Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Psychological Differentiation And Future Time Perspective, John Stewart Durland Iii

Doctoral Dissertations

Witkin's differentiation hypothesis predicts communality in the formal aspects of behavior across diverse psychological areas. The purpose of the present research was to determine to what extent Kastenbaum's dimensions of future time perspective (FTP) are related to Witkin's psychological differentiation (PD) construct.

Experimental data were obtained in two phases. First, 60 undergraduates were administered two tests of PD and four tests of FTP. Based on indexes of PD, the 10 most and 10 least psychologically differentiated subjects were asked to return for further testing. The second phase entailed making unobtrusive observations of temporal behavior during the course of 15-minute structured …

The Effect Of Multiple Depth Cues In The Perception Of Occlusion, James William Rhodes

Doctoral Dissertations

The perception of depth in visual displays containing multiple sources of depth information was investigated. A computer graphics system generated randomly textured visual patterns that were presented on a television screen. One half of each pattern moved continuously toward the remaining stationary half. The texture elements of the moving half of the pattern were deleted from view as they contacted the stationary pattern area. This kinetic occlusion of texture elements tended to be perceived as one surface passing behind another. Two experiments were performed in which the depth cues of brightness, texture density, and relative velocity were systematically added to …

An Observational Study Of The American Black Bear (Ursus Americanus), Robert Herbert Jordan

Doctoral Dissertations

This study describes the relationship of the human observer to observed black bears (Ursus americanus) , and describes social investigation and autogrooming behavior in black bears and relates these to aspects of chemical communication. The subjects were two pairs of captive black bears kept at separate locations--a male-female pair and a female-female pair, all of approximately the same age. They were sexually immature during most of the study. Both pairs were usually observed on the same days, for comparison. Observations were typically one hour long and behavior was recorded on paper every 30 seconds using a time-sampling technique. …

Studies Of The Behavior Of Gamecocks, Harold Albert Herzog

Doctoral Dissertations

Scientific and popular accounts of cockfighting are reviewed, and cultural and psychological aspects of the sport are examined. Information is presented on breeding and husbandry of gamecocks, fight preparation, rules and types of fights, gambling practices, and legal aspects of cockfighting. The scientific literature on the agonistic behavior of gamecocks, descriptive studies of fighting in chickens and the factors which determine fight outcome.

In Chapter III data recorded at actual cockfights are presented. This includes information on fighting behaviors, fight length, number of "pittings" (rounds) per fight, pitting length, the effect of weight on outcome, and survivorship. Of particular interest …

Ethological Considerations In The Experimental Study Of Lizard Behavior, Neil Greenberg

Faculty Publications and Other Works -- Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

The importance of an ethological approach to the experimental study of an unfamiliar species is described and several of its problems discussed. The selection of units of behavior is a crucial first step in the development of a behavior inventory. The correlation of a behavioral unit with a particular context is necessary to ascribe function to that to that unit and to develop an ethogram. Methods of studying lizards under controlled conditions are described and discussed. Constraints on behavior that must be considered in an experimental study include the microclimate and its thermal qualities, food and water, shelter utilization, and …

Delivery Of Community Mental Health Services Through A 5-Session Group Therapy Module, Annie Lee Jones

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore one possible way to facilitate change in low-income groups through the use of a time-limited group therapy program. It was hoped that through the documentation of change with each case in the study it would be shown that change was possible for low-income persons utilizing psychotherapy, especially with realistic assessment of problems and the setting of realistic goals by the client and therapist.

The assessment data was obtained for each case through these instruments: A. Problems Checklist; B. Personal Data Sheet; C. The Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale; D. The Levenson Internal-External Scale; …

A Comparative Investigation Of Fantasy In Normal And Behaviorally Deviant Latency-Aged Boys, Elgan L. Baker

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to compare the fantasies of normal and deviant males between the ages of 8 and 10 in order to determine if systematic differences exist between the two groups. Further, the study attempted to delineate differences between the two deviant subgroups: Withdrawn children and Acting-Out children. The fantasies were examined both in terms of structure and content.

Thirty boys were selected from the Fayette County, Ky. public school system on the basis of normal intelligence, average school performance, middle class socioeconomic status and freedom from overt behavior problems. These children formed the Normal group. The …

An Investigation Of The Relationship Between Extrinsic And Intrinsic Outcomes And Anticipated Job Satisfaction, Attitudes Toward Management, And Attitudes Toward Unions, Douglas P. Massengill

Doctoral Dissertations

One hundred sixty-seven trainees at a vocational training school were provided with job descriptions in which the levels of intrinsic and extrinsic outcomes along with whether or not the jobs were unionized were varied. Ss then completed questionnaires to assess anticipated reactions to the jobs.

It was predicted that both intrinsic and extrinsic outcomes would be related to anticipated job satisfaction, that whether or not a job was unionized would moderate the relationship between extrinsic outcomes and anticipated attitudes towards management, that only extrinsic outcomes would be related to anticipated attitudes toward a union, and that only extrinsic outcomes would …

Investigation Of The Interaction Of D-Amphetamine And Amantadine Hydrochloride Using Repeated Acquisitions With Serial Reversal Discriminations, Elizabeth Dozier Jones

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this series of studies was to investigate the interaction of d-amphetamine and amantadine hydrochloride employing serial discrimination reversals with repeated acquisitions. Specifically, the blockade of the effects of d-amphetamine by amantadine hydrochloride was investigated.

In meeting this goal, dose-response curves were determined independently for d-amphetamine and amantadine hydrochloride. The dose-response curve for d-amphetamine indicated that the 0.5 mg/kg dosage provided for optimal discrimination of SDR, while dosages of 1.0 mg/kg and 2.0 mg/kg proved to be disruptive. The experiments investigating amantadine hydrochloride indicated that dosages above 10 mg/kg were detrimental to the discrimination task, while dosages below …

The Relationship Between Expectation, Belief, And Anxiety In A Speaking Situation, George (Tod) William Bossert

Doctoral Dissertations

Subjects were given bogus test results that indicated they would be either "relatively calm" or "highly anxious" in a speaking situation. They were also given either an anxiety-okay belief or an anxiety-not-okay belief. The expectations and beliefs given subjects by the experimenter were called manipualted expectations and beliefs. Subjects also filled out forms indicating whether they expected to be calm or anxious and whether they believed anxiety was or was not okay. The expectations and beliefs of the subject were called prior expectation and beliefs.

Each subject was given an expectation and a belief and then requested to make a …

Analysis Of The Proctor And Self-Paced Components Of The Personalized System Of Instruction, Janice Joyner Maclin

Doctoral Dissertations

The primary purposes of this study were to determine the effect of modifying the proctor and self-paced components of the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI). Research has shown that students in Personalized courses score higher on final exams and rate the course higher than those enrolled in lecture courses. The components of the system have not been manipulated to determine the effect on student performance, progress or attitudes. The first purpose of this investigation was to examine the effects of the independent variable of proctors' grades being contingent upon the final examination performance of students assigned to them upon the …

An Interpersonal Investigation Of 'Swinging'- An Alternative Style Of Marriage, John Milton Mccauley

Doctoral Dissertations

As demonstrated by statistics and described by experts, traditional marriage is not proving to be a satisfactory relationship for many. The proportion of divorces is annually rising and the institution of marriage has been described aptly as a calamity. This author conducted an interpersonal study of couples involved in one alternative to traditional marriage--"Swinging."

Subjects were obtained via written letter to those swingers who advertised in a swinging magazine. Eight couples participated in the study. The procedure took place in their homes and averaged about six hours. The procedure consisted of the administration of the complete Leary Interpersonal Analysis, the …

Characteristics Of Graduate Student Instructors As Related To Students' Judgments Of Their Competence, Edwin Rice Barnett

Masters Theses

The present study seeks primarily to determine if there is a congruence between the perceived similarity of a student to his instructor and the student's judgment of the instructor's competence. To test this hypothesis, an Interpersonal Checklist, consisting of 160 adjectives, was devised and administered to two sets of 50 students during a period of six months. Three instructional sets were utilized with a five-point Likert response system in conjunction with the checklist. One instructional set asked the student to describe his instructor, another asked for a judgment of the extent to which the student thought himself similar to his …

A Preliminary Analysis Of The Activities Of Captive Black Bear (Ursus Americanus)--Locomotion And Breeding, Jeanne Crozer Ludlow

Masters Theses

The behavior of the American black bear, Ursus americanus, has been poorly documented in the past. This investigation is a preliminary analysis of the diurnal activities of a hand-reared female and a captive wild male black bear, and the successful breeding of another pair of captive black bears.

Two black bears were kept in a semi-naturalistic enclosure at Tremont within the Great Smoky Mountain National Park (GSMNP). Their daily activities were recorded by a scan sampling technique, supplemented by photographic accounts. Detailed systemic records were kept of behaviors classified into categories (locomotor, non-locomotor). The bears' activities were analyzed in …

The Referential Communication Of Facial Characteristics By Deaf And Normal-Hearing Adolescents, Irving King Jordan Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

In order to assess the characteristics of the manual communications of linguistically adult deaf individuals, six pairs of deaf adolescents and 24 pairs of normal hearing adolescents described photographic referents in a referential communication setting. The referents were photographs of people's faces, selected in a preliminary recognizability study to insure a range of difficulty from easily recognizable to almost chance recognition.

Although the design was essentially exploratory and descriptive, there are several noteworthy results: (1) There was no difference between the two subject groups in the accuracy with which they communicated. Both groups scored extremely high. (2) The deaf group …

Investigation On Perception And Behavior Of The American Black Bear (Ursus Americanus), Ellis Sutton Bacon

Doctoral Dissertations

Behavioral information concerning the American black bear Ursus americanus is limited. The present study was conducted to assess various aspects of ingestive behavior and visual discrimination of the black bear using two captive females. Information available pertaining to the management of black bears in captivity is also limited. Therefore a large portion of the study revolved around the care and maintenance of the bears in a semi-natural enclosure.

The ingestive behaviors were studied using ethological observations and a longitudinal food preference test. Observations were obtained as the subjects procured and consumed food items both naturally occurring and introduced into the …

The Effects Of Frontal And Septal Ablation On Response Regulation In The Cat, Robert Numan

Doctoral Dissertations

The literature dealing with the behavioral effects produced by ablation of the septum, frontal cortical areas and the hippocampus is reviewed. It is concluded that the medial septum, the dorsolateral frontal cortex (and its analogue in lower forms e.g., gyrus proreus in the cat and precollosal midline cortex in the rat) and the dorsal hippocampus form a nodal point within a larger neuronal system that is involved in response regulation.

A model, describing the response regulatory processes mediated by this fronto-cortical-limbic system is proposed, Motor programs are written in the frontal cortex and temoorarily stored in hippocampal area CA_{3 …}

The Application Of Porter And Lawler's Attitude-Performance Model To A Population Of Disadvantaged Trainees, Richard Dorr Scott

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to test a modified version of Porter and Lawler's attitude-performance model with a population of disadvantaged trainees. Seven hypotheses were derived from the following formulation: If a trainee sees high performance as leading to the attainment of one or more personal rewards in the training situation, he will tend to exert high effort in the program. The trainee will have correspondingly high performance in this situation providing he has the relevant ability and appropriate role perceptions.

To test these hypotheses data were obtained from 97 disadvantaged trainees and their eight supervisors at a manpower …

Physiological, Cognitive And Motor Assessments Of Systematic Desensitization, Vey Michael Nordquist

Doctoral Dissertations

Twenty-four snake phobic subjects were randomly assigned to one of four conditions in order to test directly the mechanism underlying Systematic Desensitization therapy. Only those Ss who were treated with systematic desensitization showed significant reductions in physiological cognitive and motor estimates of fear. No Treatment Control and Hierarchy-Yoked Ss did not improve on a single measure after treatment. Relaxation-Yoked Ss did report significant decrements in fear after treatment, but their verbal fear decrement was not sustained when proximity to the phobic stimulus was increased. The results supported Wolpe's contention that systematic desensitization operates on the basis of …

A Study Of The Relationship Between Aggression In The Verbally Reported Content Of Dreams And Some Conceptually Related Measures Of Personality, Minos Belden Fletcher

Doctoral Dissertations

This study involved two major research objectives: (1) to compare males and females on the basis of aggression scores computed from verbally reported dreams; and (2) to test the general hypothesis that there are predictable relationships between measures of aggression in reported dreams and conceptually related measures of personality.

A total of 529 current night dreams collected from 24 male and 15 female college students were scored for aggression content by means of the Hall-Van de Castle Aggression Scale. From the raw dream scores, six specific measures of aggression were computed: average number of aggressive incidents per dream, percent of …

Sex Role Identification Of Children Of Divorced Parents, Frank A. Brown Iii

Masters Theses

This study was designed to explore the effects of parental divorce on the male college student's over-all adjustment and his difficulty in completing the sex role identification process. Behavioral ratings of the Ss and their scores on the MMPI were used to test each of these effects. Specifically it was hypothesized that the conflict in the home preceding the divorce, more than the separation from one of the parents after it, was likely to cause difficulty for the "child" in the sex-typing process. It was also suggested that in the cases where the male "child of divorce" originally blamed the …

Sex Differences In Associative Structure, Riley F. Elder Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

First, the history of the concept of associative structure was traced, and various methods of its assessment were reviewed. Included, also, was a survey of word association literature, with emphasis on the most recent studies. Three separate studies followed which were diverse techniques for the assessment of sex differences in associative structure, plus suggestions of some possible reasons--both proximate and remote--for these differences.

The first procedure consisted of an investigation of the Jenkins and Palermo Word Association Norms with respect to sexually distinct responses. This revealed many significantly differing responses, and suggested that the differences were the result of a …

The Effect Of Tonal Proximity Upon The Memory Of A Set Of Tones, William M. Walters Jr.

Masters Theses

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the characteristics of music to which people respond. Ortmann's finding that the songs of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and R. Strauss are characterized by more frequent use of smaller intervals implies that small intervals are more typical in western music.

In Experiment I random sets of notes were played by the experimenter on a toy xylophone, and the subject was asked to reproduce the set on an identical instrument. The results were that subjects were generally capable of finding the correct notes, but this ability declined as the size of the set …

Operant Conditioning Of Heart Rate Changes In Curarized Rats With Brain Stimulation Reinforcement, David Hothersall

Doctoral Dissertations

Many learning theorists have distinguished between autonomic responses which can be conditioned using classical conditioning procedures, and skeletal responses which can be conditioned using operant or instrumental conditioning procedures. In recent years this distinction has been challenged since such autonomic responses as changes in heart rate, GSRs, vasoconstriction and vasodilation, and changes in blood pressure have all been conditioned as operants.

The aim of this study was to investigate the possibility that both increases and decreases in heart rate could be conditioned in groups of curarized rats using an operant conditioning procedure with brain stimulation as the reinforcement for the …

Thermoregulation In A Cold Environment: Effects Of Body Weight, Roger A. Kleinman

Masters Theses

The present experiment, then, was conducted to ascertain the role of body weight in the physiological and behavioral adjustment to cold. Specifically, it was hypothesized that animals which gained weight after periodic exposure to cold would show a decreased temperature loss as well as less lever-pressing behavior for infra-red heat reinforcement than animals which were maintained at their pre-experimental weight level.

Manipulation Of The Magnitude Of Incentive Variable And Runway Performance, David Mason Wildasin

Masters Theses

The purpose of the present study was an attempt to replicate the findings of Wolfe and Kaplon (1941) using rats and somewhat more precise measurements of the dependent variables. Both the former study and Dyal's work indicate that specification of the amount of reward in terms of the weight of the food is insufficient. Specifically, the effect of presenting the same amount of food in one unit as against presenting it in five units was investigated.

An Investigation Of The Effectiveness Of Educational Placement Of Mentally Retarded Children In A Special Class, Kenneth Warren

Doctoral Dissertations

The number of Special Education classes for the educable mentally retarded has increased tremendously during the past several years. Implicit within this expansion is the assumption that for the educable mentally retarded such placement offers an environment superior to any other type of placement. In this environment the child is expected to gain greater benefits academically, socially, and perhaps even emotionally. There is some evidence to support this belief, but there have been few studies investigating the differences that result from placing a child in a special class rather than retaining him in a regular class.

The present attempt of …

Resistance To Weakening Influences As A Function Of The Similarity Between Aquisition And Weakening Phases, Harry F. Desroches

Doctoral Dissertations

In general there are three reasons for the study: (1) to test a specific hypothesis as deduced from a particular theoretical position, the generalization hypothesis, that resistance to weakening influences is a function of the similarity between acquisition and weakening phases, (2) to compare and to contrast the influences of various experimental operations in weakening a learned response, (3) to compare two groups of people who are believed to respond different to traditional methods of strengthening and weakening behaviors.

There is general agreement that much, if not most, of human behavior is learned. As the infant matures he meets new …

An Appraisal Of Psychologic Deficit In Children With Cerebral Palsy, Garret H. Yanagi

Doctoral Dissertations

It is the purpose of this study to investigate the relationship between Psychologic Deficit and the effects of brain damage and environmental experiences. It is an exploratory study, therefore concerned with descriptive, testable data which may yield hypotheses concerning cerebral palsied children.

Thus, an attempt has been made to point out various viewpoints and corresponding contradictory experimental evidence with regard to the cerebral palsied. One criticism which is inherent in many of these studies lies in the difficulty encountered in replicating them. This difficulty was seen in the lack of definition of terms, as well as of well defined groups, …

A Study Of Important Stimuli In The Lives Of Men With Lung Cancer, Landon Crocker Peoples

Doctoral Dissertations

(From the Introduction)

Except in specified instances where the etiology is known, the growth of cancerous tissue in humans is an unsolved problem (Cutler 1954). Most of the investigations in this area have been medical, physiological, or biochemical. There are, however, enough studies of a psychological nature (to be cited in a later section), with sufficiently intriguing results, to warrant further research into the possibility of a relationship between psychological variables and the incidence of human cancer. The present study is concerned with this relationship.