Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Examining Delay Discounting And Response To Incentive-Based Smoking-Cessation Treatment Among Pregnant Women, Alexa Ashley Lopez

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Delay discounting is considered by many to be a risk factor for substance use disorders and other health-related behavior problems. While these health-related behavior problems are often treated with incentive-based interventions, little is known about whether delay discounting (DD) moderates response to that treatment approach. The present study examined how response to incentive-based smoking-cessation treatment varied as a function of baseline DD scores among pregnant women participating in randomized controlled clinical trials examining the efficacy of financial incentives. Women were assigned to a condition wherein they earned vouchers exchangeable for retail items contingent on abstinence from recent smoking or to …

The Effects Of Reinforcer Distribution During Response Elimination On Resurgence Of An Instrumental Response, Scott Timothy Schepers

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Resurgence is the relapse of an extinguished instrumental behavior that can occur when an alternative behavior that was introduced to replace it is itself extinguished. In a typical resurgence experiment, rats are trained to make a response (R1) for food reinforcers. In a second phase, responses on R1 are no longer reinforced, but a new response (R2) is introduced and responses on it are reinforced. During a third phase, reinforcement for R2 is removed and behavior on R1 often returns (or "resurges") despite remaining on extinction.

The current experiments were designed to examine the effects of the temporal distribution of …

Assessment Reactivity Within The Context Of A Web-Based Brief Intervention For Alcohol Use, Tera Leigh Fazzino

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Introduction: Unhealthy alcohol use is a substantial problem among college students and can lead to a variety of negative consequences. Commercially available web-based brief alcohol intervention (WBI) programs have demonstrated efficacy in a range of student groups and have been widely disseminated to colleges to address this issue. However, the majority of published WBI studies required participants to complete baseline research assessments (RA) about their alcohol use before the WBI and reactivity to the RA may have inflated WBI efficacy estimates in these studies. The present study tested whether there was an additive effect of RA administered online plus a …

Role Of Sensation Seeking In Sensitivity To D-Amphetamine Reinforcement, Mollie E. Patrick

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Psychomotor stimulant abuse is a significant public health problem. While many individuals experiment with stimulants, there is marked variability in individuals' behavioral and subjective response to these drugs and these differences may be associated with their risk for abuse. One characteristic shown to be associated with drug abuse is sensation seeking, defined as the seeking of novel sensations and experiences and the willingness to take risks for the sake of such experiences. While observational studies have shown that individuals with elevated sensation seeking are more likely to report stimulant use and abuse, less clear is whether subjective and behavioral response …

Emotion Regulation Strategies In Binge Eating Disorder: Rumination, Distress Tolerance, And Expectancies For Eating, Lilya Sitnikov

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is characterized by recurrent episodes of binge eating without the use of compensatory behaviors. Functional accounts of BED propose that negative affect is an antecedent to binge eating because binge eating serves to alleviate negative affect. However, previous studies investigating the association between negative affect and binge eating have yielded inconsistent findings, perhaps due to individual vulnerability factors that moderate the effects of negative affect on binge eating behavior. As one candidate, the current study investigated emotion regulation strategies that may be implicated in the maintenance of binge eating in BED, particularly under conditions of negative …

The Cortisol/Dhea Ratio And Sexual Function In Women With And Without A History Of Depression, Carolyn Marie Dundon

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The comorbidity between female sexual dysfunction (FSD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) is well documented; however, the mechanism(s) underlying the relationship between these disorders has not been defined. The literature has associated the adrenal hormones cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) with FSD and MDD, suggesting a biological mechanism that may elucidate the comorbidity between these disorders. Based on evidence pointing to a high cortisol/DHEA ratio (C/D Ratio) in MDD and low DHEA in FSD, this study investigated if the potential association between a high C/D Ratio and FSD would be greater for women with a history of MDD when compared to …