Digital Commons Network^™

Evolutionary Mismatch: Getting To The Root Of Modern Problems, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Humans have experienced an enormous amount of technological progress in recent years. Owing to this progress, we are globally connected and can instantly communicate with family, friends, co-workers and multitudes of strangers. We are increasingly sheltered from harsh natural elements, dangerous animals and deadly wars, and have an incredible array of medicine to treat whatever ills us. Our entertainment options now include thousands of satellite television channels and millions of video games and videos. Our food options are just as numerous. Transportation is so fast and easy that we can visit places and do business with people all around the …

The Impact Of Social Desirability On An Individual’S Scale Of Accurate Personality Prediction (Sapp) Score, Alexander James Kiss

Theses and Dissertations

The Scale of Accurate Personality Prediction (SAPP), developed by Miller (2000), was derived from the 16PF and purports to measure an individual’s ability to accurately assess his or her own self-knowledge. The scores from the SAPP are derived from calculating the absolute value of the difference between the individuals predicted scores on the 16PF, and the individual’s actual scores on the 16PF. The present study aimed to determine if individuals with lower SAPP scores were influenced by social desirability, and if social desirability perception differs by gender. Archival data of 607 individuals was organized into 150 low scoring SAPP individuals …

The Efficacy Of Concept Mapping As A Learning Tool In Life-Span Development Classes, Joseph A. Mayo

Perspectives In Learning

The effectiveness of concept mapping on learning has been reported in research across a number of undergraduate disciplines. The purpose of the present investigation is to add to the existing literature on concept mapping in the teaching of psychology through systematic comparisons of learning in undergraduate life-span development classes. In one group, students completed concept-mapping assignments. In another group, they completed written assignments with features of relationship-identification shared with concept mapping. The combined results of quantitative and qualitative comparisons favored concept mapping over the more traditional learning assignments. Implications for future classroom research are discussed.

Positive Affect And Health: What Do We Know And Where Next Should We Go?, Sarah D. Pressman, Brooke N. Jenkins, Judith T. Moskowitz

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Positive affect (PA) is associated with better health across a wide range of physical health outcomes. This review reflects on why the study of PA is an essential component of our understanding of physical health and expands on pathways that connect these two variables. To encourage forward movement in this burgeoning research area, measurement and design issues in the study of PA and health are discussed, as are the connections between PA and a range of different health outcomes. Plausible biological, social, and behavioral pathways that allow for positive feelings to get under the skin and influence physical wellness are …

Correlation Between Music And Preliteracy Skills In Preschool Age Children, Katherine G. Swierk

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

Is there a relationship between music and knowledge? If there is evidence that music is influential for processing complex cognitive information, it is reasonable to consider that if children are exposed to music early, it will help them develop literary skills. In the last decade, researchers have paid more attention to possible relationships between musical-rhythmical skills and reading acquisition. Our study chose to focus on the relationship between music and literacy development in preschool children. We hypothesized that since both music and reading involve the sequential processing of units of information, there must be a positive correlation between musical-rhythmical skills …

Efficaciousness Of Mindfulness Interventions For Trauma Using Psychophysiological Measures: A Review, Sherief Y. Eldeeb

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

In recent decades the efficaciousness of mindfulness has been proven in a wide variety of contexts, but some crucial populations remain understudied. This review critically examines the literature on mindfulness in individuals with trauma using psychophysiological measures. Psychophysiological measures offer critical insight into this intersection of mindfulness and trauma due to the known somatic components in each, as well as serving as an objective response. Mindfulness-based treatments seem to show great promise in treating trauma, however there are significant limitations in the literature. Future studies should standardize the minimum length of treatment, utilize gender-balanced and ethnically diverse samples, and introduce …

Continuous Theta Rhythm During Spatial Working Memory Task In Rodent Models Of Streptozotocin-Induced Type 2 Diabetes, Stephanie Hernandez, Ryan A. Wirt, James M. Hyman

McNair Poster Presentations

Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder altering memory loss thought to be due to neuropathological symptoms such as the buildup of beta amyloid plaques (Ab) and neurofibrillary tangles (NFT). The etiology of Alzheimer’s is still unknown; however, potential risk factors such as diabetes may lead to its development. The most common form of diabetes is type 2 diabetes known for persistent insulin resistance leading to a state of hyperglycemia. Insulin resistance has been shown to affect cognitive abilities such as learning, memory and also alters synaptic plasticity. Neural connections between the hippocampus (HC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) are known …

Advancing Research On Psychological Stress And Aging With The Health And Retirement Study: Looking Back To Launch The Field Forward, Alexandra D. Crosswell, Madhuvanthi Suresh, Eli Puterman, Tara Gruenewald, Jinkook Lee, Elissa S. Epel

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Objectives

The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) was designed as an interdisciplinary study with a strong focus on health, retirement, and socioeconomic environment, to study their dynamic relationships over time in a sample of mid-life adults. The study includes validated self-report measures and individual items that capture the experiences of stressful events (stressor exposures) and subjective assessments of stress (perceived stress) within specific life domains.

Methods

This paper reviews and catalogs the peer-reviewed publications that have used the HRS to examine associations between psychological stress measures and psychological, physical health, and economic outcomes.

Results

We describe the research to date …

Vortioxetine Differentially Modulates Mk-801-Induced Changes In Visual Signal Detection Task Performance And Locomotor Activity, Todd M. Hillhouse, Christina R. Merritt, Douglas A. Smith, Manuel Cajina, Connie Sanchez, Joseph H. Porter, Alan Pehrson

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Attention impairment is a common feature of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and MDD-associated cognitive dysfunction may play an important role in determining functional status among this patient population. Vortioxetine is a multimodal antidepressant that may improve some aspects of cognitive function in MDD patients, and may indirectly increase glutamate neurotransmission in brain regions classically associated with attention function. Previous non-clinical research suggests that vortioxetine has limited effects on attention. This laboratory previously found that vortioxetine did not improve attention function in animals impaired by acute scopolamine administration, using the visual signal detection task (VSDT). However, vortioxetine has limited effects on …

Development And Evaluation Of An Eeg-Based Symbol-Digit Substitution Task, Christopher Beckett, Dr. Bruce Brown

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The event-related potential (ERP) method has led to major advances in the experimental exploration of the neurological correlates of human cognition (Luck, 2005). The usual process is to take EEG (electroencephalographic) recordings during a cognitive task. The recording is timelocked to a stimulus so that multiple trials can be averaged to amplify the signal of the resulting cognitive process. In past research studies, faculty and students in our Quantitative EEG Lab (qEEG) have discovered a way to isolate individual cognitive “bands” within a set of ERP waves. These cognitive bands have diagnostic utility. They can be used to identify personal …

Looking On The Bright Side Of Livestock Emotions—The Potential Of Their Transmission To Promote Positive Welfare, Luigi Baciadonna, Sandra Duepjan, Elodie Briefer, Mónica Padilla De La Torre, Christian Nawroth

Emotion Collection

Emotions can be defined as an individual’s affective reaction to an external and/or internal event that, in turn, generates a simultaneous cascade of behavioral, physiological, and cognitive changes. Those changes that can be perceived by conspecifics have the potential to also affect other’s emotional states, a process labeled as “emotional contagion.” Especially in the case of gregarious species, such as livestock, emotional contagion can have an impact on the whole group by, for instance, improving group coordination and strengthening social bonds. We noticed that the current trend of research on emotions in livestock, i.e., investigating affective states as a tool …

Toxoplasma Gondii Seropositivity And Substance Use In Us Adults, Bruce L. Brown, Andrew N. Berrett, Shawn D. Gale, Lance D. Erickson, Evan L. Thacker, Dawson W. Hedges

Faculty Publications

The intracellular parasite Toxoplasma gondii (Nicolle et Manceaux, 1908) infects humans resulting in acute toxoplasmosis, an infection that in immunocompetent people is typically mild but results in persistent latent toxoplasmosis. In that T. gondii appears to affect dopamine synthesis and because addicting drugs affect midbrain dopamine transmission, latent toxoplasmosis could influence substance use. Using both the third and continuous National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we used logistic regression to test for associations between T. gondii seropositivity and subject self-report of having ever used tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine. …

Needs And Best Practices For Transfer To Our Four-Year Institutions: The Results Of Survey Research, Patrick K. Smith

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges

Contemporary concerns for college programs focus on the ability of the program to prepare students to become employable upon graduation. For a community college psychology program, that focus is somewhat muted by the fact that many of the graduates of the community college will transfer to four-year state universities. For this reason, it is imperative for the community college programs to ascertain from those four-year institutions what preparation those transferring students need. This study has captured what fourteen state public university psychology departments desire for transferring students and what they see as lacking in their students transferring from community colleges. …

Does Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation To The Prefrontal Cortex Affect Social Behavior? A Meta-Analysis, Sarah Beth Bell, Nathan Dewall

Psychology Faculty Publications

This meta-analysis (k = 48, N = 2196) examined the effect of transcranial direct current brain stimulation (tDCS) applied to the prefrontal cortex on a variety of social behaviors, including aggression, overeating, impulsivity, bias, honesty, and risk-taking. tDCS showed an overall significant effect on reducing undesirable behaviors, with an average effect size of d = −0.20. tDCS was most effective at reducing risk-taking behavior, bias, and overeating. tDCS did not affect aggression, impulsivity, or dishonesty. We examined moderators such as brain region of interest, online vs offline stimulation, within- vs between-subjects designs, dose, and duration, but none showed significant …

Common Dna Variants Accurately Rank An Individual Of Extreme Height, Corinne E. Sexton, Mark T. W. Ebbert, Ryan H. Miller, Meganne Ferrel, Joann T. Tschanz, Chris D. Corcoran, Alzheimer’S Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, Perry G. Ridge, John S. K. Kauwe

Psychology Faculty Publications

Polygenic scores (or genetic risk scores) quantify the aggregate of small effects from many common genetic loci that have been associated with a trait through genome-wide association. Polygenic scores were first used successfully in schizophrenia and have since been applied to multiple phenotypes including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and height. Because human height is an easily-measured and complex polygenic trait, polygenic height scores provide exciting insights into the predictability of aggregate common variant effect on the phenotype. Shawn Bradley is an extremely tall former professional basketball player from Brigham Young University and the National Basketball Association (NBA), measuring 2.29 meters …

Intimations Of A Spiritual New Age: Ii. Wilhelm Reich As Transpersonal Psychologist. Part I: Context, Development, And Crisis In Reich’S Bio-Energetic Spiritual Psychology, Harry T. Hunt

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Wilhelm Reich is the focus of this second in a series of papers on a group of independent figures from the 1930s into the 1950s—also including Jung, the later Heidegger, Toynbee, Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin, and Simone Weil—who in the context of those years of crisis articulated overlapping visions of a future “New Age” spirituality that might in some more distant future serve to balance and even transform a globalizing materialism and disenchantment with traditional religion. The later Reich developed a highly original version of a “vitalistic” transpersonal psychology, as his “religion for the children of the future,” which needs …

Well-Being And Self-Transformation In Indian Psychology, Sangeetha Menon, Shankar Rajaraman, Lakshmi Kuchibotla

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This paper uses instances from literature covering a broad spectrum of Indian philosophies, art, medicine and practices—attempts to offer the components of a psychology that is rooted in transformative and transpersonal consciousness. Psychology, in this instance, refers to a systematic study of mind, behavior, and relationship, rather than the formal Western discipline as such. In the Indian approach to understanding consciousness, primary importance is given to the possibility of well-being. Such an approach facilitates an immediate comprehension of the unity of metaphysical opposites, such as matter and consciousness, and its experience as empathy, love and intuition. It involves a thinking …

Haridas Chaudhuri's Contributions To Integral Psychology, Bahman Shirazi

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This article provides a summary of Haridas Chaudhuri’s contributions to the field of integral psychology. First an outline and a brief discussion of his principal tenets and triadic principle of integral psychology are presented, followed by a review of Chaudhuri’s critical reflections on some aspects of early transpersonal psychology. The article concludes with a reflection on recent trends in the field of transpersonal psychology and its evolution toward a whole person orientation compatible with integral psychology.

"An Alchemy Of Heaven On Nature's Base": Intimations Of The Universal Opus In The Integral Yoga And The Divine Life In Man In The Work Of C. G. Jung, Stephen L. Julich

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This comparative study addresses two main questions. First, considering the status of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as spiritual teachers and Jung as a psychologist: might their respective views on transformation be too divergent to warrant comparison? Second, considering that one of the goals of the Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s yoga was the transformation of physical substance, could their relationship be viewed through an alchemical lens? The discussion begins with a comparison and differentiation of integral and analytic psychologies and a discussion of the nature of awakening in the two traditions, which leads to an extended amplification: “a method of …

Human-Directed Behaviour In Goats Is Not Affected By Short-Term Positive Handling, Jan Langbein, Annika Krause, Christian Nawroth

Social Cognition Collection

In addition to domestication, interactions with humans or task-specific training during ontogeny have been proposed to play a key role in explaining differences in human–animal communication across species. In livestock, even short-term positive interactions with caretakers or other reference persons can influence human–animal interaction at different levels and over different periods of time. In this study, we investigated human-directed behaviour in the ‘unsolvable task’ paradigm in two groups of domestic goats (Capra aegagrus hircus). One group was positively handled and habituated to a plastic box by the experimenter to retrieve a food reward, while the other group only received standard …

Transcendence From Below: The Embodied Feminine Mysticism Of Marion Woodman, Lora L. Menter

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This article outlines the mystical path followed by Jungian analyst and author Marion Woodman. It unpacks the mystical aspects of Jungian psychology and uses Woodman’s life as a lens to view how the practice of mysticism can operate within alternative psycho-religious belief systems. Woodman deeply embraces mysticism as a transformative, feminist practice by focusing her work on healing the psycho-spiritual effects of patriarchy and the associated repression of women and the body. This paper also discusses how Woodman’s mystical revelations have begun to affect the epistemological foundation of Jungian psychology in a way that echoes the embodied and enactive perspective …

Sri Aurobindo's Formulations Of The Integral Yoga, Debashish Banerji

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Sri Aurobindo Ghose (1872–1950) developed, practiced and taught a form of yoga, which he named integral yoga. If one peruses the texts he has written pertaining to his teaching, one finds a variety of models, goals, and practices which may be termed formulations or versions of the integral yoga. This article compares three such formulations, aiming to determine whether these are the same, but in different words, as meant for different audiences, or whether they represent different understandings of the yoga based on changing perceptions. The article also tries to compare the versions in terms of differences in emphases and/or …

Training In Aura Reading: Results From A Small Quasi-Experimental Study In India (Research Note), Srikanth Nagaraja Jois, Sowmya Shivarajapura Nagaraj, Krishnamurthy Nagendra Prasad, Lancy D'Souza

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The aura is believed to be an invisible field surrounding the physical body, interpenetrating and extending beyond it. The present study examines whether appearance of an aura-like phenomenon around the hand can be perceived visually after a short training session. A quasi-experimental research design was employed with 47 participants with a mean age of 19 years. Results from before and after attempting to view an aura-like phenomenon around the hand were analyzed using Contingency Coefficient analysis. The results suggest that an aura-like phenomenon can be detected around the hand since the participants narrated several experiences that were novel (p

Re-Imagining Embodiment And The Self In People With Traumatic Spinal Cord Injuries: A Narrative Approach, Namitha Kumar, Sangeetha Menon

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Traumatic spinal cord injuries from accidents cause physical and social suffering, pain and loss. After an initial period of physical and psychological trauma, the individual begins to cope and successfully crosses over. Crossing over as a term used in the spinal cord injury register refers to positive adaptation—physical, psychological and social. This paper is based on a qualitative narrative study of the lived experiences of individuals negotiating spinal cord injuries in the Indian context wherein the disability is no longer the location of inability, tragedy, pain, and loss, but one of creative possibilities. As individuals re-imagine embodiment and self, a …

The Self And The Structure Of The Personality: An Overview Of Sri Aurobindo’S Topography Of Consciousness, Matthijs Cornelissen

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga aimed not only at what he called the realization of the Divine, but also at an integral transformation of human nature under Divine influence. For this exceptionally wide aim, he developed an exceptionally deep and comprehensive frame for understanding human nature. His concepts, as discussed in this paper, must be understood on their own terms, which are often different from meanings attributed in the conventional language of Western psychology. This paper provides a detailed account of Sri Aurobindo’s conceptualization of the various centers of identity and of the vertical and concentric dimensions he used to describe …

A Matter Of Heart And Soul: The Value Of Positing A Personal Ontological Center For Developmental Psychology, Elizabeth M. Teklinski

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

A whole person understanding of postconventional development needs to offer a facilitative agent, what is here called a psychocentric dimension, with a unique and necessary role in the transformation of individual consciousness, that complements and completes the egocentric and cosmocentric domains. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s writings and praxis concerning what they called the psychic being may elucidate an alternative frame to current theoretical speculations, in a way that may offer a new synthesis and a more theoretically satisfying interpretation. More specifically, it is hoped that an integral yoga psychology framework for postconventional development can meaningfully account for the transformation …

The Unconscious In Sri Aurobindo: A Study In Integral Psychology, Indra Sen

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

n/a

After Awakening, The Laundry: Is Nonduality A Spiritual Experience?, Jenny Wade

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Historically the exclusive purview of contemplative religious paths, awakening into nonduality was considered the pinnacle of human attainment, even if, in some traditions, it proved to be the threshold to even more sublime states. Awakening was traditionally available only to dedicated elite seekers, usually renunciates who practiced for years in monastic communities, their progress directed by the authorities of their lineage. Today technologies for creating the electroencephalographic signatures of advanced meditators are available for purchase, and esoteric religious practices like Zen meditation and asana yoga have been secularized as stress-reduction techniques and physical exercise, respectively. Increased numbers of teachers of …

Intimations Of A Spiritual New Age: Ii. Wilhelm Reich As Transpersonal Psychologist. Part 2: The Futural Promise Of Reich’S Naturalistic Bio-Energetic Spirituality, Harry T. Hunt

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This is the second part of a consideration of the later Wilhelm Reich as anticipating a future planetary-wide “New Age” form of this-worldly spirituality in ways overlapping with figures from the same era of Western crisis from the 1930s through the 1950s, including Jung, Toynbee, Bergson, Heidegger, Teilhard de Chardin, and Simone Weil. Where the first part of this treatment of Reich as transpersonal psychologist traced his evolution from his bio-energetic psychotherapy to a Weberian this-worldly mysticism of a universal life energy, his cosmic orgone, with its attendant features of conflicted “spiritual emergency,” this second paper seeks to further develop …

A Neurotheological Approach To Spiritual Awakening, Andrew B. Newberg, Mark R. Waldman

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

A neurotheological approach suggests an analysis of spiritual awakening experiences by combining phenomenological data with neuroscience. This paper presents a synthesis combining information on the thoughts, feelings, and experiences associated with spiritual awakening experiences and neurophysiological data, primarily from neuroimaging studies, to help assess which brain structures might be associated with these experiences. Brain structures involved with emotions correlate with emotional responses while areas of the brain associated with the sense of self appear to correlate with the key feature of these experiences in which an individual loses the sense of self and feels intimately connected with God, universal consciousness, …