Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Seduction, Control, & The Search For Authenticity: Madonna's Truth Or Dare, E. Deidre Pribram Ph.D.

Faculty Publications: Communication

Maddonnas' 1991 film Truth or Dare, based on her 1990 “Blond Ambition” tour—itself a combination of pop music and performance art— defies easy categorization. It is a “docudrama” of sorts: part documentary, part concert film, part dramatic enactment. By combining various filmic styles and traditions. Truth or Dare recreates certain long-standing cultural dichotomies between, for instance, onstage and offstage, public and private, reality and appearance, or truth and artifice. The film replicates such oppositions only to then question their continuing validity. Binary distinctions in Truth or Dare prove more apparent than real, more fleeting than differentiating. Ultimately, I believe, …

Perception/Action: An Holistic Approach, John M. Flach

Psychology Faculty Publications

A general systems approach is taken to studying the emergent properties of the human perception/action system. Two task domains, the control of locomotion and the recognition of objects, are used to study human performance. The locomotion task involves the control of altitude. Experiments are described that will manipulate the type of texture, the speed of forward motion, and altitude. A general hypothesis is presented that performance in the altitude control task is a function of the signal-to-noise ratio within the flow field--where signal refers to optical activity resulting from change of altitude and noise refers to optical activity resulting from …

The Relationship Between Pain Locus Of Control And Treatment Adherence At Long-Term Follow-Up From An Interdisciplinary Pain Center, Lisa J. Wall

Student Work

Locus of control is a cognitive construct that can be quantified and used in conjunction with other social learning theory variables to predict human social behavior. Previous research suggests that when a person perceives rewards and punishments as being contingent upon personal actions, (i.e. they possess an internal locus of control) behavior is quite different compared to when such reinforcements are perceived to occur independently of personal efforts and characteristics.

Pain is one of many areas in which there has been a significant amount of interest in relating locus of control health beliefs to a variety of relevant behaviors. Whether …

Book Review, Juanita V. Field

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Review of the following book: ELAINE VAUGHAN, SOME FACTORS INFLUENCING THE NONEXPERT'S PERCEPTION AND EVALUATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL Risks. (Garland Pub. Co. 1990) [249 pp.] Abstract, appendices, bibliography, figures, tables. LC: 90-13855, ISBN: 0-8420-0422-1. [Cloth $59.00. 136 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016.]

Aids: Implications To Society And Approaches To Control, Robert W. Sidwell

Faculty Honor Lectures

It is perhaps a measure of today's society that a new disease of potentially world-wide implication does not gain national or international attention until a famous person contracts it. This was particularly seen with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) when it became known that Rock Hudson of movie and TV acclaim was dying of it. By the time the celebrated pianist and entertainer Liberace died of AIDS, the various public health agencies around the world had begun to focus on the problem, and enormous sums of money were being committed toward its control. Today, more U.s. dollars are budgeted for AIDS …

Integrated Control Of Thermally Distorted Large Space Antennas, Robert H. Tolson

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Studies on controlling the thermal distortion of large space antennae have generally investigated a single orbital position and have optimized actuator locations based on minimizing the RMS surface deviation from the original parabolic shape. One study showed the benefits of directly using far zone electric field characteristics as the performance measure; but, this approach resulted in a nonlinear programming problem. The objective of the current study is to develop an approach to designing a control system that (1) recognizes the time dependence of the distortion and (2) controls variables that are directly related to far field performance in a quadratic …

The National Diarrheal Disease Control Project: The Egyptian Experience, Faten M Ibrahim Dahlan

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Gender Differences In The Relation Between Locus Of Control And Physiological Responses, Monique C. Grelot

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The relationship between locus of control and the physiological responses of heart rate (HR) and electrodermal activity (EDA) was investigated in 30 males and 31 females during an arithmetic task. The Levenson's Internal, Powerful Others and Chance (IPC) scales (Levenson, 1974) were used to assess the various degrees of internality for each subject. Additionally, to determine each subject's physiological Lability or Stability (LS), EDA was measured by recording spontaneous skin conductance responses during a ten minute rest period and to a tone (an Orienting Response (OR) task). A simple difficulty effect was found on the performance scores across the three …

The Application Of Behavior Modification Techniques To Two Geriatric Patients, Beth A. Schneider

Student Dissertations & Theses

Behavior modification techniques were applied to the behavioral problems of two geriatric nursing home residents. For the first subject, providing reinforcement for a competing activity effectively reduced both disruptive behavior defined as requests for cigarettes, attacking a fellow resident or unauthorized removal of charts, and time spent in the hallway. Similarly, for the second subject, offering reinforcement for out-of-bed behavior had the desired effect of increasing time spent out of bed. However, positive changes in behavior failed to generalize beyond the experimental situation, possibly due to an inability to exercise adequate control over the environment. Suggestions for establishing a totally …

Development And Control Of Licking Behavior In The Guinea Pig (Cavia Porcellus), Jack R. Alvord

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Four non-licking guinea pigs were reinforced with water for successive approximations to licking an operandum feeder. Once all subjects had obtained their total liquid intake for a three-week period by licking, an optimum deprivation schedule was determined.

Fixed ratio and variable interval schedules were found to affect licking behavior of the guinea pig in a similar way as with the rat, mean lick rate of guinea pigs being slightly lower than that of the rat. Precise control over the onset and offset of licking was demonstrated through discrimination training.

Estimating Forage Production Following Pinyon-Juniper Control: A Probabilistic Approach, Terrence F. Glover

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

An important management practice within the 60-80 million acres of Pinyon-Juniper woodlands is to convert these woodlands to open rangelands. The success or failure of seedling adapted grasses in place of trees is contingent upon the revegetation techniques employed and upon fortuitous weather patterns. In order to formulate policy for Pinyon-Juniper control decisions, persons responsible for such policies need to know the risks of introducing range grasses into given areas. This thesis is essentially a hypothesis concerning the magnitude of such risks.