Psychology Commons^™

A Review Of The Models Of Schizophrenia: And A Putative Novel, More Unified Model, Michael Vogel Bronstein

Modern Psychological Studies

Schizophrenia is a debilitating disease state which causes immense pain to sufferers and to their families. Although some proximate causes of symptoms of the disease have been identified, no ultimate cause has been uncovered which can explain all of the symptoms. This paper presents a novel theory of the ultimate cause of some forms of chronic schizophrenia with the potential to explain many (if not all) symptomologies associated with the disease. In addition to its explanatory power, this putative model may also give rise to new early diagnostic tools and treatments for schizophrenia. After the model is fully explained, suggestions …

Defining College Experiences And Changing Drinking Trends Over The Course Of One Freshman Semester, Cipriano Louis Apicelli

Honors Theses

The first semester of college is a formative stage in the lives of young adults. It is a period of transformation and adaptation, and certain experiences may set the tone for the rest of the student's college career. It has long been apparent that a number of problems at the level of secondary education can be traced to the use and, particularly, the abuse of alcohol. Problems with alcohol consumption as one of the contributing factors range from poor grades, emergency room visits, to events such as unwanted sexual advances and in extreme cases, even assaults. In this study, I …

Attaching Meaning To Sex: Attachment Styles And Possible Mediators Of Safe Sex Behavior, Dominic Antonacci

Honors Theses

Attachment theory, first posited by Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980), has been expanded and applied to many aspects of human development as well as to adult relationships. Hazan and Shaver (1987), for example, define romantic relationships as an interaction between caregiving, attachment, and sex. It would then be expected that attachment has an effect on sexual behavior, and indeed, Strachman and Impett (2009) have reported that anxious individuals are typically less likely to use condoms than avoidant individuals. This study attempted to explore the link between attachment and beliefs about sex and condom use as possible mediators for the differences seen …

Boredom And Memory For Positively And Negatively Valenced Words, James Kirchner

Honors Theses

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether boredom affected memory for positively and negatively valenced words in addition to class names (e.g., History) that were presented in an auditory modality while participants listened to a recorded script. This was accomplished by comparing the recall of a doodling group, who were asked to shade in shapes while listening to a recorded script, with a non-doodling group, who simply listened to the script. The results indicated that participants in the non-doodling group recalled more class names (e.g. History) from the script than participants in the doodling group. In addition, …

Analysis Of Body Type Preferences Among Young Adults, Khyati Maheshkumar Ganatra

Honors Theses

Based on a study conducted by Devendra Singh in 1993, it is believed that males prefer females with a lower waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7, as compared to higher ones. This may be due to the evolutionary advantage of these females being more fertile and able to reproduce. However, social media has been suggesting that thinner females are more attractive. One way society measures thinness is by a characteristic known as the 'thigh-gap' that many females strive to obtain. This study was conducted to discover whether or not a difference exists between males and females regarding their preference of the thigh-gap …

Gender Differences Associated With Memory Recall, Lee Morgan Gunn

Honors Theses

This study investigated whether a gender difference existed in the context of romantic relationships. Participants rated positively valanced words and negatively valanced words, that were related to a romantic relationship, on how relevant they were to realistic romantic relationships. Participants were then given a free recall task to recall any words that they rated earlier. The study found that a gender difference did exist in the context of negatively valanced words. Women were more successful in recall of negatively valanced words than men. These findings indicate that women encode emotional information differently than men encode emotional information and recall that …

An Evaluation Of The Penn Resiliency Program For Disruptive Preadolescents In An Elementary School Setting, Mildred Howard

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Penn Resiliency Program in decreasing disruptive behavior, modifying negative automatic thoughts and improving academic achievement. Forty-eight students from two Title I schools in Georgia participated in this study. The Behavior Assessment Scale for Children, Second Edition, Progress Monitor, The Children's Automatic Thoughts Scale and report card grades were used to evaluate program effectiveness. Research results suggest the program effectively reduced negative automatic thoughts and improved academic performance.

Validation Of A Recurrent Nitroglycerin Migraine Model In The Rat, Ainslee Johnson

Honors Theses

The present research sought to determine if repeated nitroglycerin (NTG) administrations elicited responses on clinically relevant behavioral endpoints of migraine in rats. Rats were given five saline, three NTG or five NTG administrations over a two-week period. After their fifth injection rats were evaluated using the rat grimace scale, modified light/dark box, thermal tail flick tests, elevated plus maze and forced swim test. Repeated NTG administration affected weight gain, movement in the modified light/dark box and photophobia. The thermal tail flick tests, elevated plus maze and forced swim test did not reveal treatment effects. Based on these findings, we conclude …

Mother–Infant Interactions In Free-Ranging Rhesus Macaques: Relationships Between Physiological And Behavioral Variables, Dario Maestripieri, Christy L. Hoffman, George M. Anderson, C. Sue Carter, J. Dee Higley

Faculty Publications

Studies of mother–infant relationships in nonhuman primates have increasingly attempted to understand the neuroendocrine bases of interindividual variation in mothering styles and the mechanisms through which early exposure to variable mothering styles affects infant behavioral development. In this study of free-ranging rhesus macaques on Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico, we aimed to: 1) compare lactating and nonlactating females to investigate whether lactation is associated with changes in plasma cortisol, prolactin and oxytocin, as well as changes in CSF levels of serotonin and dopamine metabolites (5-HIAA and HVA); 2) examine the extent to which interindividual variation in maternal physiology is associated with …

Interest And Informational Preferences Regarding Genomic Testing For Modest Increases In Colorectal Cancer Risk, Wendy C. Birmingham, A E. Anderson, K G. Flores, Watcharaporn Boonyasiriwat, Amanda Gammon, Wendy Kohlmann, M D. Schwartz, J Samadder, K Boucher, A Y. Kinney

Faculty Publications

Background/Aims: This study explored the interest in genomic testing for modest changes in colorectal cancer risk and preferences for receiving genomic risk communications among individuals with intermediate disease risk due to a family history of colorectal cancer. Methods: Surveys were conducted on 272 men and women at intermediate risk for colorectal cancer enrolled in a randomized trial comparing a remote personalized risk communication intervention (TeleCARE) aimed at promoting colonoscopy to a generic print control condition. Guided by Leventhal’s Common Sense Model of Self-Regulation, we examined demographic and psychosocial factors possibly associated with interest in SNP testing. Descriptive statistics and logistic …

Relationship Quality And Oxytocin: Influence Of Stable And Modifiable Aspects Of Relationships, Wendy C. Birmingham, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Kathleen C. Light

Faculty Publications

Prior studies report that couples with higher relationship quality show higher oxytocin (OT) levels, yet other studies report those with higher distress have increased OT. This study investigated these competing predictions in the context of a support enhancement intervention among 34 young married couples (N = 68). Preintervention marital quality (Dyadic Adjustment Scale) was examined for associations with plasma and salivary OT levels 4 weeks apart and for changes between these time points within the intervention group. High relationship quality, not distress, was associated with higher OT in both saliva and plasma at both time points. No significant interaction …

Modeling Change In The Presence Of Non-Randomly Missing Data: Evaluating A Shared Parameter Mixture Model, Scott A. Baldwin, Nisha C. Gottfredson, Daniel J. Bauer

Faculty Publications

In longitudinal research, interest often centers on individual trajectories of change over time. When there is missing data, a concern is whether data are systematically missing as a function of the individual trajectories. Such a missing data process, termed random coefficient-dependent missingness, is statistically non-ignorable and can bias parameter estimates obtained from conventional growth models that assume missing data are missing at random. This paper describes a shared-parameter mixture model (SPMM) for testing the sensitivity of growth model parameter estimates to a random coefficient-dependent missingness mechanism. Simulations show that the SPMM recovers trajectory estimates as well as or better than …

Why Restrictions On The Immigration Of Health Workers Are Unjust, Javier S. Hidalgo

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Some bioethicists and political philosophers argue that rich states should restrict the immigration of health workers from poor countries in order to prevent harm to people in these countries. In this essay, I argue that restrictions on the immigration of health workers are unjust, even if this immigration results in bad health outcomes for people in poor countries. I contend that negative duties to refrain from interfering with the occupational liberties of health workers outweighs rich states’ positive duties to prevent harm to people in sending countries. Furthermore, I defend this claim against the objection that health workers in poor …

The Effects Of A Pro-Eating Disorder Website Across Different Races, Lucrecia Ann Lawer

Masters Theses

This study sought to examine the effects of viewing a Pro-Eating disorder website and how the effects of this website vary across women of different races, what impact the website's racial content has, and what impact the ethnic identity of the participant has on the negative effects of viewing the website. In order to examine the effect of website content, two different Pro-Eating disorder websites were used - one containing images of Black women and one with images of Caucasian women. 93 Black and Caucasian female undergraduate students were recruited to participate in the research study, and the women viewed …

Conditional Goal-Setting As A Mediator In The Relationship Between Mindfulness And Well-Being, Adam De Fina

Masters Theses

Mindfulness is defined as the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment (Kabat-Zinn, 2003). Current research on mindfulness has begun to focus on how mindfulness works by identifying the various mechanisms through which it facilitates well-being (e.g., Carmody, Baer, Lykins, & Olendzki, 2009; Coffey & Hartman, 2008; Hölzel et al., 2011). The present study examined if engaging less in conditional goal-getting (CGS) is one of the mechanisms of action of mindfulness. Conditional goal-setting (GCS) occurs when individuals have become highly committed to accomplishing certain concrete …

A Retrospective Study Of The Link Between Maternal Social Anxiety And College-Student Social Anxiety: Mediating The Role Of Maternal Cognitions & Behaviors, Kyung Won Kim

Masters Theses

Parental social anxiety is a well-established risk factor for child social anxiety. In addition to being passed along genetically, parental anxiety seems to be transmitted partially via environmental factors, such as parental cognitions and behaviors that convey negative expectations toward the child. This paper reviews the current literature linking maternal social anxiety, maternal cognitions, and offspring social anxiety. Using a retrospective design, a mediated model, examining the association between maternal social anxiety and later offspring social anxiety, with maternal cognitions and behaviors during childhood as a mediator was tested. Consistent with the hypothesis, maternal fear of negative evaluation served as …

Understanding Workplace Meetings: A Qualitative Taxonomy Of Meeting Purposes, Joseph A. Allen, Tammy Beck, Cliff Scott, Steven G. Rogelberg

Psychology Faculty Publications

Purpose - Meetings are a workplace activity that deserves increased attention from researchers and practitioners. Previous researchers attempted to develop typologies of meeting purpose with limited success. Through a comparison of classification methodologies, we consider a taxonomy as the appropriate classification scheme for meeting purpose. The goal of our study is to propose a taxonomy of meeting purpose. We then utilize the developed taxonomy to investigate the frequency with which a representative sample of working adults engaged in meetings of these varying purposes. Our proposed taxonomy provides relevant classifications for future research on meetings and serves as a useful tool …

Naturalistic Decision Making In After-Action Review Meetings: The Implementation Of And Learning From Post- Fall Huddles, Roni Reiter-Palmon, Victoria Kennel, Joseph A. Allen, Katherine J. Jones, Anne M. Skinner

Psychology Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to add to our understanding of naturalistic decision making (NDM) in health care and how after-action reviews (AARs) can be utilized as a learning tool to reduce errors. The study focused on the implementation of a specific form of AAR, a post-fall huddle, to learn from errors and reduce patient falls. Utilizing 17 hospitals that participated in this effort, information was collected on 226 falls over a period of 16 months. The findings suggested that the use of self-guided post-fall huddles increased over the time of the project, indicating adoption of the process. Additionally, …

Linking Pre-Meeting Communication To Meeting Effectiveness, Joseph A. Allen, Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock, Nicole Landowski

Psychology Faculty Publications

Purpose – This study investigates the importance of communication that occurs just before workplace meetings (i.e., pre-meeting talk). We explore how four specific types of pre-meeting talk (small talk, work talk, meeting preparatory talk, and shop talk) impact participants' experiences of meeting effectiveness. Moreover, we investigate the role of participants’ personality in the link between pre-meeting talk and perceived meeting effectiveness.

Design/methodology/approach – Data were obtained using an online survey of working adults (N = 252). Because pre-meeting talk has not been studied previously, a new survey measure of meeting talk was developed.

Findings – Pre-meeting small talk was a …

Mothers' Temperament And Personality: Their Roles In Parenting Behaviors, Parent Locus Of Control, And The Outcomes Of Young Children, Jayme Puff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many researchers have used the terms 'temperament' and 'personality' interchangeably when describing parents' behavioral styles. Although individual relationships among parents' temperament and personality, parenting behaviors, other parent characteristics, and young children's outcomes have been documented in the literature, parents' temperament and personality have not been examined collectively in conjunction with parenting and child outcome variables. As part of this study, 214 culturally diverse mothers with young children who ranged in age from 2- to 6-years rated their own temperament and personality, their parenting characteristics, and their young child's functioning (i.e., temperament and emotional and behavioral functioning). When examining mothers' temperament …

Modeling Risk For Sexually Transmitted Infections In Women In A Court-Ordered Substance Treatment Program, Frances Deavers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Developing a comprehensive model of Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) risk factors and their inter-relationships is vital to improving methods of risk identification and treatment delivery. The CDC posed three general categories that may serve as a framework for such a model: sexual network, individual behavior, and social/ structural risk. None of the extant risk models incorporate measures from all three categories. Additionally, none of these models, generally focused on individual behavior, use medical data on infection as their outcome variable. This is problematic because the ultimate outcome of infection is also influenced by sexual network and social/ structural variables, in …

Evaluation Of A Digitally-Automated Alcohol Curriculum Designed To Alter Expectancies And Alcohol Use In First Year College Students, Amy Schreiner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

High-risk alcohol consumption remains a primary public health concern for students on college campuses. In response to this concern the National Advisory Council of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism created a task force to identify and recommend strategies to aid college administrators in implementing effective alcohol programming at their institutions. While most administrators report being aware of these recommendations, many have not successfully implemented empirically supported interventions on their campuses. One significant barrier is the cost and difficulty of training and hiring skilled staff to implement these interventions. Of the strategies identified as effective, challenging alcohol expectancies …

A Multimedia Approach To Game-Based Training: Exploring The Effects Of The Modality And Temporal Contiguity Principles On Learning In A Virtual Environment, Stephen Serge

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There is an increasing interest in using video games as a means to deliver training to individuals learning new skills or tasks. However, current research lacks a clear method of developing effective instructional material when these games are used as training tools and explaining how gameplay may affect learning. The literature contains multiple approaches to training and GBT but generally lacks a foundational-level and theoretically relevant approach to how people learn specifically from video games and how to design instructional guidance within these gaming environments. This study investigated instructional delivery within GBT. Video games are a form of multimedia, consisting …

Children-Robot Interaction: Eye Gaze Analysis Of Children With Autism During Social Interactions, Seyedmohammad Mavadati, Huanghao Feng, S. Silver, Anibal Gutierrez, Mohammad H. Mahoor

Electrical and Computer Engineering: Graduate Student Scholarship

Background:

Typical developing individuals utilize the direction of eye gaze and eye fixation/shifting as crucial elements to transmit socially relevant information (e.g. like, dislike) to others. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), deviant pattern of mutual eye gaze is a noticeable feature that may be one of the earliest (detectable) demonstrations of impaired social skills that would lead to other deficits in ASD Individuals (e.g. delaying development of social cognition and affective construal processes). This can significantly affect the quality of human’s social interactions. Recent studies reveal that children with ASD have superior engagement to the robot-based interaction, and it …

Driving Performance Adaptation Through Practice With And Without Distracters In A Simulated Environment, Marc Gentzler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A preponderance of research points to the detrimental effects of distraction on driving performance. An interesting question is whether practice can improve distracted driving. The results from the few longitudinal simulator-based research studies conducted on driving distraction have been inconclusive. This may be because practice effects could be confounded with participants adapting to driving in the simulator. Therefore, participants in the current studies were trained until performance reached a steady state prior to introducing the distracters. In this dissertation, two single-subject design studies were used to investigate the effects of training on distracted driving. The first study included two participants …

Development And Validation Of The Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injury-Risk-Estimation Quiz (Acl-Iq), Erich J. Petushek

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Over 2 million Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injuries occur annually worldwide resulting in considerable economic and health burdens (e.g., suffering, surgery, loss of function, risk for re-injury, and osteoarthritis). Current screening methods are effective but they generally rely on expensive and time-consuming biomechanical movement analysis, and thus are impractical solutions. In this dissertation, I report on a series of studies that begins to investigate one potentially efficient alternative to biomechanical screening, namely skilled observational risk assessment (e.g., having experts estimate risk based on observations of athletes movements). Specifically, in Study 1 I discovered that ACL injury risk can be accurately …

Component Numeracy Skills And Decision Making, Saima Ghazal

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Numeracy—i.e., one’s practical understanding of mathematics in context—is one of the strongest predictors of people’s general decision making skill, independent of other cognitive abilities (e.g., intelligence, working memory, attentional control). Despite notable scientific progress on the nature of numeracy and decision making, the cognitive and decision sciences have yet to investigate individual differences in numeracy components (e.g., algebra versus probability). In this dissertation, I report on my efforts to develop new measurement technology and quantitative models of cognitive and decision skills. Analyses include the first known investigations of the relations between the major adult component numeracy skills and general decision …

Benevolent Sexism, Perceived Fairness, Decision-Making, And Marital Satisfaction: Covert Power Influences, Monique Brown

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study examined the association between endorsement of benevolent sexism and marital satisfaction in heterosexual marriages, which are perceived as being egalitarian. The goal was to explore how covert power dynamics like those involved in benevolent sexism affect marital satisfaction, and how perceived fairness and decision-making outcomes interact with this relationship. Men and women who have cohabitated with their spouses at least five years were asked to complete measures assessing their endorsement of benevolent sexism and their perceived global marital satisfaction. Participants were also asked to fill out measures examining the mediating effect of perceived fairness and decision-making outcomes. Previous …

Serving Clients With Intellectual Disabilities: Clinical Psychology Training In Apa-Accredited Doctoral Programs, Emily J. Graesser

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

People with intellectual disabilities (ID) experience mental health problems at a higher rate than the general population, yet encounter significant barriers in accessing quality mental health services and have poorer mental health outcomes. Disparities in both psychology research and practice contribute to these barriers, and few mental health practitioners are willing and competent to treat people with ID. Lack of training availability has been suspected as an underlying factor, yet no previous investigation of training has been conducted in the United States. This study utilized a 20-question self-administered internet survey to explore the quantity, quality, and types of training APA-accredited …

Wisc-Iv And Intellectual Disability: A Pilot Study On Hidden Floor Effects, Allyssa M. Lanza

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study is a pilot re-creation of research in the United Kingdom (UK) by Whitaker and Gordon (2012) that assesses for possible floor effects in the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Fourth Edition (WISC-IV). Their study suggested that the Index and Full Scale IQ (FSIQ) scores of low IQ adolescents taking the WISC-IV (UK version) were significantly inflated because low raw scores were converted to scaled scores of 1. Whitaker and Gordon assessed for score inflation and resulting floor effects by creating an alternative scoring system based on the relationship between the lowest raw scores that convert to each WISC-IV …