Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Understanding Child Sexual Behavior Problems: A Developmental Psychopathology Framework, Natasha Elkovitch, Robert D. Latzman, David J. Hansen, Mary Fran Flood

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

entific community. While a heterogeneous group, children with sexual behavior problems consistently demonstrate a number of problems related to adjustment and overall development. In order to appropriately intervene with these children, a comprehensive understanding of etiology is imperative. The overarching goal of the present paper is to review the extant research on mechanisms associated with the development of problematic sexual behavior in childhood within a developmental psychopathology framework. What is known about normative and nonnormative sexual behavior in childhood is reviewed, highlighting definitional challenges and age-related developmental differences. Further, the relationship between child sexual abuse and child sexual behavior problems …

Thoughts Of Suicidality And Self-Harm In Middle Childhood: Relationship With Child Maltreatment And Maternal Substance Abuse And Depression, Tara K. Cossel, Natasha Elkovitch, David J. Hansen

Department of Psychology: Presentations

Child maltreatment victims are at increased risk for a multitude of symptoms, including: internalizing problems (e.g., depression, anxiety), behavior problems (e.g., aggression) and post-traumatic stress symptoms (Paolucci, Genuis, & Violato, 2001). Not all maltreated children present with the same outcomes, and research consistently demonstrates child abuse does not have an inevitable pattern or a unified presentation of symptoms. Some youth may be asymptomatic following abuse; others display a myriad of symptoms at varying levels of severity (Kendall-Tackett, Williams, & Finkelhor, 1993). A small percentage of this group becomes suicidal.

Recent studies have presented accumulating evidence that suicidality and self-harm warrant …

Personality And Psychosocial Factors Of College Drinking Amount And Frequency, Lindsay A. Vuchetich, Tara K. Cossel, Laura C. Herschl, Dennis E. Mcchargue Ph.D.

Department of Psychology: Presentations

Despite laws in every State that make it illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to purchase or possess alcohol, young people report that alcohol is easy to obtain and that many high school and college students drink with one goal – to get drunk. Binge drinking is defined as consuming six or more drinks in a row for boys and four or more in a row for girls. In this exploratory research, several articles were gathered in order to integrate previous findings in the current study. One factor that was looked at in the current study was if …

The Early Development Of Gender Differences, Matthew H. Mcintyre, Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This article reviews findings from anthropology, psychology, and other disciplines about the role of biological factors in the development of sex differences in human behavior, including biological theories, the developmental course of sex differences, and the interaction of biological and cultural gendering processes at different ages. Current evidence suggests that major biological influences on individual differences in human gender, to the extent that they exist, operate primarily in early development, during and especially prior to puberty. Biological effects are likely to be mediated by relatively simple processes, like temperament, which are then elaborated through social interactions (as with mother and …

The Receptor Mechanisms Underlying The Disruptive Effects Of Haloperidol And Clozapine On Rat Maternal Behavior: A Double Dissociation Between Dopamine D2 And 5-Ht2a/2c Receptors, Changjiu Zhao, Ming Li

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Many antipsychotic drugs disrupt active components of maternal behavior such as pup approach, pup retrieval and nest building at clinically relevant doses in postpartum female rats. However, the neurochemical mechanisms underlying such a disruptive effect remain to be determined. This study examined the neurochemical mechanisms that mediate the disruptive effects of haloperidol (a typical antipsychotic) and clozapine (an atypical antipsychotic) on rat maternal behavior. Postpartum rats were administered with haloperidol (0.2 mg/kg, sc) or clozapine (10.0 mg/kg, sc) together with either vehicle (saline or water), quinpirole (a selective dopamine D₂/D₃ agonist, 0.5 or 1.0 mg/kg, sc), or …

Investigation Of Endocannabinoid Modulation Of Conditioned Responding Evoked By A Nicotine Cs And The Pavlovian Stimulus Effects Of Cp 55,940 In Adult Male Rats, Jennifer E. Murray, Nicole R. Wells, George D. Lyford, Rick A. Bevins

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Rationale — The cannabinoid CB1 receptor antagonist/inverse agonist rimonabant (SR 141716) has been shown to block reinforcing and rewarding effects of nicotine. Research has not investigated whether the cannabinoid system is involved in the interoceptive stimulus effects of nicotine functioning as a conditional stimulus (CS).
Objective — We examined the effects of rimonabant and the CB_1/2 receptor agonist, CP 55,940, on responding evoked by a nicotine CS in rats. Additionally, we determined whether CP 55,940 functioned as a CS or a Pavlovian positive drug feature
Materials and methods — Pavlovian discrimination training involved intermixed nicotine (0.2 mg base/kg) and …

Correlated And Coupled Within-Person Change In Emotional And Behavior Disturbance In Individuals With Intellectual Disability, Scott M. Hofer, Kylie M. Gray, Andrea M. Piccinin, Andrew Mackinnon, Daniel E. Bontempo, Stewart L. Enfield, Lesa Hoffman, Trevor Parmenter, Bruce J. Tonge

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Individual change and variation in emotional/behavioral disturbance in children and adolescents with intellectual disability has received little empirical investigation. Based on 11 years of longitudinal data from the Australian Child to Adult Development Study, we report associations among individual differences in level, rate of change, and occasion-specific variation across subscales of theDevelopmental Behavior Checklist (DBC) with 506 participants who had intellectual disability and were ages 5 to 19 years at study entry. Correlations among the five DBC subscales ranged from .43 to .66 for level, .43 to .88 for rate of change, and .31 to .61 for occasion-specific variation, with …

Sexual Risk Recognition Deficits: The Role Of Prior Victimization And Emotion Dysregulation, Kate L. Walsh

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Recent theoretical writings suggest that the ineffective regulation of negative emotional states may reduce the ability of women to detect and respond effectively to situational and interpersonal factors that increase risk for sexual assault. However, little empirical research has explored this hypothesis. In the present study, it was hypothesized that prior sexual victimization and negative mood state would each independently predict poor risk recognition and less effective defensive actions in response to an analogue sexual assault vignette. Further, these variables were expected to interact to produce particularly impaired risk responses. Finally, that the in vivo emotion regulation strategy of suppression …

Sleep-Disordered Breathing Affects Auditory Processing In 5–7 Year-Old Children: Evidence From Brain Recordings, Alexandra P.F. Key, Dennis L. Molfese, Louise O’Brien, David Gozal

Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior: Faculty and Staff Publications

Poor sleep in children is associated with lower neurocognitive functioning and increased maladaptive behaviors. The current study examined the impact of snoring (the most common manifestation of sleep-disordered breathing) on cognitive and brain functioning in a sample of 35 asymptomatic children ages 5–7 years identified in the community as having habitual snoring (SDB). All participants completed polysomnographic, neurocognitive (NEPSY) and psychophysiological (ERPs to speech sounds) assessments. The results indicated that sub-clinical levels of SDB may not necessarily lead to reduced performance on standardized behavioral measures of attention and memory. However, brain indices of speech perception and discrimination (N1/P2) are sensitive …

Social Networks, Social Identities, And Mindset Of At-Risk College Students, Troy A. Romero

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Success in higher education is typically measured by retention and graduation, and traditionally the students who are least likely to succeed are at-risk students. At-risk students are characterized by one or more of the following: being from underrepresented ethnicities and cultures, having low socioeconomic status, being educated in poorly funded primary and secondary education systems, being first-generation college students, or being otherwise marginalized in society. This study was designed to test how at-risk students differ from other students in terms of the size of their academic social networks, the strength of their academic identities, and their mindset, and to what …

The Role Of The Peer Group In Adolescence: Effects On Internalizing And Externalizing Symptoms, Glen J. Veed

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

An adolescent’s peer group has been theorized to influence the development of psychopathology. However, little research has examined the adolescent peer group using information obtained directly from peers in a longitudinal framework. Research has also been limited on peer group influence on the development of internalizing disorders. The study used Social Network Analysis to examine self-reported anxiety, depression, aggression, and delinquency in the fall and spring of one school year for students in a rural high school. In addition to examining the effect of the peer group on individual reports of psychopathology, the strength of this relation was compared to …

A Comparison Of Two Theoretical Models Of Procedural Justice In The Context Of Child Protection Proceedings, Twila Wingrove

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this study, the researcher tested two theoretical models of justice in the context of child protection proceedings. Participants read a case file describing a hypothetical child neglect case. The file included the court petition, the caseworker’s court report, a summary of the protective custody hearing, and the judge’s final order. Within the case file, the researcher manipulated four variables: procedural treatment, interpersonal treatment, severity of child neglect, and assigned role (judge or parent). Results of confirmatory factor analyses suggested that a four-factor model of justice judgments best fit the data. Consistent with the organizational justice approach (Colquitt, 2001) the …

Neuropsychological Effects Of The Traumatic Stress Response In Sexually Abused Adolescents Throughout Treatment, Kathryn R. Wilson

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Child maltreatment is a pervasive problem in our society that has long-term detrimental consequences to the development of the affected child such as future brain growth and functioning. The alteration of the biochemical stress response system in the brain that changes an individual’s ability to respond efficiently and efficaciously to future stressors is conceptualized as the traumatic stress response. The purpose of this research was to explore the effects of the traumatic stress response on sexually abused adolescents’ through a two-tiered study of neuropsychological functioning throughout treatment. It was determined that there are measurable differences in neuropsychological processing in sexually …

Is Animal Cruelty A “Red Flag” For Family Violence?: Investigating Co-Occurring Violence Toward Children, Partners, And Pets, Sarah Degrue, David K. Dilillo

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Cross-reporting legislation, which permits child and animal welfare investigators to refer families with substantiated child maltreatment or animal cruelty for investigation by parallel agencies, has recently been adopted in several U.S. jurisdictions. The current study sheds light on the underlying assumption of these policies—that animal cruelty and family violence commonly co-occur. Exposure to family violence and animal cruelty is retrospectively assessed using a sample of 860 college students. Results suggest that animal abuse may be a red flag indicative of family violence in the home. Specifically, about 60% of participants who have witnessed or perpetrated animal cruelty as a child …

Going Beyond The Specifics: Generalization Of Single Actions, But Not Temporal Order, At 9 Months, Angela F. Lukowski, Sandra A. Wiebe, Patricia J. Bauer

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

We examined generalization in 9-month-old infants after a 24-hour delay using deferred imitation. Infants flexibly applied their knowledge of sequence actions across changes in props even though they had no opportunity for immediate imitation.

Individual Differences In Responses To Nicotine: Tracking Changes From Adolescence To Adulthood, Ming Li, Alexa Mead, Rick A. Bevins

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Aim: The present study determined the extent to which individual differences in responses to the psychostimulating effect of nicotine during adolescence predict similar individual differences during adulthood in rats. We also examined the possible long-term effects of adolescent nicotine exposure on adult prepulse inhibition (PPI) of the acoustic startle response, a measure of sensorimotor gating ability.

Methods: During the adolescent phase, rats were administered saline, 0.10, 0.40, or 0.60 mg/kg nicotine via subcutaneous injections for 8 days, and motor activity was measured daily. During the adult phase, these rats were treated with the same nicotine dose as in adolescence for …

Food Exemplar Salience: What Foods Do People Think Of When You Tell Them To Change Their Diet?, Carolyn R. Brown-Kramer, Marc T. Kiviniemi, Julie A. Winseman

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Understanding which specific foods easily come to mind when individuals consider categories of dietary behavior may help explain observed patterns of dietary intake. We examined which specific behavioral exemplars are most easily retrieved from memory when individuals consider broad dietary categories. Participants reported specific foods that come to mind when considering high fat foods, low fat foods, and fruits/vegetables. Salient foods differed from those suggested in dietary guidelines, were distinct from those known to be major diet components, and showed a non-trivial number of incorrect responses. These findings have implications for understanding how individuals respond to dietary guidelines and devising …

Frequency And Spatial Characteristics Of Highfrequency Neuromagnetic Signals In Childhood Epilepsy, Jing Xiang, Yang Liu, Yingying Wang, Elijah G. Kirtman, Cincinnati Children’S Hospital Medical Center Kotecha, Yangmei Chen, Xiaolin Huo, Hisako Fujiwara, Nat Hemasilpin, Ki Lee, Francesco T. Mangano, James Leach, Blaise Jones, Ton Degrauw, Douglas Rose

Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior: Faculty and Staff Publications

Purpose. Invasive intracranial recordings have suggested that high-frequency oscillation is involved in epileptogenesis and is highly localized to epileptogenic zones. The aim of the present study is to characterize the frequency and spatial patterns of high-frequency brain signals in childhood epilepsy using a non-invasive technology. Methods. Thirty children with clinically diagnosed epilepsy were studied using a whole head magnetoencephalography (MEG) system. MEG data were digitized at 4 000 Hz. The frequency and spatial characteristics of high-frequency neuromagnetic signals were analyzed using continuous wavelet transform and beamformer. Threedimensional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was obtained for each patient to localize magnetic sources. …

Gambling Interacts With Trauma To Predict Alexithymia Scores Among College Students, Tara K. Cossel, María José Herrera, Dennis E. Mcchargue

Department of Psychology: Presentations

Gambling is fairly common among college age students, with estimates ranging from 15% (Kerber, 2005) to 42% (LaBrie, Shaffer, LaPlante, & Wechslet, 2003). Furthermore, gambling among college students is associated with a variety of negative consequences, particularly for men (Engwall, Hunter, & Steinberg, 2004). Despite this, less is known about psychological factors linking gambling among college age students. In a recent study conducted among college students, the relationship between pathological gambling and psychological variables (e.g., alexithymia) was examined. Findings indicate that psychological variables like alexithymia might be a noteworthy risk factor to problem gambling (Parker, Wood, Bond, & Shaughnessy, 2005). …

Avoidance-Suppressing Effect Of Antipsychotic Drugs Is Progressively Potentiated After Repeated Administration: An Interoceptive Drug State Mechanism, Alexa Lucille Mead, Ming Li

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Antipsychotic drugs selectively suppress conditioned avoidance response. Using a two-way active avoidance response paradigm, we examined the role of drug-induced interoceptive state in the mediation of avoidance-suppressive effect. In Experiment 1, we found that rats intermittently treated with olanzapine (OLZ) (1.0 mg/kg, s.c.) or haloperidol (0.03 mg/kg, s.c.) on the 1st day of a 3-day cycle for seven cycles exhibited a progressive across-session decline in avoidance responding, despite the fact that they exhibited a comparable high level of avoidance responding on the 3rd day of each cycle during the drug-free retraining session. In Experiments 2 and 3, rats that were …

What Matters, And What Matters Most, For Change In Life Satisfaction In The Oldest-Old? A Study Over 6 Years Among Individuals 80+, Anne Ingeborg Berg, Lesa Hoffman, Linda Björk Hassing, Gerald M. Mcclearn, Boo Johansson

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Objectives: The study investigates whether markers of life satisfaction identified in a cross-sectional study – quality of social network, self-rated health, depressive symptoms, locus of control and widowhood, in addition to financial satisfaction and the personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism - predict change in life satisfaction (LSI-Z) across four measurement occasions during a 6-year period in individuals aged 80+. Method: Data were drawn from the Swedish OCTO-Twin-study of individuals aged 80 and older. Results: Growth curve analysis showed a relatively consistent significant linear decline in life satisfaction, but certain markers predicted change in life satisfaction. The …

Motivation To Self-Harm In Middle Childhood: Relationship To Emotional Symptomotology And Home Environment, Tara K. Cossel, Natasha Elkovitch, David J. Hansen

Department of Psychology: Presentations

Self-harm in childhood is an important, though neglected area of empirical research. Research has, however, investigated the emotional and environmental factors associated with self-harm in adolescent and adult populations. This research provides a foundation from which to investigate desire to self-harm in child populations.

With regard to emotional factors, self-injurers report having a negative affect they wish to avoid (Polk & Liss, 2007). Further, distraction from emotional pain has been identified as the most prevalent motivation for self-harm across genders (Swannell, Martin, Scott, Gibbons, & Gifford, 2008). Briere and Gil (1998) found self-injury is used in an attempt to decrease …

The Dynamic Nature Of Knowledge: Insights From A Dynamic Field Model Of Children’S Novel Noun Generalization, Larissa K. Samuelson, Anne R. Schutte, Jessica S. Horst

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This paper examines the tie between knowledge and behavior in a noun generalization context. An experiment directly comparing noun generalizations of children at the same point in development in forced-choice and yes/no tasks reveals task-specific differences in the way children’s knowledge of nominal categories is brought to bear in a moment. To understand the cognitive system that produced these differences, the real-time decision processes in these tasks were instantiated in a dynamic field model. The model captures both qualitative and quantitative differences in performance across tasks and reveals constraints on the nature of children’s accumulated knowledge. Additional simulations of developmental …

Acquired Appetitive Responding To Intravenous Nicotine Reflects A Pavlovian Conditioned Association, Jennifer E. Murray, Rick A. Bevins

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Recent research examining Pavlovian appetitive conditioning has extended the associative properties of nicotine from the unconditioned stimulus or reward to include the role of a conditional stimulus (CS), capable of acquiring the ability to evoke a conditioned response. To date, published research has used presession extravascular injections to examine nicotine as a contextual CS in that appetitive Pavlovian drug discrimination task. Two studies in the current research examined whether a nicotine CS can function discretely, multiple times within a session using passive iv infusions. In Experiment 1, rats readily acquired a discrimination in conditioned responding between nicotine and saline infusions …

Olanzapine And Risperidone Disrupt Conditioned Avoidance Responding In Phencyclidine-Pretreated Or Amphetamine-Pretreated Rats By Selectively Weakening Motivational Salience Of Conditioned Stimulus, Ming Li, Wei He, Alexa Mead

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The rat conditioned avoidance response model is a well-established preclinical behavioral model predictive of antipsychotic efficacy. All clinically approved antipsychotic drugs disrupt conditioned avoidance responding – a feature that distinguishes them from other psychotherapeutics. We previously showed that the typical antipsychotic drug haloperidol disrupts avoidance responding by progressively attenuating the motivational salience of the conditioned stimulus (CS) in normal rats. In this study, using two pharmacological rat models of schizophrenia [e.g. phencyclidine (PCP) or amphetamine sensitization], we examined whether atypicals such as olanzapine or risperidone disrupt avoidance responding through the same behavioral mechanism. Rats were first pretreated with PCP, amphetamine, …

Epistatic Interaction Between Comt And Dat1 Genes On Eating Behavior: A Pilot Study, Samantha L. Hersrud, Scott F. Stoltenberg

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Problems related to food and weight in women may be influenced by the (DA) dopamine system. Catechol-o-methyl transferase (COMT) and the dopamine transporter (DAT) exert control on concentrations of extracellular DA. High and low functioning alleles of the COMT Val158Met and DAT1 3’ UTR VNTR polymorphisms have been identified, and their associations with reward and cognition suggest a role in the modulation of eating behavior. A sample of undergraduate college women (N = 71) was characterized for binge eating and eating psychopathology and genotyped for the COMT and DAT1 markers. Results revealed a significant epistatic interaction between COMT and DAT1 …

Severity Of Child Sexual Abuse And Revictimization: The Mediating Role Of Coping And Trauma Symptoms, Michelle A. Fortier, David Dilillo, Terri L. Messman-Moore, James Peugh, Kathleen A. Denardi, Kathryn J. Gaffey

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Child sexual abuse (CSA) has consistently been associated with the use of avoidant coping; these coping methods have been associated with increased trauma symptoms, which have, in turn, been linked to increased risk for adult sexual revictimization. Given these previous findings, the purpose of the current study was to test a model that conceptualized the relationships among these variables. Specifically, CSA severity was conceptualized as leading to the use of avoidant coping, which was proposed to lead to maintenance of trauma symptoms, which would, in turn, impact severity of revictimization indirectly. This comprehensive model was tested in a cross-sectional study …

Sedation And Disruption Of Maternal Motivation Underlie The Disruptive Effects Of Antipsychotic Treatment On Rat Maternal Behavior, Changjiu Zhao, Ming Li

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The behavioral mechanisms underlying antipsychotic-induced maternal behavior deficits were examined in the present study. Different groups of postpartum rats were treated with haloperidol (0.1 mg/kg), clozapine (10.0 mg/kg), chlordiazepoxide (5.0 mg/kg, an anxiolytic) or vehicle (0.9% saline) on Days 4 and 6 postpartum and their maternal behaviors were tested under either pup-separation (e.g. pups were removed from their mothers for 4 h before testing) or no-pup-separation condition. Maternal behavior and drug-induced sedation were further tested for 3 days from Day 8 to 12 postpartum. Results show that pup-separation, which putatively increases maternal motivation, did significantly shorten clozapine-elongated pup approach latency, …

Judgments Of Omitted Be And Do In Questions As Extended Finiteness Clinical Markers Of Sli To Fifteen Years: A Study Of Growth And Asymptote, Mabel L. Rice, Lesa Hoffman, Ken Wexler

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Purpose—Clinical grammar markers are needed for children with SLI older than 8 years. This study followed children studied earlier on sentences with omitted finiteness to determine if affected children continue to perform at low levels and to examine possible predictors of low performance. This is the first longitudinal report of grammaticality judgments of questions.

Method—Three groups of children participated: 20 SLI, 20 age controls and 18 language-matched controls, followed from ages 6–15 years. An experimental grammaticality judgment task was administered with BE copula/auxiliary and DO auxiliary in Wh- and Yes/No questions for 9 times of measurement. Predictors were indices of …

Immune Responses To Methamphetamine By Active Immunization With Peptide-Based, Molecular Adjuvant-Containing Vaccines, Michael J. Duryee, Rick A. Bevins, Carmela M. Reichel, Jennifer E. Murray, Yuxiang Dong, Geoffrey M. Thiele, Sam D. Sanderson

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Vaccines to methamphetamine (meth) were designed by covalently attaching a meth hapten (METH) to peptide constructs that contained a conformationally biased, response-selective molecular adjuvant, YSFKPMPLaR (EP54). Rats immunized with EP54-containing meth vaccines generated serum antibody titers to authentic meth, an immune outcome that altered meth self-administration. Immunization increased meth self-administration suggesting pharmacokinetic antagonism. The ability of immune sera to bind a METH-modified target protein dramatically decreased during and shortly after the meth self-administration assay, suggesting effective sequestration of free meth. However, the binding ability of immune sera to the METH-modified target protein was recovered 34 days after meth-free clearance time.