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University Student-Athletes’ Experiences Of Facilitators And Barriers To Contribution: A Narrative Account, Colin J. Deal, Martin Camiré

The Qualitative Report

University student-athletes’ contributions in the form of volunteering, community engagement, and civic engagement have been the subject of recent research; however, no studies have specifically examined the factors that facilitate or serve as barriers to contribution in this population. As such, the purpose of this study is to explore the facilitators and barriers relating to university student-athletes’ contributions. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight university student-athletes (two males, six females) between 18 and 21 years of age (M = 19.25) from two Canadian universities. The analysis led to the identification of two qualitatively distinct profiles regarding how facilitators and …

Diminished Quality Of Life Among Women Affected By Ebola, Jessi Hanson, Alexis Decosimo, Megan Quinn

Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences

This article analyzes data collected from Liberian women afflicted by the Ebola virus disease, survivors of the virus and noninfected persons living in Ebola-affected homes. This research is one of the first statistical analyses examining factors diminishing quality of life: negative experiences, stigma, and psychosocial symptoms among females affected by the virus after the outbreak. The research presents a thorough literature review, including research related to other infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, to inform the gap in studies on Ebola’s effects on quality of life. Women who are Ebola virus disease survivors demonstrate significant differences in stigma and psychosocial stress when …

Consciousness And Evolutionary Biology, Yew-Kwang Ng

Animal Sentience

Reber’s axiom: “Any organism with flexible cell walls, a sensitivity to its surrounds and the capacity for locomotion will possess the biological foundations of mind and consciousness” does not seem to be supported by things we know and the logic of evolutionary biology. The latter leads to the conclusion that conscious species are flexible in their behavior (rather than in their cell walls), as argued in Ng (1995, 2016). Locomotion may be completely hard-wired and need not involve consciousness. It is hard enough to explain how consciousness could emerge in a sophisticated brain: Isn’t it a harder problem to show …

Exploring Shame And Guilt In Hiv-Positive Women In Southern India, Mitra L. Lebastchi

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Limited research exists examining shame and guilt among HIV positive populations and across cultural contexts. This study addresses this gap in the literature by considering shame and guilt, and potential associations with mental health symptoms, among a sample of 20 HIV positive women in Southern India. Results indicate that most women experienced high levels of shame and guilt, based on responses to items from an adapted version of the State Shame and Guilt Scale (Marschall, Saftner, & Tangney, 1994). Although correlations were not significant between shame and PTSD or depression, guilt was significantly correlated with both. Future research should focus …

A Reexamination Of The Cognitive Behavioral Model Of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Investigating The Cogency Of The Model’S Behavioral Pathway, Madison Sunnquist

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Cognitive behavioral theories of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) assert that cognitions and behaviors perpetuate the fatigue and impairment that individuals with CFS experience (Wessely, Butler, Chalder, & David, 1991). Vercoulen and colleagues (1998) utilized structural equation modeling to empirically develop a cognitive behavioral model of CFS. The resulting model indicated that attributing symptoms to a physical cause, focusing on symptoms, and feeling less control over symptoms were associated with increased fatigue. Additionally, individuals who attributed symptoms to a physical cause reported lower activity levels and more fatigue and impairment. However, in an attempt to replicate this model, Song and Jason …

The Difference Between Conscious And Unconscious Brain Circuits, Ezequiel Morsella, Zaviera Reyes

Animal Sentience

Theoretical frameworks in which consciousness is an inherent property of the neuron must account for the contrast between conscious and unconscious processes in the brain and address how neural events can ever be unconscious if consciousness is a property of all neurons. Other approaches have sought answers regarding consciousness by contrasting conscious and unconscious processes and through investigating the complex interactions between the two kinds of processes, as occurs most notably in human voluntary action. In voluntary action, consciousness is associated most, not with motor control or low-level perceptual processing, but with the stage of processing known as action selection.

Statistical Learning In Songbirds: From Self-Tutoring To Song Culture, Olga Fehér, Iva Ljubičić, Kenta Suzuki, Kazuo Okanoya, Ofer Tchernichovski

Publications and Research

At the onset of vocal development, both songbirds and humans produce variable vocal babbling with broadly distributed acoustic features. Over development, these vocalizations differentiate into the well-defined, categorical signals that characterize adult vocal behaviour. A broadly distributed signal is ideal for vocal exploration, that is, for matching vocal production to the statistics of the sensory input. The developmental transition to categorical signals is a gradual process during which the vocal output becomes differentiated and stable. But does it require categorical input?We trained juvenile zebra finches with playbacks of their own developing song, produced just a few moments earlier, updated continuously …

Resolving The Hard Problem And Calling For A Small Miracle, Arthur S. Reber

Animal Sentience

With the exception of the commentary by Key, the commentaries on Reber have a common feature: the commenters feel, with varying levels of enthusiasm, that there is at least some virtue in the core assumption of the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) theory that consciousness (or subjectivity or sentience) accompanies the earliest forms of life. The model has two important entailments: (a) it resolves the (in)famous Hard Problem by redirecting the search for the biochemical foundations of sentience away from human consciousness; and (b) it reduces the need for an emergentist miracle to a far simpler scale than is currently …

No Help On The Hard Problem, Derek Ball

Animal Sentience

The hard problem of consciousness is to explain why certain physical states are conscious: why do they feel the way they do, rather than some other way or no way at all? Arthur Reber (2016) claims to solve the hard problem. But he does not: even if we grant that amoebae are conscious, we can ask why such organisms feel the way they do, and Reber’s theory provides no answer. Still, Reber’s theory may be methodologically useful: we do not yet have a satisfactory theory of consciousness, but perhaps the study of simple minds is a way to go about …

Unconscious Higher-Order Thoughts (Hots) As Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness?, Rocco J. Gennaro

Animal Sentience

Rowlands argues that many nonhuman animals are “persons,” contrary to the prevailing orthodoxy which rests on a mistaken conception of the kind of self-awareness relevant to personhood. He argues that self-awareness bifurcates into two importantly different forms — reflective self-awareness and pre-reflective self-awareness — and that many animals can have the latter, which is sufficient for personhood. I agree that there is good reason to think that many animals can have pre-reflective self-awareness, but I think Rowlands is mistaken about its nature. His account runs the risk of leading to an infinite regress objection, and his notion of pre-reflective self-awareness …

Is Group Therapy Democratic? Enduring Consequences Of Outward Bound’S Alignment With The Human Potential Movement. A Response To “How To Be Nice And Get What You Want: Structural Referents Of 'Self’ And ‘Other’ In Experiential Education As (Un)Democratic Practice.", Jayson Seaman

Democracy & Education

Franklin Vernon provided an example of how programs viewing themselves as “cultural islands” are in fact embedded within historical capitalist relations, through the discourses of self that they promote. In this response, I expand on Vernon’s argument to situate the quasi-therapeutic practices he identified in the history of the human potential movement, which effectively merged with Outward Bound starting in the 1960s and continues to define outdoor experiential education. Where Vernon sought the structural referents to different models of self, this response seeks their historical origins. The response concludes by linking Vernon’s argument with existing critiques and parallel efforts in …

Influence Of Anterior Thalamic Inactivation On The Retrieval Of Spatial Reference Memory And Working Memory In The Radial Arm Maze, Ryan E. Harvey

Psychology ETDs

Previous studies have shown that the anterior thalamic nuclei (ATN) contain a large population of head direction cells, which fire as a function of an animal’s directional orientation in an environment, thereby providing a compass-like representation guiding navigation. Recent work has suggested that directional orientation information stemming from the ATN is critical for the generation of hippocampal and parahippocampal spatial representations, and may contribute to the establishment of unique spatial representations in radially oriented tasks such as the radial arm maze. While studies have confirmed that ATN lesions impair the acquisition of new spatial information in variants of the radial …

Investigating Error-Related Processing In Incarcerated Adolescents With Elevated Psychopathic Traits, James M. Maurer

Psychology ETDs

Adult psychopathic offenders show an increased propensity towards violence, impulsivity, and recidivism. For a subsample of youth with elevated psychopathic traits, the disorder appears to remain stable throughout development. Such youth represent a particularly severe subgroup characterized by their extreme behavioral problems and comparable neurocognitive deficits as their adult counterparts, including perseveration deficits. Here, we investigated error-related processing using two distinct neuroimaging methodologies in response-locked event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in two samples of incarcerated juvenile male offenders who performed a response inhibition Go/NoGo task. Adolescent psychopathic traits were assessed using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist: Youth …

Brooding, Avoidance, And Suppression As Mechanisms Linking Shame-Proneness With Depressive Symptoms, Melissa Rose Hudson

Clinical Psychology Dissertations

Depression is a significant mental health concern. Cognitive-affective models of depression identify that negative emotions and cognitive strategies for responding to negative emotions contribute to the development and maintenance of depressive symptoms. Shame has been identified as a problematic negative emotion and is associated with multiple mental health concerns including depression. Research has begun to examine cognitive emotion regulation strategies individuals use when experiencing shame and how these contribute to depressive symptoms. This study examined three strategies jointly (avoidance, brooding, and suppression) in a three-part prospective design. In a sample of 137 young adults, three hypotheses were tested. Participants ranged …

Using Auditory Feedback To Improve Striking For Mixed Martial Artists, Frank Krukauskas Krukauskas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to evaluate, auditory feedback as a training procedure to increase the effectiveness of throwing a "right cross.” Auditory feedback was evaluated in multiple baselines across behaviors design with 4 mixed martial arts students, two males and two females, 25-54 years old. The percentage of correct steps of the right crosses.” was stable .during baseline for all participants improved substantially following the introduction of the auditory feedback, and maintained at 90 percent or more for all participants during follow-up.

The Psychological Concept Of “Person”, Kristin Andrews

Animal Sentience

Reluctance to overextend personhood seems to drive many of the skeptical responses in the first round of commentaries on Rowlands's target article. Despite Rowlands’s straightforward Response that we already accept some nonhumans as persons, there is still hesitation to accept that other nonhuman animals are persons. Rowlands's argument is sound but the skeptics don’t accept the Lockean notion of person. The metaphysical sense of person is a psychological one, however, and psychological properties grant one moral status according to many ethical theories.

Goats Learn Socially From Humans In A Spatial Problem-Solving Task, Christian Nawroth, Luigi Baciadonna, Alan G. Mcelligott

Social Cognition Collection

Domestication drives changes in animal cognition and behaviour. In particular, the capacity of dogs to socially learn from humans is considered a key outcome of how domestication shaped the canid brain. However, systematic evidence for social learning from humans in other domestic species is lacking and makes general conclusions about how domestication has affected cognitive abilities difficult. We assessed spatial and social problem-solving abilities in goats (Capra hircus) using a detour task, in which food was placed behind an inward or outward V-shaped hurdle. Goats performed better in the outward than in the inward detour without human demonstration. Importantly, a …

Implications Of Social Support As A Self-Control Resource, June J. Pilcher, Stewart A. Bryant

Publications

Self-control is an intricate component of decision making and effectively managing day-to-day life. Failing to maintain adequate self-control can have negative effects on many desired goals and social experiences. As such, understanding how different facets of the human experience may affect self-control is an important undertaking. One area that is yet unclear is the possible relationships between social support and self-control. Research suggests that social support can be an effective resource in reducing stress and promoting health and well-being. Research has also indicated that stress can be a limiting factor on self-control. In contrast, few studies have focused on social …

The Serotonin Transporter Promoter Polymorphism Moderates The Continuity Of Behavioral Inhibition In Early Childhood., Victoria C Johnson, Katie R Kryski, Haroon I Sheikh, Heather J Smith, Shiva M Singh, Elizabeth P Hayden

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Persistently elevated behavioral inhibition (BI) in children is a marker of vulnerability to psychopathology. However, little research has considered the joint influences of caregiver and child factors that may moderate the continuity of BI in early childhood, particularly genetic variants that may serve as markers of biological plasticity, such as the serotonin transporter linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR). We explored this issue in 371 preschoolers and their caregivers, examining whether parent characteristics (i.e., overinvolvement or anxiety disorder) and child 5-HTTLPR influenced the continuity of BI between ages 3 and 5. Measures were observational ratings of child BI, observational and questionnaire measures …

"He Told Me That My Waist And Private Parts Have Been Ravaged By Demons:" Sexual Exploitation Of Female Church Members By "Prophets" In Nigeria, Chima Agazue

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

In urban southern Nigeria there is a widespread spiritual revival pioneered by Pentecostal pastors who claim to deliver prophecies, miracles, and healings. In many places, multiple churches can be seen within a few hundred yards of each other, while in other places, different floors of multistory buildings are occupied by different church denominations. There is competition among the pastors to present themselves as spiritually powerful and financially favored by God. Some of the pastors, calling themselves “prophets,” engage in immoral and fraudulent activities. Women are the predominant followers of these male religious leaders, and sexual exploitation of vulnerable women by …

Friendship And Mental Health Functioning, Alan R. King, Tiffany Russell, Amy C. Veith

Psychology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ashamed And Afraid: A Scoping Review Of The Role Of Shame In Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Ptsd), Tanya Saraiya, Teresa Lopez-Castro

Publications and Research

Background: Despite considerable progress in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a large percentage of individuals remain symptomatic following gold-standard therapies. One route to improving care is examining affective disturbances that involve other emotions beyond fear and threat. A growing body of research has implicated shame in PTSD’s development and course, although to date no review of this specific literature exists. This scoping review investigated the link between shame and PTSD and sought to identify research gaps. Methods: A systematic database search of PubMed, PsycInfo, Embase, Cochrane, and CINAHL was conducted to find original quantitative research related to shame …

Positioning Analysis Of Filipino Family Narratives In The Context Of Prisoner Reintegration, Donald Jay M. Bertulfo, Nico A. Canoy, Michael Angelo Celeste

Psychology Department Faculty Publications

Prisoner reintegration may be viewed as a crisis situation that may lead to a period of instability within the family. Existing researches in this area remain focused on the individual perspective of ex-offenders rather than the experiences of receiving families back in their households. In this study, we aim to examine the reintegration experiences of the family as a group from an initial state of chaos to equilibrium upon the reentry of an incarcerated parent. Using a sample of 12 interviews of family members left behind by incarcerated fathers, three major storylines relating to the family’s struggle for moral re-ascendancy …

Country Roads, Take Me Home ... To My Friends: How Intelligence, Population Density, And Friendship Affect Modern Happiness, Norman P. Li, Satoshi Kanazawa

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

We propose the savanna theory of happiness, which suggests that it is not only the current consequences of a given situation but also its ancestral consequences that affect individuals’ life satisfaction and explains why such influences of ancestral consequences might interact with intelligence. We choose two varied factors that characterize basic differences between ancestral and modern life – population density and frequency of socialization with friends – as empirical test cases. As predicted by the theory, population density is negatively, and frequency of socialization with friends is positively, associated with life satisfaction. More importantly, the main associations of life satisfaction …

Social Support Seeking And Early Adolescent Depression And Anxiety Symptoms: The Moderating Role Of Rumination, C. E. Vélez, E. D. Krause, A. Mckinnon, S. M. Brunwasser, D. R. Freres, R. M. Abenavoli, Jane Gillham

Psychology Faculty Works

This study examined how social support seeking and rumination interacted to predict depression and anxiety symptoms 6 months later in early adolescents (N = 118; 11-14 years at baseline). We expected social support seeking would be more helpful for adolescents engaging in low rather than high levels of rumination. Adolescents self-reported on all measures at baseline, and on depression and anxiety symptoms 6 months later. Social support seeking predicted fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety at low rumination levels but was not associated with benefits as rumination increased. For depression symptoms, social support seeking predicted more symptoms at high rumination …

Examining The Relationships Of Socioeconomic Status, Perceived Parental Supervision, And Reported Neighborhood Safety On Adolescents’ Smoking Behaviors And Mental Health Using The 2009 California Health Interview Survey, Colette Laroy Beetz

Theses and Dissertations

This study sought out to explore the relationships between parental supervision, poverty levels, and neighborhood safety and the impacts these factors have upon adolescent mental health needs, intervention, and smoking status. In addition, ethnicity groupings and poverty levels were examined to determine additional influence factors on mental health issues. The findings demonstrate that higher levels parental supervision and neighborhood safety predict higher reports of not needing mental health treatment and lower reports of smoking. In relation to mental health treatment, only poverty level demonstrated a significant contribution, suggesting that the lower the poverty level, the less likely treatment will be …

Psychological Well-Being And Heart Disease: The Utility Of Mental Health And Management Plans, Jennifer Anne Heath

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores the correlation between mental health and coronary heart disease (CHD) and the usefulness of including mental health treatment into disease management plans. Consistent with previous research and literature regarding the correlation between CHD and depression, results suggest individuals experiencing CHD experience more symptoms of depression, including feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness. Additionally, individuals with CHD also tend to experience more difficulty with relationships and completing household chores. Individuals who have management plans created by their healthcare providers experience less depressive symptoms than those without management plans. This suggests management plans are crucial in the treatment of mental …

Adulthood In Law And Culture, Vivian E. Hamilton

Faculty Publications

Young people today come of age in a cultural and economic milieu that prolongs their attainment of the traditional markers of adulthood. Their subjective conceptions of the transition to adulthood also depart radically from the traditional conception, with its emphasis on discrete transition events (including marriage and entry into the workforce). Instead, the modern transition to adulthood is a gradual process comprising the acquisition of general capabilities, rather than the achievement of externally constructed events. The state-established age of legal majority stands in marked contrast to this gradual and prolonged process. Not only does it categorically establish the inception of …

Body Image Perception And Internalization Problems Indicators In Mexican Adolescents, Cecilia Colunga-Rodríguez, Mercedes Gabriela Orozco-Solis, María Elena Flores-Villavicencio, José María De-La-Roca-Chiapas, Ricardo Gómez-Martínez, Alfonso Mercado, Julio César Vázquez-Colunga, Juan Carlos Barrera-De-León, Claudia Liliana Vázquez-Juárez, Mario Ángel-González

Psychological Science Faculty Publications

The aim of the study was to determine the existing differences by gender in the indicators of internalizing problems regarding the body image perception of Mexican adolescents. A descriptive and transversal study was developed. The participants were students from four public middle schools in Guadalajara Mexico. The instrument used was an online survey constituted by a sociodemographic section, an internalizing problems indicators scale (α = .85) and a body image perception scale (α = .70). Parental consent was obtained using a waiver of active consent. The survey was applied online, during school hours at the computer labs. Descriptive statistics were …

Alcohol Use Variability In A Community-Based Sample Of Nonstudent Emerging Adult Heavy Drinkers, Cathy Lau-Barraco, Abbly L. Braitman, Amy L. Stamates, Ashley N. Linden-Carmichael

Psychology Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: While nonstudent emerging adults are at elevated risk for experiencing alcohol-related problems, there remains a paucity of research devoted specifically to addressing drinking in this group.

OBJECTIVES: The present study sought to offer unique insights into nonstudent drinking by examining drinking variability across 30 days using a retrospective diary method. Specific aims were to: (1) compare within- and between-person variability in alcohol use across 30 days, and (2) determine the extent to which central social-cognitive between-person factors (i.e., social expectancies, perceived drinking norms, social drinking motivations) predict between-person alcohol use as well as within-person variability in drinking.

METHODS: Participants …