Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Community Mental Health Care In The U.S.: The Impact Of Deinstitutionalization And Assertive Community Treatment, Mariana A. De Oliveira

Masters Theses

The current review was designed to provide a better understanding of the present situation of mental health care in the U.S. Therefore, a review of the history of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill in the U.S. and an exploration of the role of a prominent current model in mental health care, Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) were undertaken. Deinstitutionalization changed the paradigm of mental health care in the country. This process underwent different stages from religious based care, to large stated hospitals and to community care, where it stands now. Research articles on ACT in urban and in rural areas were …

Reducing Eating Disorder Risk Factors In Sorority Members: A Randomized Trial, Carolyn Becker, Lisa M. Smith, Anna C. Ciao

Psychology Faculty Research

Although sororities are often perceived as contributing to eating disordered behavior, limited research has investigated eating disorders in sorority members. The purpose of this study was to investigate the utility of a highly interactive cognitive dissonance prevention program in reducing empirically supported risk factors in sorority members. Members (N=149) were randomized to the highly interactive intervention, a more passive intervention, or wait-list. Results indicated that both interventions reduced dietary restraint, body dissatisfaction, and eating disorder pathology. Only the highly interactive group reduced thin-ideal internalization as compared to waitlist. Exploratory analyses also indicated that interventions were beneficial to both …

Suicide Attempt And Characteristics Of Religiously Affiliated Puerto Rican Adolescents And Young Adults, Saúl Rivera

Dissertations

Problem. Recent research has identified several risk factors associated with attempted suicide among the general population. Puerto Ricans, in general, and Puerto Rican Seventh-day Adventists (SDAs), in particular, may face unique challenges that are related to their familial, social, and religious environment that may affect the suicidal attempts among this group. Therefore, this study examined family-related factors, history of being abused, religiosity factors, sexuality factors, gender, substance abuse, age, and socioeconomic status factors among a sample of religiously affiliated Puerto Ricans (73.2% SDAs) living on the island.

Methodology. The data for the study came from the Avance PR study. Avance …

Supporting The Successful Transition Of Youth With Disabilities Between Secondary School And Postsecondary School, Megan A. Conway, Kelly B.T. Chang

Faculty Publications - Psychology Department

No abstract provided.

Applying The Information-Motivation-Behavioral Skills Model Of Hiv- Risk To Youth In Psychiatric Care, Geri R. Donenberg, Rebecca Moss Schwartz, Erin Emerson, Helen W. Wilson, Fred B. Bryant, Gloria Coleman

Psychology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This study examined the utility of cognitive and behavioral constructs (AIDS in-formation, motivation, and behavioral skills) in explaining sexual risk taking among 172 12–20–year-old ethnically diverse urban youths in outpatient psy-chiatric care. Structural equation modeling revealed only moderate support for the model, explaining low to moderate levels of variance in global sexual risk taking. The amount of explained variance improved when age was included as a predictor in the model. Findings shed light on the contribution of AIDS informa-tion, motivation, and behavioral skills to risky sexual behavior among teens re-ceiving outpatient psychiatric care. Results suggest that cognitive and behavioral factors …

Behavioral And Psychological Symptoms Of Dementia: The Effects Of Physical Activity At Adult Day Service Centers, Erin L. Woodhead, S. H. Zarit, E. R. Braungart, M. J. Rovine, E. E. Femia

Faculty Publications

Adult day services (ADS) are an increasingly popular option for caregivers of people with dementia, but there is little research on the effects of activities on the behavior and mood of the client. This study examines participation by 94 individuals in different types of adult day-care activities and their association with changes in behavior and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) for the client during a three-month span. Three domains of BPSD were examined: restless behaviors, mood behaviors, and positive behaviors. Using growth curve modeling, results show that the restless and mood behavior domains, on average, were stable over three months, …

Innovative Interventions For Disordered Eating: A Pilot Comparison Between Dissonance-Based And Yoga Interventions, Karen S. Mitchell

Theses and Dissertations

Disordered eating, including bingeing, dieting, purging, and clinical and subclinical forms of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder, is prevalent among college-aged women. To date, few interventions have successfully reduced risk factors related to disordered eating. One promising intervention utilizes principles of cognitive dissonance to reduce thin-ideal internalization among women at risk for eating disorders. Additionally, the benefits of yoga, including increased awareness of bodily processes, offer hope that this practice might reduce disordered eating symptomatology. The current study compared cognitive dissonance and yoga interventions for disordered eating attitudes and behaviors. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that there were …

Preliminary Study Of Specific Symptoms Experienced By Individuals With Bipolar Disorder , Gail Reichman Mancini

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

The present study attempted to empirically identify symptoms of bipolar disorder to define a more accurate clinical description. A group of 30 individuals with a formal diagnosis of bipolar disorder, who had joined a support group as outpatients, a comparison group of 30 individuals with unipolar depression from an outpatient support group, and 30 nonpatient adults were administered identical measures of symptoms. Results suggested that individuals with bipolar disorder endorsed symptoms correlated with paranoia to a greater degree than individuals with unipolar disorder or nonpatient adults. In addition, symptoms of hostility, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, global severity and psychoticism, as …

Political Psychology And Personality, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

Following a brief overview of historical approaches to personality-in-politics inquiry, this book chapter reviews the current state of the field – specifically, psychodynamic approaches, trait/motivational perspectives, and cognitive models – and argues that Theodore Millon’s personological model offers an integrative framework for assessing personality in politics and building a conceptual bridge between personality patterns and political leadership styles.

Millon’s model accounts for structural and functional personality attributes at the behavioral, phenomenological, intrapsychic, and biophysical levels of analysis and provides a theoretically coherent framework for studying personality in politics consonant with established principles in the adjacent sciences and integrative with respect …

Men, Muscles, And Body Image: Comparisons Of Competitive Bodybuilders, Weight Trainers, And Athletically Active Controls, T. C. Pickett, R. J. Lewis, T. F. Cash, H. G. Pope

Psychology Faculty Publications

Objectives: To investigate body image and psychosocial adjustment among competitive bodybuilders, non-competitive weight trainers, and athletically active men.

Methods: Participants were 40 men in each of the three groups who were assessed on body composition and multiple facets of body image evaluation, investment and anxiety, eating attitudes, and social self esteem.

Results: Relative to the other two groups, competitive bodybuilders had greater body mass due to fat-free body mass. Although groups did not differ in their situational body image discomfort, competitive bodybuilders and weight trainers had a more positive global appearance evaluation and were more psychologically invested in their physical …

Dissociable Aspects Of Mental Workload: Examinations Of The P300 Erp Component And Performance Assessments, Carryl L. Baldwin, Joseph T. Coyne

Psychology Faculty Publications

Advanced technologies have enabled the choice of either visual or auditory formats for avionics and surface transportation displays. Methods of assessing the mental workload imposed by displays of different formats are critical to their successful implementation. Towards this end a series of investigations were conducted with the following aims: 1) developing analogous auditory and visual versions of a secondary task that could be used to compare display modalities; and 2) to compare the sensitivity of neurophysiological, behavioral and subjective indices of workload. Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed that analogous auditory and visual secondary oddball discrimination tasks were of equivalent difficulty …

The Influence Of Sociocultural Factors On Body Image: Searching For Constructs, Thomas F. Cash

Psychology Faculty Publications

Body image is a multidimensional construct that has received increasing scientific study over the past few decades. Considerable research has examined the determinants of body image development and functioning and their implications for other aspects of psychosocial wellbeing, especially eating pathology among girls and young women. Cafri, Yamamiya, Brannick, and Thompson (this issue) reported the results of a meta-analysis of how selected, self-reported sociocultural influence variables correlate with the basic dimension of body image evaluation. Their work raises and reinforces important questions about the definition and measurement of sociocultural influence constructs.

An Experience Sampling And Cross-Cultural Investigation Of The Relation Between Pleasant And Unpleasant Emotion, Christie N. Scollon, Ed Diener, Shigehiro Oishi, Robert Biswas-Diener

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The present study examined whether the relation between pleasant and unpleasant emotion varies across cultures and level of analysis (i.e., within-person vs. between-person). A total of 386 participants included European Americans, Asian Americans, Japanese, Indian, and Hispanic students. Momentary mood was assessed up to 7 times daily for one week. At the between-persons level, pleasant and unpleasant mood were positively correlated among Asian Americans and Japanese, but were uncorrelated among the other groups. Factor correlations at the within-person level were strongly negative in all cultures, suggesting that pleasant and unpleasant feelings are rarely experienced at the same time. Implications for …

Developmental Considerations For Substance Use Interventions From Middle School Through College, Elizabeth J. D’Amico, Phyllis L. Ellickson, Eric F. Wagner, Rob Turrisi,, Kim Fromme, Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar, Douglas L. Longshore, Daniel F. Mccaffre, Marilyn J. Montgomery, Matthias Schonlau, Dale Wright

Faculty Publications - Graduate School of Counseling

This article summarizes a symposium organized by Dr. Elizabeth D’Amico and presented at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism in Vancouver, Canada. The four presentations illustrate the importance of creating substance use interventions that are developmentally appropriate for youth. They represent innovative approaches to working with preteens, teenagers, and young adults. Dr. D’Amico’s paper describes her research on the development of a voluntary brief intervention targeting alcohol use among middle school students. Findings indicated that by using school and community input, she was able to obtain a diverse a sample of youth across grades, sex, ethnicity, …

Represent: The New York City Public Housing Resident Alliance And Its Struggle Against The Imposition Of The Neoliberal Agenda, Gretchen Susi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research has focused on four interconnected topics: the formation of a citywide group of public housing residents and advocates (The New York City Public Housing Resident Alliance); a collaboration between the Resident Alliance and building trade unions in New York City to gain jobs for public housing residents—The TRADES Coalition (Trade Unions and Residents for Apprenticeship Development and Economic Success); public housing activism in an era of neoliberal reform; and efforts on the part of the Resident Alliance to engage in what Henri Lefebvre refers to as the production of space. It has examined how The New York City …

Clima Familiar En El Trastorno Por Déficit De Atención-Hiperactividad [Family Environment In Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder], Cecilia Montiel-Nava, Isabel Montiel-Barbero, Joaquín A. Peña

Psychological Science Faculty Publications

The effect of family environment on the development of Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is not known. We sought to characterize families with children with ADHD in order to better understand the contributions of family environment to the development of ADHD. We collected demographic data, parents’ and teachers’ rating scales, intellectual quotient, and the family environment scale (FES) for 53 children (aged 4-13), 29 with ADHD diagnosis and 24 controls. Statistical analysis indicated a family environment profile within the average range for both samples. There were significant differences between ADHD and controls for the measures of cohesion, intellectual activity orientation, and …

Examination Of The Impact Of Acculturation, Stress, And Religiosity On Mental Health Variables For Second-Generation Arab Americans, Mona M. Amer, Joseph D. Hovey

Psychological Science Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Investigation Of The Influence Of Hope On The Relationship Between Racial Discrimination And Depressive Symptoms Among African American College Students, Jennifer L. Vanderzee '05

Honors Projects

The relationship between perceived racial discrimination, hope, and depressive symptoms among African American college students was investigated. The first supported hypotheses were that racial discrimination, hope, and hope's two components, agency and pathways, would each significantly affect depressive symptoms. Hope and pathways, but not agency, were each found to moderate the relationship between racial discrimination and depressive symptoms and the moderation models were found to explain as much or more variance the models examining direct effects. Also, the interaction of pathways and racial discrimination explained more variance than any of the other models. These results suggest that hope and pathways …

Child Sexual Abuse In Sub-Saharan Africa: Child Protection Implications For Development Policy Makers And Practitioners, Kevin Lalor

Reports

No abstract provided.

A Context-Dependent Model Of Proximity In Physically Situated Environments, John D. Kelleher, Geert-Jan M. Kruijff

Conference papers

The paper presents a computational model for a context-dependent analysis of a physical environment in terms of spatial proximity. The model provides a basis for grounding linguistic analyses of spatial expressions in visual perception. The model uses potential fields to model spatial proximity. It has been implemented, and when combined with a handcrafted grammar, is used to enable a conversational robot to carry out a situated dialogue with a human. The key concept in our approach is defining the region that is proximal to a landmark based on the spatial configuration of other objects in the scene. The model extends …

Ability Of College Students To Simulate Adhd On Objective Measure Of Attention, Randee Lee Booksh

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Complaints of ADHD symptoms in college students are not uncommon and college students frequently self-refer for assessment of ADHD. Some may seek out a diagnosis to obtain academic accommodations and/or stimulant medication. Diagnosing ADHD in college students is largely reliant on self-report measures, and to a lesser extent, objective measures of attention. The typical college student has easy access to information about ADHD, potentially facilitating efforts to simulate self-reported symptoms. The present study examined the ability of college students to effectively simulate ADHD on objective and self-report measures of attention, and examined the relationship between knowledge of ADHD and ability …

Constructing A Math Applications, Curriculum-Based Assessment: An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Apllications [Sic] Problems, Computation Problems And Criterion-Referenced Assessments, James E. Connell, Jr.

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is a well established tool for formative assessment. CBM has also been used for prediction of state test scores. However, validity coefficients between math-CBM and state tests have been moderate at best (Skiba, Magnusson, Martson, and Erickson, 1986; Martson, 1989; Putnam, 1989). The purpose of the present investigation was to develop and evaluate a set of math assessments designed to measure the type of application and problem-solving objectives required on state tests. The "application" type assessments constructed for this study combined characteristics of CBM, accuracy-based curriculum-based assessment (CBA) and criterion-referenced assessment (CRA). Theses assessments were derived from …

Effects Of Spaced Retrieval On Memory And Quality Of Life In Older Adults With Probable Alzheimer's Disease, Karri S. Hawley

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study was designed to explore the effects of spaced-retrieval training on memory and quality of life in older adults with probable Alzheimer’s disease. A total nineteen older adults with probable Alzheimer’s disease (AD) participated in these experiments. Experiment one was designed to determine whether the spacing effect is contributing to the success of the spaced-retrieval intervention. Participants were trained to recall a name-face association using either the adjusted spaced-retrieval method or a fixed interval retrieval method. The results showed a more consistent performance profile for the spaced retrieval group in comparison to the fixed interval group, providing evidence that …

The Efficacy Of Noncontingent Escape For Decreasing Disruptive Behavior During Dental Treatment, Patrick Michael O'Callaghan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Researchers have developed and demonstrated the effectiveness of a number of interventions to manage disruptive behavior in the dental setting. However, these treatments vary in terms of their effectiveness, invasiveness, effort to implement, and acceptability to families. This study evaluated the effects of noncontingent escape for reducing disruptive behavior in a pediatric dental setting. Within a multiple baseline design across subjects, five children were provided response-independent breaks via an automated cuing device. Results demonstrated reductions in escape-related behaviors (e.g., crying, body movements) for all children. Additionally, the intervention was implemented with high integrity and was favorably rated by the dental …

Development And Validation Of Child Routines Questionnaire: Preschool, Molly Murphy Wittig

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Experts emphasize routines as a paramount practice in successful child rearing (Fiese, 2002). Only recently, however, has empirical evidence begun to corroborate this theory. While many researchers and clinicians have documented the use of daily child routines in their parenting packages and treatment studies, none has measured the effects of child routines directly. The emergence of The Child Routines Questionnaire offered ample evidence of the importance of child routines in school-age children. Significant findings link a lack of routines to child behavior problems, poor parenting practices, and parental psychopathology (Sytsma et al., 2001; Sytsma-Jordan, Kelley, & Henderson, 2002; Jordan, 2003). …

Effects Of A Primary Care Weight Management Intervention On Physical Activity In Low-Income African American Women, Gareth R. Dutton

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Although physical inactivity is associated with numerous medical conditions, most individuals do not engage in recommended levels of physical activity. Certain subgroups of the population are particularly inactive, including women, African Americans, and individuals with lower income and less education. While research suggests that interventions targeting physical activity can produce significant improvements in activity and cardiorespiratory fitness, there is less research examining physical activity interventions for these at-risk groups. In particular, there is a lack of research examining primary care physical activity interventions among low-income, African American women. The purpose of the current study was to examine the effects of …

The Psychosocial Vulnerability Model Of Hostility As A Predictor Of Coronary Heart Disease, Karen Grothe

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the number one killer for both men and women in the United States today. African Americans are particularly at risk, due to higher prevalence rates and mortality related to CHD (American Heart Association, 2003). Less than half of the new cases of CHD can be predicted with known risk factors (tobacco use, obesity, hypertension), which suggests the possible influence of personality or additional behavioral factors. Hostility is a psychological variable that has been consistently related to health outcomes, particularly to CHD. While the exact mechanism linking hostility to health is currently unknown, a psychosocial vulnerability …

The Effects Of Discrimination Training On Choice-Making Accuracy During Symbolic Perference Assessment Formats, Christina Marie Vorndran

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The right of individuals with developmental disabilities to live fulfilling and normalized lives has been a focus of federal legislation and applied research over the past 30 years. Research has primarily focused on the identification and incorporation of preferred items and activities into the home and community environments of these individuals. Because of cognitive and communication limitations, some individuals with developmental disabilities require training to make choices that accurately reflect their preferences. Verbal choice methods are commonly used in everyday clinical practice; however, the accuracy of these methods for identifying actual preferences depends on the individual’s ability to make auditory …

Nurses' Perceptions Of The Pharmacological Management Of Acute Pain Experienced By Patients Hospitalised In The General Ward Setting, Susan Slatyer

Theses : Honours

This study explored and described the experiences and perceptions of nurses managing acute pain in a Western Australian public hospital. The focus was nurses practising in the general ward setting and using current prescribing guidelines. The aim of this research was to explore nurses' attitudes, beliefs and knowledge about pain and pain pharmacology and how this practice setting influences efficient pain management. Qualitative methodology was selected for its ability to explore complex issues in order to build nursing knowledge and guide nursing practice. This study used a descriptive, exploratory design based on a phenomenological approach. The sample comprised ten Registered …

A Qualitative Exploration Of The Transition Experience Of Students From A High School To A Senior High School In Rural Western Australia, Amiee-Jade Pereira

Theses : Honours

This review outlines literature on the normative high school transitions that occur during adolescence. Research examines factors affecting the school transition experience (e.g., school size, structure, feeder patterns, and the additive affect of multiple school transitions), student outcomes (e.g., academic performance, self-esteem and psychological symptomatology), and student perceptions of their transition experience. Research limitations include the focus on American, metropolitan schools undergoing the elementary to middle school transition, and the utilisation of quantitative methodologies. Future research needs to examine the experience of students from different countries, both metropolitan and rural, undergoing school transitions. Qualitative methodologies should also be utilised to …