Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Using Brain Break® In The Classroom To Increase On-Task Behavior And Decrease Disruptive Behaviors Of Students, Michaela C. Elza

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Off-task and disruptive behavior are one of the greatest causes to loss of instructional time in the classroom. Teachers spend time addressing student challenging behaviors which consequently cuts time from their academic instruction. Antecedent exercise programs, such as Brain Breaks®, provide teachers with short physical activity videos that provide students a movement break between long periods of academics without the need for expensive equipment. This study evaluated the effects of Brain Breaks® videos to increase students’ on-task and decrease disruptive behaviors in the classroom. Three participants were included in this study, Jordan a 6-year-old male, Andrew an 8-year-old male, and …

Maturing Out Of Crime: A Test Of The Integrated Maturation Theory Of Desistance, Kelly E. Kortright

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation partially tested a newer integrated theory, the Integrated Maturation Theory (IMT) of desistance. IMT argues that as maturation increases across five maturation domains (social role, civic, identity, psychosocial, and neurocognitive) the likelihood of offending decreases. Using a sample of serious justice-involved juveniles spanning ages 14-24 from the Pathways to Desistance Study, the individual and simultaneous maturation domain development of the social role, civic, identity, and psychosocial maturation domains, were explored for heterogeneity. Using a group-based trajectory modeling approach, including multi-trajectory modeling, this study advanced the understanding of maturation development by identifying sub-groups following declining trajectories of maturation and …

Evaluating The Use Of Behavioral Skills Training And Tactile Prompts To Increase Positive Staff Interactions In Residential Care, Kaleigh R. Cernosek

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Youth in residential care are often victims of maltreatment and are more likely to be revictimized. Residential facilities tend to be restrictive and punitive based, often implementing restraints as an intervention. Previous research has shown that a positive living climate is essential for increasing quality of life and meeting treatment goals. Building rapport between staff and youth can help promote a positive living climate and positively impact youth behavior. Behavior-specific praise (BSP) has been evaluated in school settings to increase student engagement and compliance. However, there has been limited research on the effects of increasing BSP in residential facilities. Therefore, …

Teacher-Implemented Accumulated And Distributed Schedules In The Classroom Setting, Jessica S. Benevides

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Emotional behavior disorders (EBDs) are becoming increasingly more common in schools (Forness et al., 2012). Challenging behavior can negatively impact a teacher’s implementation of classroom management strategies which can be detrimental to student outcomes (Garwood et al., 2017; Gilmour et al., 2022) and increase the risk for teacher burnout (Fernet et al., 2012). Evidence-based strategies such as differential reinforcement have been shown to be effective at reducing challenging behavior (Boniecki & Moore, 2003; Petscher et al., 2009). Moreover, accumulated and distributed reinforcer arrangements using tokens have been shown to both reduce challenging behavior and increase task engagement (Chen et al., …

Skinny And Curvy And Muscular, Oh My! Examining Co-Occurring Appearance Ideals And Associated Disordered Eating In College Women, Laura E. Boyajian

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research examining appearance ideal internalization has primarily focused on the thin ideal, neglecting the growing importance of alternative appearance ideals (e.g., curvy, muscular). Qualitatively, women report that these ideals are not internalized in isolation, but instead, are internalized simultaneously. Importantly, the simultaneous internalization of appearance ideals may enhance the negative effects of appearance ideal internalization. The current study tested whether simultaneously internalizing diverse appearance ideals (i.e., thin, curvy, muscular) was associated with increased body dissatisfaction and disordered eating behaviors in a predominantly White (Study 1; N= 260) and racially/ethnically diverse (Study 2; N=264) samples of college-aged women. Participants reported the …

From Guns To Intimate Partner Violence: The Impact Of Power And Control, Meaghan E. Brown

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Gun violence and intimate partner violence are pervasive public health concerns across the globe. Notably, previous literature has shown a positive relationship between gun ownership and intimate partner violence (IPV), even when a gun is not used during acts of IPV. Despite this established link, few studies to date have explored psychological mechanisms, especially feelings of and desire for power, that could explain this relationship among young men. Given that college students remain one of the most at-risk groups for both victimization and perpetration of IPV, examining the relationship between actual or intended gun ownership and IPV could close vital …

Trajectories Of Well-Being: Results From The Americans’ Changing Lives Study, Cassondra M. Lyman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is considerable interest in elucidating the dynamics of well-being over long periods of time, including how well-being dynamics are influenced by depression. The Americans' Changing Lives (ACL) study has followed the health and well-being of a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States for 25 years (N1986 = 3,617; N1989 = 2,867; N1994 = 2,562; N2002 = 1,787, N2012 = 1,427). Leveraging data from the ACL study, the present investigation employed growth mixture models to identify unobserved subpopulations (i.e., latent classes) typified by change in well-being over time. Three predominant trajectories for well-being were identified: relative stability …

Improving Academic Engagement And Task Completion Using Antecedent Physical Exercise In An Elementary School Classroom, Grace N. Maxwell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the effectiveness of antecedent physical activity interventions in enhancing academic engagement and task completion among first-grade students displaying off-task behaviors. The research involved three student participants from a first grade general education classroom. An ABAB reversal design was used to assess the impact of the intervention. The intervention, implemented by the classroom teacher, consisted of short, structured physical activities conducted before targeted academic periods. Results revealed significant improvements in both academic engagement and task completion following the implementation of the physical activity interventions. The findings suggest that incorporating brief physical activities into daily classroom routines can lead …

A Transtheoretical Model Of Open Science Adoption: A Survey Among Researchers Within Psychology, Julia B. Mcdonald

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Open science refers to practices that aim to improve the accessibility, transparency, inclusivity, and reproducibility of science. These practices can accelerate scientific innovation by increasing the accuracy and efficiency of the scientific process and by enhancing the translation of scientific knowledge beyond academia. However, inspiring researchers to adopt open science practices and make sustainable changes in their workflows remains a challenge. Even within psychology, a field that has been central to discussions of open science reform, there seems to be varying levels of readiness to adopt open science practices. This study aimed to support open science efforts by providing a …

A Cca Analysis Of How Media Cover Military Policies Regarding Trans Service Members And Veterans: Implications For Policy, Healthcare, And Wellbeing, Jonathan T. Baker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The military is the leading employer of transgender and gender diverse (trans) people in the United States, and trans people are twice as likely to serve in the U.S. Military compared to the national average. This dissertation analyzes newspaper coverage of transgender service members and veterans between the end of President Obama’s administration and the early months of President Biden’s administration. Guided by the Culture-Centered Approach (CCA) this dissertation focused on cross-paradigmatic questions regarding the role of voice (e.g., quoting or paraphrasing various sources) in this coverage. Specifically, I assessed (a) which groups of people are being cited most often, …

The Relationship Between Rejection Sensitivity And Higher Order Cognitive Functions, Rachel Gaynor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rejection sensitivity indexes individual differences in the expectation of, reaction to, and interpretation of possible rejection. Research on mechanisms underlying these individual differences have identified a reduction in top-down emotion regulatory processes in those exhibiting heightened rejection sensitivity. Most of these studies utilize rejection-specific affective stimuli. This study examined the relationship between rejection sensitivity score, calculated from the 18-question RSQ, and the recruitment of higher level inhibition resources, as indexed by the conflict N2, on three novel Flanker tasks. In order to further examine previously identified patterns in affective inhibition across differing levels of rejection sensitivity, and to determine whether …

Peritraumatic Distress And Dissociation In People With And Without Disabilities Utilizing Emergency Departments, Sydney C. Hart

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

To date the literature on peritraumatic distress and peritraumatic dissociation in individuals receiving emergency medical treatment has not examined people with disabilities or chronic health conditions as a specified population, despite these populations’ disproportional utilization of medical facilities and additional stressors faced in those environments. Thus, this study assessed and compared the prevalence and averages on the Peritraumatic Distress Inventory (PDI) and Peritraumatic Dissociative Experiences Questionnaire (PDEQ) in people with and without disabilities and/or chronic health conditions after Emergency Department (ED) visits. A sample of 138 participants 18 years of age or older, of which 109 reported disabilities and/or chronic …

An Evaluation Of Reinforcement Thinning Using Deposit Contracts To Increase Physical Activity, Madeline N. Mccullen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Due to the health risks associated with a sedentary lifestyle, researchers have used behavioral interventions such as contingency management and deposit contracts to increase physical activity. Although these interventions have been effective, researchers have described the lack of maintenance assessments of the target behavior. One way to address the maintenance of behavior, such as physical activity, is with reinforcement thinning. The current study evaluated the effects of self-tailored deposit contracts and reinforcement thinning on daily step count with sedentary adults using a nonconcurrent multiple baseline across participants design. Researchers and participants designed a self-tailored deposit contract by identifying a step …

The Effects Of Scenic Pictures And Progressive Time Delay On Intraverbal Responding, Breanna White

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have demonstrated the effectiveness of tact prompts to establish single responses to questions about intraverbal categories. Scenic pictures, a visual depiction of multiple exemplars belonging to a stimulus class, may increase the likelihood that individuals will emit multiple responses when answering categorical questions, and promote response variability. The purpose of this study was to extend Glodowski and Rodriguez (2019) by evaluating the effectiveness of a larger array of visual stimuli and progressive time delay on varied intraverbal responding with individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder between the ages of 8 and 17 within a private school for individuals with …

Empirically Defining Healthy And Maladaptive Exercise: A Nomological Network Approach, Cody B. Staples

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Exercise is generally considered to be healthy and adaptive; however, for some individuals, engagement in exercise is maladaptive and can damage both physical and mental health. Currently, research regarding healthy and maladaptive exercise is siloed, and factors that may result in exercise being maladaptive are unclear. This gap in the research is fueled by the incomplete definitions of what constitutes “healthy” as compared to “maladaptive” exercise behavior. To address this gap, the current study aimed to develop empirical definitions of healthy and maladaptive exercise using a nomological network approach. Theoretically and empirically supported facets of exercise (e.g., frequency, motivation) were …

Personality Pathology As A Self-Regulating Dynamical System, Haya Fatimah

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With mounting evidence that personality is both stable and variable, personality scientists have called for comprehensive approaches that integrate stability and dynamics. Dynamical systems theory offers concepts and tools to systematically integrate the stable and dynamic components of personality while identifying the relationship between these components. This study extends the dynamical systems approach to personality pathology and investigates how pathological personality states vary in a patterned manner in relation to their equilibria or attractors, as opposed to random noise. Furthermore, I test if these patterned dynamics may describe important individual differences and predict behavioral outcomes. Using daily data pertaining to …

Internalized Binegativity, Alcohol Consumption, And Expectancies Following An Experience Of Binegativity: An Experimental Study, Alexander P. Rivera

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Individuals who identify as bisexual have repeatedly been found to consume alcohol at higherrates than individuals who identify as heterosexual or homosexual and are at greater risk for developing AUD. Per the Minority Stress Model, this heightened risk for bisexuals’ poor alcohol outcomes may be attributed to experiences of bisexual-specific stressors (i.e., experienced binegativity) and beliefs about their own bisexual identity., which have previously been associated with increased alcohol use. To date, however, no studies have examined if experiences of binegativity are associated with changes in internalized binegativity and alcohol outcomes in an experimental design. The current study aimed to …

Classifying Traumatic Brain Injury: Associations With Executive Functioning And Externalizing Behavior, Lauren F. Fournier

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) involves a head injury that is, for some individuals, associated with long-term behavioral difficulties, including externalizing behaviors. The literature on TBI and its links to externalizing is limited in several important ways. First, there is evidence that current classification system of mild, moderate, or severe is imprecise and contains important variation within TBI categories. Second, TBI and externalizing are understudied among high functioning individuals, such as undergraduate students, despite rates of TBI among this population that are similar to those of the general population. Third, while it is theorized that executive functioning deficits explain the association …

Essays On Machine Learning And Corporate Disclosure, Zicheng (Leo) Xiao

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation contains two essays that shed new light on the dynamic of information disclosure on the capital market. For both two essays I leverage computational linguistics and 20 million turns of dialogues from earnings conference calls from 2006-2022. In the first essay, I introduce a novel measure that quantifies the disparity in narrative focus between managers’ disclosures and analysts’ questions during these calls, denoted as Topic Attention Divergence (TAD). A higher level of TAD indicates a higher level of firm-investor asymmetry and lower information quality. My results confirm that higher TAD in earnings conference calls inversely (positively) predict firms’ …

Navigating Shrinking Cities: Towards Coordinated Urban Development From The Perspective Of Flow And Network, Yuzhou Chen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As cities worldwide undergo rapid but uneven changes, proposing smart and sustainable urban development strategies has been a popular interdisciplinary research in the 21st century. In particular, the phenomenon of shrinking cities characterized by economic recession and population decline is becoming increasingly severe in developed countries and even developing countries. In the real world, research focusing on individual shrinking cities often neglects the interconnectedness between cities within the network formed by flows. Therefore, coordinating the development strategies for multiple closely connected cities, especially for shrinking cities, is a step up from focusing on individual cities.

This dissertation aims to propose …

Essays On The Determinants Of Women's And Children's Health In Bangladesh, Md Shahjahan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation is titled "The Determinants of Women's and Children's Health in Bangladesh." The first chapter studies the impact of a Bangladeshi schooling program on child immunization rates. The program provided a stipend and other incentives to attend secondary school, significantly increasing rural girls' education. I hypothesize that this would lead to higher immunization rates in the next generation since better-educated mothers have better knowledge of health practices. The study uses a regression model ("difference-in-differences"), which is based on differential exposure to the 1994 Female Secondary School Stipend Program (FSSSP) by birth cohort and rural residence. I find that the …

Did I Do That?: Lived Experience And Media Representation Of The Awkward Black Girl, Kendra Williams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For my thesis project I will introduce the Awkward Black Girl as a new race gender script. Though there are minor nuances of the Awkward Black Girl within television, Issa Rae’s performance of the Awkward Black Girl in Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl and the HBO hit series Insecure remains prevalent to contemporary media representations. Though there is limited scholarship within the field of Communication available about the Awkward Black Girl, most of the scholarship consists of analysis and discourse centering Rae’s portrayal in her web series and television show. I explore Quinta Brunson’s portrayal of the Awkward Black Girl …

Confronting Sexism On Tiktok: Is Sarcastic Humor Effective?, Rebecca A. Upton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Confronting sexism is important but can be difficult because of the social backlash that is associated with it. However, many individuals have begun to call out sexism online. For example, the social media platform TikTok is an increasingly popular space for women to confront misogyny. In one current trend, creators target individuals who create sexist content by using sarcasm to humorously mock their original video. In this study, I examined the effectiveness of this trend in persuading observers and how the use of sarcastic and mocking humor influences perceptions of a woman confronting sexism. 492 participants were randomly assigned to …

Revealing Long Vehicle Dynamics: A Comprehensive Journey From Visualization Tools For Heavy Vehicles To Conversion Factors And Public Transit Performance Analysis, Eren Yuksel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the past few decades, there has been an increasing fascination with Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) technology, particularly in the realm of data collection and traffic management. Thanks to the possibilities unlocked by ITS and CAV technology, traffic data collection now serves a diverse array of safety and mobility applications, delivering real-time or near-real-time information for both road users and transportation professionals.

The integration of ITS and CAV technology is crucial for the creation of safer, more reliable, and sustainable transportation environments. As traffic-related data collection, analysis, and visualization form essential components of this …

Uprooted, Displaced, Resilient: Kosovar Women’S Narratives Of Organizing For Survival During The Kosovo War, Erjona Gashi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to foreground Kosovar women’s narratives and organizing properties during the Kosovo War. I examine the overlooked gendered roles and day-to-day lived experiences of Kosovar women, survivors of the Serb genocide, political violence, and oppression, and investigate their organizing properties during the Kosovo War (1998-1999). In acknowledging women’s plurality of experiences and perspectives, I challenge the currently pervasive and monolithic narrative of women as passive victims of war present in scholarship in organizational communication and instead make overt the narrative of women as critical organizational actors that sustain lives during and after the war. Using …

Essays In The Econometrics Of Choice Analysis With Applications In Health Economics, Maksat Jumamyradov

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Unobserved heterogeneity is one of the main concerns for applied economists, particularly when modeling preferences for health and healthcare. Applied economists have preferred the mixed logit model due to its flexible latent structure allowing various specifications of unobserved heterogeneity. Since the model does not have a closed-form, its estimation relies on simulation-based methods, specifically the maximum simulated likelihood (MSL) estimator, which has been the dominant estimation strategy. In the first section of this dissertation, which include chapters 1 through 5, I analyze biases of MSL when applied to the bivariate normal, bivariate Poisson-lognormal and mixed logit models.

Discrete choice experiments …

Causes And Consequences Of Word Skipping During Reading: Evidence From The Co-Registration Of Eye Movements And Eeg, Sara Milligan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Skilled readers skip approximately one third of the words in the text while reading for comprehension (Rayner, 1998). Therefore, a prominent question for decades among reading and language researchers has been how people are able to recognize words and comprehend text without even looking at all of the words. Eye tracking studies have established that some information about an upcoming word in the text can be identified while still looking at the previous word (Rayner, 1975), but it remains an open question whether words that are skipped are thoroughly identified or if skipping decisions are based on shallow heuristic factors, …

“A Second Chance Citizen Reintegration Program Through The Lenses Of Black And Brown Participants And Case Managers.”, Bobbie Straughter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recidivism has been linked to a lack of education opportunities, heightened surveillance, a lack of housing stability, and limited access to resources for assistance. Because Black and Brown communities are facing mass incarceration, there is a growing concern about recidivism, as they are affected by several factors that may make them more likely to re-offend upon release. These include a lack of mental health outreach, their socioeconomic status, environmental influences, and the challenges they face regarding their masculinity and role in fatherhood. To both reduce recidivism and provide a solution to the obstacles presented above, the literature suggests providing re-entry …

Differences In Speech Patterns Produced By Spanish-English Language Learners During Single-Language And Mixed-Language Remote Academic Vocabulary Instruction, Ester Garcia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Individuals with lower proficiency in a second language tend to produce more disfluent speech patterns in the second language. Speech disfluencies refer to interruptions in the forward flow of speech and are distinct from the colloquial use of “fluency,” to characterize knowledge of a language. Prior research indicates that some speech disfluency patterns may be more common among Spanish-English bilingual children, who tend to produce more mazes (fragments of an utterance) and syllable repetitions than their monolingual peers. These patterns have been attributed to 1) acquiring a new language; 2) the influence of Spanish as a first language (L1) on …

Spectral Properties Of Wetlands In Michigan Using Remote Sensing To Identify And Classify Wetlands In Roscommon County, Michigan, Kolin Williamson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Biological, geological, and physical. These are only a handful of the many environmental aspects that wetlands functions maintain and protect. Unfortunately, wetlands within the United States have been razed at an alarming rate. The State of Michigan has not gone through this unscathed either, loosing over 1000 acres of wetland a year. One of the most important tools to prevent this destruction are the maps and programs that show where these essential ecosystems are located. The current, federally-created maps and imaging software in use by environmental consultants and contractors may not be up to date which can pose challenges for …