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The Current Status Of Acceptance And Commitment Therapy (Act) In Iran: A Systematic Narrative Review, Mehdi Akbari, Mohammad Seydavi, Carter H. Davis, Michael E. Levin, Michael P. Twohig, Elahe Zamani

Psychology Faculty Publications

Research on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and its application to various clinical issues have proliferated across the world. Despite very active clusters of ACT research occurring worldwide, the science that is disseminated through the literature does not fully reflect this scope and diversity, with Iran serving as a prime example of this issue. To increase awareness of ACT research findings in Iran, we conducted a systematic review of 110 randomized trials and extracted data on key study features. RCTs were identified, suggesting the efficacy of ACT in Iran for a wide range of clinical areas, including anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive …

A Practicum In Behavioral Economics, Arthur J. Caplan

Applied Economics Faculty Publications

A Practicum in Behavioral Economics is a practice-based textbook covering the broad field of behavioral economics. Because behavioral economics is foremost a "test-and-learn" field of scientific inquiry that evolves according to experimental outcomes, so too should students test-and-learn. As such, the book's primary goal is to help students experience behavioral economics through participation in the same experiments and games that serve as the foundations for, and shape the contours of, the field. With the help of this book students learn behavioral economics firsthand, and in the process create their own experiences. They learn about themselves - about how they make …

Toward Deeper Understanding And Wide-Scale Implementation Of Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions, Sophia D'Agostino, Ana D. Dueñas, Alice Bravo, Kelsie Tyson, Diondra Straiton, Giovanna L. Salvatore, Cressida Pacia, Melanie Pellecchia

Special Education and Rehabilitation Counseling Faculty Publications

Naturalistic Developmental Behavior Interventions (NDBIs) have a strong and growing evidence base. Yet, NDBIs are not implemented on a wide scale within early intervention programs for children on the autism spectrum. Potential reasons for the slow adoption of NDBIs likely stem from the differing theoretical orientations of behavioral and developmental sciences from which NDBI are derived, and a lack of training, knowledge, and support for implementing NDBIs within the behavior analytic community. In support of efforts to promote wide-scale implementation of NDBIs, we clarify their common features, discuss possible misconceptions, offer reasons why NDBIs should be widely implemented, and provide …

“I Come Out Because I Love You”: Positive Coming Out Experiences Among Latter-Day Saint Sexual And Gender Minorities, Samuel J. Skidmore, G. Tyler Lefevor, Adlyn M. Perez-Figueroa

Psychology Faculty Publications

Background:

Coming out conversations are pivotal and stressful experiences for sexual and gender minorities (SGMs). Coming out can lead to more affirmation, safety, confidence, and improved relationships. However, adverse coming out experiences can lead to damaged relationships and ostracization, which may be more likely in conservative religious contexts.

Purpose:

The purpose of the current study was to explore what leads to positive coming out experiences for SGM members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Method:

A sample of 25 current or former Latter-day Saint (LDS) SGMs participated in semi-structured interviews, which were analyzed using thematic analysis.

Results: …

The Utah Statesman August 29, 2022, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

Simple Techniques To Encourage Long-Term Retrieval, Stacy Bevan, Maryann Schneider

Empowering Teaching Excellence Conference

Amid massive changes in teaching, one thing that remains constant is that we want students to really learn, not simply memorize to pass a test and then forget everything. We want our students to be successful in their studying rather than wasting time rereading highlighted text with glazed over eyes. Despite these ambitions, teachers often use ineffective techniques and students lack the metacognitive strategies needed to enable learning. The presenters of this session will highlight evidence-based techniques found in the book "Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning" by Peter C. Brown. They will also share personal experiences from …

Classrooms And Minefields, Jonathan Simmons, Sandra Silva-Enos, Shannon Kelley

Exploring How We Teach

• Graduate school is a time of personal and professional challenges and changes. Engaging in personal reflection about your identity and your goals can help you make sense of these changes.
• Set and enforce your own personal and professional boundaries to protect all the parts of your identity; learn to recognize your own triggers and prioritize your own self-care.
• Create a set of lifelines—people and resources you can be vulnerable with and can turn to for both personal and professional challenges. You will need different lifelines to help with different problems such as identity whiplash or the many landmines you may …

Using A Minoritized Graduate Instructor Identity To Cultivate An Inclusive And Diverse Learning Space, Faqryza Ab Latif

Exploring How We Teach

• How to humanize the classroom climate and establish an authentic presence that can challenge the conventional Westernized classroom structure.
• How graduate instructors can use their malleable identity to their advantage in cultivating an inclusive community of diverse learners. There are experiences that are unique to graduate instructors, especially for those of us who come from underrepresented cultural backgrounds. These experiences can be utilized to construct a more inclusive and diverse learning environment, which could then encourage students to do the same.

Validating Students' Diverse Identities, Erin Hughes

Exploring How We Teach

• Recognizing and appreciating students’ identities is important for learning and feelings of academic empowerment.
• The ways in which we can amplify students feeling validated is by being responsive to their needs and respecting who they are both inside and outside the classroom.
• The ways students may feel invalidated are by perpetuating the power dynamics between student and teacher, disregarding students’ mental health, and engaging in inflexible standards.
• Students may feel more able to take on the difficulties of academia when we help them take a strengths-based approach to who they are.

Nothing About Us Without Us: Practical Strategies For Accessible Pedagogy, Jennie Baker, Heath J. Wooten

Exploring How We Teach

• This chapter explores practical strategies based on the lived experiences of the authors, who are disabled graduate instructors.
• Theoretical approaches to accessible pedagogy should be rooted in praxis that accounts for the material realities of the disabled people it professes to be for.
• Most classroom interventions at present are accommodations, which are based on the medical model of disability; this chapter describes an approach to accessible pedagogy rooted in the social model of disability, and an ethics of disability justice.
• Instructors can explore ways of implementing accessible praxis by rethinking the ableist assumptions inherent in such areas as time, space, …

Graduate Teaching Communities Of Practice: Fostering A Sense Of Belonging And Professional Development For Graduate Students, By Graduate Students, April Athnos, Tianyi Kou-Herrema, Matthew Langley, Emile Oshima, Harrison Parker, Hima Rawal, Olivia Wilkins, Alexandra Lee, Seth Hunt, Ellen Searle, Nathalie Marinho

Exploring How We Teach

• Communities of Practice provide explicit formal recognition for teaching work and serve as a network of pedagogical resources.
• Communities of Practice create a safe space and a strengthened sense of community.
• Communities of Practice can be formed anywhere to meet any set of needs but always thrive with members’ agency and institutional support.

Don't Forget To Breathe: Advice For Coping With Graduate Teaching Anxiety, Ryan Cheek

Exploring How We Teach

• Graduate teaching anxiety is a unique form of communication apprehension.
• Ignore your overactive amygdala. Teaching will not kill you.
• Teach with empath. Students are more afraid of you than you are of them.
• Don’t forget to breathe. A hospitable atmosphere is key to successful teaching.
• Institutions should better support their graduate student instructors.

Navigating Evidence And Knowledge Equity, J. Nick Fisk

Exploring How We Teach

• Graduate instructors are awkwardly situated in the academy, which shapes their agency in teaching effectively and developing their own teaching practice.
• Evidence is a potentially fraught construct that is nonetheless necessary and accepted in the academy and can be leveraged in lieu of the often-wanting personal authority of graduate instructors to advocate better teaching practices while also developing themselves professionally.
• Principles of knowledge equity, which is foundationed on a pluralistic epistemological approach to knowledge building, can guide graduate instructors to consider a more expansive view and contextual approach to evidence to better serve students.
• Adoption of evidence-supported practices in the …

Practicing And Researching Pedagogical Metacognition: Benefits For Graduate Instructors During The First Year Of Instruction, Audrey Tocco

Exploring How We Teach

While reading this chapter, graduate student instructors will be able to:

• Define, identify, and explain the benefits of pedagogical metacognition.
• Understand a graduate student instructor’s experience with pedagogical metacognition in a learning community and how it enhanced her reflective and reflexive practices.
• Learn strategies to implement pedagogical metacognition in instruction.

How Can Graduate Instructors Promote Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In Their Courses?, Taneisha Vilma, Natalie Low

Exploring How We Teach

In this chapter, readers will find

• Strategies to include Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices when designing the course syllabus.
• Considerations for fostering equity among students through the format and scoring of course assessments.
• Methods to include diverse cultures and contexts in course materials to increase representation.
• Strategies for promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in various components of a course by graduate instructors who have different levels of course autonomy.

Teaching To Fail: Creating Vulnerable Learning Communities To Facilitate Students' Growth, Avaneesh Narla

Exploring How We Teach

• In today’s academic environment, students perceive no room for failure. Thus, they do not explore or take risks, and this limits their growth. As a result, the instructor must create opportunities for failure while mitigating the stress associated with failure.
• Opportunities for failure can be created in the curriculum and course structure through scaffolding, formative assessments, and extensive feedback. The instructor must also adopt a growth mindset when it comes to the students’ abilities.
• Instructors can create an environment where failure is expected by being vulnerable in the classroom themselves and highlighting their failures and subsequent growth. Graduate students are …

A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial Of Culturally-Adapted, Telehealth Group Acceptance And Commitment Therapy For Iranian Adolescent Females Reporting Symptoms Of Anxiety, Mehdi Zemestani, Mojgan Hosseini, Julie M. Petersen, Michael P. Twohig

Psychology Faculty Publications

While the efficacy of internet-based acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) has been examined for different mental health concerns in high-income countries, evidence for the potential efficacy of culturally-adapted ACT in non-Western, low- and middle-income countries is scarce. The present study is a randomized, waitlist-controlled trial of culturally-adapted, online, manualized group ACT for anxiety in Iranian adolescent females. To participate, adolescents had to identify as female, report interfering anxiety symptoms, be currently attending high school, and be within the age range of 15–18 years old. Individuals in the active condition (n = 24) participated in eight group sessions delivered over the …

Settler-On-Settler Violence: Ritual Protocols In Youtube Street Fight Videos - Paper 1, Kelly Menzel, Tyson Yunkaporta

Journal of Indigenous Research

This is part one of a series of two papers exploring a project that was conducted by two Australian Aboriginal researchers, one male and one female, and might be described as ‘reverse anthropology’, in the same way that people sometimes refer to positive discrimination as ‘reverse racism’. But we would just call it anthropology; a tidal river is still a river when it flows back the other way. The project could hardly be acknowledged as anthropology though, as it was based on Indigenous methods of inquiry that do not yet belong to a formal discipline. Initially the goal was to …

Provider Perspectives In Serving Children Who Are Deaf Or Hard Of Hearing And Their Families Using Tele-Intervention, Lauri H. Nelson, Amanda M. Rudge, Pamela Dawson, Demi Culianos, Arlene Stredler-Brown

Journal of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention

Purpose: In the second of a two-part survey series, this cross-sectional survey study explored professionals’ perceptions of tele-intervention (TI) services for young children who are deaf or hard of hearing. Using Likert rating scales and open-ended questions, the survey queried professional’s confidence in providing TI services, including their views and recommendations. Data were collected March-May 2020, not realizing the survey release would coincide with the Covid-19 pandemic and the influx of unexpected virtual services. For this reason, data were stratified between those who had been providing TI services for more than versus less than

three months. Responses for in-person providers …

Myside Bias Shifting In The Written Arguments Of First Year Composition Students, Lezlie Christensen-Branum

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation reports on research conducted to better understand how college student writers learned to work against their own biases as they researched and wrote arguments. I conducted a review of former studies to design a curriculum that would help students avoid bias and increase their ability to write arguments tailored to specific readers in ways that accomplish their goals. This review also informed the kinds of data to be collected and analyzed in order to accomplish the research goal, which was to understand whether and how each of seven students enrolled in a composition course reduced their biases. I …

Intra-Operative Language Assessment For Adult Brain Tumor Survivors: A Systematic Review, Carissa Jolley

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Awake craniotomy and language assessment procedures for brain tumor survivors can drastically affect patient outcomes and quality of life. The goal of intra-operative language mapping is to help preserve vital communicative functions. However, there is currently no standardized set of measures for intra-operative language assessment. This systematic review identified behavioral language measures used during intra-operative procedures and the resulting outcomes for adult brain tumor patients, with the aim of helping clinicians and researchers select intra-operative language assessments supported by the highest levels of evidence.

PRISMA guidelines were used to systematically identify articles. Patient demographic and medical information, neuroimaging data, intra-operative …

The Personal Is Still Political: An Analysis Of Jessica Valenti's Contemporary Feminine Style, Michala M. Zilkey

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In 2016, Jessica Valenti’s memoir, Sex Object, was published. Sex Object describes Valenti’s experiences of sexualization and objectification in a personal and anecdotal format. The feminine style, a rhetorical style that bridges the divide between norms of femininity and expectations of public oration, has been heralded as essential for advancing the feminist movement. This thesis asks the question, to what extent does contemporary feminists’ rhetoric mirror and diverge from earlier iterations of the feminine style? I argue that Valenti’s employs a feminine style that utilizes relational norms and self-disclosure to illustrate the personal as political and the political as …

High School Biology Teachers' Integration Of Argumention In The Context Of Disciplinary Literacy Coaching, Ashley Strong

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Scientific argumentation is a core scientific practice. Although scientific argumentation has been linked to increased learning of scientific content, improved reading, writing, and critical thinking, traditional science classrooms have not included scientific argumentation. Teachers often have little experience learning or teaching science through argumentation and need support to integrate this complex practice of science into their classrooms. This study compared four high school biology teachers’ instruction of scientific argumentation as they worked with a literacy coach. Data were collected through interviews, audio recordings of classroom instruction and literacy coaching sessions, and artifacts. After analyzing the data, several key findings stood …

Cultural, Contextual, And Individual Determinants Of Mental Health Service Utilization Among Latinx Emerging Adults, Kenia Carrera Diaz

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Despite being at an increased risk of experiencing mental health problems, Latinx emerging adults underutilize professional psychological services compared to other ethnic/racial groups. It is important for researchers to understand this mental health disparity to improve Latinx emerging adults’ use of quality mental health services (MHS). The current project investigated factors that might influence Latinx emerging adult’s use of MHS through two separate studies. In the first study, I systematically reviewed research published in the past decade that examined predictors of MHS use among Latinx emerging adults. A total of 9 studies were found and included in this review. This …

The Association Of Military Sexual Harassment/Assault With Suicidal Ideation, Plans, Attempts, And Mortality Among Service Members And Veterans: A Meta-Analysis And Research Study, Whitney S. Livingston

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Rates of death by suicide and sexual harassment/assault that occurs during military service (MSH/A) are higher among service members/veterans than rates of suicide and sexual violence among civilians. Suicide risk includes thoughts and attempts, and research examining the strength of the relationship between suicide risk and sexual violence across past studies that examined this association are limited to civilians. Moreover, current theories hypothesizing which factors are related to suicide risk do not adequately predict suicide among service members and veterans, and do not account for factors such as MSH/A. This two-study dissertation first calculated the magnitude of the relationship between …

Syntactic Complexity In Reading Comprehension: An Eye-Tracking Study Of Text Processing Among Bilinguals And Monolinguals, Guoqin Ding

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

For Chinese students, studying in a country with different cultural components and language structures is challenging. Compared to English, the Chinese prefers shorter and simple sentence structure and allows for two sentences to be stated side by side. Different sentence structures in Chinese may influence native-Chinese readers’ understanding of English sentences and even a whole text. This exploratory study examined whether there were any differences between English monolingual and Chinese-English children while reading varied English texts with simple or complex structures at different reading difficulty levels. This study explored the differences across texts and readers, as well as the possible …

Who Is More Likely To Be Delinquent In Their Mortgage Payments Among Homeowners? The Role Of Financial Literacy, Ellie Donne Hansen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Homeownership is a way for families to build wealth and marks status attainment. Despite the many benefits of homeownership, homeowners who are delinquent on their mortgages lose the effective means of wealth accumulation and may trigger the beginning of the foreclosure process. There is evidence that homeowners with appropriate levels of financial literacy have a lower likelihood of mortgage delinquency.

Using data from the 2018 National Financial Capability Study (NFCS), the main purpose of this study was to examine what factors are associated with mortgage delinquency among homeowners. This study also examined to what extent financial literacy plays a role …

Teaching Multicultural Psychology As A Cultural Competence Intervention: An Empirical Evaluation Of Course Components, Elizabeth Tish Hicks

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Previous research has shown that a semester-long multicultural psychology course can effectively increase students’ cultural competence-related attitudes when students complete the class in-person and online. Cultural competence refers to the knowledge, awareness, and skills required to appreciate, recognize, and effectively work with members of other cultural groups. This dissertation examined several components of a multicultural psychology course: ethical grading, skill development, and intergroup contact. The first paper discussed techniques used to minimize grading bias and examined whether cultural competence shifts impacted grading. Students’ cultural competence scores did not relate to or predict their grades in the course, which supported the …

School Resource Officers' Reports Of Training And Perceptions Of High School Students With Disabilities, Kandace T. Jones

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this explanatory sequential, mixed methods research study was to identify the perceptions of school resource officers (SROs) regarding high school students with disabilities and their preparedness to work with this population, as a result of their SRO training. This study involved a national quantitative survey of SROs working in public high schools, followed by one-on-one interviews from the same sample to allow for a deeper analysis of the survey results and develop a theory on how training impacts SRO preparedness and their perceptions of high school students with disabilities. The resulting theory ascertained that the presence of …

Collaborative Practices Of Rural Inclusive Postsecondary Education Program (Ipse) Directors, Elizabeth Susanne Goode Dimond

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Inclusive postsecondary education programs (IPSE) for students with intellectual disabilities (ID) are relatively new, having their formal beginning in the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA; P.L. 110-315) of 2008. These programs vary greatly and are found in urban, suburban, and rural areas of the United States. Those programs in rural areas face unique barriers and have unique strengths that affect how they collaborate and with whom they collaborate. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study is to describe the collaborative practices of rural IPSE program directors. This study gathered the lived experiences of rural IPSE program directors collaborating with agencies …