Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Relationship Between Parental Trauma History And Perceptions Regarding Their Child’S Healthcare And Utilization Of Healthcare Services, Krishna Patel

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

TITLE: The Relationship Between Parental Trauma History and Perceptions Regarding Their Child’s Healthcare and Utilization of Healthcare Services

Adverse child events (ACEs) have been associated with a number of physical and mental health problems and have also been linked to increased health care utilization. While parents who have an ACE history may tend to seek healthcare services for themselves, limited studies have examined the impact of their trauma history on seeking healthcare services for their child. Healthcare utilization may also depend on the parents’ level of health anxiety, as well as their anxiety about their child’s health status. This …

Further Evaluation Of The Effects Of Music And Rird On Vocal Stereotypy, Keith Happel

Theses and Dissertations

Vocal stereotypy (VS), or vocalizations that are noncontexual or nonfunctional, is commonly exhibited in individuals on the autism spectrum. The nature of vocal stereotypy may pose an issue for some individuals, ranging from social ostracization to the inability to perform daily tasks. Previous research has shown that access to matched stimulation (e.g., music) and response interruption and redirection (RIRD), a form of punishment, are effective at decreasing vocal stereotypy (Gibbs et al., 2018). However, in the aforementioned study, researchers did not evaluate a less intrusive treatment in isolation prior to implementing punishment. The purpose of the current investigation is to …

Teaching Children With Autism To Tact Private Events Based On Common Properties, Madisyn Quidort

Theses and Dissertations

Skinner (1957) proposed that people learn to talk about private events in several ways. This study sought to examine the plausibility of one of those mechanisms: common properties. Skinner asserted that children learn tacts for public stimuli through normal interaction with their caregivers. When a child experiences a private stimulus that shares some feature with a previously learned public stimulus, the child generalizes the tact to the private sensation because there is a common property between the two stimuli. Three children with autistic disorder were taught 6 to 9 sensation tacts (e.g., prickly, cozy, tight) depicted in videos (e.g., a …

Parent Reported Executive Functioning Does Not Predict Memory Dysfunction In Pediatric Epilepsy And Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Nicole J. Norheim

Theses and Dissertations

Objective: Epilepsy and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) children are vulnerable to executive functioning and memory difficulties. The interaction between EF and memory is important to consider as EF impairments may put children at risk for experiencing memory difficulties which can impact their academic performance and quality of life. However, the evidence for the impact of EF on memory is very limited with only two studies to date focusing on this association (Rzezak et al., 2012; Sepeta et al., 2017). This was the first study to research the impact of executive dysfunction on memory in the pediatric epilepsy and ADHD population. Method: …

An Evaluation Of Static Versus Dynamic Instructional Stimuli On Generalization Of Action Tacts, Shana Renee Fentress

Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have noted that children with autism have difficulty generalizing responses to stimuli outside of those used in training. Some studies have analyzed ways to promote generalization such as using concurrent training or using stimuli that would be most similar to those found in the natural environment. Little research, however, has investigated strategies for promoting generalization of action tacts. The current study investigated two different types of stimulus delivery forms: static (i.e., pictures), which are typically used during instruction, and dynamic (i.e., videos), which may provide stimulation closer to that which a child would encounter in a natural setting. Findings …

Quantifying Errors Of Bias And Discriminability Emitted By Children During A Matching-To-Sample Task, Courtney Hannula

Theses and Dissertations

Children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) make errors during discrimination training regardless of antecedent or consequent procedures implemented to decrease errors. Further, these interventions are not guided by the source of errors. Two equations from Davison and Tustin’s (1978) framework can quantify errors due to bias and discriminability, known as log𝑏 and log𝑑, respectively. This framework categorized errors emitted by children diagnosed with ASD during a matching-to-sample task. The task was displayed on a touchscreen device in which touching a sample stimulus at the beginning of each trial resulted in the appearance of two comparison stimuli. Researchers delivered reinforcement …

Effects Of Rich And Lean Treatment Contexts On Renewal, Sandhya Rajagopal

Theses and Dissertations

Relapse of problem behavior following behavioral intervention can occur for many reasons, including a change in setting after treatment. Reappearance of a previously extinguished behavior due to a context change is termed renewal. Laboratory models have demonstrated renewal by training a target behavior in one stimulus context, extinguishing the behavior in another context, and testing for relapse in the training context, where the behavior remains in extinction. Basic-research studies of relapse have also shown that conditions of the treatment environment, such as reinforcement schedules, can affect the amount of relapse observed. Assuming that quality of the treatment context could have …