Behavior and Behavior Mechanisms Commons^™

Neurologists Look At Causes Of Baffling Brain Condition, Maggie Freleng

Capstones

It can be hard getting help for someone with mental illness, but almost impossible when that person doesn't think they are sick. At at least half of people with schizophrenia, for example, insist that the voices they hear are real. People who do not know they are ill often refuse therapy and medication -- and their symptoms can spiral out of control. Doctors call this lack of awareness anosognosia. Neurologists are trying to discover what causes this baffling condition--and how to treat it.

Smoking And Exercise: Mechanisms And Effects During Simulated And Genuine Quit Attempts, Stefanie De Jesus

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Cigarette smoking is a leading agent for premature morbidity and mortality among the global community. Most individuals surrender to tobacco use disorder due to the inability to cope with cravings and withdrawal symptoms. Exercise appears to provide acute relief. Currently, it is unclear how exercise attenuates these reductions. Furthermore, the available evidence has focused on acute outcomes besides smoking behaviour and is limited to simulated quit attempts. Three experimental studies were designed to address these outstanding issues. Not surprisingly, a bout of moderate intensity exercise was found in study 1 (chapter 2) to reduce cravings associated with a temporary period …

Effects Of Repeated Quetiapine Treatment On Conditioned Avoidance Responding In Rats, Jun Gao, Min Feng, Natashia Swalve, Collin Davis, Nan Sui, Ming Li

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The present study characterized the behavioral mechanisms of avoidance–disruptive effect of quetiapine in the conditioned avoidance response test under two behavioral testing (2 warning signals vs. 1 warning signal) and two drug administration conditions (subcutaneous vs. intravenous). In Experiments 1 and 2, well-trained adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were tested under the subcutaneous (s.c.) quetiapine treatment (5.0, 15.0, 25.0, 50.0 mg/kg) for 7 days in a novel procedure consisting of two conditioned stimuli (CS) (white noise serving as CS1 and pure tone as CS2). Only the highest dose (50.0 mg/kg) produced a persistent suppression of the avoidance response without impairing the …

Exploring Acceptance Of Using An Online Platform To Teach Parents Of Children With Autism Methods In Applied Behavior Analysis (Aba), Marwah S. Zagzoug

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Background and Purpose of the Study: A diagnosis of autism can lead to lifelong struggles for parents and children. These families face profound difficulties in coping with stress while seeking out early interventions and managing imperative service needs. Parents are increasingly turning to the internet for information, advice, and even formal training. Breakthroughs in technology have made the internet more accessible and more sophisticated. The involvement of parents in applying intervention strategies to help their autistic children has long been advocated as a useful approach. Enabling parents as interventionists provides renewed confidence and reduced stress for parents as well as …

Social Motivation Is Associated With Elevated Salivary Cortisol In Boys With An Asd, Vicki Bitsika, Christopher Sharpley, Linda Agnew, Nicholas Andronicos

Vicki Bitsika

Because social communication difficulties and stress are common in children with an ASD, and because it has been hypothesised that the two are related, the association between these two variables was investigated in a sample of 90 boys with an ASD and who were aged between 6 years and 12 years of age. The Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) was completed by the parents of these boys about their sons, plus salivary cortisol samples were collected from the boys. Results indicated that only one aspect of the boys' SRS was significantly correlated with cortisol—Social Motivation (SM). Factor analyses revealed two discrete …

Age-Related Differences In The Association Between Stereotypic Behaviour And Salivary Cortisol In Young Males With An Autism Spectrum Disorder, Vicki Bitsika, Christopher Sharpley, Linda Agnew, Nicholas Andronicos

Vicki Bitsika

To identify if age influenced the relationship between one of the central symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and physiological stress, the association between stereotypic behaviour (SB) and stress-related cortisol concentrations was examined in a sample of 150 young males with an ASD. Parent-rated SB was significantly correlated with cortisol concentrations for boys aged 6 years to 12 years but not for adolescents aged 13 years to 18 years. This age-related difference in this association was not a function of cortisol concentrations but was related to differences in SB across these two age groups. IQ did not have a significant …

The Effects Of Alcohol On The Interpretation Of Social And Emotional Cues: A Field Study Of College Student Drinking, Emotion Recognition, And Perceptions Of A Hypothetical Sexual Assault, Alexander James Melkonian

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Alcohol use and abuse among emerging adults is highly correlated with increased risk for sexual victimization. Alcohol myopia theory has been used to explain impairments in Social information processing resulting in decreased attention to environmental Social cues including risk factors for sexual assault as well as facial emotional recognition. Those with deficits in Social information processing may be at particular risk for the misperception of salient risk factors for sexual assault by victims, perpetrators, and bystanders when intoxicated. In this naturalistic field study, participants who had been consuming alcohol were recruited to engage in tasks of facial emotion recognition and …

Executive Function Predictors Of Children's Talk, Jacqlyne D. Weber

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Relatively few studies have investigated the relationship between executive functioning (EF) and language development, and even fewer have researched hot and cool EF as a predictor language development. This study is an investigation into the relationship between EF and language development in preschool aged children. More specifically, the ability for hot or cool EF to predict language, this will be the focus of the study. It was found that hot EF was a better predictor of language development in preschool aged children.

Effects Of Early-Adolescent, Mid-Adolescent, Or Adult Stress On Morphine Conditioned Place Preference, Chloe Shields

Senior Theses

In light of previous work demonstrating that stress can increase subjective drug reward in adult rats, the present study investigated the influence of stress on morphine conditioned place preference (CPP) in early-adolescent, mid-adolescent, and adult male Sprague-Dawley rats. Subjects in each age group were assigned to either a no stress condition or a stress condition in which they were exposed to an unpredictable eight-day schedule of elevated platform and synthetic fox odor stressors. Place conditioning then evaluated subjective morphine reward in all animals. Using a biased procedure, subjects were assigned to receive morphine on the initially non-preferred side of the …

Revisiting A Common Measure Of Child Postoperative Recovery: Development Of The Post Hospitalization Behavior Questionnaire For Ambulatory Surgery (Phbq-As), Brooke N. Jenkins, Zeev N. Kain, Sherrie H. Kaplan, Robert S. Stevenson, Linda C. Mayes, Josue Guadarrama, Michelle A. Fortier

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Background

The Post Hospitalization Behavior Questionnaire (PHBQ) was designed for assessing children's posthospitalization and postoperative new‐onset behavioral changes. However, the psychometric properties of the scale have not been re‐evaluated in the past five decades despite substantial changes in the practice of surgery and anesthesia. In this investigation, we examined the psychometric properties of the PHBQ to potentially increase the efficacy and relevance of the instrument in current perioperative settings.

Method

This study used principal components analysis, a panel of experts, Cronbach's alpha, and correlations to examine the current subscale structure of the PHBQ and eliminate items to create the Post …

Paradoxical Interaction Between Ocular Activity, Perception, And Decision Confidence At The Threshold Of Vision, Aaron Schurger

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

In humans and some other species perceptual decision-making is complemented by the ability to make confidence judgements about the certainty of sensory evidence. While both forms of decision process have been studied empirically, the precise relationship between them remains poorly understood. We performed an experiment that combined a perceptual decision-making task (identifying the category of a faint visual stimulus) with a confidence-judgement task (wagering on the accuracy of each perceptual decision). The visual stimulation paradigm required steady fixation, so we used eye-tracking to control for stray eye movements. Our data analyses revealed an unexpected and counterintuitive interaction between the steadiness …

Oscillatory Activity In The Subthalamic Nucleus And Motor Cortex In A Pharmacological Model Of Parkinsonian Tremor, Aileen F. Haque

Honors Scholar Theses

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a motor disorder with symptoms including resting tremor, akinesia, bradykinesia, and rigidity. A major neuropathological feature of PD is degeneration of nigrostriatal dopamine (DA) neurons. The resulting DA depletions lead to the production of severe motor deficits. Pharmacological agents that reduce DA transmission can also induce these motor abnormalities. In addition to the involvement of DA, drugs acting on acetylcholine, namely cholinomimetics, can induce or exacerbate Parkinsonian symptoms. In humans, one of the main motor symptoms associated with PD is resting tremor, occurring at a frequency of 3-7 Hz. This can be modeled in rodents using …

Failure To Launch? Understanding Variations In Emerging Adult Flight Patterns, Christina Ashley Williams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

What does the transition to adulthood look like for emerging adults? This study proposes that popular cultural ideas like "failure to launch" imply an oversimplified dichotomy that does not account for the multiple "flight patterns" into adulthood. Focusing on the narratives of six interview cases selected from the larger sample of interviewees from Wave 4 of the National Study of Youth and Religion and drawing on the quantitative data from the broader survey sample, this mixed-methods approach examines in-depth, narrative experiences and the ways structural barriers vary between upper-middle, lower-middle, and working class emerging adults. We find that emerging adulthood …

Exploring The Relationship Between Early Childhood Attentional Control And Language Ability, Jaima S. Price

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Relatively few studies have investigated the relationship between early childhood attentional control and later cognitive outcomes, especially language development. The current study is an investigation of the relationship between the executive functioning (EF) component of attentional control and language ability in the second year of life. More specifically, the predictive nature of two aspects of attentional control, attentional focus and resistance to distraction, was be the primary focus of the proposed study. Although it was expected that children both high in attentional focus and resistance to distraction would have significantly superior language development than infants with lower attentional capacities, analyses …

Understanding Norms Without A Theory Of Mind, Kristin Andrews

Kristin Andrews, PhD

I argue that having a theory of mind requires having at least implicit knowledge of the norms of the community, and that an implicit understanding of the normative is what drives the development of a theory of mind. This conclusion is defended by two arguments. First I argue that a theory of mind likely did not develop in order to predict behavior, because before individuals can use propositional attitudes to predict behavior, they have to be able to use them in explanations of behavior. Rather, I suggest that the need to explain behavior in terms of reasons is the primary …

Brief Report: Evidence Of Ingroup Bias On The Shooter Task In A Saudi Sample, Timothy P. Schofield, Timothy Deckman, Christopher P. Garris, C. Nathan Dewall, Thomas F. Denson

Psychology Faculty Publications

When predominantly White participants in Western countries are asked to shoot individuals in a computer game who may carry weapons, they show a greater bias to shoot at outgroup members and people stereotyped as dangerous. The goal was to determine the extent to which shooter biases in the Middle East would vary as a function of target ethnicity and culturally appropriate or inappropriate headgear. Within a sample of 37 male Saudi Arabian residents, we examined shooter biases outside of Western nations for the first time. Targets in this task were either White or Middle Eastern in appearance, and wore either …

Belief About Nicotine Selectively Modulates Value And Reward Prediction Error Signals In Smokers, Xiaosi Gu, Terry Lohrenz, Ramiro Salas, Philip R. Baldwin, Alireza Soltani

Dartmouth Scholarship

Little is known about how prior beliefs impact biophysically described processes in the presence of neuroactive drugs, which presents a profound challenge to the understanding of the mechanisms and treatments of addiction. We engineered smokers' prior beliefs about the presence of nicotine in a cigarette smoked before a functional magnetic resonance imaging session where subjects carried out a sequential choice task. Using a model-based approach, we show that smokers' beliefs about nicotine specifically modulated learning signals (value and reward prediction error) defined by a computational model of mesolimbic dopamine systems. Belief of "no nicotine in cigarette" (compared with "nicotine in …

The Neurophysiology Of Intersensory Selective Attention And Task Switching, Jeremy W. Murphy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Our ability to selectively attend to certain aspects of the world and ignore others is fundamental to our day-to-day lives. The need for selective attention stems from capacity limitations inherent in our perceptual and cognitive processing architecture. Because not every elemental piece of our environment can be fully processed in parallel, the nervous system must prioritize processing. This prioritization is generally referred to as selective attention. Meanwhile, we are faced with a world that is constantly in flux, such that we have to frequently shift our attention from one piece of the environment to another and from one task to …

Assessment Of Competence Restoration: Determining The Threshold, Andrea L. Dinsmore

Andrea L. Dinsmore

Discusses the legal precedent and research basis of evaluating a defendant's mental competency to stand trial, the variables that contribute to non-restorable incompetence to stand trial, and the differences between patients who are restorable to competency versus those who are not restorable to competency.

Naturalistic Clinical Decision Making By Emergency Department Staff And The Assignment Of Categorical Suicide Risk Ratings Within An Urban Veteran Population, Gerd R. Naydock

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

The ability to comprehensively and effectively identify those individuals who are at greatest risk to engage in self-directed violence (SDV) forms the cornerstone for all professional suicide prevention activities. To that end, mental health professionals have come to rely on the use of risk stratification to identify at-risk individuals as a way to inform and guide risk management and treatment, without having the benefit of empirical evidence to support such practices. The current program evaluation examined archival data comprised of suicide risk assessments conducted by mental health professionals on suicidal veterans (N = 1,560) in the emergency department of a …

Developing Executive Functions Through Mindfulness Training In School-Aged Children, Ashley Black Adams

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

Well-developed executive functions are necessary for successful classroom functioning. Students with executive function deficits can fall behind academically as well as socially and emotionally, relative to their same-aged peers. Effective interventions for developing executive functions within the school environment are essential for addressing this issue. This study examines changes in students’ executive functions as a result of their participation in a mindfulness training intervention. Participants included four ten-year old elementary school boys who took part in a ten-week mindfulness training intervention. The data were generated through pre and post assessments with an executive function teacher rating scale and a Goal-Attainment …

The Effectiveness Of A Computer-Assisted, Cognitive-Behavior Program For Treating Anxiety Symptoms In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Jennifer A. Zabel

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex and multifaceted, neurodevelopmental disorder that severely impacts children and families across a variety of settings. Prevalence rates of ASD are continuing to increase rapidly, with sizeable intervention and treatment costs placed on families and society. Further complicating the matter, many individuals with ASD also evidence co-occurring anxiety symptoms or disorders and tend to be at a higher risk for developing such problems when compared to other clinical populations or typically developing children. This study investigated the effectiveness of a computer-assisted CBT program, Camp Cope-A-Lot (CCAL), in regards to reducing anxiety symptoms in four …

The Anxiolytic Effects Of Self-Selected Music Among Primary Care Patients, Jennifer West-Gavin

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

The primary care setting is commonly referred to as the first line of medical treatment sought for health related services. Anxiety is one of the most frequently encountered mental health issues in primary care. The purpose of this study was to examine the level of state anxiety experienced among primary care patients, attending for routine and nonroutine appointments; its further purpose was to examine if self-selected relaxing music accounts for the greatest reductions in state anxiety among primary care patients, as compared with investigator-selected (classical) music, audio commercials, or no music. Patients included a primarily underserved primary care population between …

Impact Of Group Cognitive Behavior Therapy On Adolescents With Deficits In Inhibition, Jessica L. Morley

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

Existing literature connects impulse control dysfunction to high-risk behaviors and negative life outcomes. Evidence-based interventions for children and adolescents who are at-risk or who are displaying significant levels of impulsive behavior are necessary in order to promote self-control, and in turn, positive life outcomes. This study investigated the impact of an eight-week, school-based GCBT intervention on cognitive inhibition and behavioral impulsivity in adolescent participants. The intention of the study was to evaluate the trend in inhibition and impulsivity from baseline to post-intervention assessments across five middle school students dually enrolled in a residential treatment facility and a center-based emotional support …

Adhd Children And Mental Health Service Use: Maternal Determinants, Katarina Krizova

Theses and Dissertations--Family Sciences

The current study investigated maternal determinants of mental health service use, namely, individual child therapy, among preadolescent children diagnosed with ADHD. The Behavioral Model of Health Care Utilization (Andersen, 2008) was used as a theoretical framework for the study. Data from the last three rounds of ECLS-K dataset were employed to test a longitudinal model using Bayesian analysis. Socio-demographic variables and maternal mental health were tested as exogenous variables and mother-child relationship variables, discipline variables, and perceived maternal concern about child’s overall behavior and child’s emotional symptoms were tested as intervening variables. Results showed that only maternal mental health remained …

Differences In Stress Biomarkers In Women With High And Low Stress Appraisal, Clarissa Sara Gomez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Measures of physiological biomarkers have been widely used in the field of stress research to explain how stress negatively impacts health outcomes. Women in particular have been shown to be more at risk for developing physiological and psychological stress-induced conditions (e.g., hypertension, depression) due to hormonal differences (Kirschbaum et al., 1992), but more importantly, because of their appraisal of stressful events (Schamus et al., 2008). Few studies however have examined whether womenâ??s stress appraisal is predictive of stress reactivity, as measured by stress biomarkers, during stressful events. The goal of this study was to examine whether stress appraisal predicted stress …

The Relationship Between Coaching Environment And Athlete Attributional Style, Una Britton

Online Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the relationship between attributional style and perceived coaching behaviors in collegiate cross-country/track and field athletes in the USA and Ireland. Participants included seventy-three collegiate athletes (Ireland: n = 24 male, n = 18 female, mean ± SD age: 20.39 ± 1.61 years. USA: n = 9 male, n = 22 female, mean ± SD age: 21.02 ± 2.18 years). Participants completed the Sport Attributional Style Scale (SASS; Hanrahan et al., 1989) and the Leadership Scale for Sport (LSS; Chelladurai & Selah, 1980) to assess attributional style and perceived coaching behaviors. Explanatory pessimism, total internality, stability, and globality …

A Narrative Study Of Emotions Associated With Negative Childhood Experiences Reported In The Adult Attachment Interview, Lynne Hartman

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Attachment patterns, which tend to be stable over time, are passed from one generation to the next. Secure attachment has been linked to adaptive social functioning and has been identified as a protective factor against mental illness. The parents’ state of mind with regard to attachment—as measured with the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) (Main, Goldwyn, & Hesse, 2002)—predicts the attachment classification for the infant in Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Procedure (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). Earned-secure individuals have overcome negative childhood experiences to achieve a secure state of mind in adulthood. Earned security, like continuous security, strongly predicts infant security …

Development Of An Avian Model For Identifying Individual Differences In Drug Vulnerability, Beth A. Rice

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

The attribution of incentive salience to cues that become associated with drugs of abuse is a critical characteristic of individuals who may be vulnerable to drug addiction. Rodents with the propensity to sign track are thought to be vulnerable to drug abuse. The goal of the current work was to investigate whether sign trackers (STs) would acquire cocaine conditioned place preference (CPP) to a discrete cue using an avian species. In Experiment 1, sign and goal trackers (GTs) were first identified using a one third rank order split. Following identification, cocaine-CPP was conducted with a discrete cue in each end …

Behavioral Effects Of Fluoxetine On Aggression And Associative Learning In Betta Splendens, Benjamin Eisenreich

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

While the link between serotonin and the behaviors of aggression and learning has been elucidated, few studies have examined the impact serotonin has on learning for aggressive rewards. In particular, the SSRI fluoxetine has been demonstrated to reduce aggression as well the acquisition of instrumental responding for rewards indicating that this drugs behavioral effect may be related to motivational processes important for learning. To examine the relationship between fluoxetine and motivational process important for learning, two experiments were conducted using Betta splendens, a species well known for their robust aggressive response and drive to engage in aggressive behaviors, to examine …