Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Brief Acceptance And Commitment Therapy Based Intervention For Distressed Graduate Students, Emily Hannah Katt Jacobson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Graduate students report to experience distress at high rates. Research suggests that self-care behaviors such as sleep exercise and mindfulness practice can helpful for mental health and wellbeing. The current study examined the effectiveness of a brief Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) based intervention on increasing self-care behaviors in distressed graduate students at the University of Mississippi (N=7). The intervention was delivered in three 60-minute individual sessions. The effects of the intervention were examined using a concurrent multiple baseline across participants design. Results indicated that five out of seven participants shoincreases in self-reported self-care behaviors after the start of the …

Innovation, Ceos, And Ipos, Zhilu Lin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In Part 1, I study if CEOs with innovative ability impose a cost upon their firms. I find that while there is a positive effect of a CEO’s innovative ability on firm innovation, the benefit is only when CEO’s innovative ability is useful for the firm. Further, firms with innovator CEOs spend more on R&D projects but with lower efficiency and hold more cash but with lower cash value compared to firms with non-innovator CEOs. These results suggest that innovator CEOs create an overinvestment problem. In Part 2, I study the effects of talent cycling on IPO long-run performance and …

Empirical Support For Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (Mtfc): A Critical Review, Jennifer Marie Ladner-Graham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC), initially intended as a treatment for chronic juvenile offenders (adolescents having multiple contacts with the juvenile justice system), was designed as an alternative to placement within group facilities. MTFC allows the adolescent to remain in the community while receiving individual and family-based interventions. These interventions are dedicated to decreasing risk factors associated with offending (e.g., poor parental supervision, association with delinquent peers, poor academic performance) and increasing protective factors (e.g., effective parenting practices, healthy relationships with supportive peers, increased school involvement). MTFC has been utilized to meet the needs of a variety of populations (e.g., …

Knowledge, Assertiveness, Competence: Using A Self-Determination Theory Framework To Explain Sexual Satisfaction In College Students, Tanja Seifen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sexual satisfaction has been shown to be related to many positive factors such as high relationship satisfaction enhanced physical and psychological health and increased overall well-being. Despite making up 27% of the sexually active population in the United States young people (ages 15-24) but are typically not taught about the benefits of sexual satisfaction or how to have a pleasurable sexual experience. Due to their high risk of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and unplanned pregnancies most education and research on young people’s sexuality focuses on risk behaviors and prevention. The goal of this study was to take a positive outlook …

Gender Roles, Sexual Assertiveness, And Sexual Coercion In Lgbtq Individuals, Lavina Ying Ho

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sexual violence is a prominent community issue particularly within the LGBTQ+ community. The present study examined the relationships among gender roles sexual assertiveness and sexual victimization as well as sexual perpetration in a LGBTQ+ population. For most severe form of sexual violence victimization in the past year 17.6% reported having been raped. Moderated logistic regression analyses found that both gender roles and sexual assertiveness independently predicted severity of sexual victimization and perpetration. No interactions were found to predict either sexual victimization or sexual perpetration. Specifically the femininity gender role and lower levels of sexual assertiveness predicted greater likelihood for victim …

Is It Racism, Colorism, Or A Pigment Of Your Imagination? A Study On The Invisible Color Line, Yolanda Rodriguez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Participants were 324 self-identified ethnic/racial minority adults recruited from a southern university in the United States and an online community (MTurk workers) primarily ranging in age from 18-30 (78.4%). Participants completed a demographic questionnaire and a measure for each of the variables of interest. A moderated mediation analysis was conducted using PROCESS (Hayes 2013) model 8. It was hypothesized that acculturation modality (X) would predict skin lightening behaviors and attitudes (Y) through three mediators (M1: Discrepancy scores M2: Satisfaction with Skin Color and M3: Desire to Change Skin Color). Psychological well-being was predicted to be a moderator (W) of the …

Isolation, Athletic Identity, And Social Support: An Exploration Among Injured Collegiate Student-Athletes, Ally W. Claytor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Season ending and career ending injuries make up a large portion of all injuries (Tirabassi et al., 2016). Among psychological consequences to these types of injuries, isolation is a social consequence that has been identified as occurring after injury (Gould et al., 1997). Isolation is related to loss of identity for an athlete (Mankand et al., 2009). Additionally, low levels of support have been shown to increase feelings of isolation in injured athletes (Mitchell et al., 2014). The purpose of the present study was to explore the experience of isolation as a psychological response to injury among athletes with career …

An Exploration Of Relationships Between Parenting Stress And Primary Headache Disorders, Yelena Louise Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Stress is the most commonly reported trigger for headache and stress affects headache both directly through resulting physiological changes and indirectly through its effects on lifestyle and coping behaviors. However one form of stress that has been neglected within headache is parenting. Parenting stress is defined as the imbalance between parents’ perceptions of available resources and their perceived demands of parenthood. Many variables have been established as predictors of parenting stress (e.g. demographic variables child behavior maternal depression) though fewer studies have examined its effects on health. Given that headache and parenthood share similar demographic distributions and risk factors exploration …

Teaching Kids To Say "Ew!": Parent-Child Disgust Transmission, Brooklee Lightsey Tynes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Disgust is one of the six basic emotions but research suggests it is far more complex. As individuals respond to stimuli in different manners this suggests the emotion and its development may be shaped through learning principles and cultural practices (Rozin Lowery & Ebert 1994). It is imperative to understand how children’s disgust responses are shaped though observation classical and operant conditioning demonstrated by their primary caregivers. The current study examined the transmission of the emotion of disgust from primary caregivers to their children. Participants were 17 children (55.6% female) and one of their parents in Mississippi and Nebraska. The …

Wellness And Karate, Cristina Kumpf

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The promotion of wellness is an integral part of the counseling field and is considered to be a central focus to the counseling process (Barden, Conley, & Young, 2015; Myers, 1992). The counseling profession adopted the concept of wellness because it harmonizes with many of the founding principles of the ACA and is seen as a process of questing toward optimal health and well-being in body, mind, and spirit (Barden, Conley, & Young, 2015; Myers, 1992; Myers, Sweeney, & Witmer, 2000). Additionally, ACA Code of Ethics (2014) state that counselors “engage in self-care activities to maintain and promote their own …

Role Of Executive Function And Alcohol-Sex Schema In The Relationship Between Alcohol Use And Sexual Assault, Michelle Seulki Lee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Heavy alcohol use and sexual assault are significant problems among women attending college. The current study examined the relationship between sexual assault and alcohol use across a four-month period and the role of executive function (EF) and alcohol-sex schema in this relationship. Participants were 176 women undergraduate students with a mean age of 19.50 years (SD = 1.30), with 85 participating in a second survey four months later. Participants completed self-report questionnaires regarding alcohol use and sexual assault, a battery of EF tasks, and a lexical decision task assessing alcohol-sex schema. Sexual assault significantly predicted alcohol use four months …

Predicting And Shifting Attitudes Toward Immigrants And Immigration: Testing A Model And Communication Strategy, Tejaswinhi Srinivas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research in intergroup relations has found evidence for economic and moral explanations for negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration (NATII), and has evaluated various communication strategies for shifting these attitudes. However, no research to date has provided a cultural explanation for NATII, or tested and compared the impact of communication strategies for reducing NATII, in the American context. This study extended prior research in three ways. First, we tested a model that linked various psychosocial factors together (i.e., right-wing authoritarianism, intergroup contact, cultural essentialism, and symbolic threat) to provide a cultural explanation for NATII. Second, we tested the effect of …

Sexual Assault And Health: Understanding The Interplay Of Trauma-Related Appraisals And Physical Health Outcomes, Kerry Lyn Gagnon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Women who have been sexually assaulted are at risk for negative mental and physical health outcomes; however, limited research has tested how psychological responses to sexual assault may influence physical health. The present study tested a longitudinal model examining the association between posttrauma appraisals and physical health problems. Drawn from a larger study, the sample included 156 ethnically diverse women who had been sexually assaulted within the last year. The study used cross-lagged panel models to test for reciprocal relationships between posttrauma appraisals and physical health problems over time. A secondary aim of the study was to test whether other …

First Semester Academic Functioning Of College Students : The Role Of Stressful And Traumatic Life Events., Ashlee J. Warnecke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A large number of the nearly 20 million students who were attending American colleges in 2015 will not graduate. One factor that may affect the success of students is the influence of past experiences, including past adversity, or exposure to traumatic or non-traumatic stressors. The present study sought to better describe and understand the role of stress/trauma history in college students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. The potential relationship this history has with academic outcomes was explored. Additionally, as not all students with a history of stressful and traumatic life events struggle academically, self-reported resilience, as well as resiliency factors, were …

Binocular Rivalry Of Emotional Expressions, Daniel Stephen Lumian

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A central debate in defining emotional space is whether emotions are organized categorically (e.g., fear, happy, disgust) or continuously (i.e., along the independent dimensions of valence and arousal). Emotional facial expressions are one tool often leveraged in trying to define emotional space. Faces are rich sources of social and emotional information. Faces, like emotions, can be organized in either categorical (e.g., happy, sad) or continuous (e.g., open-closed) ways. Therefore, understanding the relatedness of emotional facial expressions to each other may shed light on the underlying structure of emotions. Binocular rivalry (BR) is a tool which can be leveraged to measure …

Microaggressions Towards Individuals With Learning Disability Within The College Setting, Cordava Valentina Aranda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Learning disability mircroaggressions refer to the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights and mistreatment which convey a derogatory feeling or message to individuals with a learning disability across various settings. Learning disability microaggressions may contribute significantly to the negative aspects of mental health issues often perceived in individuals with learning disabilities. The purpose of this study was to develop a microaggression scale designed to assess microaggressions displayed towards individuals with learning disabilities (LD) within the academic setting. A scale designed to assess LD microaggressions was constructed and modeled after the Racial Microaggression Scale (RMAS). A confirmatory factor analysis was …

Biased Attentional Processing For Negative Emotion And Youth Internalizing Psychopathology: The Role Of Attentional Control Deficits, Lauren Darlene Gulley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Biased attention for salient negative emotional stimuli is a proposed cognitive mechanism of internalizing disorders, namely depression and anxiety. Previous studies have demonstrated biases in bottom-up, stimulus-driven attentional systems, as well as top-down, goal-oriented attentional systems, in the context of negative emotion. However, the underlying cognitive mechanisms that drive these biases, such as attentional control deficits, are not well understood. Furthermore, given the high degree of conceptual and empirical overlap between depression and anxiety, it is unclear how biased attention might relate to constructs common across both disorders, such as general distress, versus what is specific to each disorder. The …

Family Processes Among Early Head Start Families: Testing The Role Of Parental Self-Efficacy In The Family Stress Model, Eliana Hurwich-Reiss

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Family Stress Model (FSM) provides a framework for how economic pressure can impact family processes and outcomes, including parent's mental health, parenting, and child problem behaviors. Although the FSM has been widely replicated, samples disproportionately impacted by poverty including early childhood samples and in particular Latino families with young children, have been largely excluded from the FSM research. Therefore, among a sample of ethnically diverse Early Head Start children (N=148) and among a subsample of Latino children (n=100), the current study evaluated a modified FSM to understand the direct and indirect pathways among economic pressure, parental depression, parenting self-efficacy, …

The Relationship Between Orientation To The U.S. Culture And Affect Among Chinese International Students, Jiquan Lin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Emerging literature suggests that ideal/desired emotions vs. actual emotions represent an important aspect of subjective emotional experiences that may be particularly important for cross-cultural research, as culture may influence the subjective experience of how individuals value certain emotions and to what extent they actually experience them. The current research conducts two studies to examine cultural differences in ideal and actual affect, and to test its association with acculturation and depressed mood within a sample of Chinese international students. Specifically, Study 1 recruited 152 Chinese international college students and 108 U.S. college students to test differences in their ideal and actual …

Points Of Leverage: Interrupting The Intergenerational Transmission Of Adversity, Lisa Schlueter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Early life stressors, such as abuse and neglect, have been associated with poor physical and mental health outcomes in adulthood. Moreover, animal models suggest that caregivers' early life stress can have intergenerational effects that then impact the health and well-being of their offspring. Although animal models are compelling, and inter-generationally transmitted and co-occurring risks are well-documented, proximal mechanistic explanations for how caregiver's history of childhood adversity can result in changes to their child's stress physiology and outcomes have not yet been systematically tested in humans. Thus, among a sample of low-income, predominantly Latino families participating in Early Head Start (EHS), …

Using The Theory Of Planned Behavior To Predict Executives’ Intentions To Hire Psychologists In Federally Qualified Health Centers, Robert M. Tolliver

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Health psychologists with training in integrated care are ideal candidates to work in Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs). However, despite the large documented need for more behavioral health providers in FQHCs, psychologists are underrepresented in this setting compared to other behavioral health professions. The purpose of this study was to: 1) examine the specific beliefs that are most relevant to executives’ intentions to hire psychologists, 2) determine how executives’ perceived control over hiring psychologists varies by several demographic variables, and 3) examine how well the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) predicts executives’ intentions to hire psychologists. Method: Executives (N …

Biopsychosocial Models Of The Development Of Childhood Disruptive Behaviors, Anne Bernard Arnett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hyperactivity/attention problems (HAP) and conduct problems (CP) are common and impairing disruptive behaviors in childhood and adolescence. Previous research has established that HAP and CP are highly comorbid, and that outcomes are worse for youth exhibiting both symptom clusters relative to youth with only one disruptive behavior type. Despite ample evidence that HAP and CP share common etiological factors and maladaptive outcomes, the nature of their developmental association remains unclear. This dissertation clarifies three important characteristics of comorbid HAP and CP development, in two replicate, longitudinal, population samples of youth. First, I test the theory that within-person variation in HAP …

Development Of Cognitive Vulnerability For Depression In Youth: Sex, Emotional Maltreatment, And Depression Predict Negative Cognitive Style, Jessica R. Technow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hopelessness theory is a prominent cognitive theory of depression that has been shown to predict depression in youth. However, research has yet to elucidate normative mean-level development of the cognitive risk factor in hopelessness theory from childhood through adolescence. The current study utilized a multi-wave design and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses to examine mean-level negative cognitive style growth and stability in late childhood, early adolescence, and mid-late adolescence. Participant sex, emotional maltreatment, and major depression were also tested as predictors of negative cognitive style. For three years, youth (N = 681, ages 7-18 at baseline) were assessed every 1.5 …

Defining A Role For Affect In Decision-Making, Pareezad Cyrus Zarolia

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent theories of decision-making have hinted that affect might be useful during some decision-making processes. I propose a model, the affective evaluation model, which defines the role of affect in decision-making as helpful when affect is decision-relevant and unhelpful when it is not. In three studies, I manipulate the decision-relevance of affect to test this central component of the affective evaluation model. Study 1 demonstrates that emphasizing decision-relevant affective signals facilitates optimal decision-making as compared to emphasizing purely cognitive evaluations. Study 2 tests the hypothesis that creating the expectation that affect is useful can facilitate decision-making. Finally, Study 3 tests …

Quantile Regression Analyses Of The Component Skills In Various Comprehension Tests, Anh Ngoc Hua

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many studies to date have examined cognitive factors that drive individual differences in reading comprehension. However, these studies often focused on typical readers, and it is not clear whether their findings apply similarly to readers performing in the extreme ends of the distribution, i.e., poor and good readers. In this dissertation, we used quantile regression on a sample of 834 children (age 8-18) to advance our understanding of the relative importance of different component processes of comprehension not just for the typical but also for poor and skilled readers. In Study 1, we examined how the relative importance of components …

Lesbian Couple Dynamics And Heterosexist Stressors: Building A Foundation For Culturally Competent Relationship Interventions, Shelby B. Scott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lesbian relationships are severely underrepresented in the couples and family literature (Hartwell, Serovich, Grafsky, & Kerr, 2012). The current study sought to expand the basic science on lesbian couples with the overarching goal of informing evidence-based relationship interventions. The first aim of this study was to examine processes found to be important to relationship success in previous studies of couples in general, including communication, external support, household tasks, intimacy, and sex, as these processes are typically targeted in relationship interventions. The second aim was to examine the role of factors more specific to lesbian couples and related to heterosexist stressors …

Patterns And Predictors Of Stability And Change In Representations Of Romantic Relationships In Adolescence And Young Adulthood, Claire Stephenson Flansburg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research on the stability of attachment representations across the lifespan has led to two alternative perspectives: the prototype and revisionist perspectives (Fraley, 2002). The prototype perspective posits that there is a stable factor underlying fluctuations in representations and the revisionist perspective argues that there is no inherently stable factor. The current study employed a latent trait-state model to investigate these alternative models of stability and change in representations of romantic relationships in adolescence and young adulthood. The study also sought to identify individual characteristics and relationship experiences that are associated with changes in representations. In a sample of 200 participants, …

Risk For Engagement In Nonsuicidal Self-Injury In Children And Adolescents, Andrea Lee Barrocas Gottlieb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although NSSI engagement is a growing public health concern, little research has documented the developmental precursors to NSSI in longitudinal studies using youth samples. This study aimed to expand upon previous research on groups of NSSI engagement in a population-based sample of youth using multi-wave data. Moreover, this study examined whether chronic peer and romantic stress, the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR), parenting behaviors, and negative attributional style predicted the NSSI group membership as well as the role of sex and grade. Participants were 549 youth in beginning in the 3^rd, 6^th, and 9^th grades at …

Examining The Relationship Among Genes, Attention Bias To Emotion, Depression In Youth, Jessica L. Jenness

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The investigation of biologically initiated pathways to psychological disorder is critical to advance our understanding of mental illness. Research has suggested that attention bias to emotion may be an intermediate trait for depression associated with biologically plausible candidate genes, such as the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and catechol-o-methyl-transferase (COMT) genes, yet there have been mixed findings in regards to the precise direction of effects. The experience of recent stressful life events (SLEs) may be an important, yet currently unstudied, moderator of the relationship between genes and attention bias as SLEs have been associated with both gene expression and attention to emotion. …

The Role Of Passage Topic Knowledge In Typical And Poor Comprehenders' Recall, Chelsea E. Meenan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role of topic knowledge (TK) in comprehension among typical readers and those with Specifically Poor Comprehension (SPC), i.e., those who demonstrate deficits in understanding what they read despite adequate decoding. Previous studies of poor comprehension have focused on weaknesses in specific skills, such as word decoding and inferencing ability, but this dissertation examined a different factor: whether deficits in availability and use of TK underlie poor comprehension. It is well known that TK tends to facilitate comprehension among typical readers, but its interaction with working memory and word decoding is unclear, particularly among participants with deficits …