Psychology Commons^™

Adaptation And Translation Of Autism Spectrum Disorder Rating Scales For School-Age Children: Evaluating Adherence To The International Test Commission Guidelines, Tamanna Chhabra

Theses and Dissertations

he current review examines adaptations and translations of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) rating scales for school-aged children around the world. ASD rating scales are a quick and efficient way to diagnosing ASD, and adaptations of ASD scales offer low-cost methods to make tools available around the world. The International Test Commission guidelines (ITC, 2017) provide a rigorous framework for researchers to adapt and translate psychological tests. This review used the X-CAGAM (Duke, 2019) a tool developed to operationalize the guidelines to examine how well the selected ASD measures adhere to the ITC guidelines. Fourteen adaptations and translations were included in …

Understanding Anger At The Self, Tasnova Ahmed

Theses and Dissertations

When people think of the emotion of anger, they think of being angry at someone or something else. Researchers have slowly found that anger can be experienced even if there is no other person to blame, by being angry at themselves. There is not enough research on understanding what self-anger entails. This paper explains a study that analyzed the relationship between other-anger and self-anger and examines how the effects of action may correlate between anger towards the self and depressed behaviors in terms of self-condemnation and other traits. The study had 169 participants, recruited from various sources. Participants were instructed …

Effectiveness Of E-Health Interventions For Externalizing Behaviors: A Meta-Analysis, Celeste Sangiorgio

Theses and Dissertations

eHealth treatments vary widely from automated treatment protocols to professional-led treatment tools that are integrated into treatment protocols with therapists. This dissertation organized, coded, and submitted 33 eHealth treatment trials to meta-analytic study to assess eHealth treatment study effectiveness overall and for each type of eHealth treatment type. Systematic review and descriptive analyses revealed that eHealth treatments that target externalizing behaviors varied widely in study, sample, and design characteristics. eHealth treatments most frequently targeted externalizing behaviors in adolescent samples (n = 22), adapted cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) to digital platforms (n = 11), and integrated digital tools into traditional treatment …

The Impact Of A Brief Gratitude Journaling Intervention On Third Grade Students Attending An Orthodox Jewish Elementary School In New York, Tamar Gassner

Theses and Dissertations

Research in the field of positive psychology has focused on the beneficial effects of gratitude on overall wellbeing. Recent studies have demonstrated that anxiety and depressive disorders are increasingly common among youth in the United States. Further, both anxiety and depression have been linked to other comorbid mental health conditions, such as dysthymia, disruptive disorder, and substance abuse disorder. Moreover, anxiety and depression are associated with negative social and academic outcomes. Considering the prevalence of anxiety and depressive disorders among youth and the associated comorbidities, it is vital to direct efforts towards prevention and early intervention. The literature supports a …

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy For Anxiety In Youth With Autism: Paving The Way To Evidence-Based Practice, Michelle M. Kirkland

Theses and Dissertations

Anxiety is one of the most common and debilitating conditions co-occurring with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as it occurs in up to 84% of individuals and can influence poor psychosocial adjustment, disruptions in individual, familial and school functioning, increased emotional and behavioral problems, self-injurious behavior(s), and an overall reduced quality of life (Meyer, Mundy, Van Hecke, & Durocher, 2006; Nadeau et al., 2011; Farrugia & Hudson, 2006; Kerns et al., 2015). To date, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), an evidence-based treatment for anxiety in neurotypical youth, has seen modest, yet limited, promise in treating anxiety in youth with ASD. With extant research …

The Contribution Of Self-Esteem, Self-Compassion, And Self-Acceptance/Self-Condemnation In Predicting Psychopathology And Well-Being, Persefoni N. Andronikos

Theses and Dissertations

Many self-concepts have developed over time. This study investigated the relationship between self-esteem, unconditional self-acceptance (USA)/irrational self-condemnation, and self-compassion. Each of these aspects of the self is thought to lead to disturbance, yet the relationship of these concepts to each other and which has the unique influence on psychopathology and well-being, is unclear. The current study sampled 303 adults from the United States of America who completed scales measuring each of the self-constructs and anxiety, depression, anger, and flourishing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results indicated mostly medium to large, correlational relationships amongst the self-constructs, as well as the self …

Food For Thought: An Exploration Of The Interplay Between Eating Disorder Recovery And Recovery Instagram Accounts, Allison Dashow

Selected Full Text Dissertations, 2011-

Social media use is more widespread than ever, with over 800 million monthly active users on Instagram alone (Anderson & Jiang, 2018). The literature suggests an association between social media usage and mental health issues, specifically that it increases body image concerns, body comparisons, and disordered eating (Saunders & Eaton, 2018; Tiggemann & Slater, 2013). While multiple studies have investigated the type of content present and individuals’ experiences within pro-eating disorder (ED) communities, few studies to date have examined Instagram’s (IG) ED recovery communities. The aim of the current study was to explore the interplay between individuals’ ED recovery and …

A Multifaceted Approach To Understanding Schizoid Personality Across Behavioral, Intrapsychic, And Interpersonal Domains, Soo Hyun Cho Lee

Selected Full-Text Dissertations 2020-

The aim of the present study was to gain a comprehensive understanding of the interaction amongst the behavioral, intrapsychic, and interpersonal domains of schizoid personality. A sample of 227 Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) players, ages 18 to 30, completed online self-report measures concerning maladaptive personality traits and several aspects of interpersonal functioning. The sample also provided narratives for Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) cards that were coded by the Mutuality of Autonomy Scale for the TAT (MOA-TAT) to measure schizoid self-other representations. Results showed that schizoid personality could be understood as a dimensional construct, specifically as a constellation of …

Who’S Afraid Of Whiteness? White Privilege, White Racial Identity And The Motivated Defense Of White Supremacy, Michael Strupp-Levitsky

Selected Full-Text Dissertations 2020-

Racial inequality pervades American society, yet this reality is largely denied or misattributed by many White people (Bonilla-Silva & Dietrich, 2011). Why are White Americans so resistant to acknowledging their privilege as unearned and therefore illegitimate? While some research suggests nominal benefit of raising awareness of White privilege (e.g., decreases in modern racist beliefs), other work indicates outright defensive reactions (e.g., increased hardship claiming). System Justification Theory conceptualizes these defenses as attempts to legitimize the current social order and resist change. In this dissertation, I sought to address the inconsistencies in the literature by identifying factors that affect the type …

Shame And Depression: Psychological And Cultural Factors In A Sample Of Middle Eastern Women, Amira Hanna

Selected Full-Text Dissertations 2020-

Shame is a self-conscious emotion that has been frequently tied to psychopathology; however, despite its deep-rooted influence in the Arab culture, little research has been conducted on its effect on the mental health of this population. Thus, this study investigated the impact of shame proneness on depression severity in a sample of adult Middle Eastern women living in the United States. The study also explored other factors that are highly relevant for this population, including anger suppression, religiosity, interdependent self construal, and Middle Eastern ethnic identity. Specifically, the study investigated the role anger suppression plays in explaining the relationship between …

Alliance, Power Dynamics And Response Styles In The Clinical Supervisory Relationship, Kara Kathleen Norlander

Selected Full-Text Dissertations 2020-

Supervisors provide evaluations, act as professional gatekeepers, and serve a central function to psychotherapy training, yet little is known about the impact of power dynamics on the supervisory relationship and the psychotherapy trainee. The present study offers a closer examination of Bordin’s (1983) concept of supervisory alliance, revealing a largely unappreciated emphasis on defusing tension associated with power. This study is the first to investigate how soft and hard power impact supervisory alliance, while also further validating the recently developed Power Dynamics in Supervision Scale (PDSS; Cook, McKibben & Wind, 2018). The Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (Luborsky & Crits-Christoph, 1998) …

Finding Agency In The Invalidating Environment: Sexism, Control, And Dialectical Behavior Therapy (Dbt), Wyatt D'Emilia

Selected Full-Text Dissertations 2020-

Endorsing an external locus of control, the belief that luck, chance, and/or powerful others determine the outcomes of one’s behaviors, leads to myriad negative outcomes. Young women in the United States have been increasingly endorsing external loci, increasing their risk for psychopathology. Experiencing sexism, an unfortunately persistent stressor, notably decreases women’s sense of agency. There therefore is a clear need to identify means by which women can more effectively cope with sexism and the external locus that often follows. Secondary control (SC), a construct whereby people accept their circumstances and adjust their behavior to fit in with their environments, has …

Belonging To Different Types Of Families As A Protective Factor Against Minority Stress In Queer Young Adults, Shayla Irene Harris

Undergraduate Honors College Theses 2016-

Research on resilience focuses on how people recover from stressful situations. This honors thesis addresses resilience in people who experience rejection from their families of origin. A common source of support in the Gay community is chosen families. However, these families are often formed related to a deficit in social support from the original family. Creating families to make up for a lack of social support could be come from a deficit-reduction approach to the need to belong, which is related to lower levels of well-being. To investigate this conceptual inconsistency between resilience and social support from a deficient orientation, …

Examination Of Initial Evidence For Emdr As A Treatment For Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Daniel Talbot

Sciences Papers and Journal Articles

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a debilitating psychological condition that impacts millions of people globally. The front-line psychological intervention for OCD is exposure/response prevention (ERP), however, many individuals do not respond to this treatment approach. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a new therapeutic option which could be effective in treating OCD. This review examined the initial evidence for the effectiveness of EMDR in reducing OCD symptoms. Nine studies were included in the review, including six case studies and three group studies. Results indicate that EMDR is a promising candidate for treating OCD, with all studies showing EMDR therapy resulted …

The Effects Of Covid-19-Related Stressors On Bruxism And Temporomandibular Disorders, Hagir A. Saleh, Samantha Smith

Dental Hygiene Student Scholarship

Problem: COVID-19 has proven to be a major public health emergency, with an array of physical and emotional complications. While COVID-19 has its own effects on the human body, anxiety induced by the pandemic has shown to take a toll on the human oral cavity by means of causing individuals to grind and clench their teeth due to anxiety/stress, potentially leading to temporomandibular disorders and orofacial pain.

Methods: A thorough review of literature was conducted by consulting credible studies published on online databases such as PubMed, Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source, Google Scholar, and Academic Search Complete. The studies examined …

Relationship Of Child Sexual Abuse Survivor Self-Perception Of Consent To Current Functioning, Nathan R. Daly

Theses and Dissertations

In 1998 Rind, Tromovitch and Bauserman conducted a meta-analysis using a college sample which challenged the prevailing belief that childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has inherent deleterious effects. Resultantly, the authors proposed alternative terminology (e.g., child-adult sex), without adequate investigation into what distinguishes child-adult sex from CSA. In response, the current study investigated the relationship between CSA, consent and adult functioning in a college sample. The sample consisted of 297 undergraduate college students, ranging in age from 18 to 63-years-old. Data was collected at a mid-sized university in the southeastern United States. The measures utilized in the study include the Symptom …

Intimate Partner Violence Survivors: The Relationship Between Risk Factors And Symptom Severity, Danielle Horrigan Millen

Theses and Dissertations

While violent crimes have been on a decline since 2005, domestic violence has been increasing steadily over the past decade (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005, 2013, and 2014). A number of adult and childhood risk factors are associated with the increased likelihood of intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization. Witnessing interparental violence and experiencing abuse as a child are both linked to increased likelihood of experiencing IPV as an adult. (Ehrenstaft et al., 2003; Magdol, Moffitt, Caspi, & Silva, 1998; Stith et al., 2000; Stith, Smith, Penn, Ward, & Tritt, 2004; Widom et al., 2014). Additionally, relationship factors, including length of …

Judicial Decision Making And The Duty To Warn: An Empirical Study Of Case Law, Casey Dunn Ravitz

Theses and Dissertations

Duty to warn is an important staple of psychologists’ ethics training. It is also a widely misunderstood and problematic law that does not necessarily capture the intricacies of working with high-risk or potentially violent clients in outpatient settings. While inpatient settings allow for some control over one’s clients, outpatient settings increase the difficulty in performing risk assessments in duty to warn situations, as well as with managing clients who are not within one’s custody. While researchers have long identified issues related to psychologists’ understanding of the duty to warn, none have empirically explored whether the trends seen in individual cases …

A Comparison Of Clinic-Based And Telehealth Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, Abigail Peskin

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the rich evidence for early intervention to prevent/treat emotional and behavioral disorders, a gap continues to exist between research and practice, and multitudinous barriers prevent families from accessing vital evidence-based services. Telehealth is an emerging area of research and clinical practice, often proposed as a solution for multiple barriers to service provision. However, despite scattered promising evidence translating in-person treatments to telehealth, many treatments still lack established effectiveness in a virtual format. Parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT) is a traditionally in-person behavioral parenting intervention uniquely well-suited to telehealth, as during typical clinic practice the clinician is not in the clinic …

Specialists In Name Or Practice? The Inclusion Of Transgender And Gender Diverse Identities In Online Materials Of Gender Specialists, Natalie Holt, Robyn E. King, Richard Mocarski, Nathan Woodruff, Debra A. Hope

Trans Collaborations Academic Papers

Recommendations for health care providers working with transgender and gender diverse (TGD) individuals emphasize affirming clients’ identities, such as using correct pronouns and name, however it is unknown how often gender specialists adhere to such recommendations. Websites and intake forms of gender specialists were coded for use of affirming language, asking for pronouns and chosen name, and mention of TGD specialties and resources. Most websites identified the provider’s specialty to work with TGD individuals, though much fewer provided additional resources concerning TGD issues and only half of intake forms included affirming language. Given previous research that has demonstrated providers working …

Psychometric Evaluation Of The Transgender Congruence Scale, T. Zachary Huit, Allura L. Ralston, J, Kyle Haws, Natalie Holt, Debra A. Hope, Jae Puckett, Richard Mocarski, Nathan Woodruff

Trans Collaborations Academic Papers

Introduction Despite increased attention to transgender and gender diverse (TGD) issues in psychological literature during the past decade, gaps remain for psychometric validation of TGD-specific measures. Kozee et al. (Psychology of Women Quarterly 36(2):179–196, 2012) addressed such gaps by creating the Transgender Congruence Scale (TCS), measuring gender acceptance and feelings of gender congruence between internal and external attributes across a broad range of gender identities. The current study extended Kozee and colleagues’ work by further examining the psychometric properties of the TCS.

Methods Between October and November of 2017, 210 transmasculine, transfeminine, and gender diverse adults between ages 19 …

The Resulting Mental Health Pandemic From Covid-19: Research And Resources For Social Workers, Ami Lynch

Social Work Student Works

The COVID-19 pandemic will have long-lasting mental health impacts on hundreds of millions more worldwide than the contagion itself. Social workers are seeing increases in depression, anxiety, suicidality, and post-traumatic stress disorder and other negative mental health impacts. Because of this, social workers in all environments and modalities of practice need to be well-trained, agile, and energized while facing the pandemic themselves. This report compiles the impacts and concerns for a variety of social workers and their clients into a single, digestible source, supplemented by the “COVID-19 Resource Compendium for Social Workers and Their Clients”. Social workers must practice self-care, …

The Negative Impacts Of Cishet Values: An Exploration Of Lgbqtia+ Representation Within Emerging Adult Relationship Research, Kristina Betz

Psychology Student Scholarship

The hegemony informs epistemological assumptions within the field of psychology, and thus, psychological research is informed by the heteropatriarchy. Emerging adult relationships are rooted in cishet values, heteronormative and cisnormative values, erasing LGBTQIA+ romantic relationships. Emerging adult relationship research promotes cishet values by disregarding gender and sexuality spectrums through the expectations of binary gender and sexualities which produces data that cannot be generalized (Brassard et al., 2018; James-Kangal et al., 2019). Future research must utilize sample groups that include multidimensional social identities and researchers must internalize the importance of examining their dichotomized biases. Metanalytic studies and a broader critique are …

Understanding The Influence Of Childhood Experiences On The Development Of Female Sexual Perpetrators Against Underage Individuals, Cassandra Marie Hershman

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Females who are perpetrators of sexual offenses are an understudied population. Due to societies’ failure to recognize that female perpetrators exist and to recognize their abuse when it occurs, sexual abuse completed by females often goes unreported. As a result, females engaging in sexual offenses, particularly pedophilia, is seen as a rare occurrence. However, research suggests that the actual rate of female pedophilic behavior is occurring at a rate three-four times higher than what is actually reported (Cortoni, Babchishin, & Rat, 2017). This study used anonymous data from 2,828 adult females in the IRB approved study [127810-11] Effects of Recalled …

An Examination Of The Use Of The Bess With Rural Appalachian Preschoolers, Savana B. Earnest

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The use of universal behavioral screenings is endorsed by school psychology training programs as a gold standard of practice, but the implementation of these screenings is less common. Due to this, it is crucial that research examines reliability, validity, and all other psychometric properties when implementing a universal behavioral screening. Literature tells us that the BESS TRSP has shown to have moderate-to-high predictive validity and high stability coefficients in a variety of urban and rural populations of preschool and school age children. This research examined stability of high and low risk scores on the BESS TRSP within a rural Appalachian …

Understanding And Improving Coordination Efficiency In The Minimum Effort Game: Counterfactual- And Behavioral-Based Nudging And Cognitive Modeling, Alexander R. Hough

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Individuals often need to coordinate with others to pursue and achieve goals. However, individuals often fail to coordinate on any choice or on efficient (i.e., higher reward) choices. Researchers addressing coordination failure often used invasive methods ranging in complexity and generalizability with minimal success. There are also no clear measures for coordination behaviors. Here, I used a more parsimonious and generalizable method: Using counterfactuals (i.e., hypothetical outcomes had they or other players chosen differently) to nudge (i.e., indirectly guide and allow for free choice) individuals towards choosing options that are more likely to result in efficient coordination. I simulated a …

The Cultivation Of University Students’ Spiritual Wellbeing In Holistic Education: Longitudinal Mixed-Methods Study, Joe Pong

Faculty of Management & Hospitality (THEi)

"This longitudinal mixed-methods study, which consisted of (1) questionnaire surveys and (2) individual in-depth interviews, explored the development of the spiritual wellbeing of university students over the past four years under the cultivation of holistic education. A sample of 276 in quantitative and 32 students in qualitative studies was successfully followed up. The quantitative results suggest a main effect of time on the spiritual wellbeing of students, though no significant interaction effect is found between time and other variables, including gender, age and major disciplines. Qualitative results further show that holistic education through experiential learning contributes highly to the development …

An Analysis Of The Connection Between Insecure Attachment Style And Bodily Disposal Methods In Serial Homicide Offenders, Emmaleigh Welka

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

The purpose of this research was to connect behaviors based on John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory to bodily disposal methods utilized by serial homicide offenders. In this thesis, insecure attachment styles were the primary focus due to their translation into criminal behavior. The attachment styles analyzed within this study were anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, and fearful-avoidant. The bodily disposal methods that were analyzed were set forth by the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes and are the primary disposal methods utilized by serial homicide offenders. The disposal methods analyzed were transport/concealment, transport/dumping, no-transport/concealment, and no-transport/as is. The approach utilized for this …

Political Partisanship And Male High School Students Who Carry Handguns, John Page, Wayne L. Davis

Lincoln Memorial University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Handguns play a significant role in criminal activity. About 66% of all murders and 40% of robberies involve firearms. Because there are about than 470 residents for each full-time police officer in America, the police cannot effectively protect individual citizens. According to the differential association theory, criminality is a product of shared values, motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes that can be influenced by perceptions of the legal code. Democrats and Republicans have different views on reducing social harm via gun-control legal codes, and each political party creates its own unique ambience. Indeed, because each political party believes that its gun-control …

Ecological Interface Design For Flexible Manufacturing Systems: An Empirical Assessment Of Direct Perception And Direct Manipulation In The Interface, Dylan G. Cravens

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Four interfaces were developed to factorially apply two principles of ecological interface design (EID; direct perception and direct manipulation) to a flexible manufacturing system (FMS). The theoretical foundation and concepts employed during their development, with findings related to more significant issues regarding interface design for complex socio-technical systems, are discussed. Key aspects of cognitive systems engineering (CSE) and EID are also discussed. An FMS synthetic task environment was developed, and an experiment was conducted to evaluate real-time decision support during supervisory operations. Participants used all four interfaces to supervise and maintain daily part production at systematically varied levels of difficulty …