Psychology Commons^™

The Critical Need For Mental Health Education To Be Mandated In New Mexico's Public Schools, Bonnie L. Murphy

Shared Knowledge Conference

Based on a review of research and best practices in mental health awareness and skills, this inquiry project argues for state legislative policies that would require mental health awareness and skills in the K-12 curriculum. Mental health affects individual accomplishments in every stage of people’s lives beginning in early childhood and throughout the life cycle. Prevention and treatment of mental illness plays a key role in the ability of an individual to cope with loss and develop resiliency and perseverance in challenging times and to make better decisions that improve the individual’s life and the lives of those around them. …

Developmental Perceptual Impairments: Cases When Tone-Deafness And Prosopagnosia Co-Occur, Sébastien Paquette, Hui C. Li, Sherryse L. Corrow, Stephanie S. Buss, Jason J.S. Barton, Gottfried Schlaug

Psychology Faculty Publications

Studies have shown subtle gray and white matter abnormalities in subjects with several developmental disorders including prosopagnosia, tone-deafness, and dyslexia. Correlational evidence suggests that tone-deafness and dyslexia tend to co-occur, suggesting a link between these two developmental disorders. However, it is not known whether tone-deafness can also be associated with other developmental disorders such as impaired face recognition or prosopagnosia. We addressed this question by assessing face perception abilities in a group of tone-deaf individuals and matched non-tone-deaf subjects. The Cambridge (CFMT) and the Warrington (WRMT) face memory tests were used to assess face processing in the combined group of …

A Cohort-Based Program To Help Students Prepare A Conference Research Presentation, Alanna Lecher

Florida Statewide Symposium: Best Practices in Undergraduate Research

Students move through many first time experiences when navigating their undergraduate and graduate education. Such experiences include the first time students submit an article to a peer-reviewed scientific journal, attend a conference, and conduct fieldwork. The cohort model has been shown to be effective in increasing success in undergraduate education, and it can be adapted to helping students succeed in these novel experiences as well. This presentation will explore one program where the cohort model was implemented to aid undergraduate students preparing their first conference presentation on a scientific research project. Program structure and implementation will be described.

Demographics Regarding Belief In Non-Human Animal Sentience And Emotional Empathy With Animals: A Pilot Study Among Attendees Of An Animal Welfare Symposium, Amelia Cornish, Bethany Wilson, David Raubenheimer, Paul Mcgreevy

Societal Attitudes Toward Animals Collection

Attitudes to animals are linked to beliefs about their ability to experience pain and suffering, their cognition, and their sentience. Education and awareness-raising play a pivotal role in increasing society’s consideration of non-human animal welfare. The current pilot study explores the attitudes towards animal welfare among a unique population of people who attended an animal welfare symposium at the University of Sydney. It involved administration of a validated questionnaire that assessed attitudes to animals; specifically exploring participants’ (n = 41) beliefs about the sentience of animals and their emotional empathy with animals. The resultant data revealed significant associations between participants’ …

Looking On The Bright Side Of Livestock Emotions—The Potential Of Their Transmission To Promote Positive Welfare, Luigi Baciadonna, Sandra Duepjan, Elodie Briefer, Mónica Padilla De La Torre, Christian Nawroth

Emotion Collection

Emotions can be defined as an individual’s affective reaction to an external and/or internal event that, in turn, generates a simultaneous cascade of behavioral, physiological, and cognitive changes. Those changes that can be perceived by conspecifics have the potential to also affect other’s emotional states, a process labeled as “emotional contagion.” Especially in the case of gregarious species, such as livestock, emotional contagion can have an impact on the whole group by, for instance, improving group coordination and strengthening social bonds. We noticed that the current trend of research on emotions in livestock, i.e., investigating affective states as a tool …

Does Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation To The Prefrontal Cortex Affect Social Behavior? A Meta-Analysis, Sarah Beth Bell, Nathan Dewall

Psychology Faculty Publications

This meta-analysis (k = 48, N = 2196) examined the effect of transcranial direct current brain stimulation (tDCS) applied to the prefrontal cortex on a variety of social behaviors, including aggression, overeating, impulsivity, bias, honesty, and risk-taking. tDCS showed an overall significant effect on reducing undesirable behaviors, with an average effect size of d = −0.20. tDCS was most effective at reducing risk-taking behavior, bias, and overeating. tDCS did not affect aggression, impulsivity, or dishonesty. We examined moderators such as brain region of interest, online vs offline stimulation, within- vs between-subjects designs, dose, and duration, but none showed significant …

Human-Directed Behaviour In Goats Is Not Affected By Short-Term Positive Handling, Jan Langbein, Annika Krause, Christian Nawroth

Social Cognition Collection

In addition to domestication, interactions with humans or task-specific training during ontogeny have been proposed to play a key role in explaining differences in human–animal communication across species. In livestock, even short-term positive interactions with caretakers or other reference persons can influence human–animal interaction at different levels and over different periods of time. In this study, we investigated human-directed behaviour in the ‘unsolvable task’ paradigm in two groups of domestic goats (Capra aegagrus hircus). One group was positively handled and habituated to a plastic box by the experimenter to retrieve a food reward, while the other group only received standard …

Underlying Contribution Of Executive Functioning To Cognition And Academic Achievement In Individuals With Dystrophinopathy, Robert Fee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dystrophinopathy is a genetic disorder that results in the lack of or abnormal expression of the protein dystrophin. It is a disorder that alters cell structure and function, impacts the developing brain and brain function, presents with multi-domain cognitive deficits, and influences both mood and behavior. Cognitive impairments appear to be more localized to specific areas of functioning rather than a global deficit; however, deficits have been identified across multiple cognitive domains including language and aspects of executive functioning. A careful examination of the cognitive phenotype and its association to mutations affecting CNS isoforms is necessary to clarify the neuropsychological …

The Relationship Between Cognitive And Neural Bases Of Metamemory Judgments, Alexandra M. Gaynor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Metamemory monitoring, the process of making subjective assessments of the status of one’s own memory, is crucial to guiding behavior and effective learning. Past cognitive research has shown that subjective confidence judgments are inferential in nature, and based on cues available at the time of the judgment. When confidence is based on cues that are related to objective memory performance, metamemory accuracy is high. However, past studies have shown that metamemory monitoring tends to be inaccurate because individuals base their confidence on information that is not predictive of memory success, such as the fluency with which items were encoded during …

Dietary Curcumin Promotes Resilience To Chronic Social Defeat Stress In A Highly Susceptible Mouse Strain, Antonio V. Aubry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chronic exposure to stress is a risk factor for the development of major depression and post traumatic stress disorder in humans and induces depressive- and anxiety-like phenotypes in rodents. However, there are few pharmacological interventions available that effectively treat maladaptive responses to chronic stress in the clinical setting. One therapeutic agent that has recently shown promise in treating psychiatric disorders is curcumin, a yellow-pigmented polyphenol compound found in the turmeric plant. Curcumin has been shown to prevent the development of stressed-induced depressive-like behavior in rodents and reduce symptoms of depression in clinically diagnosed patients. In this dissertation, I investigated whether …

Curcumin Inhibits The Ikk:Nf-Kappa B Pathway In Neural Fear Circuits, Miguel A. Briones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The study of how the brain acquires fearful memories has attracted considerable experimental attention, due in part to the promise of discovering novel therapeutic approaches for psychiatric disorders that are characterized by unusually strong and persistent traumatic memories. In recent years, extensive research has focused on studying the neural and molecular mechanisms by which fear memories are acquired, stored, and retrieved in the brain. Once acquired, fear memories may be attenuated using one of 2 procedures: 1) fear extinction, which involves repeated presentation of the fear-arousing stimulus in the absence of an aversive consequence, or 2) interference with the reconsolidation …

Best Integrated Writing 2018 - Complete Edition

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University. The journal is published annually by the Wright State University Department of English Language and Literatures.

Yardwork: A Biography Of An Urban Place By Daniel Coleman, Vivian M. Hansen

The Goose

Review of Daniel Coleman's Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place.

Bubble Stream Production By Belugas (Delphinapterus Leucas), Megan Slack

Theses

Bubble stream production in belugas has been poorly characterized and its function is not well understood. I examined behavioral states when producing bubble streams (“bubbling”), and when bubbling calls, to determine whether bubbling was significantly associated with a particular call category or behavioral state. Using 19 hours of video and audio recordings collected over a two-day period, I quantified bubble streams of a 4-month old calf and an unrelated adult female housed together. Based on the overall activity budgets and pool of vocalizations for both animals, I calculated the expected counts of bubble streams with and without vocalizations, assuming that …

Influences Of Intrinsic And Extrinsic Hand-Feel Touch Cues On Sensory Perception And Emotional Responses Toward Beverage Products, Ragita Cantika Pramudya

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Consumer perception of and preference toward products are influenced by intrinsic product-specific (e.g., product temperature) and extrinsic non-product-specific (e.g., packaging or container) characteristics. Besides communicating information between products and consumers to create expectations toward the content at the point of sale, packaging also influences sensory perception of the content during consumption. Previous cross-modal studies on packaging effects on the content had largely overlooked hand-feel touch cues. Touch closely relates to consumers’ emotional responses to and their quality evaluation of products. One way to manipulate hand-feel touch cues in a beverage consumption setting is to vary materials of cup sleeve, which …

The Effect Of Maoa And Stress Sensitivity On Crime And Delinquency: A Replication Study, Christa C. Christ, Joseph A. Schwartz, Scott F. Stoltenberg, Jonathan R. Brauer, Jukka Savolainen

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Across several meta-analyses, MAOA-uVNTR genotype has been associated with an increased risk for antisocial behavior among males who experienced early life adversity. Subsequently, early life stress and genetic susceptibility may have long-term effects on stress sensitivity later in life. In support of this assumption, a recent study found evidence, in two independent samples, for a three-way interaction effect (cG × E × E) such that proximate stress was found to moderate the interactive effect of MAOA-uVNTR and distal stress on crime and delinquency among males. In light of recent developments in cG × E research, we attempted to …

Examining The Associative Learning And Accumbal Dopaminergic Mechanisms Of Caffeine Reinforcement, Curtis Bradley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Caffeine is the most consumed psychoactive substance in the world, and most caffeine consumption in coffee and energy drinks is intended to produce a psychoactive effect. However, caffeine is not a primary reinforcer in preclinical paradigms – non-human species do not reliably take the drug to produce a psychoactive effect. However, caffeine is a ‘reinforcement enhancer’ in preclinical models; the effects of caffeine increase the motivation to obtain other non-drug reinforcers. The overall goal of this project was to determine if these reinforcement enhancing effects of caffeine could promote caffeine self-administration and to subsequently investigate the behavioral and neurochemical underpinnings …

Complexities And Challenges Of Nonduality, Elizabeth Stephens

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

States of consciousness referred to as nonduality, awakening, enlightenment, moksha, peak experience, unitive states, or void states, among other terms, have garnered increasing secular attention and have become a topic of psychological and neuroscientific research. A review of the literature revealed many challenges to studying this set of states, such as inconsistent conceptualizations, a variety of models and theories, and conflicting descriptions indicating that the actual experience may not live up to the superlative descriptions found in historical texts or the expectations put forth by nondual teachers. A great deal more empirical research on this topic is needed, and researchers …

Goats Prefer Positive Human Emotional Facial Expressions, Christian Nawroth, Natalia Albuquerque, Carine Savalli, Marie-Sophie Single, Alan G. Mcelligott

Social Cognition Collection

Domestication has shaped the physiology and the behaviour of animals to better adapt to human environments. Therefore, human facial expressions may be highly informative for animals domesticated for working closely with people, such as dogs and horses. However, it is not known whether other animals, and particularly those domesticated primarily for production, such as goats, are capable of perceiving human emotional cues. In this study, we investigated whether goats can distinguish human facial expressions when simultaneously shown two images of an unfamiliar human with different emotional valences (positive/ happy or negative/angry). Both images were vertically attached to a wall on …

Functional Polymorphisms Of Alcohol Metabolism Genes And Their Protection Against Alcoholism Via Gene Therapy: A Systematic Review, Olivia Tzeng

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Around 45% of East Asians are unable to fully metabolize ethanol due to functional

polymorphisms of alcohol metabolism genes, specifically alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) and aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH). These individuals display high levels of toxic blood acetaldehyde when consuming alcohol, causing symptoms such as tachycardia, vomiting, and flushing. The studies included in this review examine how functional polymorphisms of ADH and ALDH protect against alcoholism in addition to how polymorphisms can be utilized as protection against alcoholism via gene therapy. The studies included found that carriers of the ADH and ALDH polymorphisms were 66 to 99% genetically protected against alcoholism. Through …

Inactivation Of The Medial-Prefrontal Cortex Impairs Interval Timing Precision, But Not Timing Accuracy Or Scalar Timing In A Peak-Interval Procedure In Rats, Catalin V. Buhusi, Marcelo B. Reyes, Cody-Aaron Gathers, Sorinel A. Oprisan, Mona Buhusi

Psychology Faculty Publications

Motor sequence learning, planning and execution of goal-directed behaviors, and decision making rely on accurate time estimation and production of durations in the seconds-to-minutes range. The pathways involved in planning and execution of goal-directed behaviors include cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuitry modulated by dopaminergic inputs. A critical feature of interval timing is its scalar property, by which the precision of timing is proportional to the timed duration. We examined the role of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in timing by evaluating the effect of its reversible inactivation on timing accuracy, timing precision and scalar timing. Rats were trained to time two durations in a …

Direct Current Stimulation Of Endothelial Monolayers Induces A Transient And Reversible Increase In Transport Due To The Electroosmotic Effect, Limary M. Cancel, Katherin Arias, Marom Bikson, John M. Tarbell

Publications and Research

We investigated the effects of direct current stimulation (DCS) on fluid and solute transport across endothelial cell (EC) monolayers in vitro. Our motivation was transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) that has been investigated for treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders, to enhance neurorehabilitation, and to change cognition in healthy subjects. The mechanisms underlying this diversity of applications remain under investigation. To address the possible role of blood-brain barrier (BBB) changes during tDCS, we applied direct current to cultured EC monolayers in a specially designed chamber that generated spatially uniform direct current. DCS induced fluid and solute movement across EC layers that persisted …

Hypocrisy And Corruption: How Disparities In Power Shape The Evolution Of Social Control, Omar T. Eldakar, J. Oliver Kammeyer, Nikhil Nagabandi, Andrew C. Gallup

Biology Faculty Articles

Altruism presents an evolutionary paradox, as altruistic individuals are good for the group yet vulnerable to exploitation by selfish individuals. One mechanism that can effectively curtail selfishness within groups is punishment. Here, we show in an evolutionary game-theoretical model that punishment can effectively evolve and maintain high levels of altruism in the population, yet not all punishment strategies were equally virtuous. Unlike typical models of social evolution, we explicitly altered the extent to which individuals vary in their power over others, such that powerful individuals can more readily punish and escape the punishment of others. Two primary findings emerged. Under …

Human Demonstration Does Not Facilitate The Performance Of Horses (Equus Caballus) In A Spatial Problem-Solving Task, Joan-Bryce Burla, Janina Siegwart, Christian Nawroth

Spatial Cognition Collection

Horses’ ability to adapt to new environments and to acquire new information plays an important role in handling and training. Social learning in particular would be very adaptive for horses as it enables them to flexibly adjust to new environments. In the context of horse handling, social learning from humans has been rarely investigated but could help to facilitate management practices. We assessed the impact of human demonstration on the spatial problem-solving abilities of horses during a detour task. In this task, a bucket with a food reward was placed behind a double-detour barrier and 16 horses were allocated to …

Wearable Assistive Technologies For Autism: Opportunities And Challenges, Emma Mansouri Benssassi, Juan-Carlos Gomez, Louanne E. Boyd, Gillian R. Hayes, Juan Ye

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Autism is a lifelong developmental condition that affects how people perceive the world and interact with others. Challenges with typical social engagement, common in the autism experience, can have a significant negative impact on the quality of life of individuals and families living with autism. Recent advances in sensing, intelligent, and interactive technologies can enable new forms of assistive and augmentative technologies to support social interactions. However, researchers have not yet demonstrated effectiveness of these technologies in long-term real-world use. This article presents an overview of the social and sensory challenges of autism, which offer great opportunities and challenges for …

Processing Emotional Expression In The Dance Of A Foreign Culture: Gestural Responses Of Germans And Koreans To Ballet And Korean Dance, Zi Hyun Kim, Hedda Lausberg

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

Artistic dance differs between cultures with regard to the formal movement repertoire and methods to represent dancer's emotions. The present study explores how differently the spectators perceive the dance scenes of their own and foreign cultures. We showed German and Korean participants sad and happy dance scenes of the French ballet Giselle and Korean dance Sung-Mu. To learn the perceived thoughts and feelings of the participant from the dance scenes, we analyzed the frequency of their hand movements and gestures, which were accompanied by verbal descriptions of the participant's appreciation immediately after observation of the dance stimuli. The videotaped …

When Less Is More: Mindfulness Predicts Adaptive Affective Responding To Rejection Via Reduced Prefrontal Recruitment, Alexandra M. Martelli, David S. Chester, Kirk Warren Brown, Naomi I. Eisenberger, C. Nathan Dewall

Psychology Faculty Publications

Social rejection is a distressing and painful event that many people must cope with on a frequent basis. Mindfulness—defined here as a mental state of receptive attentiveness to internal and external stimuli as they arise, moment-to-moment—may buffer such social distress. However, little research indicates whether mindful individuals adaptively regulate the distress of rejection—or the neural mechanisms underlying this potential capacity. To fill these gaps in the literature, participants reported their trait mindfulness and then completed a social rejection paradigm (Cyberball) while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Approximately 1 hour after the rejection incident, participants reported their level of distress during …

Incubation Under Climate Warming Affects Behavioral Lateralisation In Port Jackson Sharks, Catarina Vila Pouca, Connor Gervais, Joshua Reed, Culum Brown

Laterality Collection

Climate change is warming the world’s oceans at an unprecedented rate. Under predicted end-of-century temperatures, many teleosts show impaired development and altered critical behaviors, including behavioral lateralisation. Since laterality is an expression of brain functional asymmetries, changes in the strength and direction of lateralisation suggest that rapid climate warming might impact brain development and function. However, despite the implications for cognitive functions, the potential effects of elevated temperature in lateralisation of elasmobranch fishes are unknown. We incubated and reared Port Jackson sharks at current and projected end-of-century temperatures and measured preferential detour responses to left or right. Sharks incubated at …

If You Experience Sexual Harassment You Must Report It... Right?, Alejandra M. Rosales

Intersections: Critical Issues in Education

No abstract provided.

Linking Signal Detection Theory And Encoding Models To Reveal Independent Neural Representations From Neuroimaging Data, Fabian A. Soto

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.