Psychology Commons^™

How Adults In Developmental Reading Courses Describe Their Educational Life Experiences: A Phenomenological Case Study Examining Whether Experiences Influence Reading Attitudes And Decision-Making Processes, Ashley Paige Reece Armour

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this phenomenological case study is to explore the reading attitudes and decision-making skills of college freshmen enrolled in remedial language arts courses. The theoretical framework guiding this study is qualitative phenomenology explained by Baxter and Jack (2008). This specific type of research “provides tools for researchers to study complex phenomena within their contexts” and the findings help researchers evaluate program, design, and intervention methods, which is pertinent to the discovery of prevailing reading attitudes among struggling students and allows researchers to prevent, adjust, and improve these attitudes in future students (Baxter and Jack, 2008; Yin, 2003). This …

General And Emotion-Specific Alterations To Cognitive Control In Women With A History Of Childhood Abuse, Kristen L. Mackiewicz Seghete, Roselinde H. Kaiser, Anne P. Deprince, Marie T. Banich

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Background

Although limited, the literature suggests alterations in activation of cognitive control regions in adults and adolescents with a history of childhood abuse. The current study examined whether such alterations are increased in the face of emotionally-distracting as compared to emotionally neutral information, and whether such alterations occur in brain regions that exert cognitive control in a more top-down sustained manner or a more bottom-up transient manner.

Methods

Participants were young adult women (ages 23–30): one group with a history of childhood physical or sexual abuse (N = 15) and one with no trauma exposure (N = 17), as assessed …

The Role Of Attention And Memory In Prospective Person Memory, Kara Nicole Moore

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I examined the role of memory and attention in prospective person memory. Prospective person memory involves being on the lookout for a person with the goal of completing some task (i.e., contacting the authorities) upon encountering the person. Success at prospective person memory tasks in lab and field based studies is rather low (i.e., less than 10% of people report encountering the person). In the current study the prospective person memory task involved a simulated search for a missing person. I manipulated attention to the missing person and strategic monitoring, which involves being in retrieval mode and searching for cues. …

From Foster Care To College: Student Stories Of Success, Tory Nicole England

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the different factors that empower young adults that were in foster care to be successful in a college environment. It has been documented that foster youth have significant challenges during secondary education (Conger & Rebeck, 2001; Geenen & Powers, 2006). Due to these challenges, foster youth attend and graduate higher education at a lower rate than their peers. The perspectives of foster youth currently enrolled in higher education is critical to determining which factors and programs have helped with their educational success. Five participants completed semi-structured interviews about their secondary education, …

Lived Experiences Of Mothers Raising Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder In Nigeria, Joyce Itseme Ulofoshio

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Autism has no cure, but early and appropriate diagnosis and intervention may increase outcomes for individuals affected. The level of awareness, acceptance, and support for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in Nigeria is very low. There is a gap in the literature regarding a detailed account of the experiences of parents raising children with ASD within the Nigerian environment and culture. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the perceptions and lived experiences of mothers raising children with ASD in Nigeria including the impact of Nigerian culture on their experiences. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory was the guiding conceptual framework …

Cognitive Demand And The Outcome Density Effect, Ciara Louise Willett

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Judgments regarding the strength of a cause to produce an outcome do not always follow predictions of normative causal reasoning models (Kao & Wasserman, 1993). In the case of the outcome density effect, individuals’ ratings of the strength of a putative cause tend to be greater when the number of observed outcomes is high than when it is low (e.g. Jenkins & Ward, 1965). In the current experiment, I investigated the outcome density effect as a possible heuristic. Participants made causal judgments based on information about the prevalence of headaches in a sample of individuals who did or did not …

What You Know Makes A Difference: Physical Activity Maintenance And Adherence Of Collegiate Students, Vista Beasley, Brooke Thompson, Patrick R. Young, Itay Basevitch

Journal of Counseling and Psychology

For decades, exercise psychology researchers dismissed health/exercise knowledge as a determinant of physical activity (PA). We sought to overturn this misconception, showing that psychological theory may serve as a basis for informing physical education curriculum. Based on social cognitive and self-determined motivation theories, we examined health/exercise knowledge as a determinant of collegiate students’ PA maintenance (i.e., ≥ 6 months of regular PA involvement); adherence to United States Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS) 2008 PA guidelines; and PA types (i.e., aerobic, weight training). Collegiate students (n = 231) provided data via online survey. ANOVA analyses revealed that knowledge …

Learning To Think Slower: Review Of Thinking, Fast And Slow By Daniel Kahneman (2011), Samuel L. Tunstall, Patrick N. Beymer

Numeracy

Daniel Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 499 pp. ISBN 978-0374275631.

As an expansive review of Kahneman and others' work over the past half-century in understanding human decision-making, Thinking, Fast and Slow provides Numeracy readers much to consider for both pedagogy and research. In this review, we outline Kahneman's core argument—that humans use both rash (emotional) System 1 thinking and slow (logical) System 2 thinking—then discuss how such systems might be addressed in a quantitative literacy classroom.

Think Twice: Review Of Thinking, Fast And Slow By Daniel Kahneman (2011), Anne Kelly

Numeracy

Daniel Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 499 pp. ISBN 978-0374275631.

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman significantly sharpens our understanding of human decision-making and the systems of thinking that underlie it. He offers a compelling critique of the rational-agent model, arguing that, while we can and do use reason, we often fall back on a type of thinking that operates quickly and requires less cognitive effort but is vulnerable to faulty belief.

An Investigation Of The Neural Components And Saccade Sequences That Enable Direct Navigation Through Virtual Space, Daniel R. Barto

Psychology ETDs

Spatial navigation is a critical behavior for nearly all life forms. The ability to navigate to a destination and to remember how to return to that destination involves numerous brain processes such as perception, attention, memory, learning, proprioception, and distance estimation. The study of spatial navigation, in various organisms and on different sorts of maze-apparatuses, has revealed what is required of the brain and what is required of the environment to enable successful navigation. This dissertation adds to this vast literature by examining the physiological and behavioral components involved in human navigation in a virtual environment.

The primary aim of …

Perspectives On Personality Assessment Of Children With Limited Cognitive Ability, Jasmine Fayeghi Schnurstein

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Personality assessment can be an important part of diagnosis and treatment planning with children and adolescents. Consequently, research in personality assessment with children and adolescents has received attention; however, there is still limited research in this area with children of below average cognitive capacity. In order to gain better understanding of the current practice of personality assessment of children with below average IQ, this interpretative phenomenological study explores expert psychologists' experience and recommendations for future practice. Structured interviews were conducted with four clinical psychologists with an expertise in personality assessment with children, including children with below average intelligence. Five themes …

Exploring The Prevalence Of Learning Styles In Educational Psychology And Introduction To Education Textbooks: A Content Analysis, Mary Katherine Ryle

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The implementation of learning styles models in the classroom remains a heavily debated topic in education. Notable problems with utilization of learning styles in the classroom include a lack of empirical research support and potential maladaptive effects on student learning and motivation. The primary research questions focused on the presence and quantity of learning styles discussion in the text, which definitions, models, and recommendations were presented, and which of the cited references were based on empirical data. The answers to these questions were compared between educational psychology and introduction to education textbooks. A content analysis of introduction to education (n …

Impact Of Expressive Intensity And Stimulus Location On Emotion Detection, Brittany Nicole Groh

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Previous research demonstrates that the age of an observer, the peripheral location of a face stimulus on a display, and the intensity of the emotion expressed by the face all play a role in emotion perception. Older individuals have more difficulty identifying emotion in faces, especially at lower expressive intensities. The purpose of the current study was to understand how younger and older adults’ abilities to detect emotion in facial stimuli presented in the periphery would be affected by the intensity of the emotional expressions and the distance that the expressions are presented away from the center of the display. …

Growing Up With Porn: The Developmental And Societal Impact Of Pornography On Children, Gail Dines

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Selective Tactile Attention Under Auditory Perceptual Load, Stephanie C. Bowar

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

Previous research has demonstrated that detection of certain stimuli can be increased or decreased by a manipulation of attentional load during a target task. While much of this research focuses on sensory attention, there is some debate regarding whether the effect can be seen across sensory modalities (Kahneman, 1973), or only within the same sensory modality (Wickens, 1980). Additionally, it is unclear whether the effect can be applied to audition. The purpose of the current study was to determine whether irrelevant tactile distractors would be ignored or detected under various levels of auditory stimulation (‘load’). It was predicted that vibrotactile …

Data Sets For “Pubh-D-17-00335r2 Effects Of Selected Socio-Demographic Characteristics On Nutrition Knowledge And Eating Behavior Of Elementary Students In Two Provinces In China”, Ling Qian, Fan Zhang, Ian Newman, Duane F. Shell, Weijing Du

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

The 2 attached digital files are placed in UNL Digital Commons for access by readers of open access journal BMC Public Health < https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/ >. The data set supports the analysis reported in the study “PUBH-D-17-00335R2 Effects of Selected Socio-demographic Characteristics on Nutrition Knowledge and Eating Behavior of Elementary Students in Two Provinces in China” by Ling Qian, MD PhD; Fan Zhang, MD PhD; Ian M. Newman, PhD; Duane F. Shell, PhD; Weijing Du, MD PhD.

The paper has been accepted by BMC Public Health. It is the journal’s policy that the data on which the conclusions are based are …

Aging, Executive Function, Fronto-Parietal Network Cortical Thickness: Insights From Cognitive Reserve, Katherine Reiter

Dissertations (1934 -)

Cognitive reserve (CR) indexes the nonlinear relationship between neurological insult and behavioral change. CR is manifested in both static factors (e.g., childhood environment, education) and modifiable lifestyle factors, (e.g., leisure activities). Detailed investigation of the influence of CR on cortical thickness, which indexes neuropathology, and cognitive functioning could be particularly important in understanding the heterogeneity of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). While memory decline is the hallmark of AD, executive functioning (EF) decline often predates memory changes, making EF an important target for investigating CR influences. The current study examines the relationship of CR and genetic risk for AD (ε4) on EF …

Emotional Memory For Affective Words In Manifest And Prodromal Huntington’S Disease, Patricia Lynn Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Huntington’s disease (HD) patients have been found to have specific deficits in emotional processing, most consistently demonstrating impairment recognizing the emotion expressed on a static face. The purpose of this study was to examine emotional memory in HD, which has not yet been investigated, and its relationship with executive functioning, emotional facial recognition, and the disease progression in HD. An emotional memory task with pleasant, neural, and unpleasant words was administered to control (n=26), prodromal HD (n=26), and manifest HD (n=29) participants in addition to executive function measures, an apathy scale, and emotional facial recognition task. Free recall was not …

A Hilbert Space Geometric Representation Of Shared Awareness And Joint Decision Making, Mustafa Canan

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Two people in the same situation may ascribe very different meanings to their experiences. They will form different awareness, reacting differently to shared information. Various factors can give rise to this behavior. These factors include, but are not limited to, prior knowledge, training, biases, cultural factors, social factors, team vs. individual context, time, resources, and technology. At the individual level, the differences in attaining separate actions by accessing shared information may not be considered as an anomaly from the perspective of rational decision-making. But for group behavior, reacting differently to the shared information can give rise to conflicts and deviations …

Psychometric Comparison Of Dissociative Experiences Scales Ii And C: A Weak Trauma-Dissociation Link, Lawrence Patihis, Steven Jay Lynn

Faculty Publications

The debate regarding the relationship between dissociation and trauma has raised questions regarding the validity of measures of dissociation. Dalenberg et al.'s (2012) meta-analysis included studies using the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES II), but excluded the DES-Comparison (DES-C) scale, claiming that it lacked validity as a measure of dissociation. Lynn et al. (2014) contended that omitting those studies might have skewed the results. In the current study, we compared the psychometric properties of both measures in two nonclinical US adult (student, general population) samples to evaluate the convergent and discriminant validity of the scales. We found support for the DES-II …

The Effect Of Narrative Feedback On The Learning And Transfer Of Complex Communication Skills, Rebecca A. Kennedy

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the present research was to examine the effects of narrative performance feedback on learning and transfer of intercultural communication skills learned in an experiential training task. It was predicted that feedback based on a narrative structure, especially from a first-person perspective, would enhance learning by providing schemas for memory organization, contextual information, and emotional content. Using a healthcare-related training task, participants learned the CRASH principles of intercultural sensitivity and then performed a low-fidelity, text-based simulated conversation with a patient and patient’s family member. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three kinds of performance feedback: didactic, third-person …

Can We Talk?: Synergistic Effects Of Cognitive And Behavioral Frameworks To Address Substance Use And Abuse, Lauren Jaye Adams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Behavioral economic accounts of substance use have provided a novel framework to examine constraints that affect behaviorally driven outcomes. Several behavioral studies support the application of such frameworks to examine impulsive decision-making processes as well as how subjective reward influences substance use. Based on stimulus-response models, behavioral economic research often applies mathematical formulas to draw conclusions about behavioral outcomes. These mathematical formulas, while useful, largely ignore decades of cognitive psychology research that have examined state-based influences (e.g., mood, environment, motivational processes, etc.) on behavioral sequelae. To address this issue, the present study merged a cognitive framework into two behavioral economic …

I Love Myself! The Effects Of Positive Self-Talk On Behavior, Martmargret Charles, Rachel Huesman, Sharon Benton

Celebration of Student Scholarship Poster Sessions Archive

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Mood On Processing In Event-Based Prospective Memory, Rachel A. Workman

Theses and Dissertations

Different moods seem to elicit different processing styles (Hunt & McDaniel, 1993, Storbeck & Clore, 2005) and mood has been shown to affect retrospective memory in many ways. The current research investigated how induced mood affects event-based prospective memory (PM). The current study examined mood effects on focal and non-focal PM retrieval. Participants were induced into either a depressive or elated state using Velten statements directly prior to retrieval of the PM task. A main effect of task type was found, such that those in the focal condition completed the task quicker and more accurately than those in the non-focal …

How Social Reactions To Alcohol-Related Facial Flushing Are Affected By Gender, Relationship, And Drinking Purposes: Implications For Education To Reduce Aerodigestive Cancer Risks, Ian Newman, Lanyan Ding, Duane F. Shell, Lida Lin

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Alcohol-related facial flushing is a sign of compromised alcohol metabolism and increased risk of certain cancers. This project examined how facial flushing might be used to reduce alcohol use to lower cancer risks. Interviews with Chinese university students identified gender, friendship, and drinking purpose as important variables related to whether someone would encourage a person who flushes when drinking alcohol to stop or reduce their drinking. A questionnaire was developed that incorporated these variables into 24 drinking scenarios in which someone flushed while drinking. Students responded whether they would (a) encourage the flusher to stop or drink less; (b) do …

Mental Skills Training In Martial Arts, Megan Rinderer, Adam Bernero

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

The following case recounts the experiences of two entry-level consultants implementing a 6-week Mental Skills Training program with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) athletes. Both consultants identify with an Acceptance and Commitment (ACT) approach to mental skills training. Each consultant worked with a BJJ athlete for six weeks, integrating mental skills interventions into the athletes’ existing training regimen. Overall, the interventions focused on cognitive defusion techniques, identifying and developing emotional intelligence, self-regulating arousal levels, and managing energy and attention. Consultants relied heavily on mindfulness exercises as well as biofeedback technology in order to identify, develop, and refine the psychological skills crucial …

Entertainment-Education Videos As A Persuasive Tool In The Substance Use Prevention Intervention "Keepin' It Real", Youngju Shin, Michelle Miller-Day, Michael L. Hecht, Janice L. Krieger

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Based on social cognitive theory and narrative engagement theory, the current study examined hypothesized indirect effects of engagement with keepin’ it REAL (kiR) curriculum entertainment–education (E–E) videos on youth alcohol use via youth drug offer refusal efficacy. Students in 7th grade (N = 1,464) at 25 public schools in two Midwestern states were randomly assigned to one of the two versions of the kiR curriculum, the kiR urban version and the kiR rural version. Each version had their own set of five culturally-grounded E–E videos depicting communicative skills to refuse drug offers. Differential effects for engagement components …

Pulse - A Consultation, Barry J. Mauer

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured 53 at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. We may never know or understand what was in Mateen’s mind, but we can situate his attack within the history of eliminationism in America. Islamist terrorism is just part of a larger phenomenon: right wing eliminationism. But despite centuries of right wing eliminationist words and deeds in the U.S., there is little or no mainstream recognition of the phenomenon. Instead, we are treated to more denial, more distraction, more obfuscation. Until we look this problem squarely in the face, it will …

Spatial-Relational Learning And Memory Deficits Associated With Nmdar Autoantibodies In Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Brittany L. Bascetta

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Individuals with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) experience inflammation that may target any organ within the body, including the central and peripheral nervous systems. Additionally, these individuals often demonstrate psychological dysfunctions including emotional and cognitive deficits; however, research is inconsistent as to the nature and cause of these dysfunctions. While there are multiple factors that may increase risk for variability in cognitive function, such as population differences, socioeconomic status (SES), mood disorders (depression and anxiety), medication effects, and disease activity, these factors do not reliably predict the severity and extent of cognitive deficits. A growing body of animal research associates autoantibodies …

Automatically Guilty: Associations Between Evidence And Guilt, William E. Crozier Iv

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Both real-life cases and laboratory research demonstrate that confession evidence is very convincing—even when it should not be. Could this be due to an automatic association between a confession and guilt? We tested this possibility using a Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) list, which measures automatic associations by presenting participants with a list of words that are thematically related but, importantly, lack the word describing the theme (“critical lure”). When the association between the list words and the theme is sufficiently strong, participants incorrectly report seeing the critical lure. We hypothesized that participants would show more false recall for seeing “guilty” on a …