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The Influence Of Eye Movements And Surround Contours On The Generation And Interocular Transfer Of The Motion Aftereffect, Lawrence Andre Symons

Digitized Theses

Despite its considerable use as a psychophysical tool, relatively little attention has been paid to factors that might influence the interocular transfer of the motion aftereffect. The present thesis reports five experiments that examined the role of eye-movements and their interaction with surround contours in the generation and interocular transfer of the motion aftereffect. Experiment 1 compared the amount of transfer of three different aftereffects when the non-adapted eye viewed a dark occluder or an equiluminant occluder. Equiluminant occlusion enhanced interocular transfer of the motion aftereffect but no the other two aftereffects. Experiment 2 showed a similar enhancement of interocular …

Binocular Interactions In Individuals With Anomalous Early Visual History, Marla Ellen Wolf

Digitized Theses

The present set of experiments used adaptation procedures to explore binocularity in individuals with abnormal binocular vision. The first series of experiments examined interocular transfer because this measure has been used previously to test for the presence of binocular neurons (Movshon, Chambers and Blakemore, 1972). Experiment I examined the test-retest reliability of this measure. Interocular transfer was found to be reliable. The results of Experiments II-IV clearly show that individuals with anomalous early visual history (A.E.H.) are capable of interocular transfer of a magnitude associated with normals.;Experiments III and IV also addressed the organization of binocular channels in individuals with …

Macular Pigment In Monozygotic Twins, Billy Randall Hammond

Doctoral Dissertations

Differences in the optical density of macular pigment between ten pairs of identical twins were examined. Foveal and parafoveal sensitivities to lights of 460 and 530 nm were measured by heterochromatic flicker photometry in five separate sessions for the right eye of each twin. These two wavelengths represent the maximum and minimum absorbance for macular pigment. Taking the difference in log sensitivity to the 460 nm light for the fovea and parafovea, after normalizing with respect to 530 nm, yields a measurement of the optical density of macular pigment. Statistically significant differences in macular pigment density were found for five …

Patterns Of Peer Relations And Adjustment: A Longitudinal Follow-Up Study, Mary Louise Hennessy Blum

Doctoral Dissertations

The risk hypothesis proposes that problematic peer relations predict later maladjustment. Extensive research on the risk hypothesis provides evidence that the quality of peer relations is associated with adjustment. The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the associations, concurrently and across time, among three distinct levels of peer relations (dyadic friendship, small group interactions, and sociometric status) and two perspectives of social/behavioral adjustment as assessed by parents and children. The study showed further support for the risk hypothesis that low peer group acceptance in the classroom, low prosocial non-interactions in the small group, low warmth and high conflict in …

The Effects Of Thalamic, Frontal Cortical And Hippocampal Formation Lesions On A Delayed Nonmatching To Sample Task, Heather Leslie Young

Doctoral Dissertations

Two areas of the brain have been implicated in global amnesia: the medial temporal lobe and the midline diencephalon (Squire and Zola-Morgan; Victor, Adams, and Collins, 1989). A third area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, has more recently been included as a memory related area (Fuster, 1989).

The purpose of the study reported here was to further examine the neurological basis of the delayed nonmatching to sample place cue task (DNMTS-PC) deficit by comparing lesions in each of the three major areas attributed to memory processes. Patterns of impairments on the DNMTS-PC were further understood by manipulating retention and …

The Rhetoric Of Realism: American Psychology And American Literature, 1860-1910, Sandra Webster

Doctoral Dissertations

The period following the end of the Civil War in America and extending to just after the turn of the century witnessed the emergence of an independent discipline of psychology as well as the emergence of a uniquely American literary tradition. Though these developments occurred independently and operated out of different traditions, they shared a common interest in the concept of "consciousness." The present study is a comparison of models of consciousness expressed in psychological and literary texts of two periods: The first period covers the emergence of literary realism and American philosophical psychology (1865-1885); the second period covers literary …

Children Experiencing Unemployment Stress: A Comparison Of Families With Stable And Unstable Employment Histories, Barbara Alice Wauchope

Doctoral Dissertations

This study investigates children's experiences of changes that occur in families when fathers lose their jobs, the children's interpretations and responses to those changes, and their resulting symptoms of stress. In the first part, school-aged children and their parents in fourteen two-parent families in northern New England were interviewed and completed instruments measuring the children's behavior and symptoms of stress. In the second part, adults from seventy-six additional families completed a self-administered questionnaire. In both parts, children in families were divided into two groups and compared: middle-class with older parents in which fathers had little or no history of losing …

Development Of A Body Image Assessment Procedure For Children And Pre-Adolescents., Staci Veron Guidry

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Eating disorders have been researched extensively among adult, and, more recently, among adolescent populations. Body image disturbance is included as a diagnostic criterion for anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, and has been postulated as a central characteristic of the eating disorders. Researchers have identified eating disorders among prepubertal children; therefore, there is a need for the development of reliable and valid measures of eating disorders and body image in children. In this investigation, a total of 257 children in grades 3 through 7 completed the Children's Eating Attitudes Test, Children's Depression Inventory, Piers-Harris Children's Self Concept Scale physical appearance and …

Recovered Memories Of Alleged Sexual Abuse: An Analysis Of The Theory Of Repressed Memories Under The Washington Rules Of Evidence, Colette Mulrenan Smith

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment explores whether testimony regarding repressed memories is admissible under Washington rules of evidence. This Comment concludes that the process of repression and accurate recall of memories has not been proven to be a sufficiently reliable and trustworthy phenomenon to justify admission of evidence that abuse occurred.

The Effectiveness Of Group Counseling On Adolescents, Jennifer Deitch-Pepperell

Whittier Scholars Program

This project consists of a literature review, a study of group counseling effects on adolescents aged 12-18, and personal observations. This literature review will discuss the effectiveness of group counseling on adolescents while discussing the different typesof group counseling and their effects. This study also examines a key theory developed by James Garland ultimately concluding that group counseling is beneficial to adolescents at any level of development.

The Examiation Of African-American Academic Achievement And European-Amrican Racial Attitudes In A Desegregated Six-Grade Middle School Classroom: The Effects Of The Student Teams-Aceivement Divisions, A Cooperative Learning Task, Sunny Marie Birney

Psychology Senior Independent Study Theses

Thesis digitized from Psychology Department IS archive.

Teacher Behaviors And Their Effect On Student Behavior: An Inservice Project, Cindy K. Dracobly

All Graduate Projects

This project was developed as a means to provide meaningful inservice for school staff in the area of classroom management as it relates to student behavior. This project established inservice activities providing staff with simple strategies to develop a positive classroom climate and to foster effective management of the learning environment while minimizing off task and disruptive student behavior.

The Role Of Stress, Social Support, And Psychopathology In Primary Care Utilization., Serrhel G. Adams Jr

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

One hundred thirty-three low socioeconomic status adult subjects from Earl K. Long Medical Center were interviewed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R - Nonpatient Edition. Subjects also completed the Schedule of Recent Experiences, Interpersonal Support Evaluation List, and Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R Personality Disorders Questionnaire. This study attempted to predict medical utilization over the past year. The independent variables included in the predictive portion of the study were active medical problems, manic symptoms, depressive symptoms, psychotic symptoms, alcohol abuse symptoms, non-alcohol substance abuse symptoms, anxiety symptoms, somatic symptoms, somatization symptoms, personality disorder symptoms, life events, and social support. …

Estimation Of Premorbid Intelligence: A Combined Demographic And Psychometric Approach., Sandra Cook Friedberg

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

A combined demographic and present abilities approach to estimate premorbid intellectual functioning was developed and cross validated on unimpaired and closed head injured subjects. The non-clinical sample included 75 non-neurologically impaired individuals divided into two groups. The development sample (n = 50) was used to generate linear regression equations to estimate WAIS-R IQs from the estimated Barona IQ score (Barona, Reynolds, & Chastain, 1984) plus error score on the National Adult Reading Test (NART; Nelson, 1982). The cross-validation sample (n = 25) were individually matched to the clinical subjects on age, education, gender, and race variables. The clinical sample included …

The Impact Of Trait Anxiety On Slow-Wave Sleep Processes., Kristi Hulse Fuller

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The sleep of high anxiety/worry and low anxiety/worry subjects was studied by means of nocturnal polysomnography. Fifteen high anxiety adult subjects were chosen to represent an analog Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) population, and were selected from among individuals scoring within the upper 20th percentile on the trait portion of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ). Fifteen low anxiety subjects were selected from among individuals scoring within the lower 50th percentile on those measures, and were matched with high anxiety subjects for age, sex, race, and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) scores. Analysis of polysomnography variables …

Validation Study Of The Teacher Ratings Of Individual Student Skills And Achievement (Trissa)., Wayne Thomas Stewart

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to assess the concurrent, predictive, and discriminant validity of the Teacher Ratings of Individual Student Skills and Achievement (TRISSA). The TRISSA was developed in three major phases. Phase I consisted of the generation of an item pool and review of these items by experts. Phase II involved teachers completing the original 100-item TRISSA and subjecting data to a factor analytic study. Based on the factor analysis of 1,049 cases, a revised TRISSA (i.e., TRISSA-36) was produced. The TRISSA-36 was administered to teachers as part of actual pupil appraisal evaluations in three parishes in southeastern …

Bombesin-Induced Hypothermia At Normal Ambient Temperatures: Contribution Of The Sympathetic Nervous System., John Christopher Barton

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Bombesin is a tetradecapeptide first isolated from frog skin. This peptide has potent effects on core body temperature of rats when administered centrally. Bombesin-induced hypothermia at normal ambient temperatures appears to be dependent upon some pre-existent condition which may be related to nutritional status. Four experiments were conducted to examine if the pre-existing condition for bombesin-induced hypothermia at normal ambient temperatures is primarily related to modulation of sympathetic nervous system activation. Experiment I demonstrated that central bombesin resulted in hypothermia in rats tested at normal ambient temperatures under conditions of ad-libitum access to food only when injected peripherally with the …

An Investigation Of Behavior Problems Of Children With Down Syndrome And Their Relationship To Life Events., David Alan Coe

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Behavior problems of 44 children with Down Syndrome between the ages of 6 and 15 and 44 controls without mental retardation matched for age, sex and socioeconomic status were compared by means of mother and teacher ratings. Ratings from both sources indicated that children with Down Syndrome had more behavior problems, in particular attention deficit, noncompliance, thought disorder and social withdrawal. Thirty one percent of these children were identified by mothers as having a significant behavior problem compared with 58% of those rated by teachers. In both cases, Down Syndrome behavior problem prevalence exceeded that for controls by a three …

Factors Affecting Intended Self-Referral To An Employee Assistance Program., Paul Richard Damiano

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Using data from 256 subjects from three organizations which all had employee assistance programs (EAP), this study explored factors hypothesized to affect the likelihood for employees to self-refer to the EAP. Using both correlational data and a 2 x 2 x 2 x 5 repeated measures ANOVA, it was found that perceived confidentiality, reputation of the program, perceived problem seriousness, and type of problem (job, financial, health, psychological, or relationship) were significantly related to the intent to self-refer. There was also evidence that perceived controllability of the problem and a job performance decrement influenced the propensity to self-refer. An additional …

Effects Of Threat-Related Emotional Information In A Lexical Decision Task: Examination Of Cognitive And Motor Performance., Sheryl Rene Jackson

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Recently, attention has been given to the cognitive processing of aversive emotional, or threat-related, information. Although investigations have often focused on anxiety disordered individuals, it is suggested that examination of "normal" individuals with varying levels of anxiety will increase the understanding of the cognitive processing of aversive emotional, or threat-related, information. It has been hypothesized that high anxious individuals exhibit an attentional bias toward threat-related emotional information. The response of low anxious individuals to threat-related information is unclear. Some evidence suggests that non-anxiety disordered individuals employ a mechanism that inhibits or interferes with the processing of threat-related, emotional information. The …

Selective Information Processing Of Body Size And Food Related Stimuli In Women Who Are Preoccupied With Body Size., Richard Daniel Fuller

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Overconcern or preoccupation with body size and weight is a central psychopathological feature of the eating disorders. The overconcern with body size is considered to be a function of fear of weight gain or "fear of fatness". Cognitive theories of psychopathology have hypothesized that fear results in an increased activation of cognitive structures associated with the feared object. This increased activation (priming) is hypothesized to enhance the processing of information related to the feared object. This study tested this hypothesis using a lexical decision task. Individuals with extreme body size preoccupation were evaluated for a selective information processing of body …

A Comparison Of Verbal And Nonverbal Relaxation Induction Techniques In Neurologically Impaired Rehabilitation Patients., Warren Turner Jackson Iii

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This study compared the relaxation responses of neurologically impaired rehabilitation patients during verbal and nonverbal relaxation induction protocols. Seventy inpatients undergoing rehabilitation served as voluntary participants: (a) 20 patients with right-hemisphere brain dysfunction, (b) 20 patients with left-hemisphere dysfunction, and (c) a contrast group of 30 non-neurologically impaired orthopedic/medical patients. In the first phase of the study, all subjects underwent an evaluation that involved completion of screening instruments, self-report measures, and a brief neuropsychological test battery. In the second phase of the study, all subjects underwent two successive relaxation induction protocols: (a) verbal, and (b) nonverbal. Order of presentation was …

Cognitive Distortions, Impulsivity, And Stressful Life Events In Suicidal Adolescents., Christine Sadowski

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Among adolescents, escalating rates of completed and attempted suicide are reported worldwide (Maris, 1985). In the literature, a variety of risk factors have been associated with suicidality in adolescence. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between cognitive distortions, impulsivity, and stressful life events in suicidal adolescents. A total of 118 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 years participated in this investigation. The subjects comprised four groups: inpatient suicide attempters (n = 33); inpatient and outpatient suicide ideators (n = 17); inpatient, nonsuicidal controls (n = 33), and community high school controls(n = 35). Subjects …

Blood Pressure Reactivity And Emotion Among Borderline Hypertensives, Mild Hypertensives, Diabetic Hypertensives, And Normotensives., Alicia G. Pellegrin

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between emotion and blood pressure levels and variability for 80 Caucasian subjects between the ages of 30 and 65 matched on gender. The subjects were divided into four groups: normotensives, untreated borderline essential hypertensives, treated mild essential hypertensives, and Type II diabetic hypertensives. Subjects completed five psychological measures: the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI); State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-trait anxiety (STAI-Tanx); State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-trait anger (STAXI-Tang); the ratio of anger-in to anger-out (STAXI-IO); and the Autonomic Nervous System Response Inventory (ANSRI). Subjects then recorded their home blood pressures seven times throughout the …

Explicit Memory Bias For Body-Related Stimuli In Eating Disorders., Shannon Buckles Sebastian

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This investigation studied the presence of an explicit memory bias for emotional body related stimuli in patients diagnosed with an eating disorder. Explicit memory refers to the recall of stimuli previously presented. Explicit memory tasks are thought to reflect cognitive elaboration mechanisms. Research on depressed patients has found a bias for recalling negatively valenced information and/or a bias against recalling positively valenced information. This study sought to extend this type of memory bias research to eating disorder patients. Three groups were examined, a group of clinical eating disordered women (n = 30), a group of weight preoccupied non-eating disordered individuals …

Building Blocks Of Analysis: Using Simple Sesame Street Skills And Sophisticated Educational Learning Theories In Teaching A Seminar In Legal Analysis And Writing, Nancy Millich

Santa Clara Law Review

No abstract provided.

Career Decision Certainty And College Students' Psychological And Social Development, Michael David Zlatos

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to determine the nature of the relationship between the certainty of career decision, as measured by the Certainty scale of the Career Decision Scale, gender, and three of Chickering's seven vectors of psychosocial development: Clarifying Purpose, Freeing Interpersonal Relationships, and Becoming Autonomous, as measured by the PUR, MIR, and AA tasks of the Student Developmental Task and Lifestyle Inventory (SDTLI). Participants were 135 college freshmen and sophomores recruited from generalEducation courses who were classified as undecided, tentatively decided, or decided based on groupings of Certainty scale scores. Four, 3 x 2, MANOVAs were conducted for each …

Predicting Categorical Diagnoses Using A Dimensional Approach: Comparing Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder And Oppositional Defiant Disorder, David Lee Vanhorn

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Historically, there have been two major approaches to the classification of childhood psychopathology, the categorical and dimensional approaches. The purpose of the present study was to compare an example of each of these approaches (DSM-III-R and Child Behavior Checklist, respectively), exploring how information from the CBC can be used to differentiate between Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and a clinical control. The present study also focused on predicting diagnostic category group membership using a subset of variables from the Child Behavior Checklist. Subjects were 46 Euro-American males between the ages of 4 and 11, drawn from a population …

Patterns Of Adaptive Functioning In Cortical And Subcortical Diagnostic Groups Of Dementia., Paul Matthew Dammers

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Much debate exists as to the independence of subcortical dementia as a recognizable clinical entity. Researchers in the dementia area seem to accept that cortical dementias are relatively more incapacitating than subcortical dementias. However, there are no empirical studies to support this claim. Impairment in adaptive functioning is one criterion to be met in the diagnosis of dementia according to DSM-III-R (APA, 1987) and NINCDS-ADRDA criteria (McKhann, Drachman, Folstein et al., 1984). However, a comparison of the degree of impairment in adaptive functioning between subcortical and cortical diagnostic groups of dementia has never been systematically and empirically investigated. This study …

Structural Equation Modeling Analysis Of Risk Factors For The Development Of Eating Disorder Symptoms In Adolescents., Susan Elizabeth Barker

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Risk factors which have been shown to influence the development of body dissatisfaction and eating disturbance in adolescents include depressed mood, low self-esteem, a history of teasing about physical appearance, social and parental pressure to be thin, pubertal timing, and actual body weight or body mass index. In the present study, an etiological model was proposed with these risk factors as predictors of the presence of eating disorder symptoms; this association was hypothesized to be mediated by dissatisfaction with body shape and weight. Structural equation modeling was used to test this theoretical model within a total sample of 345 adolescent …