Digital Commons Network^™

Neurotypes: Do Ocd, Adhd, And Autism Play A Role In Life Satisfaction?, Morgan Mcleod Evans

Honors Theses

OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), and ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) are neurotypes that impact every aspect of life, including daily activities and socialization, which is why they have been shown in prior studies to negatively impact life satisfaction. This study compared the levels of life satisfaction now and before the COVID-19 pandemic in young adults (n = 324) with typical neurotypes, those with only ASD (autism), with only OCD, with only ADHD, with two of the neurotypes, and with all three neurotypes. Contrary to predictions from prior research, life satisfaction did not decrease after the onset …

Study Of Collective Self-Esteem And Academic Motivation Examining Perceptions Of Academic Statistics Of Black Traditional Undergraduate Students Attending A Pwi, Ariyah Robinson

Honors Theses

College enrollment for black traditional college-age students has been on the rise. Matriculation experienced a seven percent increase from 2000 to 2018 (NCES, 2020). However, Cokley et al. (2013) found that black students exhibit the highest minority stress among college students. Researchers also found that students may feel pressured to break stereotypes and perform well academically (Smith & Hope, 2020; Brooms, 2019; Mary et al., 2018). As more black students enroll in colleges nationwide, there is more than reasonable cause to continue examining how the matriculation of black students into predominantly white institutions impacts black students and their perceptions of …

Assessing The Damage: Moral Realism And The Evolutionary Debunking Argument, Olivia Denton

Honors Theses

For millennia, prominent thinkers have believed that moral sentiments were the recognition of external, objective truths, be they of divine, Platonic, or natural origin. Now the challenge is to find any objective tether at all for our evaluative judgements. The theory of evolution’s encroachment on metaethics is practically as old as Charles Darwin himself, but the more evolved version of this attack on the justification for moral realism (the position that avers the existence of objective moral truths and that we can know at least some of them) comes in the form of Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (EDAs). The (specifically, materialist) …

Impact Of Social Distancing On Physical Activity In College Students During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Carrington E. Brown

Honors Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic was one that affected everyone in some way. From mandatory lockdowns to vaccinations, the pandemic took a toll on everyone. This study focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic’s mandates on undergraduate college students’ rate of physical activity prior, during, and after the pandemic. A sample of 41 college students was recruited via student email. Participants were of all races, ages, and male and female, and they answered questions determining how the pandemic affected them in their physical activity routine, if applicable. As hypothesized, many individuals’ physical activity routine was interrupted because of the mandates from …

Wait, Is That Legal?: A Defense Of The Rights Of The Mentally Ill In The United States Prison System, Sophie Owen

Honors Theses

The ever-evolving question of what the legal requirements are regarding providing mental health care in prisons has been debated for decades. This thesis presents a meta-analysis that examines the Eighth Amendment Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause in regards to the mentally ill in the Criminal Justice System and applies it to present day prison systems in the United States. This research creates a clear picture of the inadequate care that is provided and the systemic issues that allow this level of mistreatment and lack of care to prevail. It examines the requirements for mental health care as set by the …

Rejecting The Paradigm: Reimagining The Philosophy Of Punishment To Address The Criminal Justice Crisis In Twenty-First Century America, Jon E. Mcgee

Honors Theses

Legal punishment has been subject to cacophonous debate and transformation throughout the history of American political and philosophical discourse. As a growing body of academic literature indicates a failure in the punitive techniques practiced by American institutions, the necessity for a precise diagnosis of such ailments paired with a new model addressing American concerns for reform remains increasingly pertinent. With due consideration to the previous recommendations of scholars, this paper illustrates the crisis in criminal justice currently felt in the United States. Through statistical, theoretical, and comparative analyses, existing alternatives are examined and an alternative fit to serve the United …

“What Is The Environment Doing To Our Genes?”: A Pedigree Analysis Of The Possible Genetic Basis Of A Set Of Familial Clinical Disorders, Emily N. Goodman

Honors Theses

The exact contribution the environment plays in human health is unknown; however, it is estimated that 24% of the global disease burden and 23% of deaths are attributed to environmental factors (Remoundou and Koundouri 2009). With the statistics from previous studies drawing attention to the impact of the environment on humans, it makes sense why the number of clinical disorders is on the rise. Many are being impacted more frequently than in previous generations by clinical disorders. This study was conducted to investigate a personal pedigree to gain insight and analysis to determine a possible connection between the environment and …

Emotionally Unavailable: A Comparison On The Ability Of Children With Developmental Language Disorders To Interpret Emotions In Humans And Inanimate Objects, Savanna B. Gullett

Honors Theses

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is a neuro-developmental condition that emerges in early childhood and can persist into adulthood, manifesting as a variety of symptoms that can be significantly different in each individual. It has an estimated prevalence of 7.58% and is nearly 7 times more common in children than autism spectrum disorder (McGregor, 2020). As a population, individuals with DLD are at risk of facing significant issues in associating areas of language, including reading comprehension, problem-solving abilities, and social skills. Professionals have noticed emotional disconnect amongst individuals with DLD, leading to the proposition that those with DLD may have a …

Anxious Attachment As A Mediator Between Parental Abuse In Childhood And Partner Attributions In Adulthood, Naomi Michele Pearson

Honors Theses

Parenting in childhood can positively or negatively affect physical and mental health and behaviors in adulthood. When a child undergoes abuse or neglect from their caregiver, they often develop inadequate adjustment, due to insecurity in close relationships, which may continue throughout their lives. Furthermore, this insecurity, established in childhood, can manifest in adult romantic relationships, as assurance-seeking, jealousy, and hostility, causing insecurely-attached individuals to attribute blame onto their partners, internal attributes, or circumstances.

These pessimistic attributions, caused by parental- influenced feelings of ambivalence and separation anxiety, may lead to increased tension and dissatisfaction within close relationships. A sample of 150 …

When Smart Kids Fall Behind: Root Causes And Remediation, Victor T. Logan

Honors Theses

Absenteeism, alongside root causes such as socio-economic status and health indicators, is a primary driving force in young students falling short of academic goals, particularly in elementary and middle school. Determining the root causes of this chronic absence, and the mechanisms by which it hinders student achievement, is necessary to effectively fight back. Which sources of absences are preventable? Which are not? Is it better to construct a system of remediation that broadly addresses the challenges these students face, or to develop multiple smaller systems designed to more specifically target the needs of students based on their particular situation? These …

Coded: Dialect Diversity In The Secondary American Classroom, Madeline Dunn

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the differences between dialects along racial, cultural, and ethnic lines with a specific focus on Black and Latine students inside the public secondary classrooms of America. The focus of the paper is on two linguistic tactics: “code-switching,” a linguistic practice which teaches students to separate their home language from the language they use in formal or professional settings, and “code-meshing,” a linguistic practice to teach students how to mesh together multiple dialects with which a student is familiar. Through the creation of a historical framework and an analysis of existing literature, theory, and pedagogical practices regarding the …

Poetry, Prose, And The Loss Of Verse, Jackson Rowe

Honors Theses

In this essay, I argue that the presence of verse in a text initiates a mutually generative relationship between a text’s sonic and semantic qualities, and that critics’ tendency to praise great prose passages as “poetic” is a result of poetry’s historical connection to verse and the semantic elegance which said verse tends to inspire. I base this argument on Fredrich Nietzsche’s first book, The Birth of Tragedy, and explore, through it, various examples of prosimetrum - that is, works combining poetry and prose.

Grieving Experiences Of Undergraduate College Students, Alexia V. Rehling

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study was to compare the well-being of bereaved versus non-bereaved undergraduate students. Additionally, they were asked to report how many losses they have experienced, the characteristics of the most difficult loss, and their experiences with grief. Lastly, data on use of and access to support sources was collected as well as their perceived helpfulness. Results showed that bereaved undergraduates (i.e., those who indicated experiencing at least one significant loss) reported lower well-being than non-bereaved individuals. Further, 4% of participants met the criteria to receive a diagnosis of Prolonged Grief Disorder, 32.4% reported experiencing the separation distress …

An Exploration Of Community Needs: The Lafayette County Foster Care System,, Meredith Mckissick

Honors Theses

Are there enough foster parents to meet the needs of our community? Who advocates on behalf of children who are in the custody of the state? What do children in custody need? Prior to this research, the general public was unable to find these answers in a concise and accessible manner. This study explores the community needs of the Lafayette County Foster Care System in Mississippi, through the means of a needs assessment. The assessment involves six interviews with local foster care leaders, collection and analysis of results, and formal recommendations. Findings are organized by both individual interviews and thematic …

Distinctive Sans Forgetica Font Does Not Benefit Memory Accuracy In The Drm Paradigm, Anie Mitchell

Honors Theses

A common method used by memory scholars to enhance retention is to make materials more challenging to learn—a benefit termed desirable difficulties. Recently, researchers have investigated the efficacy of Sans Forgetica, a perceptually disfluent or distinctive font, which may increase the processing effort required at study and, as a result, enhance memory. We examined the effects of Sans Forgetica relative to a standard control font (Arial) on both correct memory and associative memory errors using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) false memory paradigm. Across four experiments which included nearly 300 participants, Sans Forgetica was found to have no impact on correct or …

Stigma And Rurality: How Community Type Influences Stigmatizing Views Toward Mental Illness, Kirsten P. Speights

Honors Theses

Public stigma, or a set of negative attitudes and beliefs that can contribute to discrimination against those with mental illnesses, negatively affects behavioral health care and may be particularly prevalent in rural communities. The goal of this study was to examine public stigma across rural, suburban, and urban communities, as well as its association with mental health symptoms. An online survey was conducted using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) service as well as the University of Southern Mississippi’s SONA platform. Demographic data, community type, and mental health symptoms were collected via self-report inventories. When looking at the combined SONA (n= 298) …

Evaluating The Effects Of Initial Testing On Misinformation Suggestibility For Eyewitnessed Videos, Wryleigh Shearin-Anderson

Honors Theses

Exposure to misleading details following an eyewitnessed event often leads to memory errors for these misleading details—a pattern termed the misinformation effect. A recent debate is whether completing a memory test after a witnessed event, but before exposure to misleading details, can reduce subsequent misinformation (a protective effect of testing; PET) or increase subsequent misinformation (retrieval-enhanced suggestibility; RES). We further evaluated the initial testing effects using witnessed videos (vs. static images) which often yield a RES pattern and using household scenes which often yield a PET pattern. Following study of four household videos (e.g., bathroom, bedroom, etc.) that depicted an …

The Effects Of “No Pro Homo” Policies On Lgbtq+ Perceptions In The American South, Isabella L. Brocato

Honors Theses

Five states in the American South currently have “no pro homo” policies in place, while an increasing number of bills targeting discussions about sexuality and gender identity in public schools are being introduced to House floors around the country. Although there is extensive research on the ways in which these policies put the physical and mental well-being of LGBTQ+ students at risk, there is little to no research about how they shape public perceptions of the LGBTQ+ community collectively. With inspiration from Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s social science study cited in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), this study works …

A Comparative Analysis Of Statutory Remedies For Wrongful Convictions In The Fifty States, Abigail St. John

Honors Theses

Thousands of individuals have been wrongfully convicted across the United States. When an exoneration occurs, an individual’s conviction is absolved, and their innocence is proved through newly discovered evidence. While it might be impossible to protect from the errors of the criminal justice system, it is in the hands of the state to compensate the wrongly convicted. There is an abundance of research that focuses on reforming the existing wrongful conviction compensation legislation, but there is a lack of scholarly data that explains the motivations behind this compensation. Moreover, few researchers have considered the role of partisanship and political parties …

Low Academic Outcomes: A Result Of Food Insecurity And Student Mental Health During Covid19, Kristen Riley Cole

Honors Theses

Food insecurity has significantly increased throughout the United States as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many schools switched to remote learning and children lost access to free school meals, affecting them psychologically and academically. This study examined the relationship between food insecurity and low academic outcomes, accounting for student mental health, such as anxiety, depression, and ADHD, as well as parental involvement as a possible protective factor against mental health. The current study administered a survey through Amazon’s MTurk to reach a diverse group of participants across the United States. Data analysis from the study can conclude that food …

Future Parents: Associations Between Social Media Use, Parenting Styles, And Parenthood Desires, Kennedy Evins

Honors Theses

Research suggests that college students without children have opinions about parenting styles and practices, which may influence future parenting intentions and behaviors. In addition, research indicates that media exposure affects fertility desires in women. The present study explored how pre-parent college students view parenthood by examining the impact of social media use on perceptions of parenting, parenthood intentions, and anticipated parenting styles. One hundred nineteen (N = 119) college students completed measures that assessed social media use, perceptions of parenting, parenthood intentions, and anticipated parenting styles. Demographic variables such as parental status, race, age, and gender were also collected. …

Fine-Tuning A 𝑘-Nearest Neighbors Machine Learning Model For The Detection Of Insurance Fraud, Alliyah Stout

Honors Theses

Billions of dollars are lost within insurance companies due to fraud. Large money losses force insurance companies to increase premium costs and/or restrict policies. This negatively affects a company’s loyal customers. Although this is a prevalent problem, companies are not urgently working toward bettering their machine learning algorithms. Underskilled workers paired with inefficient computer algorithms make it difficult to accurately and reliably detect fraud.

The goal of this study is to understand the idea of -Nearest Neighbors ( -NN) and to use this classification technique to accurately detect fraudulent auto insurance claims. Using -NN requires choosing a value and a …

Heroines And Murderers The World Of Sophoclean Women, Nathan Debar

Honors Theses

This thesis will examine the female characters of the extant and fragmentary plays of the 5th-century BC Athenian poet Sophocles. These plays’ composition date ranges from the second half of the 5th century BC. Not every play will be considered for this study, as some do not contain female characters or female characters cannot be ascribed to a fragmentary play. Only plays that feature female characters or plays in which female characters and their actions can be reasonably estimated will be used in this study. For the fragments and their information, I shall default to Hugh Lloyd-Jones’ 1996 Sophocles: Fragments. …

The Efficacy Of The Student Communication Repair Inventory And Practical Training Program On Adolescent’S Self-Advocacy Skills In Communication Breakdowns, Karlye Tolbird

Honors Theses

Purpose

Hearing loss can affect several aspects of an adolescent’s life, particularly their self-advocacy skills and ability to communicate their needs in the classroom. Literature shows that adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 years have a prevalence of hearing loss between 14.9 percent and 19.5 percent (Shargorodsky et al., 2010). Therefore, early identification and intervention of hearing loss are necessary to reduce the adverse effects on the development of cognition, verbal communication skills, and self-advocacy skills (Michael & Zidan, 2018). This research study aimed to determine if the implementation of the SCRIPT program changes the communication repair behavior …

Effects Of Acute Exercise On True And False Memory, Hanna Watson

Honors Theses

Objective: The objective of this experiment was to evaluate the role of acute exercise timing on true and false memory performance. Methods: A randomized controlled, within-subject design, was employed (N=39). The five counterbalanced visits included a control visit, vigorous-intensity exercise (80% of HHR; heart rate reserve) before encoding, vigorous exercise during encoding with no delay before encoding, vigorous exercise during encoding with a delay before encoding, and light-intensity exercise (30% of HHR) during encoding. A recognition task using the DRM (Deese-Roediger-McDermott) paradigm was used to evaluate true and false memory performance. Results: With hit rate as the outcome, there was …

Women Without Bodies: Autonomy, Empowerment, And Embodiment In Southern Women, Martha Peyton Ford

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the relationship between rural, upper-class, Southern, white women and their bodies. In my attempts to understand this relationship, I analyze sources from the fields of gender studies, philosophy, and psychology, utilizing concepts such as the Cult of True Womanhood, the newly-emerging field of body memoirs, and the long-lasting but elusive idea of Southern ladyhood to make sense of cultural expectations of Southern women and their bodies. This research, alongside my use of autoethnography and oral history, serve as an anchor for my analysis of women’s relationships to their bodies, in which I use myself, my mother, and …

Supporting Teachers With Psychologically Diverse Populations, Morgan Wilkie

Honors Theses

While the issue of mental health management in education settings has been a focus for research for decades now, much of what is missing from these examinations is direct accounts from educators themselves on how they may be better supported as they navigate teaching psychologically diverse populations. In this study, 20 public-school teachers across the Oxford-Lafayette school district were surveyed through the use of semi-structured interviews in order to understand how they may be better equipped to manage psychological disorders in their classrooms. Each participant was asked the same prompt, and after the interviews were administered, their answers were then …

A Social Learning Perspective On Sexual Coercion, Mallory Ferrick

Honors Theses

Akers’ (2009) social learning theory proposes that individuals learn deviant behavior through the same learning processes by which they learn conventional behavior. Social learning theory has been applied as an explanation for an array of deviant behaviors; however, no known published research has explored the theory’s ability to explain the perpetration of sexual coercion. This project investigated the extent to which Akers’ social learning theory can be applied to sexual coercion. This project utilized a sample of undergraduate students enrolled in various courses at a private four-year institution in the northeast. Descriptive statistics revealed a lack of variability among responses …

Improving Care And Licensing Standards And Oversight In America's Zoos, Hannah Willis

Honors Theses

Since 1966, the Animal Welfare Act has been the official federal legislation passed to provide care standards and regulations for publicly exhibited animals, specifically exotic animals within zoos; however, in an age of major advocacy for improved animal welfare standards for all animals, the AWA has remained fairly stagnant in its guidelines for animal exhibitors. Through numerous articles, documentaries, and TV shows, specific zoos and animal exhibitors have shown many Americans that there seems to be little to no governmental oversight over zoos that have engaged in poor animal care or those engaging in often dangerous and cruel animal contact …

Assessment Of Motivation In Human Anatomy And Physiology Students, Mary Whitehead

Honors Theses

Motivation is the key to success in difficult science courses such as Human Anatomy and Physiology. Students may possess intrinsic motivation, or motivation for enjoyment, extrinsic motivation, or motivation for a reward, or amotivation, a lack of motivation at all. The goal of this experiment was to identify better ways of helping students succeed in Human Anatomy and Physiology (HAP) at the University of Mississippi, determine when motivational efforts seem to decrease during the semester, and identify how to better develop intrinsic motivation in students. There was a significant relationship between many of the student’s survey responses to their exam …