Psychology Commons^™

Towards A New Role Of Mitochondrial Hydrogen Peroxide In Synaptic Function, Cliyahnelle Z. Alexander

Student Theses and Dissertations

Aerobic metabolism is known to generate damaging ROS, particularly hydrogen peroxide. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are highly reactive molecules containing oxygen that have the potential to cause damage to cells and tissues in the body. ROS are highly reactive atoms or molecules that rapidly interact with other molecules within a cell. Intracellular accumulation can result in oxidative damage, dysfunction, and cell death. Due to the limitations of H₂O₂ (hydrogen peroxide) detectors, other impacts of ROS exposure may have been missed. HyPer7, a genetically encoded sensor, measures hydrogen peroxide emissions precisely and sensitively, even at sublethal levels, during …

Re-Member Selfhood A Drama Therapy Intervention, Option 1, Angelique Beauchêne

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Re-member Selfhood is a specific trauma-informed, drama therapy, intervention designed to meet the needs of adults with exposure to trauma and traumatic stress, who have pertinent adverse childhood experience scores and/or experience persistent trauma cycles over the lifespan concurrent with somatization. The aim of this thesis was to introduce an intervention which could function as indirect exposure and assist in the integration process taking the whole being of trauma sufferers into account, including body, mind, and soul. Additionally, the hope of this intervention is to decrease perceived physical pain, assist in the integration of the rejected aspect of self, and …

Playing With International Students From Asia: An Exploration Of Cultural Commonalities And Differences In Developmental Transformations (Dvt), Hazuki Okamoto

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Asian international students in the United States face a multitude of challenges such as language barriers, differences in cultural norms and behaviors, and identity confusion while navigating a foreign landscape. Developmental Transformations (DvT), a form of drama therapy, may apply to these challenges by enabling participants to explore different identities and express themselves creatively beyond the language barrier. This community engagement project was designed for Asian international students to be seen and heard by utilizing DvT. Within an in-person workshop, five participants played with their shared stories, and explored international and cultural roles in group DvT. Key takeaways from the …

Resilience In Refugee Youth: A Review Of Contributing Factors And Potential Barriers, Anna J. Kreisman

Honors Projects

While past research has predominantly centered on the trauma and challenges faced by refugees, there is a current shift toward examining refugee lives through a lens of resilience. The purpose of the present investigation is to examine the contributing factors and potential barriers to resilience in young refugees. I conducted a literature review of research from the past 24 years, primarily searching PsycINFO, Academic Search Complete, and SocINDEX. The review findings demonstrate that resilience can stem from individual, family, school, and community-level factors. The findings further indicate several potential barriers to resilience. In addition, I briefly discuss mental health interventions …

Does Higher Socioeconomic Status Associate With Better Mental Health Outcomes Among Primary Caregivers In Rural China?, Wenwen Zhang

Master's Theses

This study explores the intricate relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and the mental health outcomes of primary caregivers in rural China, focusing on the Early Childhood Development (ECD) context in Ya'an. Anchored in a major intervention project launched in 2023, the study critically examines the hypothesis that higher socioeconomic status correlates with lower levels of negative emotions among caregivers.

Utilizing cross-sectional data, the research investigates how educational attainment and household income influence caregivers' mental health, measured through the DASS-21 score in three dimensions: stress, anxiety, and depression. The findings reveal that higher household income and educational levels are significantly associated …

Knowledge Production And The Unthinkable: Weaving Stories Of Art, Gender, And Land, Christin Huntsman

Master's Theses

Colonialism is deeply and violently embedded in Western knowledge formation—dominant power structures produce epistemes that uphold and perpetuate colonial narratives. This kind of knowledge production forecloses other possibilities. Western discourse of truth becomes universalized to the point that other worldviews, other knowledges that do not conform to hegemonic norms, are suppressed or silenced. This thesis examines three areas of hegemony and erasure: art, gender, and land. First, the history of art clearly marks a delineation between Western elitist artistic masterpieces and non-Western ethnographic artifacts. Eurocentrism of art in the academy determines what counts as art and how art is categorized. …

Transition Skills Lab: A Telehealth Intervention For Improving Healthcare Transition In Youth With Special Health Care Needs, Angela Combs, Alaina Linafelter, Jordan Sevart, Michele H. Maddux

Research Days

The goal of this abstract is to evaluate youth skill-building and confidence across health care tasks through the virtual Transition Skills Lab.

Long-Term Physical And Emotional Functioning In Children Following Intensive Interdisciplinary Pain Treatment For Amplified Pain Syndrome, Sabrina Ung, Jacqueline Pabis Phd, Jenny Scheurich Phd, Dustin Wallace Phd

Research Days

The current study aimed to examine the efficacy of pediatric interdisciplinary pain treatment (IIPT) several years after treatment completion by exploring mean-level changes of physical and mental health functioning pre-intervention, post-intervention, and at follow-up 2 to 6 years after IIPT completion.

Exploring The Role Of Pain On Physical Activity Among Youth With Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Using The Biopsychosocial Model, Anna E. Van Asselt, Renee Gilbert, Meghan Tokala, Jacee Weber, Meredith L. Dreyer Gillette, Robert C. Gibler, Carolyn R. Bates, Keith August

Research Days

The Role of Pain on Physical Activity in Pediatric ALL

Keywords: Biopsychosocial model, pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, pain, physical activity

Introduction: Engaging in physical activity (PA) during cancer treatment benefits a child’s physical and mental well-being (McLaughlin et al., 2021). However, engaging in PA may be challenging due to treatment and disease-related pain (Uhl et al., 2020). Pediatric cancer research has primarily focused on management of procedural and chronic pain, with fewer studies examining how pain may interfere with PA during treatment (Clews et al., 2022). The current study qualitatively investigated the impact of pain on PA using a …

Euclidean Coordinates Are The Wrong Prior For Models Of Primate Vision, Garrison W. Cottrell

MODVIS Workshop

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are currently the best models we have of the ventral temporal lobe – the part of cortex engaged in recognizing objects. They have been effective at predicting the firing rates of neurons in monkey cortex, as well as fMRI and MEG responses in human subjects. They are based on several observations concerning the visual world: 1) pixels are most correlated with nearby pixels, leading to local receptive fields; 2) stationary statistics – the statistics of image pixels are relatively invariant across the visual field, leading to replicated features 3) objects do not change identity depending on …

Extreme Image Transformations Improve Latent Representations In Machines, Girik Malik, Ennio Mingolla

MODVIS Workshop

Shuffling pixels in an image helps machines to learn a more robust object representation. To probe the strategies used by humans and machines for object recognition, we introduce Extreme Image Transformations (EITs). Machines rely heavily on exploiting low-level features like color and texture, so their performance degrades on out-of-distribution and adversarial inputs. Humans depend on high-level features like shapes and contours, making them relatively robust to image distortions. EITs systematically shuffle the pixels in an image, parameterized by the size of grids, probability of shuffle and binary block movement, distorting the structure of objects at both local and global levels. …

Effects Of A Character Strengths Intervention On Emerging Adults’ Identity Formation, Self-Efficacy, And Self-Doubt, Wen Pin Wong, Kai-Shuen Pheh, Chee Seng Tan

Makara Human Behavior Studies in Asia

This study aimed to determine the effects of a single-session character strength intervention (CSI) on enhancing identity formation and self-efficacy and decreasing self-doubt of Malaysian emerging adults enrolled in tertiary education. A randomized active-controlled trial with a pretest, a posttest, and a 2-week follow-up was performed. A total of 129 undergraduate students (aged 18–25) were randomly assigned to either the CSI or the control group, who participated in a gatekeeper training for suicide prevention. Data from emerging and perceived adults were analyzed separately through a mixed-design analysis of variance. CSI showed no effects on improving emerging adults’ identity formation, self-efficacy, …

White Matter Trajectories Over The Lifespan, Stefania Conte, Dabriel Zimmerman, John E. Richards

Faculty Publications

White matter (WM) changes occur throughout the lifespan at a different rate for each developmental period. We aggregated 10879 structural MRIs and 6186 diffusion-weighted MRIs from participants between 2 weeks to 100 years of age. Age-related changes in gray matter and WM partial volumes and microstructural WM properties, both brain-wide and on 29 reconstructed tracts, were investigated as a function of biological sex and hemisphere, when appropriate. We investigated the curve fit that would best explain age-related differences by fitting linear, cubic, quadratic, and exponential models to macro and microstructural WM properties. Following the first steep increase in WM volume …

Listener Biases Toward Chinese And Latino Instructor Accents: Their Impact On Subjective Evaluations And Objective Memory Measures, Ka Wai Lau

Student Theses and Dissertations

Many people in the United States speak with a non-native accent that reveals their racial identity. Accent bias and discrimination are prevalent issues in many social interactions, including academic and work environments. Past research has argued that foreign-accented speech is generally more difficult to process. The present study aimed to explore the impact of Chinese and Latino accents compared to standard American accents on subjective evaluations and objective memory in a classroom setting. Participants were asked to evaluate speaker competence, trustworthiness, and warmth in math and Western literature lessons and completed a memory test for them. I found that Chinese-accented …

Creating Whole Inclusive Worlds: The Impact Of Social Media Usage On Black Gender Expansive Millennials’ Experiences Of Social Support And Identity Development Processes, Meredith J. Holmes

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study explored the processes of finding community and developing one’s own intersectional racial and gender identity through the social media (SM) experiences of 8 Black gender expansive (GE) adults located around the United States. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) methodology and an intersectional theoretical framework, the research questions guiding the study were: “What is the relationship between Black gender expansive people, social media, and community?” and “What is the relationship between Black gender expansive people, social media, and identity development?” The researcher’s findings from in-depth interviews with participants included three major themes: A) Positive Resilience-Supporting Experiences on SM, …

Resilient Af: Understanding The Lived Experiences Of Women Of Color Psychologists In Forensic Mental Health Settings, Carisse A. Cronquist

Doctoral Dissertations

This study explored the lived experiences of women of color psychologists who identify as ethnic-racial minorities. This qualitative study used interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to understand the narrative experience of the participants from their perspective. A total of four participants took part in this study. All participants identified as cisgender women psychologists currently working in a forensic mental health setting and identified as an ethnic-racial minority. In the lived experiences of the participants, three themes, and several subthemes, emerged: challenges, self-preservation, and strengths / resilience. The results showed that women of color psychologists working within forensic mental health settings face …

Anisotropy In Non-Rigidity Perception: The Role Of Anisotropies In Neural Populations, Akihito Maruya, Qasim Zaidi

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Parents’ Perception Of An Intensive Interdisciplinary Pain Treatment For Amplified Pain Syndrome, Jacqueline Pabis Phd, Sabrina Ung Ma, Jenny Scheurich Phd, Dustin Wallace Phd

Research Days

This study examines overall parent satisfaction with Intensive interdisciplinary pain treatment for youth with amplified pain syndrome. Additionally, it evaluates the relationship between parent-provider communication and satisfaction, as well as with perceived child outcomes.

Local Geometry Of Elementary Visual Computations, Peter Neri

MODVIS Workshop

Visual operators (e.g. edge detectors) are classically modelled using small circuits involving canonical computations, such as template-matching and gain control. Circuit models explain many aspects of the empirical descriptors that are used to characterize local visual operators, from sensitivity to classification images. Notwithstanding their utility, these models fail to provide a unified framework encompassing the variety of effects observed experimentally, such as the impact of contrast, SNR, and attention on the above descriptors. My goal is to start with a simple, plausible geometrical representation of the perceptual operation carried out by the observer, and to show that this representation is …

Do Mechanisms Of Sinusoidal Contrast Sensitivity Account For Edge Sensitivity?, Lynn Schmittwilken, Felix A. Wichmann, Marianne Maertens

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Relationship Between Perception Of Mindfulness In Email Communication And Employee Stress, Jacqueline Christine Snook

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate the relationship between the perception of leadership mindfulness with email communication and employee stress. Foundational to this research was the theoretical basis of the Job Demands Resource model, the Buddhist philosophy of mindfulness, and the Bible. The framework provided a necessary structure for investigating the application of mindfulness to organizational behavior in terms of email communication practices. The study was conducted using a sample of 69 participants. The participants responded to a 33-item Likert inventory through Survey Monkey. Reliability was assessed to determine the consistency and trustworthiness of each item for …

The Effects Of Period Poverty On Women Around The World, Sagelyn Shoell

Student Works

Period poverty involves girl’s and women’s lack of access to menstruation supplies, clean and private facilities, and education due in large part to negative attitudes surrounding the female menstrual cycle (Mann & Byrne, 2023). It is estimated that up to 500 million women around the world live in period poverty (The World Bank, 2022). Period poverty can adversely influence a women’s physical health, mental health, and educational opportunities and is usually associated with hostile sexism (at worst) and misunderstanding (at best) (Eyring et al., 2023; Marvan et al, 2013). Women who are experiencing period poverty often resort to unsanitary products, …

Defining Healthy Love: A Narrative Review Of Purity Culture's Impact On Healing From Sexual Assault, Gloria L. Diehl

Honors Projects

Over the last few decades, evangelical Christian teachings on sexuality have become an area of increasing interest as those who grew up in Purity Culture experience long-term effects on their world-concept. One area where the effects are particularly potent is attitudes regarding sexual assault. Research on healing from sexual assault identifies social responses to reports as a defining factor for the direction of healing. This literature review looks at how social support is negatively impacted by purity culture teachings through the endorsement of rape myth acceptance and victim blaming attitudes.

Causes And Consequences Of Word Skipping During Reading: Evidence From The Co-Registration Of Eye Movements And Eeg, Sara Milligan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Skilled readers skip approximately one third of the words in the text while reading for comprehension (Rayner, 1998). Therefore, a prominent question for decades among reading and language researchers has been how people are able to recognize words and comprehend text without even looking at all of the words. Eye tracking studies have established that some information about an upcoming word in the text can be identified while still looking at the previous word (Rayner, 1975), but it remains an open question whether words that are skipped are thoroughly identified or if skipping decisions are based on shallow heuristic factors, …

Barriers To Mental Health Treatment Among U.S. Army Aviation Personnel, Aric James Raus

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Safe and effective Army aviation operations require a clear focus from all involved. Yet, after more than two decades of U.S. combat aviation operations, little is known about the barriers experienced by aviators when considering mental health evaluation and treatment. An extensive literature review found no published studies examining mental health treatment hesitance among Army Aviation personnel or the perceived acceptability of self-help treatment options. This study identifies the relationships between age, gender, and aviation career specialty on the self-disclosed instrumental, attitudinal, and stigma-based barriers to care among U.S. Army aviation personnel. Additionally, the research determines relationships between the population’s …

The Effects Of Online Learning On Mental Health During A Pandemic, Christina J. Mcrae

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study investigated the effects of online learning on mental health. The focus included six aspects: academic performance, physical activity, social isolation, food insecurity and other stressors, pros and cons, and religion and mental health. Each aspect included advantages and disadvantages that adolescent students experienced. The study included 6th - 12th graders attending a Charter school. The eligibility requirement was that participants participated in online learning during the 2020-2021 school year. Academic performance data was obtained from the school office for students who attended the school during online learning and requested from parents if they attended other schools. Both positive …

Parenting Styles Of Biological Parents With And Without A History Of Childhood Trauma, Alita M. Soulsby

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This paper details a survey examining the impact of childhood trauma on the future parenting style of biological parents. This study included 65 parents (58 Mothers, 7 Fathers) with (n=27) and without (n=38) a history of childhood trauma. Parents were surveyed using the Parental Style Measure (Kim, Zang, & Lee, 2015) and the Early Trauma Inventory-Self-Report- Short Form (Bremner 2007) to determine parenting style and whether the participant had a history of childhood trauma. Also, parents were asked to report the number of years from the resolution of the trauma until the commencement of parenting to determine if the demonstrated …

Applying Stewardship Leadership That Impacts Employee Work Attitudes To Reduce Voluntary Turnover, H. Dea Dietrick Wood

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

At a time when leadership corruption threatens a hazard to sustainable organization development, a new brand of leadership governance is in demand. Therefore, the importance of this quantitative study was to examine a unique, newly proposed theory—stewardship leadership (SSL). SSL theory, based on a biblical worldview, was hypothesized to influence subordinates perceived organizational support (POS), subordinate affective commitment (AC), and subordinate organizational identification (OI) that, in turn, reinforces job embeddedness (JE) and reduces voluntary turnover intentions (TI) in comparison to servant (SL), transformational (TL), and leader-member exchange (LMX) leadership styles on work attitudes. SSL also appeared to be a composite …

Teacher Voices: Stress And Coping Mechanisms Among The Teaching Profession, Jasmine Suttles

Education | Master's Theses

Stress is a natural response that occurs in our body when we feel overwhelmed, and it can manifest in both positive and negative instances. The teaching profession is not exempt from this phenomenon, as it is unique in that educators have multiple roles to play and have to manage and interact with many students simultaneously. Teachers have been described as "exasperated by heavy loads of emotional labor in the classroom" (Ferguson et al., 2022). This "heavy load" can place the teaching profession at risk of stress and burnout if self-care is not addressed or mental health resources are not offered. …

Pain Interference In Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain: Examining A Resilience Model Of Dispositional Optimism, Coping Responses, And Mind-Body Practices, Trey Heffernan

Dissertations

Chronic musculoskeletal pain is the leading cause of disability in the United States. Pain interference, or the ways chronic pain negatively interferes with everyday life, is the biggest problem impacting individuals with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Although previous research has targeted risk factors associated with poor health outcomes, the adaptive functioning of some patients with chronic pain highlights a need for research investigating resilience factors. The purpose of this study was to investigate the direct and indirect relationships between resilience factors of optimism, coping responses, and mind-body practices on pain interference for individuals with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Specifically, the resilience model …