Digital Commons Network^™

The Effects Of Screen Time On Cognitive Development In Early Childhood, Ella Bagne

Psychology Student Publications

Spending time on devices (screen time) has become normal in day-to-day life, however our understanding of how this may affect development in early childhood is not yet fully understood. This paper explores the relationship between screen time and early childhood cognitive development, utilizing a definition of cognitive development as the growth of how children think, learn, communicate, and develop an understanding about the things around them. Research findings so far indicate that there may be both positives and negatives with screen time. For example, a child’s screen time may be positively and negatively correlated to vocabulary and language development specifically, …

Exercise And Its' Impact On Student's Mental Health, Braden Wolf

Psychology Student Publications

This paper examines how exercise positively impacts the mental health of college students, a group especially vulnerable to mental health challenges. It reviews empirical evidence showing that exercise improves self-efficacy, reduces negative emotions, and lowers suicide risk by enhancing confidence, sleep, academic success, and reducing depression, anxiety, and stress. While exercise is not a complete solution to mental health issues, it can significantly alleviate symptoms and prevent further distress.

The Dismissive Avoidant Attachment Style: Its' Detrimental Effects On Romantic Relationships, Ella Schlinger

Psychology Student Publications

This essay explores how the dismissive avoidant attachment style --rooted in emotional neglect during childhood--negatively impacts romantic relationships. It explains how initial excitement often fades as emotional intimacy becomes threatening, leading to poor communication, unproductive arguments, and eventual relationship breakdown. Ultimately, the paper concludes that without professional intervention, this attachment style can prevent the formation of healthy, lasting romantic bonds.

The Perception Of Therapists About Compassion Fatigue And Burnout After Working With Victims Of Domestic Violence, Bernadine Edwards

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This qualitative study involved gaining a better understanding of the perceptions of therapists who work with domestic violence victims, and how the therapists’ work may contribute to the development of compassion fatigue and burnout in the treating therapists. The goal was to gather firsthand data regarding the lived experiences of therapists. This study involved conducting semi-structured interviews with six counselors, listening to lived experiences, reading transcriptions, taking and reading notes in a journal during and after interviews, and analyzing data. The social ecological theory guided the study. The research identified 11 key themes highlighting the significant stress associated with this …

Employees’ Perceptions Of Leaders’ Diversity Training For Supporting Organizational Equity, Michelle L. Burchfield

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite growing organizational attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion, some workplaces continued to struggle with embedding equitable practices. The research problem addressed in this study focused on understanding how employees perceived leaders’ diversity training and its effectiveness in supporting organizational equity. The purpose of this qualitative interpretative phenomenological study was to explore employees’ perspectives of leadership diversity training and its role in supporting organizational equity. Behavioral leadership theory and critical race theory grounded this study. The participants consisted of 10 employees with experience in leadership diversity training in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. Data were collected using semistructured interviews. Seven most …

Secondary Education Teachers’ Perspectives On School-Based Mental Health Resources, Madison Rose Litterell

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Approximately one in six youth ages 6 to 17 years old in the United States have a mental health disorder, such as depression and anxiety. Out of the 119,000 youth in Michigan in that age group, roughly 57.8% are not receiving proper mental health support services. Students are at school for a large majority of their day, so it is important that they have access to school-based services. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to understand the perceptions of secondary education teachers in Wayne County, Michigan, on school-based mental health support services. Using the community level and the …

Effective Strategies To Reduce Burnout For Employees With High Workload Demands, Michelle Healy

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Ineffective strategies to reduce burnout for employees can decrease productivity and quality of work, and can increase turnover. Event industry leaders who struggle to reduce burnout of employees with high workload demands are at risk of employee turnover. Grounded in the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, the purpose of this qualitative, pragmatic inquiry research project was to explore effective strategies to reduce burnout for employees with high workload demands. The participants were eight event industry leaders who had effectively implemented strategies to reduce burnout. Data were collected using semistructured interviews and a review of public websites and documents. Using thematic analysis, …

Beliefs And Practices Of Filipino Bilingual Senior High School Students On Language Learner Autonomy, Japhet E. Manzano, Zachi Einna R. Orquijo, Giovanni C. Duran

Journal of English and Applied Linguistics

The concept of learner autonomy (LA) has been investigated mostly from the perspective of language teachers, whereas students’ views regarding this notion have received less attention in recent decades. In line with this, the present study aimed to examine the beliefs and practices of Filipino bilingual senior high school students enrolled in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HumSS) and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) strands. A total of 148 students from two Philippine public schools in Metro Manila participated in an adapted survey questionnaire containing Likert-scale items on beliefs, desirability, and feasibility of LA, along with an open-ended question …

Discourse, Power, And Pedagogy In Ai And Human-Designed Efl Lesson Plans: A Clil And Systemic Functional Linguistic Perspective, Christian D. Libunao, Vincent A. Morales

Journal of English and Applied Linguistics

The integration of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) into English language teaching (ELT) raises important questions about how AI-generated lesson plans shape pedagogy, interaction, and ideology compared to human-designed materials. This study examines how ChatGPT-generated lesson plans converge with or diverge from those published by the British Council, with particular attention to teacher and learner roles, classroom power dynamics, and pedagogical scaffolding. A triadic framework combining systemic functional linguistics (SFL), critical discourse analysis (CDA), and content and language integrated learning (CLIL) was applied to three British Council lesson plans and three thematically matched ChatGPT outputs. Findings reveal that both sets of …

2025-12-17 University Graduate Committee Meeting Minutes, Morehead State University. Faculty Senate., University Graduate Committee.

Faculty Senate Records

Meeting minutes from the University Graduate Committee from December 17, 2025.

Investigating The Polygenic Relationship Between Heavy Cannabis Use And Schizophrenia In The All Of Us Research Program, Isabelle Austin-Zimmerman, Hayley H A Thorpe, John J Meredith, Jibran Y Khokhar, Tian Ge, Marta Di Forti, Arpana Agrawal, Emma C Johnson, Sandra Sanchez-Roige

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: Decades of research have identified a strong association between heavy cannabis use and schizophrenia (SCZ), with evidence of correlated genetic factors. However, many studies on the genetic relationship between cannabis use and psychosis have lacked data on both phenotypes within the same individuals, creating challenges due to unmeasured confounding. We aimed to address this by using multimodal data from the All of Us Research Program, which contains genetic data as well as information on SCZ diagnosis and cannabis use.

METHODS: We tested the association between cannabis use disorder (CUD) and SCZ polygenic scores (PGSs) with SCZ and heavy cannabis …

A Play-Based Stoic Intervention: Preventive Pedagogy For Childhood Resilience, Ross William Podyma Mr

International Journal of Playwork Practice

Rates of reported childhood mental health difficulties have risen markedly in recent years, prompting a policy emphasis on early identification and rapid referral to clinical services. While such responses are vital for acute and complex presentations, there is growing concern that they may contribute to an over-pathologising of normative developmental experiences. Everyday challenges that once functioned as opportunities to build resilience are increasingly framed as early symptoms of mental disorder. This risks undermining children’s ability to cope adaptively with adversity, inadvertently fostering reliance on external intervention.

Since its inception in 2012, Sporting Communities CIC has been embedded in schools and …

The Play Cycle, Outside School Hours Care And Autistic Children, Jennifer Cartmel, Fiona Mackay

International Journal of Playwork Practice

Autistic children use Outside School Hours Care Services (OSHC) on a regular basis. However, they experience many barriers to a fully inclusive experience. This study examined whether the use of the Play Cycle (King, 2020) held any value as a means of reducing those barriers to access. Four educators from an OSHC service in Brisbane, South East Queensland, Australia who were using the Play Cycle and Play Cycle Observation Method in their practice were interviewed to gain their perspectives on the ways in which the play cycle was valuable to them when working with autistic children. The responses were analysed …

Teachers’ Views About School Playtime: A Systematic Literature Review, Misbah Khan, Cathy Atkinson

International Journal of Playwork Practice

School playtime exists in varying forms across the world, and there is an extensive evidence-base pointing to its beneficial effects on children. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) recognises these benefits and provides clear guidance to international organisations, including schools, on protecting children’s right to play. However, legislative and societal pressures have led to teacher practices which facilitate the erosion of school playtime. Teachers’ beliefs and their practices are considered to be interlinked and therefore the aim of this systematic literature review is to consolidate existing research on teachers’ views about playtime and consider how …

Minutes From December 17 2025, University Senate

University Senate Minutes

Minutes from December 17 2025 University Senate Meeting

The Conditional Nature Of The Value Premium: Interaction And Cross-Sectional Evidence Across Market Regimes, Samuel L. Klein

Honors Thesis

This thesis examines why value-based investment strategies generate strong returns in some environments yet weaken or collapse in others. Regressions test whether the performance of the book-to-market ratio depends on the investor’s perception of financial health as defined by F-Score and accruals. Across additive regressions, interaction models, cross-sectionals, and heatmap visualizations, a consistent mechanism emerges. The book-to-market effect is strongest when financial information is neither highly reliable nor severely distressed. In these “moderate-quality” environments, investors struggle to fully distinguish the transitory components of earnings from their persistent counterparts. This makes valuation ratios particularly influential. Accrual intensity and financial strength jointly …

Acer 2024-2025 Annual Report, Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

ACER Annual Reports

For more than 95 years, ACER has been driven by a single purpose – to improve learning for all. Founded in 1930, ACER began as a small team of researchers determined to bring rigour and evidence to education and assessment. Over the decades, that commitment has evolved into a global mission – combining world-class assessment and research to help learners, educators and systems understand what works in education, and why.

Enfrentando El Patriarcado: La Voz, El Espacio Femenino Y Lo Sobrenatural En Mexican Gothic De Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Raquel Macias Del Valle

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the crossroads of gender, space, and the supernatural in Mexican Gothic (2020) by Silvia Moreno–Garcia, examining how the novel challenges patriarchal structures through its protagonist, Noemí Taboada. Utilizing feminist theory, spatial analysis, and studies on the supernatural, this research demonstrates how Moreno–Garcia constructs a narrative in which female expression and connection are central to reinstating the feminine self as a subject. The novel presents High Place, the ancestral mansion of the Doyle family, as a space that embodies patriarchal control. Drawing on Gastón Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space and Marc Olivier’s Household Horror, this study examines how …

The ‘For Youth’ Page: Analyzing Tiktok Content Feeds For College-Aged Users, Hadiyah Mohamed

Honors College Theses

This study analyzes the content college-aged users encounter on TikTok’s “For You” page to understand the ways platform design and user-generated content shape prolonged engagement. Existing research frames doomscrolling largely as a compulsive behavior driven by algorithmic design, often overlooking the role of content itself and why it resonates with young adults. Through qualitative content analysis, 150 videos were collected across three TikTok accounts: scrolling from a personal account, a neutral new account, and a new account under the #CollegeTok tag. Videos were rigorously coded in a spreadsheet for narrative descriptions, topics, captions, hashtags, and tone to capture the themes …

Investigating The Differential Effects Of Narrativization And Causal Structure Of Stories On Memory, Savannah J. Born

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Narratives are an effective stimulus-type for studying memory, as they can closely replicate how we use our memories in daily life. A key feature of narratives is the cause-and-effect structure between events, and previous research has found that events that are part of a causal chain are more often remembered and rated as important compared to events that are not part of a causal chain. However, there has not been a systematic investigation of the effects of varying narrativity and causality across a stimulus yet. This study aimed to address this gap by manipulating two factors: 1) the narrative vs …

Emotional Regulation In Adolescents, Its' Link To Social Media, & Potential Solutions, Jace Burke

Psychology Student Publications

This essay discusses emotional regulation in adolescents, and how social media has significant effects on its development. It also goes over potential solutions on how to fix irregular emotional dysregulation, and how society might be able to help prevent or teach adolescents to adapt emotional regulation to the modern digital landscape.

Does Sleep Duration Affect Mental Health, Aubrey Aaland

Psychology Student Publications

Sleep is a critical component of overall health, yet inadequate sleep has become increasingly common, particularly among young adults and college students. This paper explores the relationship between sleep duration and mental health, with specific attention to symptoms of anxiety, depression, and emotional instability. Not enough sleep can heavily impact an individual's mental health. This paper explores the negative effects of inadequate sleep on psychological well-being, focusing on the correlation between reduced sleep duration and increased symptoms of anxiety, depression, and emotional instability. Topics like the importance of sleep, the cycle of sleep and stress, and how it all affects …

Sensory Processing Difficulties In Children And How It Affects Behaviors And Parental Stress, Brooklyn Hagberg

Psychology Student Publications

This paper looks at how Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) affects children and their families. It explores how struggles with processing everyday sensory information can lead to behaviors that are often misunderstood, as well as the stress this can place on parents. By increasing awareness of SPD and its effects, we can better support children, ease parental challenges, and help kids feel more comfortable and successful in their daily lives.

How Ptsd And Trauma Affect The Brain, Presley Faris

Psychology Student Publications

How PTSD and trauma affect our brain function and structure. Kids are affected when they have lived through trauma as well.

Dynamics Of The Mind: Factors Of Physical Activity And The Affects That Come From Exercise, Samantha Gruendemann

Psychology Student Publications

This paper explores a deep dive into the benefits of physical activity and exercise. In this piece of literature we look at six studies and sources that give you the advantages of how physical activity affects psychology, the dynamics of movements, and the behavioral aspects of one’s mental health. As research continues to come out over the past decades, we see a positive correlation between health and physical activity (Penedo & Dahn, 2005). Studies still show to this day that moderate physical activity may decrease the risk of many diseases and disorders that you may be genetically adaptable to (Miller …

The Negative Impact Sleep Loss Has On Mental Health, Kaden Sayler

Psychology Student Publications

Many teenagers struggle with chronic sleep deprivation due to busy schedules, social media, and late-night habits. Research shows that lack of sleep severely affects adolescents’ mental health, increasing risks of depression, anxiety, poor attention, and impaired brain development. This paper highlights how modern factors like screen time and “social jetlag” worsen the issue, warning that sleep deprivation is a hidden but serious threat to teens’ well-being.

The Effect Of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy On Anxiety, Lauren Schauer

Psychology Student Publications

Anxiety is a very common mental health disorder that many individuals struggle with every day. Cognitive behavioral therapy is structured to make individuals aware of their thinking and behavioral patterns and how they can take control. This paper explores how effective cognitive behavioral therapy is on each type of the most common anxiety disorders.

Is It Our Phones? Examining The Relationship Between Social Media, Mass Shooters And Dark Fandoms In America, Marilyn Gago

Psychology Student Publications

This paper explores the complex relationship between media consumption, online communities, and mass shootings in America. It examines the sensationalized portrayal of crime through social media and traditional news, and how they can contribute to dark online communities and the glorification of mass shooters.

Lasting Love: First Sight Or Friends To Lovers, Rylee Lunnie

Psychology Student Publications

This article will explore the origins of romantic relationships, specifically, the “love at first sight” phenomenon compared to gradual love through friendship. This instant attraction, common in literature and film, may feel powerful and convincing, but some psychologists have doubted its accuracy. We’ll look at empirical evidence and psychological theories to perhaps determine whether “love at first sight” or relationships grounded in deep friendships are more likely to create lasting love.

Effects Of Exercise On Mental Health And Well-Being On College Students, Keira Kitzmann

Psychology Student Publications

This paper shows the effects of exercise on mental health and well-being on college students. College students’ mental health is an important issue because it greatly affects their academic success and performance. Overall, exercise can improve the well-being of college students and increase mental health.