Psychology Commons^™

A Comparison Of Measurement Systems To Score Sleep Disturbance For Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Aaron Lesser

Theses & Dissertations

Direct observation of children’s sleep disturbance in the home is critical to understanding child behavior while awake and determining qualitative features of the sleep environment, but obtaining these data from an in-home recorded video, second-by-second, is impractical in terms of scoring time because observers score when the child is asleep and awake. In Studies 1 and 2, we conducted an analog study to assess a motion-detection camera to determine whether it would be suitable to measure children’s sleep disturbance. In Study 3, we obtained in-home measures of sleep disturbance for three children with an autism spectrum disorder using a motion-detection, …

An Individualized Approach To Teach Greeting And Conversation Skills With Persons With Autism: Efficacy, Generalization, And Social Acceptability Outcomes, Stephanie A. Hood

Theses & Dissertations

Individuals with an autism spectrum disorder commonly exhibit deficits in social skills, which can lead to a lack of friendships (Howlin, 2003) and underemployment (Shattuck et al., 2012). We selected social skills based on a parent interview and a direct assessment of three individuals’ conversation and greeting deficits. We taught the conversation and greeting skills using behavioral skills training and within-session prompting. We assessed generalization of the conversation and greeting skills across unfamiliar conversation partners and maintenance over time. We obtained parent responses on the social acceptability of their child’s social skills. A multiple baseline design across behaviors was used …

Culture And Cognition: The Role Culture Plays In Cognitive Development In Rural Tanzania, Eileen Seissen

Capstone Collection

This capstone paper examines the perceived difference of cognition in a Tanzanian classroom. It also examines the effects culture has on cognition. It aims to answer the questions: What role does Tanzanian culture play in shaping the cognitive skills of its children? And, from an American trainers perspective, within an experiential learning environment, what cognitive differences are perceived in abstract thinking, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving? Nine American trainers, one Tanzanian trainer, and one Tanzanian student participated in my study. Each participant filled out a questionnaire geared toward understanding their training methods and perceptions of participant's skills and abilities. After …

Childhood Feeding Practices In African Americans, Nicole Somogy

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the feeding practices of minority children specifically looking at African Americans from birth to 11 years old to see if there are any red flags so that professionals can be alerted for a concern with obesity. Previous research conducted on feeding styles and patterns of adults have shown some clues as how a parent plays a key role in the etiology of childhood obesity (Chaidez & Kaiser, 2011). One strategy that is used when looking at obesity is to look at physical activity as well as parenting styles which includes authoritative, authoritarian, …

Examination Of Structured Physical Activity On Students With Special Needs, Arianna Sparano

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship of a structured physical activity, Rowan Unified Sports Basketball organization, for children with special needs and the positive impact the physical activity will have on their social skills. Past studies have proven that exercise has many beneficial effects mentally, physically, and socially. The effects reflex on children and adults. Not only does physical fitness promote good health, it relieves stress and anxiety. Social skills will be analyzed using the Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS) Rating Scale, the parent form version. A pretest was given at the beginning of the season …

Ethical Decision Making Of Counseling Mental Health Practitioners Working With Clients Right-To-Die Issues, Amanda E. Johns

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The purpose this study was to explore the relationship between counseling mental health practitioners’ attitudes toward euthanasia and their ethical decision making levels when confronted with clients facing end-of-life concerns. A review of literature indicated a series of complex ethical, moral, and societal issues surrounding clients’ right-to-die issues. Because of the lack of research in the counseling field and the growing prevalence of right-to-die issues with clients who have a diagnosis of a terminal illness, more research in the counseling field is needed (Hadjistavropoulos, 1996; Winograd, 2012). Participants for the present study were recruited from six state divisions of the …

The Shared Experiences Of Counselors Who Practice In Natural Environments, Bonnie King

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to gain a deep understanding of the shared experiences of therapists who provide counseling in non-traditional, natural environment settings. Eight participants shared their experiences about counseling in nature. The primary research question for this study was: What are the shared experiences of counselors who provide nature-based counseling? A review of the literature of nature-based counseling provided benefits to spending time in nature, descriptions of various types of nature-based counseling, and ethical and legal issues that affect nature-based counselors.

Semi-structured interviews comprised of open-ended questions were used to collect data by phone and …

Model Of Maladaptive Control: Understanding The Link Between Parents’ Psychological Control And Youth Aggression Problems, Genevieve E. Lapre

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Research shows that parental psychological control is associated with youth aggression in peer relationships. This includes various aggression roles (aggression and victimization), forms (overt and relational), and functions (proactive and reactive). The current study examined the role of two youth individual traits, Machiavellianism and dysregulation, in the association between psychological control and youth aggression. A sample of 142 participants (age M = 15.4, SD = 1.13, 93% male, 82% African-American) were recruited from several juvenile detention facilities in Louisiana. Participants completed a battery of questionnaires, including self-reports of Machiavellianism, dysregulation, aggression, victimization, and parental psychological control. Bootstrap analyses indicated youth …

The Predictive Utility Of Emotional Deficits And Callous-Unemotional Traits For Important Antisocial Outcomes In Juvenile Justice-Involved Youth, Laura C. Thornton

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The current study investigated the predictive utility of callous-unemotional (CU) traits and emotional facilitation to distress (EFD) for multiple antisocial outcomes in a sample of juvenile justice-involved males. Although CU traits and EFD did not generally interact to predict antisocial outcomes, CU traits were a consistent predictor of total, proactive, and reactive forms of aggression over 18 months. Similarly, CU traits and time interacted to predict total and violent self-reported offending, such that CU traits were positively associated with both outcomes, but this association weakened over the 18 month timeframe. Racial and ethnic differences only emerged for the prediction of …

Parent And Child Vagal Tone: Examining Parenting Behaviors As Moderators Of The Association, Rebecca Graham

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Research indicates that learning how to regulate one’s emotions is critical to successful child development and is associated with adaptive social functioning and psychological adjustment (Dunn & Brown, 1994; Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, & Reiser, 2000; Eisenberg, Fabes, & Murphy, 1996). Children’s emotion regulation abilities are thought to be influenced by both child (e.g., age, temperament) and parent characteristics (e.g., parenting behaviors, parental regulation; Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998). Resting heart rate variability (HRV) has emerged as a potentially important biomarker associated with emotion regulation (Porges, 2007; Thayer & Lane, 2000); however, there are still significant gaps in research. In particular, …

Mistrust: An Exploration Of African Americans' Attitudes And Perspectives Toward Healthcare, Adolfo Gabriel Cuevas

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation explored mistrust through focus group discussions (study 1), responses to standardized laboratory vignettes (study 2), and survey questionnaires (study 3). In the first study, I found that African American community members (N=60) experienced perceived discrimination, medical mistrust, and poor communication in numerous and interrelated ways. For example, medical mistrust occurred when clinicians did not convey respect to patients, leaving patients to wonder whether their clinician's treatment was discriminatory or not. Based on these findings, I wanted to see whether these experiences of perceived discrimination and mistrust were related to other dimensions of Black experience, such as racial identity. …

This Is My Protest: What Psychologists Can Add To Conversations About Ferguson, Joyce Yang

Psychology

In the United States, while deaths of Black individuals at the hands of the police occur at unbelievable rates, many continue to proclaim that we live in a post-racial society or that racism is an artifact of the past. Psychologists can, and indeed must, make a unique contribution to conversations about recent race-related events such as Ferguson and the #BlackLivesMatter movement. On the one year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown, this letter briefly highlights several phenomena established in psychological literature on racial biases such as the Superhumanization bias and findings from Shoot, Don’t Shoot paradigms that may increase …

Developmental Changes In Analytic And Holistic Processes In Face Perception, Jane E. Joseph, Michelle D. Dibartolo, Ramesh S. Bhatt

Psychology Faculty Publications

Although infants demonstrate sensitivity to some kinds of perceptual information in faces, many face capacities continue to develop throughout childhood. One debate is the degree to which children perceive faces analytically versus holistically and how these processes undergo developmental change. In the present study, school-aged children and adults performed a perceptual matching task with upright and inverted face and house pairs that varied in similarity of featural or 2^nd order configural information. Holistic processing was operationalized as the degree of serial processing when discriminating faces and houses [i.e., increased reaction time (RT), as more features or spacing relations were …

Is Big Brother Playing Fair? Exploring Effects Of Perceived Nepotism In Public Institutions On Trust In Strangers, David Amon Neequaye

Lingnan Theses

Trust has proven to be a vital social capital. It has been implicated in a myriad of socially beneficial initiatives. While trust vested in familiar others remain important, trust extended to strangers is crucial to the continued development of social capital. This is because such interaction, though risky at times, forms a springboard to untapped opportunities. Using a multi-round trust game and self-report assessments the present study explored explanations for observed cultural differences in trust in strangers. Data was drawn from university students in Ghana and Hong Kong. Factor analysis showed that self-report trust in strangers was associated with trust …

The Influence Of Job Insecurity On Performance Outcomes Among Chinese, German And U.S. Employees : Evidence From Self-Reported And Observational Studies, Lara Christina Roll

Lingnan Theses

Since the 1980s our economy has been quickly evolving. Mergers, downsizing, privatizations and the recent economic crisis have exposed employees to a growing sense of uncertainty about their job future. Both quantitative and qualitative job insecurity has been linked to numerous negative performance and health outcomes for employees, negatively impacting organizations. Negative effects include burnout, reduced work engagement and decreased safety motivation and compliance. Most studies on job insecurity only look at one country, usually a Western country, and rely exclusively on self-reports. Therefore, the aims of the present research (including two studies) are to a) examine both qualitative and …

Testing Theory Of Planned Behavior And Neo-Socioanalytic Theory Models Of Trait Activity, Industriousness, Exercise Social Cognitions, Exercise Intentions, And Physical Activity In A Representative U.S. Sample, Phuong T. Vo, Tim Bogg

Psychology Faculty Research Publications

Prior research identified assorted relations between trait and social cognition models of personality and engagement in physical activity. Using a representative U.S. sample (N = 957), the goal of the present study was to test two alternative structural models of the relationships among the extraversion-related facet of activity, the conscientiousness-related facet of industriousness, social cognitions from the Theory of Planned Behavior (perceived behavioral control, affective attitudes, subjective norms, intentions), Social Cognitive Theory (self-efficacy, outcome expectancies), and the Transtheoretical Model (behavioral processes of change), and engagement in physical activity. Path analyses with bootstrapping procedures were used to model direct and …

A Descriptive Analysis Of The Appropriate Use Of Cognitive Bias Terminology In Forensic Science Literature, Courtney A. Winters, Evelyn M. Buday, Trevor I. Stamper

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Cognitive bias occurs without a person’s awareness and can affect decision-making abilities. In forensic science, bias can be especially detrimental to making accurate decisions about the evidence in a criminal investigation. There are many academic studies in identifying, describing, and suggesting ways to mitigate cognitive biases in forensic science. Many authors will give a known cognitive science concept a new name or create their own bias. This is a problem in the literature because nobody knows for sure how many published studies are referring to or testing the same phenomena since authors are using different definitions or terminology to describe …

Comprehensive Functional Characterization Of Murine Infantile Batten Disease Including Parkinson-Like Behavior And Dopaminergic Markers, George Taylor, Joshua Dearborn, Steven Harmon, Stephen Fowler, Karen O’Malley, Mark Sands, David Wozniak

Psychology Faculty Works

Infantile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (INCL, Infantile Batten disease) is a neurodegenerative lysosomal storage disease caused by a deficiency in palmitoyl protein thioesterase-1 (PPT1). The PPT1-deficient mouse (Cln1−/−) is a useful phenocopy of human INCL. Cln1−/− mice display retinal dysfunction, seizures, motor deficits, and die at ~8 months of age. However, little is known about the cognitive and behavioral functions of Cln1−/− mice during disease progression. In the present study, younger (~1–2 months of age) Cln1−/− mice showed minor deficits in motor/sensorimotor functions while older (~5–6 months of age) Cln1−/− mice exhibited more severe impairments, including decreased locomotor activity, inferior cued …

The Compensatory Role Of Implementation Intentions For Young Adults With Low Working Memory Capacity, J Thadeus Meeks, Margarida Pitães, Gene A. Brewer

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Many factors improve prospective memory performance both inside and outside of the laboratory, including the detailed planning of the situational cue and intended action (i.e., implementation intentions). In the current study, we obtained measures of working memory capacity and laboratory event-based prospective memory performance in college-aged adults. Half of our participants formed an implementation intention in the prospective memory task. Due to evidence that implementation intentions increase the encoding/retrieval efficiency of the prospective memory, it was predicted that forming an implementation intention would serve as a compensatory strategy for those with low working memory ability. Our results supported this hypothesis …

Mental Health Clinical Managers And Their Multicultural Leadership Practices, Christie Marie Melonson

Theses & Dissertations

There is a general recognition that the United States has historically failed to provide adequate mental health services to ethnic minorities. The American Counseling Association has mandated multicultural competence of counseling professionals in today’s context of dramatic demographic change. Despite numerous studies on practitioners, organizations, models, and interventions geared toward minorities, disparities in access, usage, and outcomes in still exist. Simultaneously, counseling fields have emphasized leadership development as a key factor in improving services, yet training or research on leadership remains scarce. In response to these conditions, this basic interpretive qualitative study focused on exploring clinical managers’ perceptions of their …

Psychopathy In The Criminal Justice System, Jillian K. Peterson, Jerrod Brown

College of Liberal Arts All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Brief Overview Of Amblyaudia, Raelynn Lamminen, Daniel Houlihan

Psychology Department Publications

Amblyaudia, a recent subcategory of auditory processing disorder, is characterized by asymmetrical auditory processing of an individual’s ears. Amblyaudia can result in speech comprehension difficulties, reading difficulties, information processing deficits, and inattention. These difficulties can be mistakenly attributed to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Specific Learning Disorders (SLD), depression, anxiety disorders, and communication disorders. Unfortunately, traditional hearing tests do not place the two ears in competition and cannot detect asymmetry. Therefore, students who exhibit these difficulties and have normal performance on traditional hearing tests should be also evaluated for amblyaudia with dichotic listening tests. Amblyaudia can be addressed through dichotic …

Soldiers Returning From Deployment: A Qualitative Study Regarding Exposure, Coping, And Reintegration, Lisa A. Brenner, Lisa M. Betthauser, Nazanin Bahraini, Jaimie L. Lusk, Heidi Terrio, Ann I. Scher, Karen A. Schwab

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Student Scholarship

Purpose/Objective: The purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore exposure to deployment-related physical and/or emotional trauma and associated symptoms among Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) soldiers. Interviews also focused on in-theater- and reintegration-related experiences. Research Method/Design: OEF/OIF soldiers (N = 103) participated in semistructured interviews, and a qualitative descriptive methodology was used to analyze the data. Results: Themes were identified regarding (a) common experiences related to emotional and physical traumas and associated symptoms and strategies for coping and making meaning of experiences and (b) how combat and reintegration experiences affected soldiers’ senses of self, relationships with others, …

The Association Between Stalking And Violence In A Sample Of Spanish Partner Violence Cases, Rosa Viñas-Racionero, Chitra Raghavan, Miguel Ángel Soria-Verde, Remei Prat-Santaolaria

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The present descriptive study analyzes stalking in a sample of 278 Spanish court cases involving partner violence and contrasts the benefits of the new bill article 172ter, which criminalizes stalking, compared with the Organic Law 1/2004 on partner violence. Thirty-seven percent (37%) of the total sample included stalking behaviors, which manifested in intimidatory (60%) and controlling (45%) unwanted verbal communications (62%) and physical approaches (42%) that ended violently in a third of the cases (35%). Cases involving violent stalking, non-violent stalking, and physical violence without stalking were compared. A closer look at violent stalking cases uncovered that intimacy-seeking stalking behavior …

Responses Of Primate Frontal Cortex Neurons During Natural Vocal Communication, Cory T. Miller, A. Wren Thomas, Samuel U. Nummela, Lisa A. De La Mothe

Psychological Sciences and Counseling Faculty Research

The role of primate frontal cortex in vocal communication and its significance in language evolution have a controversial history. While evidence indicates that vocalization processing occurs in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex neurons, vocal-motor activity has been conjectured to be primarily subcortical and suggestive of a distinctly different neural architecture from humans. Direct evidence of neural activity during natural vocal communication is limited, as previous studies were performed in chair-restrained animals. Here we recorded the activity of single neurons across multiple regions of prefrontal and premotor cortex while freely moving marmosets engaged in a natural vocal behavior known as antiphonal calling. Our …

School Psychologists’ Training And Knowledge Of Tourette Syndrome, Leticia Cornejo

Educational Studies Dissertations

A web-based survey was conducted that included 97 practicing school psychologists in California. The results from the survey indicated that the majority (88%) of respondents were knowledgeable about Tourette Syndrome. Many respondents (28%) had never worked with a student with Tourette’s, 20% had at least one case, and 52% indicated that they had worked with more than two cases in their careers as school psychologists. The majority of respondents indicated that their school psychology program did not adequately train them to assess or counsel students with Tourette’s. The majority of participants also did not feel confident to work with students …

Contrasting Styles In Cognition And Behaviour In Bumblebees And Honeybees., David F Sherry, Caroline G Strang

Psychology Publications

Bumblebees and honeybees have been the subjects of a great deal of recent research in animal cognition. Many of the major topics in cognition, including memory, attention, concept learning, numerosity, spatial cognition, timing, social learning, and metacognition have been examined in bumblebees, honeybees, or both. Although bumblebees and honeybees are very closely related, they also differ in important ways, including social organization, development, and foraging behaviour. We examine whether differences between bumblebees and honeybees in cognitive processes are related to differences in their natural history and behaviour. There are differences in some cognitive traits, such as serial reversal learning and …

Implicit And Explicit Contributions To Statistical Learning., Laura J Batterink, Paul J Reber, Helen J Neville, Ken A Paller

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Statistical learning allows learners to detect regularities in the environment and appears to emerge automatically as a consequence of experience. Statistical learning paradigms bear many similarities to those of artificial grammar learning and other types of implicit learning. However, whether learning effects in statistical learning tasks are driven by implicit knowledge has not been thoroughly examined. The present study addressed this gap by examining the role of implicit and explicit knowledge within the context of a typical auditory statistical learning paradigm. Learners were exposed to a continuous stream of repeating nonsense words. Learning was tested (a) directly via a forced-choice …

Tract-Based Spatial Statistics In Preterm-Born Neonates Predicts Cognitive And Motor Outcomes At 18 Months., E G Duerden, J Foong, V Chau, H Branson, K J Poskitt, R E Grunau, A Synnes, J G Zwicker, S P Miller

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Adverse neurodevelopmental outcome is common in children born preterm. Early sensitive predictors of neurodevelopmental outcome such as MR imaging are needed. Tract-based spatial statistics, a diffusion MR imaging analysis method, performed at term-equivalent age (40 weeks) is a promising predictor of neurodevelopmental outcomes in children born very preterm. We sought to determine the association of tract-based spatial statistics findings before term-equivalent age with neurodevelopmental outcome at 18-months corrected age.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Of 180 neonates (born at 24-32-weeks' gestation) enrolled, 153 had DTI acquired early at 32 weeks' postmenstrual age and 105 had DTI acquired later at …

Transient Visual Responses Reset The Phase Of Low-Frequency Oscillations In The Skeletomotor Periphery., Daniel K Wood, Chao Gu, Brian D Corneil, Paul L Gribble, Melvyn A Goodale

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

We recorded muscle activity from an upper limb muscle while human subjects reached towards peripheral targets. We tested the hypothesis that the transient visual response sweeps not only through the central nervous system, but also through the peripheral nervous system. Like the transient visual response in the central nervous system, stimulus-locked muscle responses (< 100 ms) were sensitive to stimulus contrast, and were temporally and spatially dissociable from voluntary orienting activity. Also, the arrival of visual responses reduced the variability of muscle activity by resetting the phase of ongoing low-frequency oscillations. This latter finding critically extends the emerging evidence that the feedforward visual sweep reduces neural variability via phase resetting. We conclude that, when sensory information is relevant to a particular effector, detailed information about the sensorimotor transformation, even from the earliest stages, is found in the peripheral nervous system.