Digital Commons Network^™

Concept Identification And Formation In Adolescents Diagnosed With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Jonathan Sterling Beck

Theses and Dissertations

Abstraction is an inductive process through which specific details become united by a general concept. Abstraction incorporates two sub-skills: concept identification which involves recognizing patterns created by an external agent, and concept formation which is more difficult, requiring independent creation of a schema to organize information. Impairments in concept identification and formation are theorized to underlie a variety of practical difficulties of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; e.g., failure to generalize learning in one context to a similar, but new context). However, past research has yielded mixed results, with some finding significant impairment and others finding intact concept identification …

Subjective Well-Being And Cardiometabolic Health: An 8-11 Year Study Of Midlife Adults, Julia K. Boehm, Ying Chen, David R. Williams, Carol D. Ryff, Laura D. Kubzansky

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Objective: Individuals who are satisfied and experience frequent positive emotions tend to have reduced risk for coronary heart disease (CHD). However, conflicting evidence exists and little research has investigated whether well-being is associated with early-warning indicators of biological risk that precede CHD. We investigated whether life satisfaction and positive emotions longitudinally predicted reduced risk of incident cardiometabolic conditions and healthier cardiometabolic risk scores, which may provide insight into underlying mechanisms and novel prevention targets.

Methods: Initially healthy men and women (N=754–854) reported their baseline life satisfaction and positive emotions. During follow-up, presence of manifest cardiometabolic conditions was assessed …

Mental Health Practitioner Stigma, Attitude, And Belief: A Multidimensional Study On Marriage And Family Therapists, Clinical Social Workers, And Clinical Psychologists, Jessica Ann De La Rosa, Ruxandra Elena Tanase

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Existing stigma in the form of negative attitudes towards individuals with severe mental illness by mental health practitioners, has the potential to set barriers towards recovery. A survey of 72 mental health practitioners from three disciplines were surveyed, in an attempt to measure mental health practitioner attitudes towards individuals with severe mental illness, and how their attitudes impact their belief in client recovery. This was a quantitative study, based on two Likert Scale surveys and distributed both in paper form and using Survey Monkey. Participants were gathered through a snowball effect, and consisted of 42 social workers, 18 marriage and …

Grandiose Narcissism Predicts Willingness To Behave Badly, Without Proportional Tolerance For Others’ Bad Behavior, Harry M. Wallace, Benjamin R M Scheiner, Andrew Grotzinger

Psychology Faculty Research

Narcissists characteristically behave badly; our study investigated how they respond to experiencing others’ bad behavior. After completing the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, a measure of grandiose narcissism, participants reported their willingness to engage in different inconsiderate or unethical common behaviors. Then they reported how bothered they would feel in response to experiencing each of the same bad behaviors—perpetrated by someone else. Participants overall reported feeling bothered by others’ bad behavior, but narcissism was unrelated to intolerance judgments. Narcissists are often highly reactive when their inflated self-views are challenged, but our study suggests that narcissists are not uniquely bothered by everyday minor …

Pure Partial Awareness Or Interaction Between The Mask And The Masked Stimuli?, Jiangong Guo, Jerwen Jou, Qian Cui, Guang Zhao, Shen Tu

Psychological Science Faculty Publications

Many studies using masking paradigm have shown that stimuli can be processed unconsciously. However, different researchers put forward different ideas about the mechanisms of the unconscious information processing. For example, one idea is that the unconscious information might be derived from a partial awareness of the masked stimulus. Another idea is that it is derived from a perceptual interaction between a masked stimulus and the masking stimulus. We used a masking paradigm (with a briefly displayed target followed by a mask) and a subjective rating and an objective forced-choice test (with a word and picture version) given after the display …

Intimate Partner Violence In A Conservative Christian Denomination: Prevalence And Risk Factors, Carolyn Sallion-Love

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

This study examines the prevalence and risk factors of intimate partner violence (IPV) in a Christian denomination. To date, no studies have been found in the literature that looked at IPV in a Christian denomination in South America, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Little is known regarding how church members from these countries experience victimization from IPV. One 2002 Inter-American Division (IAD) data set provides some insight into IPV; and the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church has analyzed cross-sectional data of more than 7,000 SDA respondents from the study area of interest. Discriminant function analysis (DFA) was used to determine if …

Widening Access In Selection Using Situational Judgement Tests: Evidence From The Ukcat, Filip Lievens, Fiona Patterson, Jan Corstjens, Stuart Martin, Sandra Nicholson

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Widening access promotes student diversity and the appropriate representation of all demographic groups. This study aims to examine diversity-related benefits of the use of situational judgement tests (SJTs) in the UK Clinical Aptitude Test (UKCAT) in terms of three demographic variables: (i) socioeconomic status (SES); (ii) ethnicity, and (iii) gender. Methods: Outcomes in medical and dental school applicant cohorts for the years 2012 (n = 15 581) and 2013 (n = 15 454) were studied. Applicants' scores on cognitive tests and an SJT were linked to SES (parents' occupational status), ethnicity (White versus Black and other minority ethnic candidates), and …

Gender Threat, Male Dominance, And Masculinity: A Perfect Storm For Workplace Aggression, Brooke Elise Dresden

Theses and Dissertations

Higher prevalence of gender harassment has previously been identified in male dominated workforces, but not in academia. Factors such as implicit bias, male dominance, perceived gender threat, and heightened masculinity may increase the likelihood of gender harassment occurring in an academic setting. Two studies investigated this. In Study 1, one hundred seventy-one (92 male, 79 female) participants from male dominated and gender equivalent majors completed an online survey in which their explicit attitudes regarding gender and authority (GAM; see Rudman & Kilianski, 2000), and implicit associations regarding gender and careers (IAT; see Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) were measured. Additionally, …

Recognizing Microaggressions: A Framework For Helping Grandfamilies, Loriena Yancura, Christine A. Fruhauf, Heather Greenwood-Junkermeier

GrandFamilies: The Contemporary Journal of Research, Practice and Policy

Microaggressions are manifestations of prejudice targeted toward socially marginalized groups. They may take several forms: subtle discriminatory remarks, behavior, or environmental characteristics. In contrast to overt aggressions, microagressions are not easy to detect and often invisible to both perpetrator and recipient. Existing research demonstrates that experiencing microaggressions is harmful to members of stigmatized groups and provides a framework to combat these negative effects. Although most of the literature on microaggressions is focused on groups characterized by minority race and female gender, microagressions might also be experienced by members of grandfamilies, who often have socially marginalized status. Microagressions toward grandfamilies may …

The Benefits Of Multicultural Eclectic Service Delivery, Eugena Griffin

Publications and Research

To date, Blacks in America are often misdiagnosed or mistreated due to the failure of mental health practitioners to provide services from a multicultural eclectic purview. It is necessary to attend to the past and present influences of psychosocial variables related to real and perceived discrimination on minority achievement, behavior, and clinically health outcomes. When providers do not take into consideration these factors, they have a limited conceptualization of their clients’ needs. Such psychosocial variables can exacerbate behaviors, symptoms, and at times be the antecedent that onset those symptoms. Thus, it is imperative that health providers learn methods to investigate …

The Influence Of Mentor-Youth Activity Profiles On School-Based Youth Mentoring Relationship Processes And Outcomes, Stella S. Kanchewa

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Although quality formal mentoring relationships are associated with beneficial effects on youth’s academic and social-emotional development, these effects have been relatively modest. As such, research has focused on factors that may contribute to relationship quality. Within this context, relatively little is known about the effects of activities that matches engage in on relationship processes and youth outcomes. The purpose of the current study was to investigate associations between mentor-youth activities, and processes and outcomes of school-based mentoring. First, a person-centered approach using latent profile analysis (LPA) was employed to examine whether match activity (i.e., how matches spend their time together) …

Self-Forgiveness And Forgiveness-Seeking In Response To Rumination: Cardiac And Emotional Responses Of Transgressors, Sérgio P. Da Silva, Charlotte Witvliet, Blake Riek

Faculty Scholarship

Self-forgiveness and forgiveness-seeking are important and understudied aspects of forgiveness. We examined the cardiac and emotional patterns of healthy young adults (40 women, 40 men) who recalled an unresolved offense they had caused another person. Participants engaged in four imagery conditions: ruminating about the offense, being humbly repentant and engaging in self-forgiveness, seeking forgiveness from the victim and receiving forgiveness, and seeking forgiveness from the victim and being begrudged. Being repentant and begrudged forgiveness by one’s victim was associated with the same level of guilt as when ruminating, but significantly more negative emotion, less control, and less empathy than when …

Self-Forgiveness And Forgiveness-Seeking In Response To Rumination: Cardiac And Emotional Responses Of Transgressors, Sérgio P. Da Silva, Charlotte Vanoyen-Witvliet, Blake Riek

Faculty Publications

Self-forgiveness and forgiveness-seeking are important and understudied aspects of forgiveness. We examined the cardiac and emotional patterns of healthy young adults (40 women, 40 men) who recalled an unresolved offense they had caused another person. Participants engaged in four imagery conditions: ruminating about the offense, being humbly repentant and engaging in self-forgiveness, seeking forgiveness from the victim and receiving forgiveness, and seeking forgiveness from the victim and being begrudged. Being repentant and begrudged forgiveness by one’s victim was associated with the same level of guilt as when ruminating, but significantly more negative emotion, less control, and less empathy than when …

Science, Symptoms, And Support Groups:Adhd In The American Cultural Context, Kealy D. Fallon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a cultural analysis of the behaviorally- and psychiatrically-defined disorder ADHD, socio-historically contextualizing it in the United States and exploring ethnographically how people affected by it talk about and organize their experience of its symptoms.

Selective Attention To Threat In People With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Meta-Analysis, Amberle Cusmano

Theses and Dissertations

People with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) show increased attention towards or away from threat in their environment; the current literature is divided on the direction of these effects. This meta-analysis aims to aggregate and examine if people with PTSD display selective attention to threat compared to people without PTSD.

Slowed Temporal Disengagement From Ambiguous Information In Trait Anxiety, Tiffany Arango

Theses and Dissertations

We investigated the relation between trait anxiety and temporal disengagement from social and nonsocial affective information. Participants (n =54) completed a disengagement task and self-report questionnaires. Trait anxiety was associated with slower temporal disengagement from neutral nonsocial information, but did not predict above and beyond state anxiety.

Does Permissiveness Mediate The Relationship Between Sexual Identity Exploration And Sexual Behavior?, Kailani Capote

Theses and Dissertations

Sexual identity exploration and permissive attitudes about sex increase emerging adults' sexual behaviors. This study surveyed (N=301) 18-29 year-olds’ sexual attitudes and anal/ vaginal sex acts. Findings support that permissiveness accounts for some of the relationship between sexual identity exploration and sex acts but did not show a mediation effect.

Behavioral Avoidance And The Evaluation, Expression, And Intensity Of Emotions In Generalized Anxiety And Major Depressive Disorders, Laura Lamantia

Theses and Dissertations

Emotion dysregulation manifests in ways, such as behavioral avoidance and differential patterns of emotional reactivity and processing. The current study examined whether behavioral avoidance (i.e., task disengagement and expression suppression) and emotional experience (i.e., intensity and evaluation) are associated differently in those with GAD, MDD, and healthy controls.

Ménage À Trois In The Atlantic Brief Squid (Lolliguncula Brevis): Prior Presence Affects Mate Choice, Rachel A. Schlessinger

Theses and Dissertations

Lolliguncula brevis given prior presence experienced a significantly greater number of contacts with opposite sex squid than rivals. Males given prior presence also spent significantly more time in proximity to females than rivals. This suggests that for both female and male Atlantic brief squid, having prior presence influences mating behavior.

Principles Of Multimodal Integration In The Startle Escape System Of Goldfish, Camille Mcintyre

Theses and Dissertations

In this study, we revealed how visual and audio stimuli are integrated during goldfish escape startle by analyzing startle response probabilities and latencies evoked by individual and combined presentations of a short (5 ms) audio pips and a long lasting (900 ms) gradually increasing visual looms.

A Case Study: Observations Of Behaviors & Vocalizations In A Captive Asian Elephant (Elephas Maximus) During Quarantine, Alexandra L. Dilley

Theses and Dissertations

Bozie, an Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), was relocated from the Baton Rouge Zoo to Smithsonian’s National Zoo. During a requisite 29-day quarantine period, I recorded Bozie’s stress-related behaviors and the vocalizations she produced when she was alone and with her keepers in free and protected contact.

Investigating The Nest Sanitation Hypothesis In A Rejecter Species: Is Sanitation A Proximate Link, Pre-Adaptation, Or By-Product Of Egg Ejection?, Alec B. Luro

Theses and Dissertations

Nest sanitation, a behavior similar in motor pattern to egg ejection, has been proposed repeatedly as a potential pre-adaptation to foreign egg ejection in avian brood parasites hosts. We found no support for the sanitation hypothesis--therefore we suggest egg ejection may have evolved independently of sanitation.

Facial Expressions In Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Lauren Noble

Theses and Dissertations

This study found that greater displays of sad facial expressions and body movement are associated with higher self-reported anxiety-related symptoms in those with GAD. In the control group, lower scores on rumination and worry scales are associated with greater displays of fearful facial expressions during the fear video.

Beauty, Sex, And Death: The Role Of Mortality Salience In Objectification Processes, Kasey Lynn Morris

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although much attention has been paid to the consequences of objectification, relatively little research has focused on the question of why women are objectified. From a terror management theory perspective, the association of women with (literal) objects strips them of the qualities that are threatening (on account of mortality concerns). Sexualization, however, underscores women’s animal nature, and this association is problematic in the management of existential anxiety. The current research builds on a distinction between sexual and appearance-focused objectification to identify the existential mechanisms in the motivation to dehumanize, and subsequently harm, women. Consistent with the hypothesis, participants primed with …

Laterality Strength Is Linked To Stress Reactivity In Port Jackson Sharks (Heterodontus Portusjacksoni), Evan E. Byrnes, Catarina Vila Pouca, Culum Brown

Laterality Collection

Cerebral lateralization is an evolutionarily deep-rooted trait, ubiquitous among the vertebrates and present even in some invertebrates. Despite the advantages of cerebral lateralization in enhancing cognition and facilitating greater social cohesion, large within population laterality variation exists in many animal species. It is proposed that this variation is maintained due links with inter-individual personality trait differences. Here we explored for lateralization in Port Jackson sharks (Heterodontus portusjacksoni) using T-maze turn and rotational swimming tasks. Additionally, we explored for a link between personality traits, boldness and stress reactivity, and cerebral lateralization. Sharks demonstrated large individual and sex biased laterality …

Rostral Middle Frontal Gyrus Thickness Is Associated With Perceived Stress And Depressive Symptomatology, Lindsay J. Michalski

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Elevated stress perception and depression commonly co-occur and have shared genetic and environmental influences, suggesting they may rest upon a common underlying neurobiology. The rostral middle frontal gyrus (RMFG), part of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, is critical for executive function, including emotion regulation and working memory. Variability in RMFG cortical thickness has been associated with both depression and stress-related phenotypes, although the directionality of these associations has been inconsistent thus far. The current study examined healthy participants (n=879) who completed the ongoing family-based Human Connectome Project were included in analyses. RMFG cortical thickness was computed from structural magnetic resonance imaging …

Investigating The Effects Of Copy Number Variants On Reading And Language Performance, Alessandro Gialluisi, Alessia Visconti, Erik G. Willcutt, Shelley D. Smith, Bruce F. Pennington, Mario Falchi, John C. Defries, Richard K. Olson, Clyde Francks, Simon E. Fisher

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Background

Reading and language skills have overlapping genetic bases, most of which are still unknown. Part of the missing heritability may be caused by copy number variants (CNVs).

Methods

In a dataset of children recruited for a history of reading disability (RD, also known as dyslexia) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and their siblings, we investigated the effects of CNVs on reading and language performance. First, we called CNVs with PennCNV using signal intensity data from Illumina OmniExpress arrays (~723,000 probes). Then, we computed the correlation between measures of CNV genomic burden and the first principal component (PC) score …

Anxious Anticipation Of A Social Threat And Its Effect On Time Estimation, Natasha April Tonge

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Time perception is a well-studied phenomenon; however, subjective experience of time and its relationship to affective states has received comparatively less attention in the literature (Grondin, 2010). Recently, it was suggested that anticipatory anxiety may also lead to an overestimation effect regarding angry faces in socially anxious individuals (Jusyte et al., 2014). In the present study, participants completed two temporal bisection tasks (TBT) in which they were asked to categorize a stimulus as being of short or long duration. Between the tasks, participants were to present a speech that served to provoke anxiety. In the present study, I aimed to …

Do Rats Consume Ethanol To Regulate A Negative Emotion Induced By A Successive Negative Contrast Procedure?, Andrew Dieterich

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

According to the self-medication hypothesis, individuals may consume drugs or alcohol, or engage in other behaviors in order to reduce a negative emotional state (Khantzian, 1985; Gross, 2013; Crum et al., 2013). Rats experiencing a negative state induced by various stressors (Bertholomey et al., 2010), or a decrease or loss in reward value of a sucrose solution (Manzo et al., 2015; Manzo et al., 2014) demonstrate increased consumption of alcohol. I used successive (SNC) and anticipatory negative contrast (ANC) procedures to further examine this hypothesis and the previous findings (Manzo et al., 2015), that rats increase consumption and preference for …

Education About The Adverse Health Effects Of Recreational Marijuana: The Role Of Type Of Persuasion And Source, Dina Mattern

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In recent years, efforts have been made to legalize cannabis based on increasing research supporting medical benefits and the assumption, albeit questionable, that this is a safe drug. Statistics from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) demonstrate a sharp increase in users, especially among the youth population (2014). This is problematic because smoking marijuana during the teenage years has been shown to have possible adverse effects, such as despondency and potential complications in cognitive development. (Crane et al., 2012) This current study aims to explore effective ways to educate the public on the adverse health effects of recreational marijuana …