Digital Commons Network^™

Imaginative Instruction: What Master Storytellers Can Teach Instructional Designers, Jason K. Mcdonald

Faculty Publications

Good instructional storytelling engages students’ attention and cognitive abilities to the end of more effective learning, and instructional researchers have discussed whether the principles of storytelling could lead to the same or similar results if applied to educational situations beyond only telling traditional stories. But despite this potential, the principles of storytelling are seemingly underutilized by today’s instructional designers. This study investigates what instructional designers might learn from another design field that is more experienced in the art of storytelling, specifically that of film production. Eight filmmakers who have successfully produced films that motivate, inspire, and educate were interviewed to …

Relational Aggression: K-12 School Counselors' Perceived Preparedness, Attitudes, And Interventions, Chasity Lynn Odden Heide

Education

The purpose of this concurrent mixed methods study was to explore school counselors' responses to relational aggression in schools. A convenience sample of K-12 school counselors (n = 370) who use the Internet was used. Participants were recruited by postings made to ASCA Scene and through advertisements by state counseling associations. Participants were screened to include school counselors who (1) had licensure/certification from the Department of Education as a school counselor, and (2) were currently employed as a licensed/credentialed school counselor as defined by the Department of Education. The School Counselors' Responses to Aggression in Schools survey instrument was designed …

Categorization Of Regional And Foreign Accent In 5-To 7-Year-Old British Children, Caroline Floccia, Joseph Butler, Frédérique Girard, Jeremy Goslin

School of Psychology

No abstract provided.

What Determines Auditory Similarity? The Effect Of Stimulus Group And Methodology., Kirsteen M. Aldrich, Elizabeth J. Hellier, Judy Edworthy

School of Psychology

Two experiments on the internal representation of auditory stimuli compared the pairwise and grouping methodologies as means of deriving similarity judgements. A total of 45 undergraduate students participated in each experiment, judging the similarity of short auditory stimuli, using one of the methodologies. The experiments support and extend Bonebright's (1996) findings, using a further 60 stimuli. Results from both methodologies highlight the importance of category information and acoustic features, such as root mean square (RMS) power and pitch, in similarity judgements. Results showed that the grouping task is a viable alternative to the pairwise task with N > 20 sounds whilst …

Oestradiol Level And Opportunistic Mating In Women, Kristina M. Durante, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The ovarian steroid hormone oestradiol plays a crucial role in female fertility, sexual motivation and behaviour. We investigated the relationship between oestradiol and the likelihood that women would engage in opportunistic mating. Two salivary samples were taken from normally cycling women within the peri-ovulatory and luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. At both testing sessions, participants also completed selfperceived desirability scales and provided subjective reports of sexual and social motivations, and satisfaction with their primary relationship partner. Oestradiol level was positively associated with a woman’s self- and other-perceived physical attractiveness and with inclinations to mate outside her current relationship. Oestradiol …

Analisis De Razones Por Las Que Los Jovenes Abandonan La Iglesia Adventista Del Septimo Dia En Argentina, Jorge De Sousa Matias

Doctor of Ministry Projects

Problem. A 65% of the new Church members in the Argentinian Union Conference (UA) are below 30 years old. However, 35% of them leave the Church annually. This generates the following question: what are the reasons by which such a high%age of young people leave the Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDAC) in the UA?

Methodology. Three surveys were conducted. The first survey was applied to 146 distrital pastors, the second one to 319 young Adventist members, and the third one to 52 apostate young members.

Results. The pastors that answered the first survey recognized that they do not have a permanent …

Expenditures And Information Disclosure In Two-Stage Political Contests, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

This laboratory experiment studies two-stage contests between political parties. In the first stage, parties run their primaries and in the second stage the winners of the primaries compete in the general election. The resource expenditures in the first stage by the winning candidates are partially or fully carried over to the second stage. Experimental results support all major theoretical predictions: the first stage expenditures and the total expenditures increase, while the second stage expenditures decrease in the carryover rate. Consistent with the theory, the total expenditures increase in the number of candidates and the number of parties. Contrary to the …

Cooperation Spillovers In Coordination Games, Timothy N. Cason, Anya Savikhin, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

Motivated by problems of coordination failure observed in weak-link games, we experimentally investigate behavioral spillovers for order-statistic coordination games. Subjects play the minimum- and median-effort coordination games simultaneously and sequentially. The results show the precedent for cooperative behavior spills over from the median game to the minimum game when the games are played sequentially. Moreover, spillover occurs even when group composition changes, although the effect is not as strong. We also find that the precedent for uncooperative behavior does not spill over from the minimum game to the median game. These findings suggest guidelines for increasing cooperative behavior within organizations.

Can Groups Solve The Problem Of Over-Bidding In Contests?, Roman M. Sheremeta, Jingjing Zhang

ESI Working Papers

This study reports an experiment that examines whether groups can better comply with theoretical predictions than individuals in contests. Our experiment replicates previous findings that individual players significantly overbid relative to theoretical predictions, incurring substantial losses. There is high variance in individual bids and strong heterogeneity across individual players. The new findings of our experiment are that groups make 25% lower bids, their bids have lower variance, and group bids are less heterogeneous than individual bids. Therefore, groups receive significantly higher and more homogeneous payoffs than individuals. We elicit individual and group preferences towards risk using simple lotteries. The results …

Evidence For Menstrual Cycle Shifts In Women’S Preferences For Masculinity: A Response To Harris (In Press) “Menstrual Cycle And Facial Preferences Reconsidered", Lisa Debruine, Benedict C. Jones, David Frederick, Martie Haselton, Ian S. Penton-Voak, David I. Perrett

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Over the last decade, a growing literature has shown that women in the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle demonstrate stronger preferences for men with masculine traits than they do when in the non-fertile phases of the cycle (see Gangestad and Thornhill, 2008 and Jones et al., 2008 for recent reviews). In a recent article, Harris (in press; Sex Roles) failed to replicate this increase in women's preferences for masculine faces when women are near ovulation. Harris represented her study as one of only three studies on the topic, and as the largest of the existing studies. There are, however, …

Coherence, Complexity, And Information Flow: Self-Organizing Processes In Psychotherapy, David Pincus

Psychology Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"This chapter is written in the spirit of optimism, suggesting that self-organization is just such a general theory that may assist in providing a deeper, scientifically grounded understanding of the complex biopsychosocial processes involved in psychotherapy. To provide some foundation to this rather grand suggestion, the following review rests on five more specific theoretical propositions stemming from self-organization theory... The analysis of these propositions begins with an integrative review of traditional theories of interpersonal process through the lens of nonlinear dynamical systems (NDS) and self-organization theory in particular. Next, the contemporary empirical and theoretical developments using NDS to understand psychotherapy …

The Promise Of Sustainable Happiness, Julia K. Boehm, Sonja Lyubomirsky

Psychology Faculty Books and Book Chapters

From ancient history to recent times, philosophers, writers, self-help gurus, and now scientists have taken up the challenge of how to foster greater happiness. This chapter discusses why some people are happier than others, focusing on the distinctive ways that happy and unhappy individuals construe themselves and others, respond to social comparisons, make decisions, and self-reflect. We suggest that, despite several barriers to increased well-being, less happy people can strive successfully to be happier by learning a variety of effortful strategies and practicing them with determination and commitment. The sustainable happiness model (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, 2005) provides a theoretical …

Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, And Repurchase: Meta-Analytical Review, And Theoretical And Empirical Evidence Of Loyalty And Repurchase Differences., Tamilla Curtis

HCBE Theses and Dissertations

Despite the large volume of research in the area of loyalty-repurchase-satisfaction, the findings on the relationship between these variables are conflicting. It seems that links between loyalty, repurchase, and satisfaction are not fully understood yet.

The study provided the theoretical background on loyalty, repurchase, satisfaction, and their interrelationships. The Theory of Planned Behavior and the Expectation Confirmation Theory were discussed. The loyalty-repurchase differentiation with five contributing factors was addressed. From the literature review nine hypotheses were proposed.

The study was conducted in three phases. The purpose of the first phase was to statistically identify the magnitude and the direction of …

Disestablishing Environmentalism, Andrew P. Morriss, Benjamin D. Cramer

Faculty Scholarship

The debate over environmental policy is increasingly conducted in language with strong religious overtones. Both proponents and opponents of various environmental policies appeal to religious doctrine to support their positions: Those who question human-caused global warming are labeled "heretics, " while appeals for environmental "stewardship" echo Biblical texts. Religious groups play an important role in defining environmental policy issues, and both supporters and critics of specific environmental policy views have labeled particular sets of beliefs about the environment a "religion." In this Article we engage in a thought experiment, arguing that there are valuable lessons to be learned from treating …

Two Tongues For A Dream: A Hermeneutic Study, Marta Bachino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although bilingualism is a common feature of clinical work with patients, the specific aspects of working with the dreams of the bilingual patient have not been much discussed. This qualitative study explored the discrepancies that arise in the linguistic expressions of the psychological complexes when dreams are worked simultaneously in the dreamer's native and second language. The aim was to learn more about the significance of including the bilingual patient's native tongue when working with dreams in a dreamer's second language. Key concepts on the study of language, dreams, psychological complexes, linguistics and psychoanalysis situated the research using various theoretical …

A Hermeneutic Exploration Of The Literature Of Technology: Prometheus Bound, Frankenstein And Battlestar Galactica, William Blais

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There are few phenomena in contemporary culture that are more dynamic and impactful than technology. That said the understanding of technology held by most therapists is overly simple or, at best, based on one-dimensional critiques of technological life. The present study endeavors to build a broader understanding of technology that allows for both a robust critique and a more accepting recognition of its potential contributions. The present study explores the archetypally invariant structure of technology as well as the more culturally and historically contingent elements of several of its historically specific expressions. It engages this material through a series of …

Foster Mothers' Experience Of Parenting A Foster Child With Attachment Problems: An Empirical Phenomenological Investigation, Cynthia Byers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explored foster mothers' experiences of parenting a foster child who displayed problematic attachment. This topic is important because research suggests foster children presenting with attachment problems often experience disrupted foster placements, which are known to be detrimental to their continued development.

An introductory letter seeking foster mothers with difficult to care for foster children between the ages of 2 and younger than 6 years was sent by seven foster care agencies in Allegheny County to all of those agencies' foster mothers. Foster mothers were not told in advance that the study involved attachment-disordered foster children. Six foster mothers …

Dialogues Between Feminists And Jacques Lacan On Female Hysteria And Femininity, Katerina Catherine Daniel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This theoretical dissertation aims to initiate a dialogue between Lacan and Irigaray, Butler, and poststructuralist Anglophone feminists on the relationship between hysteria and femininity. The very existence of hysteria has been called into question by the majority of Anglophone feminists, who have criticized its diagnostic proliferation, claiming that it has negative implications for social change and has played a central part in women's oppression. The Anglophone feminist tradition views Lacanian psychoanalytic theories of sexuation and hysteria with a critical eye, arguing that Lacan's oeuvre is another version of patriarchal discourse, another reductionistic paradigm of female suffering, and another essentialist scheme …

The Characteristics And Functions Of Humor In Psychotherapy: A Qualitative Study, Joshua Gregson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Literature on humor in psychotherapy has been strongly influenced by a debate on whether therapists should engage in humor with clients. Many authors urge caution and are suspicious of humor's use by therapists. Others argue that humor is helpful in therapy and illustrate its uses through clinical evidence, mainly anecdotes from the author's experience. The debate on humor's admissibility in psychotherapy treats humor as optional, and thereby ignores its centrality in human relating and its inevitability in the therapeutic relationship.

Since humor inevitably arises in psychotherapy, it is important for therapists to know typical manifestations and meanings of humor in …

Imag(In)Ing Neuro-Psychology: A Multi-Perspectival, Critical, Autoethnographic Study, Kristen Hennessy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Neuropsychology in the United States initially strove to diagnose brain damage. Recently, this diagnostic task has been largely usurped by the emergence of neuroimaging. Despite the encroachment upon the traditional territory of neuropsychology, neuropsychology has continued relatively unchanged. Personally encountering neuropsychology from the multiple positions of patient, family member, and training professional, I wondered about the forces operating that prevented neuropsychology from evolving. I speculated that unseen forces operated to keep neuropsychology stagnant and that the neuropsychologist's function was largely unarticulated. I further speculated that the hidden functions involved very particular (problematic) relationships. This dissertation aims to begin to highlight …

The Editor, The Preface, And The Eighteenth-Century Edition: A Critical Bibliographic Study, Jessica Jost-Costanzo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Scholarly editions became entrenched as published texts during the eighteenth century. This dissertation considers the contributions of editors to their specific editions and, ultimately, the editorial project. Forty-five editions, some well-known and some obscure, are critically and bibliographically analyzed in four cross-referenced chapters. The first chapter deals with editions of autobiography and memoirs. The second chapter examines editions of women's texts. Chapter three focuses on family editions (in which the editor is a family member of the author), and the fourth and final chapter addresses colonial editions. Such a study reveals that eighteenth-century editors were interested in diverse texts. Furthermore, …

Relationship Between Discipline Referrals In Career And Technical Education As Compared To Core Classes, Kim Genge

OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers

A study to determine whether there was a relationship between discipline referrals in career and technical education as compared to academic classes for determining factors that could be used to reduce referrals in eighth grade. Determine the number of referrals written by career and technical education and academic teachers. Determine if career and technical education classes provided environments and instructional strategies which reduced discipline referrals.

Examination Of Instructional Strategies And Teaching Methods Used In Training A Platform Battle Command System To Sustainment Warfighters, Lori Rapovy

OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers

The problem of this study was to determine if different teaching methods lead to improved short term student comprehension conducted during the FBCB2 operator course.

Significant Differences Between Seventh And Eighth Grade Students Enrolled In Keyboarding To Earn High School Credit, Kellie Wheeler

OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers

The purpose of this study was to investigate seventh and eighth grade students end of course grades in keyboarding to determine if their passing score were higher for students who were more mature in age.

Effects Of Employee Participation And Behavior-Based Safety Programs On Osha Recordable Incident Rates, Andrew Nowicki

OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers

The problem of this study was to determine the effect of employee participative and behavior-based safety programs on OSHA recordable incident rates so it could be determined which type of safety program should be adapted by all of Scholle Packaging's North American facilities.

Relationship Of Gender To Grades In A General Education Technology Course, Harry Stout

OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers

A study to determine the relationship between male and female student's final grades in a general education technology course to determine if gender plays a role in achieving academic excellence in the course. There is no correlation between a student's gender and the achievement of academic excellence in a post-secondary technology course.

The Role And Function Of Literacy In Two Homeschooling Families, Kevin Rua

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Homeschooling is an increasingly popular practice, and this raises questions about how it is carried out. One important area for investigation is the literacy practices of homeschooling. Literacy is often seen as a necessary component of formal schooling. This project investigated the role and function of literacy in two homeschooling families. Specifically the research was designed to answer the following questions:

*How is homeschooling both similar to and different from formal schooling?

*What are the literacy practices of homeschooling? What tools are used in these practices? What knowledge and skills are used in these practices? What are the goals of …

Mental Health Care At The Margins: A Critical Ethnography Of Psychological Practice In An Inner City Mental Health Setting, Katy Sampson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Within the past several decades, the field of psychology has attempted to improve psychological services for a greater diversity of people. However, despite these attempts, research continues to document a "gap" when it comes to mental health care services for marginalized populations. Various studies have addressed the issue of this "gap" in mental health care; however, most adhere to positivist assumptions regarding sociocultural aspects of experience, understanding culture and identity as immutable qualities existing within individuals, rather than as an interpersonal phenomenon that is negotiated between and among people and institutions. As a result of these assumptions, many past studies …

Examination Of The Reliability And Validity Of The Triage Assessment Form: Families, Leslie Slagel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study evaluated the reliability and validity of the Triage Assessment Form: Families (TAF: F), a 33-item, 5-point Lickert summated rating scale. The study consisted of 152 college and technical school students. Each participant responded to the TAF: F after reading mild, moderate, marked and severe domestic violence scenarios. Statistical analysis using SPSS 12.0 was performed on the data to determine validity and reliability. Reliability was tested using an internal consistency model. Validity of the TAF: F was evaluated using exploratory factor analysis. In addition, this researched analyzed the capacity of the TAF: F to distinguish among mild, moderate, marked, …

Clients' Experience Of Effective Psychoanalytic-Psychodynamic Psychotherapy For Major Depression: An Empirical Phenomenological Study, Thomas Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although there is sufficient evidence that psychodynamic therapy for depression is effective, there is no research documenting the qualities of experience in effective psychodynamic therapy for depression. To address this lack, this study aimed to investigate clients' experiences of both the helpful processes and the therapeutic effects of psychodynamic therapy for depression.

Letters, emails, and flyers were distributed and advertisements placed through psychological associations at the local and state level, and letters were mailed to therapists in the greater Pittsburgh metropolitan area. Solicitation procedures yielded four participants of whom three were female and one was male. Participants completed a research …