Digital Commons Network^™

The Psychophysiological Correlates Of Personality, Trauma, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder And Social Support, Meghan E. Pierce

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Theories considering the etiology of psychopathy suggest that trauma exposure, specifically childhood maltreatment and sexual abuse, is related to the development of callous-unemotional traits in children and adolescents, which are precursors to psychopathic traits in adulthood. Furthermore, posttraumatic stress disorder has an opposite relationship with many of the emotional and behavioral components of the two-factor model of psychopathy. Specifically, PTSD is positively associated to IA and traits associated with it and negatively associated with FD. Thus, this study sought to expand upon the current theories of a trauma-based etiology of psychopathy by investigating the relationship between trauma, PTSD, and psychopathic …

Retrieval-Induced Forgetting Via Social Media: The Mnemonic Consequences Of Posting Pictures On Instagram, Chi Lap Wong

Student Theses

Social media has become a common tool for individuals to selectively offload personal memories to the internet. Such selectivity may reinforce the posted “memory” but induce forgetting for related “memories” (Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994). To explore this possibility, the present study adopted the retrieval-induced forgetting paradigm to the context of social media, Instagram. Participants were required to write a diary attached with pictures relevant to the events and then post pictures to the Instagram, followed by the final recall test. The results indicated that posting personal pictures online induced forgetting in related memories but not pictures, and posting …

The Role Of Resilience, Emotion Regulation, And Perceived Stress On College Academic Performance, Katherine A. Pendergast

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Stress is a common problem for college students. The goal of this thesis was to examine the relationships between protective and risk factors to experiencing stress and how these factors may predict academic performance in college students. 125 college students were surveyed twice over the course of a semester on emotion regulation strategies, trait resilience, and perceived stress. The relationships between these variables and semester GPA were analyzed using correlational, multiple regression, and hierarchical regression analyses. It was determined that trait resilience scores do predict use of emotion regulation strategies but change in stress and trait resilience do not significantly …

The Relationship Between Social Status Motivation And The Detection Of Trustworthy And Affiliative Cues In Faces, Christopher J. Lustgraaf

Dissertations

A prominent feature of human (and non-human primate) social group structure involves the establishment and maintenance of a social hierarchy; that is, social groups are arranged hierarchically, based on individuals’ level of status, and conspecifics who more effectively ascend this status hierarchy accrue more reproductive and resource benefits (Hawley, 1999). Thus, for any individual, other group members could be either a threat to one’s status, or an ally to assist status goals, and accurate identification of these various social targets would have adaptive utility in status maintenance or status hierarchy ascension. The current study tested the hypotheses that activation of …

And, The Winner Is…A Visual Preference For Endpoints Over Starting Points In Infants’ Motion Event Representations, Laura Lakusta, Stephanie Difabrizio

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Infants represent objects that are endpoints in motion events and show a preference for encoding the endpoint (the duck waddles into a bowl) over the starting point (the duck waddles out of a box). This asymmetry continues to appear in nonlinguistic cognition and language throughout development. This study tests whether this asymmetry also shows up in 16-month-old infants’ visual preferences for motion events, and if so, for which types of events. Infants looked longer at events depicting an “agentive” figure (e.g., duck) moving into an object (endpoint) than out of an object (starting point), and this asymmetry persisted even when …

Mindfulness And Alcohol-Related Problems Among Individuals With Fibromyalgia: Chronic Pain And Depressive Symptoms As Mediators, Julie I. Morrissey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mindfulness is a cognitive attribute that is associated with better health and well-being. Fibromyalgia is a neurosensory disorder primarily characterized by chronic pain and comorbid depression, leading to an increased risk for alcohol-related problems. Empirical literature confirms mindfulness has beneficial associations with chronic pain, depression, alcohol-related problems, and fibromyalgia. Mindfulness may lead to better health and well-being by facilitating self-monitoring, objective reperceiving, and purposeful changing of health-related behaviors. It was hypothesized that higher levels of mindfulness would be related to lower levels of chronic pain and depressive symptoms, and, in turn, to fewer alcohol-related problems among individuals with fibromyalgia. Cross-sectional …

Spirituality And Suicidal Behavior: The Mediating Role Of Self-Forgiveness And Psychache, Benjamin B. Hall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Growing evidence for protective factors of spirituality against physical and mental health related outcomes has led to the consideration of spirituality as a protective factor for suicidal behaviors. Although initial support for this association is promising, spirituality has yet to be explored as it relates to psychache. Additionally, self-forgiveness has emerged as an important protective factor of suicidal behavior, but has not been explored in the context of psychache. Following a model developed by Webb, Hirsch, and Toussaint (2015), the current project explores the protective role of spirituality on suicidal behavior based on three dimensions of spirituality: ritualistic, theistic, and …

Replicability And Reproducibility In Comparative Psychology, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

Psychology faces a replication crisis. The Reproducibility Project: Psychology sought to replicate the effects of 100 psychology studies. Though 97% of the original studies produced statistically significant results, only 36% of the replication studies did so (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). This inability to replicate previously published results, however, is not limited to psychology (Ioannidis, 2005). Replication projects in medicine (Prinz et al., 2011) and behavioral economics (Camerer et al., 2016) resulted in replication rates of 25 and 61%, respectively, and analyses in genetics (Munafò, 2009) and neuroscience (Button et al., 2013) question the validity of studies in those fields. Science, …

The Effect Of Boat Type On Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops Trucatus) Behavior In The Mississippi Sound, Maria Zapetis

Master's Theses

Increases in oceanic shipping are a global phenomenon, and a leading cause of concern for marine animal welfare. While it may be difficult to assess the effect of boat traffic on all species in all contexts, it is vital to report anthropogenic impacts where longitudinal data is available, and doubly so where a dearth of information exists. The purpose of this study is to describe how dolphin behavior changed in the presence of boats in the Mississippi Sound between 2006 and 2012, and more specifically, to detail how different boat types impacted dolphins’ behavioral states. This study is unique in …

Temperament And Behavior Factors In A Community Sample Of Youth With Selective Mutism, Rachele Alexandra Diliberto

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Children with selective mutism often present as a very diverse population, with both oppositional (APA, 2013; Cohan et al., 2008; Steinhausen & Juzi, 1996), and anxious symptoms (APA, 2013; Kristensen, 2000; Vecchio & Kearney, 2009) most commonly reported. The first aim of the current study was to validate the presence of previously identified anxious and oppositional behavior factors in a community sample of youth with selective mutism. These factors were previously identified in a clinic sample of youth with selective mutism (Diliberto & Kearney, 2016). The second aim was to examine the association of anxious and oppositional behavior factors with …

The Development And Testing Of Potential Music Piracy Warnings, Joanne Ullman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A combination of technological, legal, and economic factors necessitates efforts to protect music from being illegally reproduced in a globally digital environment. Entities such as record companies, recording industry organizations, and special governmental agencies are committed to eradicating the unauthorized dissemination of copyrighted material. Furthermore, the FBI provides an official anti-piracy icon with accompanying text to be placed on websites and packaging. In support of these initiatives, the principal goal of this study was to empirically identify icon design elements that will most successfully communicate to consumers the illegality of unauthorized music reproductions.

Recommendations from extant literature indicate that viewers …

Symptoms Of Anxiety And Depression And Suicidal Behavior In College Students: Conditional Indirect Effects Of Non-Suicidal Self-Injury And Self-Compassion, Andrea R. Kaniuka

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Young adults of college age are at particular risk for psychopathology, non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) and consequent suicidal behavior, perhaps in a continuum of increasing severity. However, not all persons who experience psychopathological symptoms, or who self-harm, go on to engage in suicidal behavior, perhaps due to protective factors such as self-compassion that buffer this progression. We examined the mediating effect of NSSI on the relation between anxiety/depressive symptoms and suicide risk, and the moderating role of self-compassion on these linkages. Our collegiate sample (N=338) completed: Beck Depression Inventory, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Self-Harm Inventory, Suicidal Behavior Questionnaire-Revised, and the Self-Compassion Scale. …

The Effects Of Familiarity On Visual Search Performance Of Typically Developing Toddlers And Toddlers With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Laura Keegan

Honors College Theses

Visual Search is an attention task that measures how efficiently a person is able to find a target among distractors. It has been found before that children diagnosed with ASD can perform better at visual search when compared to age-matched typically developing children (Kaldy et al., 2011, 2013). Our team conducted a follow-up study with slightly different stimulus parameters (Smith et al., 2015) and two different potential target objects (in this task, an apple vs. a carrot). The results showed that the identity of the target object influenced toddlers’ search performance: they were slightly faster at finding the target when …

Insightful Problem Solving And Emulation In Brown Capuchin Monkeys, E. Renner, Allison M. Abramo, M. K. Hambright, Kimberley A. Phillips

Psychology Faculty Research

We investigated problem solving abilities of capuchin monkeys via the "floating object problem," a task in which the subject must use creative problem solving to retrieve a favored food item from the bottom of a clear tube. Some great apes have solved this problem by adding water to raise the object to a level at which it can be easily grabbed. We presented seven capuchins with the task over eight trials (four "dry" and four "wet"). None of the subjects solved the task, indicating that no capuchin demonstrated insightful problem solving under these experimental conditions. We then investigated whether capuchins …

Exploring The Moderating Effects Of Drinking Context On The Relationship Between Harmful Drinking And Risky Sexual Behaviors Among College Females, Lauren A. Gardner

Honors Theses

Females are engaging in harmful amounts of drinking at higher rates than ever before. Because these rates are increasing, studying harmful drinking in the college female population is imperative. Previous studies have noted that an increase in harmful drinking correlates positively with an increase in risky sexual behavior. Although these correlations are evident, no previous study has looked at drinking context as a moderator between these two variables. The current study examined the degree to which drinking context moderates the relationship between harmful drinking and risky sexual behavior in college females. This study consisted of 387 female college students ages …

Delay Discounting Mechanisms In Eating Disorders: A Call To Arms, Rowan Crowder

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Delay discounting, or temporal discounting, is a measure of impulsivity that describes the devaluation of a reinforcer as a function of its receipt in time. Several studies have shown that individuals diagnosed with a variety of behavioral maladies such as obesity/over-eating, substance abuse, cigarette smoking, heavy drinking, and problematic gambling exhibit greater discounting rates. To be specific, they are more impulsive and less willing to wait for delayed reinforcement than healthy controls. Several of these studies have found that obese women discount at a steeper rate than non-obese women, similar results have been shown in binge eating disorder. The relationship …

Identifying Behavioral Response Trends Following Aggression In Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus), Breanna M. Cheri

Honors Theses

In group-living species, an individual’s response to aggression from another animal can reveal information about the complexities of their social relationships. The current study sought to categorize behavioral responses between conspecifics following direct aggression. Agonistic behavioral interactions were analyzed in a semi-captive group of bottlenose dolphins housed at the Roatan Institute for Marine Sciences, whose population dynamics mirror those observed in the wild. Interactions began at the onset of an aggressive behavior, and all concomitant behaviors between aggressor(s) and recipient(s) were coded chronologically for the length of each event. Results revealed five response types present following aggression: retaliation, reconciliation, avoidance, …

Identifying The Underlying Components Of Delay Discounting Using Latent Factor Modeling, W. Brady Dehart

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Many problematic behaviors can be conceptualized as choosing a smaller, immediate outcome over a larger, delayed outcome. For example, drug abuse involves choosing between the immediate euphoric effects of the drug and the delayed health and legal consequences of drug abuse. Individuals that consistently choose the smaller outcome are said to behavior “impulsively.” The goal of this dissertation was to understand how to change impulsive choice. Chapters 2 and 3 successfully demonstrate that impulsive choice can be altered by reframing how the choice is presented. For example, framing a delayed outcome using a specific date instead of a duration of …

Increasing Knowledge And Detection Of Racial And Ethnic Microaggressions In White College Students, Christina A. Patterson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Scholars have strongly suggested that to combat microaggressions and their impact on persons of color, there needs to be an increased awareness and ability to detect microaggressions when they occur. There is limited research on how to practically address these concerns. This study examined the efficacy of a multimedia intervention aimed at increasing White individuals’ ability to accurately detect microaggressions. The high-exposure intervention was compared against two other conditions, low-exposure and control, at pre-, post-, and 1-week follow-up from intervention.

Undergraduate university students were recruited from two predominantly white universities (PWU). Participants watched a series of videos to determine if …

The Contributions Of Perceived Ethnic Discrimination And Rumination To Depression, Anxiety, And Anger In Emerging Adults, Alexis M. Lima

Psychology

Perceived ethnic discrimination (PED), a type of race-based social stress, is conceptualized as a subjective experience of discrimination based on phenotype, linguistic, or cultural characteristics. As an environmental stressor, it is associated with the same negative outcomes as other stressors such as greater depressive and anxious symptoms, poorer academic performance, and poorer health outcomes. Previous research has focused on PED’s association with mental and physical health outcomes, but cognitive factors (i.e., cognitive ruminations, coping strategies, executive functioning) that might mediate or moderate outcomes have received less attention. Moreover, while some research has investigated the associations of anger rumination and perceived …

Heads Up! Dynamic Similitude For Perception With An Object Wielded By Head Or Hand, Jeffrey B. Wagman, Alex Dayer, Alen Hajnal

Faculty Publications – Psychology

Possibilities for behavior (i.e., affordances) can be perceived with units spanning anatomical components and external objects. For example, affordances for standing on an inclined surface can be perceived with an object held in the hand or attached to the head. We investigated whether these two person-plus-object perceptual systems exhibit the same pattern of nonlinear phase transitions in perception of this affordance. Blindfolded participants explored an inclined surface with a rod held in the hand or attached to the head and reported whether they could stand on that surface. Inclinations were presented in ascending or descending sequences. In both conditions, responses …

Sparking A Dolphin's Curiosity: Individual Differences In Dolphins' Reactions To Surprising And Expectation-Violating Events, Malin Katarina Lilley

Master's Theses

Non-scientific literature consistently describes dolphins as “curious animals,” but there has been little systematic research on curiosity in dolphins. Curiosity in humans and certain non-human animal species, including birds and non-human primates, has been studied by examining individual differences in exploration and reactions to novel stimuli. Additionally, research has explored how human infants and non-human animals react when an event violates their expectations. The present study explored dolphins’ reactions to spontaneously surprising and expectation-violating stimuli. The reactions of dolphins, 15 bottlenose (Tursiops truncatus) and 6 rough-toothed (Steno bredanensis), at Gulf World Marine Park were analyzed in …

Video Game Engagement, Gender, And Age: Examining Similarities And Differences In Motivation Between Those Who May Or May Not Play Video Games, Joseph Camarata

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research aims to fill a research gap by examining video games to explore whether gender, age, or hours played per week would exert any influence on the information of those who may or may not play video games. Mood Management Theory and Uses and Gratification Theory were used as the theoretical foundation for this study. Four-hundred-three East Tennessee State University students who received the survey via email were asked to voluntarily participate in a survey about their motivations behind playing video games. Results from MANOVA showed that the motivations of male participants on video games were significantly higher than …

The Social Progression Of Post -Traumatic Stress Disorder: Post Vietnam And September 11th Attacks, Ellie Mcdonald

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The Social Progression of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Post-Vietnam and September 11^th Attacks is an examination on the infrastructure of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’and of the Department of Defense’s lack of clarity and misinformation of the challenges and effects of mental illness within military ranks. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) made the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) after Vietnam. Since then, PTSD has been reevaluate numerous times, to properly define it. This research is a comparative analysis of the misconceptions of PTSD as experienced by Vietnam veterans and the first responders of the September 11^th tragedy. My research charts …

Sleep Duration Partially Accounts For Race Differences In Diurnal Cortisol Dynamics, Laurel M. Peterson, Karissa G. Miller, Patricia M. Wong, Barbara P. Anderson, Thomas W. Kamarck, Karen A. Matthews, Clemens Kirschbaum, Stephen B. Manuck

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Objective: Emerging research demonstrates race differences in diurnal cortisol slope, an indicator of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA)-axis functioning associated with morbidity and mortality, with African Americans showing flatter diurnal slopes than their White counterparts. Sleep characteristics are associated with both race and with HPA-axis functioning. The present report examines whether sleep duration may account for race differences in cortisol dynamics. Method: Participants were 424 employed African American and White adults (mean age = 42.8 years, 84.2% White, 53.6% female) with no cardiovascular disease (Adult Health and Behavior Project—Phase 2 [AHAB-II] cohort, University of Pittsburgh). Cortisol slope was calculated using 4 salivary cortisol …

Comparison Of Suicidality Among Heterosexual And Sexual Minority Individuals, Ashley R. Pate

Honors Theses

Previous research suggests that sexual minority individuals have a higher risk of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts than do heterosexual individuals. Little research has been done to determine what may cause these differences and how living in a conservative region may contribute to it. This study sought to compare risk factors for suicidal ideation among heterosexual and sexual minority college students in southern Mississippi. To do so, suicidal ideation was examined, as well as thwarted belongingness (TB) and perceived burdensomeness (PB) – two robust predictors of suicidal ideation. It was hypothesized that sexual minorities would have elevated TB, PB, and …

Anxiety-Like Behaviors And C-Fos Expression In Adult Zebrafish: Effects Of Housing Conditions, Alcohol And Caffeine, Adam Douglas Collier

Dissertations

Alcohol abuse is the third largest risk factor for disease world, responsible for an estimated 3.3 million deaths each year. The concomitant ingestion of alcohol and caffeine is hypothesized to increase risk factors associated with alcohol use alone by reducing subjective effects of intoxication. The zebrafish (Danio rerio) has recently garnered attention from researchers as an effective pre-clinical in-vivo animal model in behavioral pharmacology research, largely due to small size, low-cost and ease of drug delivery. A number of studies have reported the effects of alcohol and caffeine on zebrafish behavior at a variety of doses. However, the …

Do Pinnipeds Have Personality? Coding Harbor Seal (Phoca Vitulina) And California Sea Lion (Zalophus Californianus) Behavior Across Contexts, Amber J. De Vere

Master's Theses

Personality has now been studied in species as diverse as chimpanzees (King & Figueredo, 1997) and cuttlefish (Carere et al., 2015), but marine mammals remain vastly underrepresented in this area. A broad range of traits have been assessed only in the bottlenose dolphin (Highfilll & Kuczaj, 2007), while consistent individual differences in a few specific behaviors have been identified in grey seals (Robinson et al., 2015; Twiss & Franklin, 2010; Twiss, Culloch & Pomeroy, 2011; Twiss, Cairns, Culloch, Richards & Pomeroy, 2012). Furthermore, the context component of definitions of personality is not often assessed, despite evidence that animals may show …

Does Personality Similarity In Bottlenose Dolphin Pairs Influence Dyadic Bond Characteristics?, Kelsey R. Moreno

Master's Theses

Social structures are critical to the success of many species and have repercussions on health, well-being, and adaptation, yet little is known about the factors which shape these structures aside from ecology and life history strategies. Dyadic bonds are the basis of all social structures; however, mechanisms for formations of specific bonds or patterns in which individuals form which types of bonds have yet to be demonstrated. There is a variety of evidence indicating personality may be a factor in shaping bonds, but this relationship has not been explored with respect to bond components and is yet to be demonstrated …

Towards A Better Understanding Of Zebrafish Sleep Behavior, Kanza Musarrat Khan

Master's Theses

Sleep serves many vital functions in humans, ranging from energy restoration to memory consolidation and information integration. Sleep deprivation is linked to worsened physiological states and psychological conditions. Zebrafish are an emerging model in neurobehavioral research and have recently demonstrated great utility in the study of sleep. This teleost species possesses several of the same neurotransmitter and neuropeptide systems that are involved in the regulation of sleep and waking rhythms in higher order mammals. Previous study of these animals has revealed a differential gene and proteomic expression following sleep deprivation through changes in environmental stimuli. The present study sought to …