Psychology Commons^™

The Beliefs, Events, And Values Inventory (Bevi): Implications And Applications For Therapeutic Assessment And Intervention, Jared Cozen

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Within the larger mental health field, practicing clinicians are faced with an overwhelming number of different therapeutic models and intervention techniques (Norcross, 2005). These approaches often employ different psychological constructs to guide clinical treatment and define therapeutic change (Henriques, 2011; Levitt, Stanley, & Frankel, 2005; Magnavita, 2010; Wachtel, 1997). However, there is a lack of current assessment measures that are both broad and flexible enough to operationally define and measure constructs from all three of the different psychotherapeutic traditions (Levitt, Stanley, Fankel, & Raina, 2005; Steele, Steele, & Murphy, 2009). Five potential common assessment factors and associated scales on the …

Understanding The Gendered Self: Implications From Ei Theory, Ei Self, And The Bevi, Christen Pendleton

Dissertations, 2014-2019

The current study focuses on theory, data and analyses from the Forum BEVI Project (www.ibavi.org/content/featured-projects/), a national learning assessment initiative, with a particular emphasis on the “Gender Traditionalism” scale from the Beliefs, Events and Values Inventory (BEVI). Because Gender Traditionalism is central to Equilintegration Theory (EI Theory), the EI Self and the Beliefs Events and Values Inventory (BEVI), issues of definition, measurement and theory are considered with respect to this model, framework and method along with an examination of data and analyses from the BEVI, which are relevant to a deeper understanding of this construct. Results suggest that the EI …

Teacher Child Interaction Training (Tcit) Creates A Positive Classroom Environment: Improving Attachment And Management Of Child Behavior Problems, Kara Devers

Dissertations, 2014-2019

By improving the quality of early teacher-child relationships, a child may improve his socio-emotional competence and decrease problem behaviors. Teacher Child Interaction Training (TCIT), adapted from Parent Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), is a school-based prevention program in which teachers are taught to use the principles of learning and behavior management in the classroom to enhance positive interactions and attachment, and to prevent and reduce problem behaviors in young children. In the present study, changes in teacher and child behavior were experimentally analyzed within a multiple-baseline design across two classrooms with five teachers and thirty nine preschool children. Teacher and child …

The Treatment Of Missing Data When Estimating Student Growth With Pre-Post Educational Accountability Data, Jason P. Kopp

Dissertations, 2014-2019

To ensure program quality and meet accountability mandates, it is becoming increasingly important for educational institutions to show “value-added” for attending students. Value-added is often evidenced by some form of pre-post assessment, where a change in scores on a construct of interest is considered indicative of student growth. Although missing data is a common problem for these pre-post designs, missingness is rarely addressed and cases with missing data are often listwise deleted. The current study examined the mechanism underlying, and bias resulting from, missingness due to posttest nonattendance in a higher-education accountability testing context. Although data were missing for some …

Using A Visual Analogue Scale To Assess Delay, Social, And Probability Discounting Of An Environmental Loss, Brent A. Kaplan, Derek D. Reed, Todd Mckerchar

Research, Publications & Creative Work

As anthropogenic influences on climate change become more readily apparent, the role of behavioral science in understanding barriers to sustainable actions cannot be overstated. Environmental psychologists have proposed that a major barrier to sustainability is the delayed, socially distant, and probabilistic effects of public policy efforts aimed at preserving Earth’s resources. This proposal places sustainability squarely within the research topic of delay, social, and probability discounting – processes well known to behavioral scientists. To date, there has been surprisingly little behavioral research examining the role of discounting processes in environmental decision making. In the present study, we examined the degree …

Lqts Patients’ Satisfaction With Emergency Room Care, Stephanie H. Felgoise, Katherine Lawrence, Victoria L. Vetter

Research Day

Abstract: Long QT Syndrome (LQTS) is a genetic condition affecting 1:2,500 that predisposes individuals to cardiac arrhythmias (Ellis et al., 2009). Life threatening symptoms are often unpredictable although there are known triggers to LQTS specific cardiac events. Triggers include physical exertion, emotional upset, and sleep. Events could be triggered by medications, dehydration, and other circumstances that affect cardiac rhythm. Treatments include betablockers, pacemakers, internal cardioverter defibrillators, and automated external defibrillator as precautionary measures. As such, LQTS patients often present to their emergency room (ER) when they become symptomatic. Research suggests that LQTS patients’ experience dissatisfaction in the ER and treatment …

Affect Perception In Computer Mediated Communication, Rachel E. Townsend, Chris Allen

Student Research Symposium

The perception of affect influences the subjective perception of an individual’s environment (Isbell & Burns, n.d.). Accurate affect perception leads to increased resilience and positive coping mechanisms when faced with daily life stressors (Robinson, 2012). Communication technologies have revolutionized the ways in which individuals connect to one another professionally and socially (Walther, 1996). This study investigated accurate affect perception in computer mediated communication (CMC) from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Communication research posit several theories to accommodate the ways in which we communicate using CMC (J. B. Walther, 1996). Personality research has documented the correlation between the traits extraversion and neuroticism with …

The Power Of The Gaze: Self- And Partner-Objectification Within Same-Sex Relationships, Diane Smedberg

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Most of the literature concerning objectification is focused on the individual experiences and the consequences that manifest from objectification. This study sought to address the gap in the existing literature on objectification theory by examining self- and partner- objectification in the context of same-sex relationships. The primary hypothesis of the current study is that gay men experience higher levels of self-objectification and partner-objectification than do lesbian women. A secondary aim of the study was to explore related variables, including enjoyment of sexualization, drive for muscularity, thinness attitudes, internalized heterosexism, and fear of HIV/AIDS. Participants were gay men (n = 32) …

Promoting Independence Among Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Emma Schack

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

Autism spectrum disorders are characterized by deficits in social and cognitive functioning. Many individuals with autism have poor executive functioning which inhibits their ability to initiate a task, to remain attentive, and to organize and sequence information. Poor executive functioning can also make it difficult to generalize learned skills. As a result of these developmental weaknesses, individuals with autism spectrum disorders struggle to function independently. The use of pictorial activity schedules, videos, work systems, and social stories can be implemented to help individuals with autism spectrum disorders become increasingly independent, while reducing the need for adult prompting.

Promoting Positive Attitudes Toward Individuals With Down Syndrome: The Relationship Between Indirect Contact Interventions And The Quality Of Previous Contact, Nadine M. Rooney

Psychology Honors Projects

The present study examined the influence of two indirect contact interventions (i.e., viewing a positive image of a man with DS and imagining a positive interaction with a man with DS) on nondisabled individuals’ attitudes toward those with DS. Additionally, this study explored the nature of the relationship between previous contact (i.e., quantity and quality) and the effectiveness of said interventions. In this two-part study, 87 participants reported their attitudes and liking toward individuals with DS, as well as the quantity and quality of previous contact. One week later, participants completed a lab session that involved viewing a picture of …

Toward A Novel Model Of Pain In Zebrafish: Exposure To Water Containing Dilute Concentrations Of Acetic Acid, Amanda D. Currie

Psychology Honors Projects

Existing models of pain in zebrafish (Danio rerio) require injection of acetic acid into localized areas including the lips. We are currently developing an alternative assay of pain in zebrafish that involves immersion in dilute concentrations of acetic acid. This assay involves placing subjects in a 120 mL beaker containing 100 mL of water taken from the subject’s original tank. After a 20-minute acclimation period, the experimental substances are added, if applicable. Subjects are exposed to the experimental substances for 30 minutes (unless otherwise specified), after which they are returned to their original tanks. A series of studies …

Improv To Improve Interprofessional Communication, Team Building, Patient Safety, And Patient Satisfaction, Candace A. Campbell

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

The purpose of this process improvement project was to implement a test of change within a healthcare team utilizing applied improvisational exercises (AIEs), and to lay the groundwork for more effective inter- and intra-professional communication.

Literature review: AIEs have been shown to facilitate individual participant communication strengths through a process of un-learning certain common behavioral habits, and learning new habits that assist in creating and expanding closed-loop communication. Such un-learning and learning enriches the participant’s awareness of the environment and encourages participant adaptability through positive group interactions.

Method: An all-day AIE seminar/workshop was conducted with members of two healthcare teams …

The Experience Of Stress In Women Diagnosed With Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, Amanda Canavatchel

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a complex endocrine disorder that affects multiple organ systems within the female body, hallmarked by infertility, the possibility of androgen excess, and the possibility of ovulatory dysfunction. Along with a myriad of physiological symptoms, PCOS is also associated with many psychological issues, including an increased incidence of depression, anxiety, and lower reported quality of life among women diagnosed with PCOS. The need for treatment directed to attenuate any psychological implications of the syndrome has become increasingly important are of research. While some researchers have focused on PCOS in a psychosocial perspective, including analysis on depression, …

Wilderness, Kathryn E. Bucolo

Celebration

The collection of short stories I have written focuses on how people process (or do not process) tragedy, especially as related to themes of grief, memory, and faith. Most of the stories I have written are dysfunctional narratives in that they do not necessarily provide solid conclusions or solutions for the characters or readers, reflecting current trends in literature to move away from the didactic and moralistic in favor of the ambiguous and unstable, the hopeless and sorrowful. In "Wilderness", one of the pieces I wrote for my collection, Robert struggles with the death of his wife when he realizes …

Male Hypergamy And Social Status, Cedric N. Floyd

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

Male hypergamy, a social pattern rarely observed, has been prevalent throughout history as a symbol of social status for men. Hypergamy is the act of marrying into a higher social class or caste. This paper analyzes a few exemplary men ranging from the Italian Renaissance to Twenty-First Century America to make note of this pattern and attempts to understand how it affects the social order in middle-to-upper class society. The research, gathered from various books on class and society, presents an idea of various men who have, in some way or another, used their marriages as a social asset and …

The Effect Of Patient Education On Anxiety Levels In Patients Receiving Chemotherapy For The First Time, Sarah Garcia

Evidence-Based Practice Project Reports

Cancer affects approximately 1.5 million people every year throughout the United States.Comprehensive care that includes psychosocial aspects is important to help patients effectively adapt to their diagnosis and treatment plan. Improper prevention and management of anxiety can lead to poor psychosocial outcomes, dissatisfaction with care, and decreased adherence to treatment. Current evidence suggests that education is effective at helping reduce anxiety in patients receiving chemotherapy for the first time. The purpose of this evidenced based practice project was to determine if nurse-led patient education regarding chemotherapy side effects, side-effect management, and orientation to the infusion center was effective at decreasing …

The Use Of Stress Reduction Techniques In Nursing Education, Jennifer S. Bauer

Evidence-Based Practice Project Reports

Stress is a complex phenomenon that has significant effects on students which may disturb their physiological, psychological, and spiritual health and well-being. Nursing students have been identified to be at high risk for stress during their education. Stress can arise from new clinical experiences, academic load, and personal stressors (Jones & Johnston, 2006). This increase in stress can lead to the student’s inability to assimilate and learn within the classroom and clinical settings. A review of the literature provided evidence that reported a positive relationship between guided imagery and a decrease in stress and anxiety. This evidence-based practice (EBP) project …

The New Normal: Goodness Judgments Of Non-Invariant Speech, Julia R. Drouin

Honors Scholar Theses

Previous research has found that perceptual learning, or normalizing the idiosyncratic phonemes of speech, causes a shift in speech sound category boundaries. The present study examined if perceptual learning was limited to the boundary or if also caused a shift in internal category structure. Seventeen individuals participated in three behavioral tasks to explicate this question. In the Lexical Decision task, participants were trained in either /s/-biasing or /ʃ/- biasing context. In the Goodness Judgment task, participants rated a continuum of sounds on perceived /s/ goodness using a designated scale. Finally, in the Phoneme Identification task, participants listened to the same …

Mode, Method, And Medium: The Affordance Of Online Tutorials In The Writing Center, Erik V. Holtz

Honors Scholar Theses

While the body of literature regarding online tutorials in the writing center is growing, researchers seem hesitant to fully endorse, or even commend, online writing tutorials. This seems appropriate for work in communication theory and human-computer interaction; working across a medium may be different, but this could create new and interesting ways of tutoring. This research reports on a comparative analysis of online and in-person tutoring at three different universities, focusing on tutor self-perceptions and on affordances, a concept drawn from systems engineering, human-computer interaction and ecological psychology. Unstructured interviewing is used to create a set of preliminary affordances of …

Single And Ready To Mingle: Factors Affecting Risky Sexual Behavior, Ines Castro, Jacqueline Charlton, Rebecca Stoutamyer, Katherine Kimball

CLAS: Colby Liberal Arts Symposium

College students today are having a lot of unprotected sex with multiple partners, making the risk of college students contracting an STI extremely high. Previous research has found that high self-esteem increase the likelihood that an individual will use a condom. It has also been found that extroversion leads to decreased condom use, perhaps due to the fact that extroverts are more likely to seek out risky situations. This study looked at how extroversion, gender, and sociosexual orientation moderated the relationship between self-esteem and condom use. We measured self-esteem, extroversion, SOI, condom use intentions and willingness and demographics using an …

The Effect Of Choline Supplementation And The Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (Bdnf) On Medial Temporal Lobe Volume Changes As A Measurement Of Depression, Leigh Mathieu

CLAS: Colby Liberal Arts Symposium

Depression is a prevalent mood disorder categorized by a lowered mood state, social withdrawal, somatic symptoms, cognitive defects, and feelings of worthlessness or guilt. Prenatal supplementation of the essential nutrient choline increases adult hippocampal neurogenesis and can reduce the risk and improve prognosis of depression and other mood disorders. Characteristic in these disorders is dysfunction in neural plasticity as mediated through the growth factor, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Genetic variants and mutations in the genes that code for this and related proteins in humans and rats affect the brain in many ways, including how dopaminergic synapses in the reward pathway …

Passing And Transcendence In Political Identities And Socioeconomic Status, Sophie Hamblett, Ginger Brooker, Samuel Poulin, Megan Mackenzie

CLAS: Colby Liberal Arts Symposium

This study will examine passing, a phenomenon that occurs when an individual tries to hide a part of their identity, or takes on a new false identity in order to fit in with a certain social context. Passing might be especially important in a college setting, where students are in a stage of emerging adulthood and exploring new identities. This process can occur with all sorts of identity, commonly one that makes the individual a minority.In our study, we will focus specifically on passing in the areas of race and socioeconomic status, which has, thus far, not been addressed by …

Prologue, Michiko Nohara-Leclair

Undergraduate Psychology Research Methods Journal

No abstract provided.

Schrödinger And Nietzsche And Life: Eternal Recurrence And The Conscious Now, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

The phenomenological question of consciousness usually associated with Husserl (although there are echoes of this in Augustine as in Marcus Aurelius, Kant and Schopenhauer), is the consciousness of the now, the present moment. I explore this consciousness for Erwin Schrödinger, which for him included reference to the Upaniṣads together with Nietzsche’s central teaching or “thinking” of the eternal recurrence of the same.

Volunteers' Cross-Cultural Experience In Tanzania And Zambia, Josephine Elaine Talarski

Theses & Dissertations

Despite a growing interest in international volunteerism, there is a scarcity of literature concerning returning volunteers’ cross-cultural experience in developing countries. The purpose of the study was to examine the phenomenon of volunteers’ cross-cultural experience of participating in immersion trips to Tanzania and Zambia. The study also explored whether volunteers believed their cross-cultural experience to be life changing. The following research questions were used to guide this study: 1. What motivated volunteers to participate in immersion trips to Tanzania and Zambia? 2. How has the immersion experience changed the volunteers’ beliefs about themselves while engaging in a cross-cultural environment? 3. …

Self-Esteem Of Boys During The Transition From A Single-Sex Middle School To A Coeducational High School, Patrick Atkerson

Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine how men who attended a single-sex elementary and middle school as a boy describe their experiences following their transition to coeducational high schools and how the participants perceived those experiences influenced their global self-esteem during the first years in high school. Two questions guided the research. 1) What changes, if any, did the men in this study perceive in their global self-esteem, as measured by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale after their transition from a single-sex middle school to a coeducational high school? 2) If there were changes to the levels …

An Exploration Of Service-Oriented Fields, Eliza Murray

Undergraduate Psychology Research Methods Journal

Community psychology, nonprofit administration, and social work are service-oriented fields that seek to understand and solve a variety of social problems. All of these fields are value-oriented, but they use a variety of approaches to understand social issues facing individuals, families, and communities. Community psychology uses participatory action research to understand the relationships between individuals and their communities, social work is practice-oriented and seeks to empower and liberate all people, and nonprofit administration explores the governance and leadership of nonprofit organizations. Information about the basic duties of professionals in these fields is readily available; however, individuals interested in the aforementioned …

Physical Activity And Nutritional Behavior Of Overweight College Students Trying To Lose Weight 2014, Santino Vallejos M.S.

Master's Theses

Although there are numerous benefits to increased physical activity and proper dietary behaviors, the decreased participation in physical activity and poor dietary behaviors has emerged as a significant problem within the college student population. The focus of this research study was to identify the relationship between physical activity and dietary behavior to weight loss behaviors within an undergraduate student sample of a small, comprehensive northeastern university. College-aged students (age range: 17 to 27 years old) completed the American College Health Association’s (ACHA) National College Health Assessment II (NCHA) during the years 2009 and 2012. According to the results, there were …

Exploring Job Stress Among Drug Court Personnel, Ragan Andrew Downey

Dissertations

In the field of criminal justice, much research has been devoted to exploring job stress among corrections staff, police officers, and individuals working in legal professions. Additionally, there is an abundance of research regarding drug courts and their impact on the justice system. There is, however, a stark absence of research concerning job stress among drug court personnel. This study was designed to fill that gap in the existing literature by examining the perceptions of drug court personnel regarding job stress, job satisfaction, and other relevant factors identified in the literature. Results of bivariate and multivariate analyses indicated that drug …

Do Culture And Biological Sex Influence People Who Engage In Non-Suicidal Self-Injury?, Rachel Berger

Graduate Theses

Non-Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI) refers to behaviors in which a person intentionally harms and causes tissue damage to oneself, without the desire to end his or her life. There have been contradictory findings with regard to differences in NSSI by biological sex and culture. In this study, I sought to examine if adults with independent cultural self- construals would report more occurrences of NSSI in comparison to those with interdependent cultural self-construals. Furthermore, I was interested in whether females would report more instances of NSSI in comparison to males in independent based cultures, and I examined whether the methods and reasons …