Digital Commons Network^™

Mental Illness Among Chinese In The United States: Myth Or Reality?, Alex C. N. Leung

Dissertations and Theses

Several mental health professionals have suggested that Chinese in the United States as a group are less subject to mental disorders than other races. Whereas other investigators have also indicated that due to the influences of cultural conflict and racism, Chinese in the United States are under greater emotional distress than members of the host society. When stress from these sources becomes too great, mental health problems are frequently the result.

The purpose of this library research thesis is to review the available research works related with Chinese Americans mental health problems in the hope of seeking answers to the …

A Validity Study Of Select Symbol-Referent Relationships Using Semantic Differential Ratings, Stephen Willard

Dissertations and Theses

The present research was conducted in order to develop a method useful for measuring the meaning of symbolic material. Using this method an investigation was conducted to test the validity of several personality theories which ascribe meanings to select symbols.

A summary of the major personality theories dealing with symbolic material was conducted . Each theory was briefly presented with a discussion of the methods employed to determine the meanings of symbols. A set of symbol theory considerations was presented which would suggest the necessary components of an objective investigation attempting to be a validity test of symbol meanings predictions.

The Negative Effects Of Divorce On The Behavior Of Children, David Hawkins, Karen Lloyd

Dissertations and Theses

Our study is concerned with the effects of filing for divorce on the behavior of children. We are interested in the adjustment of the child to the changes which occur during separation and divorce, and we maintain the attitude that the lives of children are affected in some way when a marriage or family unit dissolves. A generally accepted belief is that divorce produces negative consequences in the lives of children as shown in their behavior. However, recently a number of studies have suggested that divorce need not be a negative experience, at least to the degree most people feel …

A Study Of The Relationship Between The Adolescents' Knowledge Of Laws And Their Attitudes Towards The Police, Barbara Mccallum

Dissertations and Theses

Crime in the United States has risen at an alarming rate in the last few years and along with it, juvenile crime and delinquency. Society has had a difficult task trying to deal with this increased juvenile crime. Whereas the destructive, antisocial adult can be placed in prison or jail away from society, we are generally reluctant to institutionalize youth in such a manner. Rather, the feeling is that there is still hope for teenagers who commit crimes, that the community rather than institutions can and should be primarily responsible for trying to prevent and/or rehabilitate delinquents.

In the fall …

Residential Treatment Of Emotionally Disturbed Adolescents, Rosemary Brown Sutherland

Dissertations and Theses

This study was requested by Dr. Ira B. Korman, Administrator, Woodland Park Mental Health Center. Woodland Park Mental Health Center currently provides a program of short-term evaluation and crisis care for adolescents. The staff there find it is difficult to locate suitable out-of-home placements for certain of their adolescent patients concluding hospitalization. Their concern for this group of hard-to-place patients has led to this inquiry, the purposes of which are to (1) assess need, (2) design a residential program, and (3) consider the feasibility of its implementation.

Fingertip Skin Temperature As An Indicator Of Affect Arousal, Michael A. Glazer

Psychology ETDs

This experiment was concerned with investigating the effectiveness of fingertip skin temperature as an indicator of anxiety and affect arousal. All fingertip skin temperature data was divided into four levels; an anxiety fingertip skin temperature data level, a nonanxiety fingertip skin temperature data level, a decreasing approach to an anxiety level, and an increasing approach to a nonanxiety level. Fifteen subjects were divided into low, medium, and high anxiety groups based on their Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale Scores. The subjects were attached to the fingertip skin temperature apparatus and 40 minutes of verbal behavior per subject was recorded. The subjects …

Cognitive Manipulation Of Test Anxiety Through False Emotional Feedback And Modeling, John Russell Jacobson

Psychology ETDs

The effects of false emotional feedback and modeling on the cognitive manipulation of test anxiety were studied. A Composite Scale of Test Anxiety (Koenig, 1973) was administered to introductory psychology students. The distribution of scores was divided into thirds, and subjects were defined as either high, average, or low test-anxious. Forty-eight high and forty-eight low test-anxious subjects were then randomly chosen from subjects in the pretest population who had volunteered to participate in the actual experiment. They were assigned to each of four conditions (false emotional feedback, modeling, combined false emotional feedback and modeling, and control). There were 12 subjects …

A Casual Analysis Of The Relationship Between Students' Expected Grades & Their Ratings Of An Instructor, Dianne Willoughby

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Is there a relationship between the grades students expect to receive in a course and the ratings they assign their course instructor? If a relationship does exist, do the students' grade expectations cause the ratings subsequently given the instructor? Data were collected at the beginning and end of a semester, and a cross -lagged panel correlational analysis was applied to two pairs of variables. The first pair of variables, a single -item assessment of instructor effectiveness and a single-item record of each student's expected grade, indicated a statistically significant relationship between expected grades and the measure of instructor performance. This …

A Study Of Five Factors Affecting Attitudes Of Educators Toward Career Education, Rushie Spear

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Educational practices appear to have failed in preparing many individuals to build productive, fulfilling lives. This is evident in the increasing number of dropouts and individuals who qualify neither for a job nor college. Career education has been selected as a Priority program in attempting to remedy such failures.

Theory implies that to successfully implement new educational programs, educators' attitudes and values need to be favorable toward such programs. At present, however, there is very little data available about attitude and the factors that affect attitude. An analysis of educators' attitudes appears to be a necessary first step in the …

Vocalizations Of Isolated Piglets. Ii. Some Environmental Factors, D. Fraser

Communication Skills Collection

The vocalizations of suckling piglets were studied during brief tests which involved social isolation, restriction of movement, and exposure to unfamiliar surroundings. Similar trends were shown in most cases by the three classes of call studied - closed mouth grunts, open mouth grunts, and squeals. The rate of calling was much lower when a piglet was in the home pen than when alone in an unfamiliar pen, and more calls were given in both situations when the animal’s movement was restricted by caging. The presence of the dam and four littermates in unfamiliar surroundings caused a large reduction in calling, …

The Effects Of Stimulus Repetition On Performance Of A Discrimination Task, Nancy A. Neef

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Positive Conditioned Suppression On Schedule-Induced Polydipsia, John Robert Crossen

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Factors Contributing To The Usage Or Non-Usage Of Mental Health Programs At The Comstock Community Center, John H. Bolton

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Sex And Curriculum Differences In Conceptions Of The Teacher Role: A Role Theoretical Analysis, Steven Michael Koning

Masters Theses

This study is concerned with factors which influence the way individuals conceptualize and define their social roles. Role theory suggests that role conceptions, which are individual orientations to a role, are affected by expectations associated with the role and personality characteristics that an individual brings to the role. These suggestions are tested by examining sex and curriculum differences in conceptions of the teacher role among education students at a midwestern university. Conceptions of teacher control and nurturance are assessed by two scales developed by the author. Results indicate that factors associated with a student's curriculum influence orientations toward teacher control …

An Analysis Of The Recovery Of Responsiveness Subsequent To Habituation, Lowell G. Smith

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Letter Identification Training Requiring An Extra Motor Response, Ali Uzunoz

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Response Effort Reduction, Instructions, Group And Individual Feedback, And Reinforcement On Staff Performance, Gerald Lyn Shook

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

An A Priori Analysis Of The Internal Validity Of Interval Recording, Christopher R. Milar

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

A Functional Analysis Of The Effects Of A Token Economy Program On Attending Behavior In Children And Subsequent Test Performance, Kay Delores Lillig Cotter

Dissertations and Theses

Thirty children, 4 years 8 months to 6 years 7 months, enrolled in a privately operated day school, were randomly assigned to either a treatment group or a control group over a one week period of baseline and a one week period of treatment. The experiment was designed to determine, if the implementation of a token economy program to decrease disruptive behavior in a classroom would result in improved academic performance. Both the children's and teacher's behavior were assessed. The findings were nonsignificant for all of the dependent measures for children's behavior. The only significant effect for teacher's behavior was …

Anxiety In Father-Absent College Males, Thomas Wilson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between father-absence and anxiety levels in male cohere students (N=59). A questionnaire was utilized to identify father-absence and four variables associated with father-absence: type or reason for father's absence, length of absence, age of onset, and availability of a father surrogate. Levels of anxiety were defined by scores on the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (AS). A t test comparison of the MAS means of the father-absent students and the MAS means of a father-present control group was not significant. Chi square analyses of M1-3 scores in the father-absence group failed …

The Role Of The Concept Of Death In Existential Psychology: From Kierkegaard To Binswanger, Lennart Belfrage

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The meaning and importance of death in existential psychology are investigated. Four major theorists are presented, i.e. Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Rank, and Binswanger Their interpretation of death in man's personal development, although with different perspectives, nevertheless is seen as having a basic common theme: It is necessary for the person to free himself from the chains of conformity in order to become an individual. By realizing one's potentialities one also must realize and understand one's finitude. Thus by facing death one may actively and courageously move through the anxiety of this life in the shadow of death.

These theories are focused …

The Runaways, Richard David Young

IUSTITIA

At the present stage of development, the varied literature on runaway children and adolescents provides little basis for firm conclusions. The apparent heterogeneity of runaways has yet to be fully realized in conceptual or research attempts, although efforts in that direction are beginning. There appears to be little utility or meaning in assigning runaway behavior solely to categories of delinquency or psychopathology. Such efforts have done little to clarify the meaning of running away or to define the important environmental factors and personality features involved in running away. To some extent their greatest impact has been on the restriction of …

Vocalizations Of Isolated Piglets. I. Sources Of Variation And Relationships Among Measures, D. Fraser

Communication Skills Collection

The vocalizations and activity of suckling piglets aged 4 to 25 days were studied during 5-min periods of social isolation in an unfamiliar enclosure. The animals became very active and vocalized repeatedly during the test, but the reaction was attenuated among older litters. Calls were predominantly closed mouth grunts at low rates of calling, and mainly squeals and open mouth grunts at high overall rates. Squealing correlated with open mouth grunting and with the activity measure both within and between litters. Even so, the measures appeared to be affected independently by the piglets’ behaviour in the home pen just before …

Client Preference For Psychotherapist: Authoritarianism Revisited, Lee Kraus

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The California F Scale served to distinguish among high-, medium-, and low-authoritarian graduate students who participated in a study of client preference for psychotherapist. The subjects viewed the film series, Three anproaches to psychotherapy, and were asked their personal preference for a psychotherapist (Carl Rorers or Albert Ellis) and their perceptions on and consideration given to 12 dimensions of therapist style and behavior. Comparison of the high-, medium-, and low- authoritarian groups indicated that their choice of therapist was significantly different. Authoritarian subjects preferred the directive therapist (Ellis) whereas the nonauthoritarians chose the nondirective therapist (Rogers) at a rate significantly …

Changes In Perceived Guilt As A Function Of False Heart Rate Feedback, Darryl Lee Hawkins

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

No abstract.

Use Of Mental Imagery In Psychotherapy: A Critical Review, Anees A. Sheikh, Nancy C. Panagiotou

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

The paper presents arguments in favor of the use of mental imagery for therapeutic purposes. Several existing imagery approaches to psychotherapy are critically examined and suggestions for future inquiry are offered. The intimate relation between imagery and the affective-somatic processes is stressed.

Training Procedures For Conditional Sentence Reasoning, Susan L. Abbott

Psychology ETDs

An experiment tested the effectiveness of three training procedures on the ability of college subjects to solve complex conditional sentence reasoning problems. Each of these groups of subjects was given one of three brief training courses based on the major component skills of conditional sentence reasoning. These training procedures were (1) training in the relevance and application of falsification as an hypothesis testing strategy, (2) truth table training on conditional and biconditional rules, and (3) conversion training which demonstrated the fallacy of assuming the converse of a conditional streamer.

The Control Response Duration By Correlated Probability Of Reinforcement, Reid R. Vandell

Psychology ETDs

The temporal flux of reinforcement probability is a prominent feature of many operant situations. Presumably, it is also a pervasive determinant of performance. The momentary probability of reinforcement or some derivative variable has been emphasized in many theoretical accounts of the performance engendered by operant schedules of reinforcement. The duration of a barpress specifies a more restricted class of behavioral and environmental events than doe the length of an interresponse time. Accordingly, it was conjectured that the quantitative details of the regulation of performance by momentary reinforcement likelihood would be revealed more readily if response durations were used as predictors …

Sequencing Processes In Observational Learning, Howard Gordon Shore

Psychology ETDs

Major theorists, who adhere to a dual-process hypothesis of mediation, state that imaginal codings encode behaviors, but verbal codings are solely responsible for sequential processing. To test if imaginal-verbal or verbal-imaginal associations are formed, thirty male Ss were shown one of two counter-balanced motion pictures. The films presented a paired-associate learning task with modeled actions and their verb equivalent as the stimuli and two-digit number as the response terms. There were four groups of words and actions. For the Same group, actions and their verb equivalents were both paired with the same number. For the Different and Inverted groups, the …

Coding, Perceptual Grouping And Part-To-Whole Transfer In Recognition Memory And Recall, Frederick J. Parente

Psychology ETDs

Three experiments examined the effects of part-to-whole transfer of organization in recall and recognition memory. The experiments modified the traditional part-to-whole transfer procedures in that subjects initially learned a list of perceptually grouped letter sequences and certain aspects of those sequences (letter elements and/or group structure) were part of larger sequences presented for second-list recall and recognition. The results of the first experiment provided clear support for an organizational interpretation of transfer effects in part-to-whole learning. Subjects in this experiment exhibited a facilitation in second-­list learning which was the result of prior exposure to perceptual groupings that were common to …