of syllable shapes in 10-minute spontaneous speech samples. SLI-E 24-month-olds predominantly produced earlier developing syllable shapes containing vowels, liquids, and glides. TD 24-month-olds and SLI-E 36-month-olds produced approximately the same proportion of syllable types, with the exception of consonant clusters, where TD 24 month-olds produced more than SLI-E 36-month-olds. TD children at 36 months showed the greatest use of syllable shapes containing two different consonants and consonant …

The Effects Of An Outdoor School Program On 6th-Graders’ Empathy And Attitudes Towards Nature, Carolyn Ann Occhipinti

Dissertations and Theses

Past research in environmental psychology and education has shown that outdoor experiences such as wilderness adventure camps and environmental education programs may result in increases in participants' self-esteem, sense of connectedness to the natural world and environmental awareness. Developmental research has suggested a link between high self-esteem and increased levels of empathy.

The present study was intended to explore possible effects of nature experiences on empathy development, and to add to our understanding of the relationship between people and the natural environment by measuring four aspects of children's subjective experiences: empathy, self-esteem, sense of connectedness to the natural world, and …

Nuclear Weapons In The 21st Century: Sense, Nonsense, No Sense, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article considers commonly posited benefits of nation-states' possessing nuclear weapons.

Late-Talking Toddlers: Mlu And Ipsyn Outcomes At 3;0 And 4;0, Leslie Rescorla, Katherine Dahlsgaard, Julie Roberts

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Expressive language outcomes measured by MLU and the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn) at ages 3;0 and 4;0 were investigated in 34 late talkers with normal receptive language identified between 2;0 to 2;7 and 16 typically developing comparison children matched on age, SES, and nonverbal ability. Late talkers made greater gains than comparison children between 3;0 and 4;0 in both MLU and IPSyn raw score. However, when age-standardized x-scores were analysed, the late talkers were about 2.5 Standard deviations below comparison children on both measures at both ages. At 3;0, 41 % of the late talkers had MLUs above the …

Assessment Of Religious Motivation And Its Effects On Health Related Behaviors, John Austin Davis

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The belief that one’s religious behavior can influence health, either by formal offerings to religious shamans or the uttering of a prayer to an unseen deity, likely predates recorded history and finds its most basic beliefs expressed in Exodus 15:26, “I will put none of the diseases upon you which I put upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord, your healer.” Findings and observations published in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s that some of the membership among the more conservative denominations with strict proscriptions regarding health behavior experience lower rates of cancer and heart disease supported this belief, …

The Impact Of Sexism On Older Women's Mental And Physical Health, Kelli Lynn Mcswan

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Research has demonstrated that discrimination accounts for a statistically significant portion of the variance in women’s reported physical and mental symptoms above and beyond that accounted for by generic stressors. Furthermore, the literature suggests that discrimination in the elderly has lead to inadequate medical care as well as psychological and physical problems. Relatively little is known, however, about the degree to which older women perceive or experience sexism. This study investigated whether or not elderly women experience sexism and the impact it may have on their mental and physical health.

Attentional Processing In Parkinson's Disease: Hyperkinetic And Akinetic Type, Christine Diane Kraus

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Parkinson's disease (P.D.) has long been thought of as a single disorder. Recent research involving neurochemistry, neurophysiology, and detailed analysis of symptoms, have created a basis for questioning the concept that P.D. is a singular disorder. Literature suggests there may be two primary subtypes (with the possibility of others). The two probable subtypes are hyperkinetic, in which tremor is the predominate symptom and akinetic, in which, gait freezing and postural instability predominate.

In both of these pathological manifestations, several investigators have noted cognitive deficits including attention. The differences in symptomotology and neuropathology attributed to these probable subtypes suggest that there …

The Cardiac Correlates Of Attention In The Denervated Heart: A Study Of Infant Heart Transplant Recipients, Stephanie Dianne Griffone

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The cardiac correlate of attention is a deceleration in heart rate, controlled by the parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system. This has been extensively studied in infants; the findings indicate that this deceleration is affected by a number of factors, several mediated by the vagus nerve. However, the effects of denervation on this response are not known. Studies with adult heart transplant recipients have shown attenuated acceleration in response to stressful mental tasks. This study investigated the cardiac response to attention in infants who had received a heart transplant, using a habituation paradigm. The hypothesis that they would show …