Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Effects Of Mindfulness On Verbal Distress Disclosure, Sara Fleming

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a mindfulness induction on participants’ verbal distress disclosure (as measured by the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count and State Disclosure Questionnaire). Participants were 86 undergraduate students enrolled in an Introduction to Psychology course and were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: a mindfulness condition or a control condition. Participants in the mindfulness condition engaged in a 15-minute mindfulness induction prior to disclosing about a stressful experience, while participants in the control condition listened to a neutrally valenced audio excerpt from a podcast about emotions before speaking about a …

The College Experience: Exploring The Relationship Between Sleep, Executive Function, And Alcohol Use, Evelyn R. Conner

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Improving Lawyers’ Judgment: Is Mediation Training De-Biasing?, Douglas N. Frenkel, James H. Stark

All Faculty Scholarship

When people are placed in a partisan role or otherwise have an objective they seek to accomplish, they are prone to pervasive cognitive and motivational biases. These judgmental distortions can affect what people believe and wish to find out, the predictions they make, the strategic decisions they employ, and what they think is fair. A classic example is confirmation bias, which can cause its victims to seek and interpret information in ways that are consistent with their pre-existing views or the goals they aim to achieve. Studies consistently show that experts as well as laypeople are prone to such biases, …

Locke, Judgment, And Figure: A Consistent Answer To The Molyneux Problem, Jamale Nagi

Anthós

John Locke has been famously credited with resurrecting the distinction between common and proper sensibles, better known in the Essay as primary and secondary qualities. Although some argue that Locke’s adherence to the doctrine of the common sensibles is in conflict with his empiricist sensibilities, I will show this is not likely to be the case. In order to achieve this I will argue that Locke held there to be cross-modal connections in the mind for the representational content of ideas of primary quality, through the relation of resemblance, but that these representations need to be empirically verified to …

Scene Classification By Fuzzy Local Moments, H. Cheng, Rutvik Desai

Rutvik Desai

No abstract provided.

Locke, Figure, And Judgement: A Consistent Answer To The Molyneux Problem, Jamale Nagi

Student Research Symposium

Ever since the early modern period the Molyneux Problem has been a topic of debate both in the philosophy of perception and the psychology of perception. The problem centers on whether the senses share representational content between one another, or does each sense modality have its own stock of representational content that becomes associated with the others after some habituation. For example, if you knew a shape only by touch, could you identify that shape when seeing it for the first time without being allowed to touch the object? Typically, rationalists have held to the former claiming yes, while empiricists …

The Impact Of Childhood Trauma As Moderated By Ptsd, Relationship With Caregiver, And Rumination, Aislyn M. Allen

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

The current study explored the relationship between childhood trauma and deliberate rumination, as well as PTSD symptomology, psychological and physiological functioning. Participants consisted of 55 undergraduate students, ages 18-23; who completed measures about a specific traumatic event, psychological functioning, parental attachment, PTSD symptoms, deliberate rumination, childhood maltreatment, and a demographics questionnaire. Reported childhood trauma was a specifically identified traumatic life event, child maltreatment, or having a parent with a substance abuse or mental disorder. Following completion of measures, participants were asked to answer questions while heart rate, heart rate variability, and electrodermal activity were monitored. Results indicated there was relation …

The Psychology Of Cyberbullying As Seen Through The University Of Rhode Island, Meaghan Rose Costello

Senior Honors Projects

Cyberbullying is among the most common forms of bullying in today’s American society. There has been an increase in communication through social media, texting, and other forms of technology, as well as a decrease in ‘real-life’ and interpersonal communication. Technological advances have facilitated indirect and passive aggressive forms of harassment on the internet. Many people know someone who has experienced cyberbullying, or have experienced it themselves. Bullying in general receives tremendous attention—with nonprofit groups on a mission to spread awareness and schools actively outlining detailed policies against it, children grow up understanding its repercussions. However, this form of bullying has …

Design, Programming, And User-Experience, Kaila G. Manca

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis is a culmination of my individualized major in Human-Computer Interaction. As such, it showcases my knowledge of design, computer engineering, user-experience research, and puts into practice my background in psychology, com- munications, and neuroscience.

I provided full-service design and development for a web application to be used by the Digital Media and Design Department and their students.This process involved several iterations of user-experience research, testing, concepting, branding and strategy, ideation, and design. It lead to two products.

The first product is full-scale development and optimization of the web appli- cation.The web application adheres to best practices. It was …

Animal Cognition, Kristin Andrews, Ljiljana Radenovic

Kristin Andrews, PhD

Debates in applied ethics about the proper treatment of animals often refer to empirical data about animal cognition, emotion, and behavior. In addition, there is increasing interest in the question of whether any nonhuman animal could be something like a moral agent.

Machines And Agency: Understanding The Ai Ethics Problem, Addison T. Rahn

Senior Honors Theses

Mankind has long been interested in the unique, the strange, and the new; perhaps nothing more fully encompasses this interest than recent work on developing Artificial Intelligence (AI). With this research, however, comes a great many questions. Are AIs alive? Are AIs moral agents? Can machines be held legally culpable for their actions? These questions, and more, continue to be a topic of much debate in the academic community, and will no doubt remain of interest for years to come. It is the purpose of this research project, however, to investigate the far-reaching effects of this academic debate. While the …

The Plight Of “Big Black Dogs” In American Animal Shelters: Color-Based Canine Discrimination, Amanda Leonard

Amanda Leonard, MA

The paper begins by describing Big Black Dog Syndrome and its effects in shelters across the United States. I then discuss the physical and environmental factors that contribute to BBD Syndrome; Western symbolism associated with the color black, historical examples of black dogs as negative entities in Western culture, and the concept of “unconscious background checking,” which negatively impacts the adoption rates of BBDs. Lastly, I offer some suggestions as to how shelters in the United States can ameliorate the negative effects of BBD Syndrome.

Shoes, Sabrina Morelli

Common Reading Essay Contest Winners

First Place

Essay Prompt: In Justice, Sandel discusses a number of contemporary political issues (e.g. price gouging during the 2004 Hurricane, the 2008-9 financial meltdown, the volunteer army, pregnancy surrogates, executive pay, slavery reparations, immigration, and gay marriage). Take a position on one of the issues discussed in the book and make the best case that you can for why this position is the most just. You may include evidence from the book, your prior studies, your own experience, and/or outside research. (Outside research is not required.)

Can Two Dots Form A Gestalt? Measuring Emergent Features With The Capacity Coefficient, Robert X.D. Hawkins, Joseph W. Houpt, Ami Eidels, James T. Townsend

Joseph W. Houpt

While there is widespread agreement among vision researchers on the importance of some local aspects of visual stimuli, such as hue and intensity, there is no general consensus on a full set of basic sources of information used in perceptual tasks. Gestalt theories place particular value on emergent features, which are based on the higher-order relationships among elements of a stimulus rather than local properties. Thus, arbitrating between different accounts of features is an important step in arbitrating between local and Gestalt theories of perception in general. In this paper, we present the capacity coefficient from Systems Factorial Technology (SFT) …

The Common Sense Of Contract Formation, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, David A. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

What parties know and think they know about contract law affects their obligations under the law and their intuitive obligations toward one another. Drawing on a series of new experimental questionnaire studies, this Article makes two contributions.First, it lays out what information and beliefs ordinary individuals have about how to form contracts with one another. We find that the colloquial understanding of contract law is almost entirely focused on formalization rather than actual assent, though the modern doctrine of contract formation takes the opposite stance. The second Part of the Article tries to get at whether this misunderstanding matters. Is …