Psychology Commons^™

Studying Treatment Intensity: Lessons From Two Preliminary Studies, Nicole Neil, Emily A. Jones

Education Publications

Determining how best to meet the needs of learners with Down syndrome requires an approach to intervention delivered at some level of intensity. How treatment intensity affects learner acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of skills can help optimize the efficiency and cost effectiveness of interventions. There is a growing body of research on the effects of treatment intensity but almost no systematic study of it with children with Down syndrome, providing little guidance about how to approach the study of intensity. In two preliminary studies we manipulated different aspects of the dose of treatment intensity and measured effects on skill acquisition …

Attention During Visual Search: The Benefit Of Bilingualism, Deanna Friesen, Vered Latman, Alejandra Calvo, Ellen Bialystok

Education Publications

Recent research has produced mixed results about the existence of a bilingual executive control advantage in young adults. The current study manipulated both task demands and task difficulty to investigate the conditions under which a bilingual advantage may be observed during a visual attention task. Bilingual and monolingual young adults performed visual search tasks in which they determined whether a target shape was present amid distractor shapes. In the feature searches, the target (e.g., green triangle) differed on a single dimension (e.g., color) from the distractors (e.g., yellow triangles); in the conjunction searches, two different types of distractors (e.g., pink …

Obesity-Related Behaviors Among Poor Adolescents And Young Adults: Is Social Position Associated With Risk Behaviors?, Miranda Lucia Ritterman Weintraub, Lia C. Fernald, Elizabeth Goodman, Sylvia Guendelman, Nancy E. Adler

This cross-sectional study examines multiple dimensions of social position in relation to obesity-related behaviors in an adolescent and young adult population. In addition to using conventional measures of social position, including parental education and household expenditures, we explore the usefulness of three youth-specific measures of social position – community and society subjective social status and school dropout status. Data are taken from a 2004 house-to-house survey of urban households within the bottom 20th percentile of income distribution within seven states in Mexico. A total of 5,321 Mexican adolescents, aged 12–22 years, provided information on obesity-related behaviors (e.g., diet, physical activity, …

The Theological Foundations Of Religious Liberty In The Thought Of John Locke And James Madison, Edward M. Yager

Commonwealth Review of Political Science

Religious liberty is an important human right supported by both religious and secular m:guments. This work explores John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration and James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance and identifies a common theological or religious argument supporting religions liberty as the requisite means to satisfy the duties of conscience to the Creator. Since individual duty and accountability to God is a shared premise among theistic faith traditions, this approach to advancing religions liberty and religious pluralism may have broader appeal and utility to reformers in faith traditions not especially responsive to secular arguments.

Religious And Spiritual Diversity Training In Clinical Psychology Doctoral Programs: Do Explicitly Christian Programs Differ From Other Programs?, Mark R. Mcminn, Michael J. Vogel, M Elizabeth Hall, Alexis D. Abernethy, Ryan Birch, Timofey Galuza, Jacqi Rodriguez, Kathryn Putman

Faculty Publications - Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) Program

The American Psychological Association (APA) accredits several explicitly Christian doctoral programs in clinical psychology. To what extent do these programs offer training in religious and spiritual diversity that students may nor receive at orher APA-accredited programs? A total of 353 students from 5 explicitly Christian programs were surveyed using the same questionnaire used in a more general national sample of APA-accredited doctoral programs a year previously. Students in explicitly Christian programs reported receiving more training in religious and spiritual diversity and more training in advanced competencies regarding religious and spiritual issues in professional work d1an students in the general sample …

The Truth About Humans: The Decision To Adopt Dogs & Cats, Leann Stadtlander

2010-2016 Archived Posters

Millions of dogs and cats are adopted from animal shelters every year, however, little is known about why specific animals are adopted. This study examines the qualitative comments given by adopters of cats and dogs for selecting specific animals. Differences between the species and insights into human/animal interactions are discussed.

Associations Among Ethnicity, Gender, Age, Age Of First Drink, And Drinking Behavior Among High School Students, Ricky Gujral

2010-2016 Archived Posters

Moderation management theory was employed to assess whether gender, ethnicity, age, and age of first drink were associated with drinking among adolescents. The statistically significant model distinguished between adolescents who reported moderate versus binge drinking. Age of first drink made a statistically significant main effect contribution to the model.

Development Of The Dori-Tbi: An Investigation To Develop A New Screening Measure To Determine Consultation With A School-Based Brain Injury Resource Team, Doriann Marie Adragna

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Brain injury is the leading cause of disability and death in children in the United States. Student re-entry into the school setting following a traumatic brain injury is crucial to student success. Multidisciplinary teams within the school district comprised of individuals with expertise in brain injury are ideal in implementing student specific treatment plans given their specialized training and wide range of expertise addressing student needs. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop and initially validate a quantitative instrument that school personnel can use to determine if a student, identified as having a traumatic brain injury, will benefit …

Core Beliefs And Self-Schematic Structure In Depression, David J.A. Dozois, Katerina Rnic

Psychology Publications

This article reviews recent research on core beliefs (i.e., early maladaptive schemas; EMS) and self-schema structure in depression. The empirical research supports these variables as vulnerability factors for depression. Whereas EMS operate independently of stress, cognitive organization appears to influence depression in a manner consistent with a diathesis-stress model. Recent research has also explored predictors of EMS and schema structure. Specifically, childhood adversity (e.g., emotional maltreatment, peer rejection) are associated with negative self-schemas and core beliefs. Schema beliefs and structure also mediate the relation between early adversity and subsequent depression. Fortunately, these deeper cognitions appear to be modifiable by psychological …

The Causal Role Of Attentional Bias In A Cognitive Component Of Depression, Rebecca Mcdermott, David J.A. Dozois

Psychology Publications

Cognitive theories have, for years, postulated the causal role of attentional biases in depression and low self-esteem. However, this assumption has been based predominantly on correlational findings. With the advent of attentional bias modification techniques (Mathews & MacLeod, 2002), it became possible to modify attentional bias experimentally. The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether negative attentional biases are trainable and causally linked to changes in important characteristics of depression, namely self-esteem. Participants completed negative attentional training and a stress induction task. Consistent with the diathesis-stress model, a combination of negative attentional biases and stress resulted in changes in …

Accounting For Differences In Depression Stigma Between Canadian Asians And Europeans, Amanda L. Shamblaw, Francois B. Botha, David J.A. Dozois

Psychology Publications

Stigma is an important barrier to recovery from depression. Individuals of Asian origin show greater levels of depression stigma compared with individuals of European origin. This study examined the mediators of the relationship between ethnicity and depression stigma in a North American context. A sample of university students, including 199 Canadian Europeans and 249 Canadian Asians, completed a variety of measures through an online study. Stigma toward an individual with depression was measured using both the Depression Attribution Questionnaire-27 and a Social Distance Scale. The perception of social norms, the belief that depression brings shame to one’s family, a social …

Preliminary Analyses Of Three Measures Of Grace: Can They Be Unified?, Rodger K. Bufford, Amanda M. Blackburn, Timothy A. Sisemore, Rodney L. Bassett

Faculty Publications - Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) Program

Grace is an interesting and potentially significant domain within positive psychology, but remains largely neglected. The present study examined the relationships among three known grace scales to evaluate the potential for creating a stronger single measure. It also explored their relationships to several other religious/spiritual measures to examine whether the three scales are measuring the same construct, to explore the implications for our understanding of grace, and to provide insights for further study. The three measures had moderately strong correlations with each other (r= .55 to .66), had similar relationships to other measures of religion/spirituality, and had distinct relationships to …

Spanish Language, Cultural Knowledge And Teachers’ Professional Development In An English-Only Environment, Sara Soledad Garcia

Teacher Education

This study documents the findings of action research projects generated by two teachers with different cultural backgrounds and grade levels; one is a bilingual Spanish-English high school teacher and the other is an English monolingual first grade-reading teacher. Teachers’ cognitive and professional development is examined by taking into account the results of the action research project on the literacy needs of their students. Qualitative data from teacher interviews and reflections have been collected and analyzed. These teachers as researchers of their own practice plan and integrate cultural interpretation produced by the children to better understand how learners construct knowledge through …

Middle School Predictors Of High School Dating Violence Among At-Risk Early Adolescents, Meredith C. Joppa, Christopher D. Houck, Christie J. Rizzo

Title IX Research and Resources

Hypothesis: Emotion regulation (ER) skills (higher ER, lower emotional lability/negativity) and greater parental communication in 8th grade will be associated with less frequent dating violence (DV) involvement in 9th grade for at-risk early adolescents.

Information Technology, Social Networking, And Controlling Behaviors Among Adolescent Girls Involved In Dating Violence, Meredith C. Joppa, Christie J. Rizzo, Jessica Johnson

Title IX Research and Resources

Hypothesis: Girls with dating violence (DV) histories will report high levels of involvement in social networking and information technology (SNIT) as well as frequent engagement in controlling behaviors via SNIT.

Attentional Bias To Body-Related Stimuli In Younger And Middle-Aged Females: The Role Of Eating Disorders And Thin Ideal Priming, Teresa A. Markis

ETD Archive

Research has shown individuals with an eating disorder selectively attend to stimuli related to their concerns, and this attentional component might be one way in which eating disorders are maintained. Research using a variant of the Stroop task has demonstrated that women with an eating disorder have a stronger Stroop interference effect for words related to body shape than controls. The conclusion is individuals with an eating disorder have an information processing bias for stimuli related to their disorder, and thus, slower responses. A main objective of this study was to investigate this effect in both younger and middle age …

Effects Of Information Processing Strategies On Rater Motivation In Job Analysis, Corey Alexander Cecil

ETD Archive

Accuracy of the output resulting from a job analysis is of utmost importance to practitioners and human resource professionals. Without this accuracy, many of the organizational actions that follow can be prone to failure. One of the notable sources of inaccuracy in job analysis is motivation. Evidence of motivation as a source of inaccuracy in job analysis comes from findings which have been largely adapted from cognitive and social psychology literature. To bridge the gap more directly, this study examined how different variables such as self-efficacy, need for cognition, job complexity, and job analysis purpose impacted the relationship between information …

Gerontological Intelligence Test, Erika Beatriz Gobbi

ETD Archive

The current study was designed as a preliminary analysis to design an alternative intelligence scale for older adults ages 65 plus. This study was predominantly administered to White participants with a females being the prominent gender (30 females, 14 males). 44 participants were administered the four subtests Analogies, Matrices, Geometric Shapes and Information. The Block Design and Vocabulary from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale was administered to assess the validity of the current study. By creating a more tailored intelligence test for older adults, problems such as fatigue, administrator bias and physical limitations can be addressed. With the population of …

The Cognitive Basis Of Social Behavior: Cognitive Reflection Overrides Antisocial But Not Always Prosocial Motives, Brice Corgnet, Antonio M. Espín, Roberto Hernán-González

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Even though human social behavior has received considerable scientific attention in the last decades, its cognitive underpinnings are still poorly understood. Applying a dual-process framework to the study of social preferences, we show in two studies that individuals with a more reflective/deliberative cognitive style, as measured by scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), are more likely to make choices consistent with “mild” altruism in simple non-strategic decisions. Such choices increase social welfare by increasing the other person's payoff at very low or no cost for the individual. The choices of less reflective individuals (i.e., those who rely more heavily …

Tweeting About Sexism: The Well-Being Benefits Of A Social Media Collective Action., Mindi D. Foster

Psychology Faculty Publications

Although collective action has psychological benefits in non-gendered contexts (e.g., Drury et al., 2005), the benefits for women taking action against gender discrimination are unclear. This study examined how a popular, yet unexplored potential form of collective action, namely tweeting about sexism, affects women’s well-being. Women read about sexism and were randomly assigned to tweet, or to one of three control groups. Content analyses showed tweets exhibited collective intent and action. Analyses of linguistic markers suggested public tweeters used more cognitive complexity in their language than private tweeters. Profile analyses showed that compared to controls, only public tweeters showed decreasing …

Is It Time To Consider The "Burnout Syndrome" A Distinct Illness?, Renzo Bianchi, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Eric Laurent

Publications and Research

The "burnout syndrome" has been defined as a combination of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment caused by chronic occupational stress. Although there has been increasing medical interest in burnout over the last decades, it is argued in this paper that the syndrome cannot be elevated to the status of diagnostic category, based on (1) an analysis of the genesis of the burnout construct, (2) a review of the latest literature on burnout-depression overlap, (3) a questioning of the three-dimensional structure of the burnout syndrome, and (4) a critical examination of the notion that burnout is singularized by its …

Orbitofrontal 18f-Dopa Uptake And Movement Preparation In Parkinson’S Disease, Lucio Marinelli, Arnoldo Piccardo, Laura Mori, Silvia Morbelli, Nicola Girtler, Antonio Castaldi, Agnese Picco, Carlo Trompetto, Maria Felice Ghilardi, Giovanni Abbruzzese, Flavio Nobili

Publications and Research

In Parkinson’s disease (PD) degeneration of mesocortical dopaminergic projections may determine cognitive and behavioral symptoms. Choice reaction time task is related to attention, working memory, and goal-directed behavior. Such paradigm involves frontal cortical circuits receiving mesocortical dopamine which are affected early in PD. The aim of this study is to characterize the role of dopamine on the cognitive processes that precede movement in a reaction time paradigm in PD.We enrolled 16 newly diagnosed and untreated patientswith PDwithout cognitive impairment or depression and 10 control subjectswith essential tremor. They performed multiple-choice reaction time task with the right upper limb and brain …

Excusing Murder? Conservative Jurors’ Acceptance Of The Gay Panic Defense, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Jessica Salerno, Bette L. Bottoms, B. L. Harrington, Dave Kemner

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

We conducted a simulated trial study to investigate the effectiveness of a “gay-panic” provocation defense as a function of jurors’ political orientation. Mock jurors read about a murder case in which a male defendant claimed a victim provoked the killing by starting a fight, which either included or did not include the male victim making an unwanted sexual advance that triggered a state of panic in the defendant. Conservative jurors were significantly less punitive when the defendant claimed to have acted out of gay panic as compared to when this element was not part of the defense. In contrast, liberal …

The Potential Impact Of Rape Culture On Juror Decision Making: Implications For Wrongful Acquittals In Sexual Assault Trials., Meagen M. Hildebrand, Cynthia J. Najdowski

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Feminist writers contend that Americans live in a culture that supports sexualized aggression and violence against women. This “rape culture” is reflected in our society by the pervasive endorsement of rape myths and sexual objectification of women, both of which are legitimized by everyday media. One potential consequence of living in a rape culture is that individuals may themselves come to endorse rape myths and sexually objectify women, and, in turn, perceive certain forms of sexual violence against women as defensible. This is concerning considering the significant role that laypeople play in administering justice in sexual assault cases, but research …

The Impact Of Autobiographical And Vicarious Events On Narrative Identity, Kendall Michelle Soucie

Wayne State University Dissertations

The primary aim of this dissertation was to elucidate the process by which we incorporate the life events of others (vicarious events) into our own lives and, by extension, into our own sense of identity. It was hypothesized that vicarious events from within a person's social network can be as germane to identity development as autobiographical events if the vicarious event involves someone with whom the person is socially-close rather than socially-distant and is an event in which the self was more proximal (shared events) than distal (witnessed or hearsay). The extent to which age, gender, dispositional empathy, and the …

Event Centrality After Trauma: Stability, Trauma Type, And Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Anna Michelle Wright

Wayne State University Dissertations

In order to better understand posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and PTSD’s etiology, researchers have begun examining whether PTSD symptoms are related to the centrality of the traumatic event (i.e., whether the trauma is central to the individual’s life story and changes the way he or she views the world). The current study examines the following questions: (1) Is event centrality stable over time? (2) What is the effect of cumulative trauma on event centrality? Additionally, do different types of trauma have different associations with event centrality? and (3) Given its relationship with PTSD, should event centrality be considered a …

Differential Parenting Practices Within Families: Associations With Siblings' Academic And Behavioral Outcomes, Ashley Ceresnie

Wayne State University Dissertations

The association between parenting behaviors and the outcomes of children has been widely studied, with results commonly linking parents' attitudes and behaviors with child outcomes. Few studies, however, have examined and analyzed the link between differential or inconsistent parenting within families and the academic and behavioral outcomes of siblings. Thus, the main purpose of this study was to explore the relations between differential parenting within families and the academic and general behavioral outcomes of pairs of siblings. Included in this study were variables that represent parenting factors (demandingness and responsiveness) and child outcomes (academic grades and behaviors). Unique to this …

The Influence Of Sibling Presence On Grade Point Average, Amanda Joanne Kipp

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Using archival data from schools in southeastern Ohio, this paper explores the idea that the GPA of students will be affected when a sibling resides in the home compared to students who do not have a sibling in the home. The study explored whether having an older sibling affects the GPA of a student more than that of a younger sibling. Finally, the study examined whether an older male sibling has an affect on the student’s GPA more than an older female sibling. The results showed that having a sibling in the home does not affect the GPA of a …

Critical Period Conditioning By Orgasm During Heterosexual Oral Sex, Kristy N. Woods

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Data were obtained retrospectively and anonymously using a computerized survey instrument from 450 female and 489 male participants who had experienced orgasm during oral sex before age 18, as well as 352 female and 151 male participants who had not experienced an orgasm while receiving oral sex before age 18. Female participants who experienced an orgasm during oral sex prior to age 18 were significantly more likely to experience an orgasm during oral sex after age 18. For male participants, although the difference was in the hypothesized direction, it did not reach significance. Female participants who experienced an orgasm during …

Personality Traits In Parkinson's Disease, Lindsey Clark

Undergraduate Review

Parkinson’s disease (PD) has been associated with certain personality characteristics, including low novelty seeking and high harm avoidance, but examination of the literature reveals mixed results. One limitation of studies to date is their failure to examine gender differences or to even include both male and female participants in their studies. The aim of the present study was to examine gender differences in personality traits among individuals with and without PD. Twenty-three non-demented PD patients (12F/11M) and 21 age and education matched normal control adults (NC; 11F/10M) were administered the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), a 240-item self-report questionnaire assessing …