Experimental Analysis of Behavior Commons^™

Incentive Contrast As A Relative Reward, Alexandra Schmidt

Honors Projects

This study examines the relationship between rapid relative reward comparisons and incentive contrast among rats (n=5). Animals were trained to lever-press in order to obtain access to a sucrose solution (concentration used: 1%, 10% or 20% in tap water). These rewards were placed outside an operant box which could be reached through a small hole displaying sessions with mixed comparisons (1v20%, 20v1%) or single sessions (1v1%, 10v10%, 20v20%) that rotated between two spouts containing the pre-randomized order of paired blocks; allowing for comparative analysis between two spouts/concentrations and blocks of responses. Throughout weekly testing each animal experienced a …

Exploring And Training Spatial Reasoning Via Eye Movements: Implications On Performance, Victoria A. Roach

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation sought to determine if eye movements could serve as an indicator of success in spatial reasoning, and if eye movements associated with successful completion could be applied to strategically improve spatial reasoning.

Using the line images of Shepard and Metzler, an electronic test of mental rotations ability (EMRT) was designed. Two versions of the test were created, allowing for both a timed (6 seconds per question) and untimed testing environment. Four experiments were designed and completed to relate mental rotation ability (MRA) scores from the EMRT, to patterns in chrononumeric and visual salience data. In each experiment, participants …

Color Me, Please: How Color-Emotion Pairs Affect Our Perceptions, Russell T. Rogers

Honors College Theses

Color-emotion pairings are part of everyday experience, and they develop in early childhood. Emotional experiences are typically much stronger when emotional stimuli (e.g., pictures or videos) are paired with sensory stimuli (e.g., sights or sounds). Since the presence of these sensory stimuli seems to heighten the emotional experience of emotion-evoking visual stimuli, it should be the case that such pairings will allow the manipulation of color-emotion pairings through the presence of a color (a visual stimulus) during an emotional situation (such as watching a video). In this study (N = 44), we paired both a positive and negative video …

Olfactory Enrichment In California Sea Lions (Zalophus Californianus), Mystera M. Samuelson

Dissertations

In the wild, California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) are exposed to a wide array of sensory information at all times. However, it is impossible for captive environments to provide this level of complexity. Therefore unique procedures and practices are necessary for the maintenance of physiological and psychological health in captive animals (Wells, 2009). This project aims to explore the behavioral effect of scent added to the environment, with the goal of improving the welfare of captive sea lions by introducing two scent types: 1.) Natural scents, found in their native environment, and 2.) Non-natural scents, not found in …

Feasibility Of A Peer Support Oriented Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Training Massive Open Online Course For Emotion Dysregulation, Rachel Gill

Senior Theses

Public interest in mental health care modernization has steadily gained momentum since ratifying The United States Health Care Affordability Act (U.S. Office of the Legislative Counsel, 2010). Furthermore, with 1 in every 1000 people seeking online support for mental health issues (DeAndrea & Anthony, 2013), research concerning the development of virtual mental health applications is critical to ensure science guides their innovation. To this end, this study explores the feasibility of a mental health intervention that unites the experiential, recovery-oriented, and self-determined values of mental health peer support (Kaufman et al., 2014) with dialectical behavior therapy skills training (DBT-ST) (Linehan, …

“God Hates Fags”—The Use Of Religion As Justification For Prejudice Towards Homosexuals, Michelle S. Fabros

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The Westboro Baptist Church and Phelps family are notorious for their signs proclaiming anti-homosexuality epithets such as “God Hates Fag,” and references to Biblical verses to revile homosexuality (e.g., Romans 1:24-27). Although the homonegativity bias that Westboro patrons and many traditional Christians express is often understood as being rooted in religion, I proposed the possibility that religion can be a justification rather than source of homonegativity. That is, although religion typically is seen as the source of prejudice towards LGBT+ people, I argued that this relationship might work in reverse. I examined under which conditions this “reverse” phenomena might occur …

Effects Of Failure On Subsequent Performance In The Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops Truncatus), Lisa Kay Lauderdale

Master's Theses

The current study examined the immediate effects of two types of failure during operant-conditioning based training sessions in 11 bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) at the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program in San Diego, CA. While learning a multi-faceted behavior not commonly found in nature, such as beaching, animals are likely to perform approximations of the behavior that are not successful and do not result in reinforcement. The effects of failure on beaching trials were systematically investigated over a three-month period by determining the mean failure rate and the probability of success after initial success, initial attempts, and initial …

Same-Sex Socio-Sexual Interactions Among A Group Of Captive Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus), Natalia Botero Acosta

Master's Theses

Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) frequently engage in non-reproductive sexual behavior, including homosexual encounters. In order to better understand the nature and function of these interactions, a longitudinal study of the patterns of association and the dynamics of initiator/recipient role exchange was conducted. Underwater video footage of a colony of bottlenose dolphins housed at the Roatan Institute for Marine Sciences (RIMS), collected between March of 2010 and May of 2013, was analyzed. Associations occurring during homosexual interactions were transitory for most individuals. Nonetheless, subsequent analyses allowed the rejection of the null hypothesis of random association, suggesting the existence of …

Comparing Implicit And Explicit Measures Of Sex Guilt In Predicting Sexual Behavior, Delaram Asadzadeh Totonchi

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Sex guilt is a generalized expectancy for self-mediated punishment for violating or anticipating violating standards of proper sexual conduct. Our current knowledge about sex guilt is primarily achieved through using explicit measures, particularly the widely used Mosher Sex Guilt Inventory. Research has shown that explicit sex guilt can predict many sexual behaviors such as sexual activity, number of sexual partners, and condom use. Responses on explicit measures, however, are influenced by dissimulation and social desirability, especially when assessing socially sensitive domains such as sexual attitudes. The present study hypothesized that adding implicit sex guilt as a second predictor to the …

One-Session Mindfulness Meditation: The Effects Of Stress Anticipation, Christina Dorothy Colgary

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The current study concerns three main questions that are related to mindfulness meditation: the benefits of a brief preventative one-session mindfulness meditation, the effects of mindfulness meditation compared to a concentrative meditation, and correlations between rumination and stress when facing anticipated and unanticipated stressors. Type of meditation and whether or not participants could anticipate an upcoming stressor were varied in four conditions. Participants completed one 20-minute session of either mindfulness meditation or guided imagery meditation and were informed of a speech preparation task either before or after completing the meditation. Both one-session of mindfulness meditation and guided imagery meditation were …

The Effects Of Trade Competition On Health, And Determinants Of Workplace Behavior, Thomas Clayton Mcmanus

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation consists of three essays related to workplace behavior. In the first paper, we design a controlled laboratory experiment to study image motives in a setting where decisions signal intelligence. The experiment results show that in some settings social scrutiny can discourage individuals from making choices that signal their intelligence, despite evidence that the signal was privately valuable. In the second paper, we study the effect of Chinese import competition on occupational safety and health at US manufacturers. We find that a change in US trade policy and Chinese import shocks significantly increases worker injury and illness rates in …

Adult Attachment Styles And Psychopathic Traits: A Relationship Mediated By Empathy And Emotional Regulation?, Chelsea Heim

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

Psychopathic personality traits encompass an array of characteristics that emerge early in life and are influenced by insecure attachments between children and their parents. Disruptions in parent-child interactions also affect the development of empathy (Panfile & Laible, 2010) and emotion regulation (Waters, S. F., Virmani, E. A., Thompson, R. A., Meyer, S., Raikes, H. A. & Jochem, R., 2010), which contributes to lasting impairments in interpersonal working models about the self and others (Mack, Hackney & Pile, 2010). The interactions between psychopathy and insecure attachment, low levels of empathy, and the ability to regulate one’s emotions have been separately investigated …

Phase Change Lines, Scale Breaks And Trend Lines Using Excel 2013Tm, Neil Deochand

Masters Theses

The development of graphing skills for the behavior analyst is an ongoing process. Specialized graphing software is often expensive, not widely disseminated, and may require specific training. Dixon, et al. (2009) provided an updated task analysis (Carr & Burkholder, 1998) in the widely used platform Excel 2007. Vanselow and Bourret (2012) provided online tutorials outlining some alternate methods also using Office 2007. This article serves as an update to those task analyses with alternative and under-utilized methods in Excel 2013. To examine the utility of our recommendations twelve psychology graduate students were presented with the task analyses and the experimenters …

Temporal Information Processing Across Primary Visual Cortical Layers In Normal And Red Light Reared Tree Shrews., Wenhao Dang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Visual neuroscience research has benefitted from decades of efforts of comparative studies of different species, since exploring and understanding the diversity of functional properties of visual system in different species has helped us identify both general organization rules and unique traits of certain species. In this study, spatio-temporal receptive fields (STRFs), together with some other functional properties (etc. stimulus preference to different visual stimuli, orientation tuning, temporal frequency tuning and the F1/F0 ratio of responses to sine-wave grating stimuli), of primary visual cortex (V1) cells were measured in normally reared and red-light reared tree shrews (Tupaia), a species considered the …

An Examination Of Several Variables Influencing The Efficacy Of The Gateway In Street Sign Configuration On Motorist Yielding Behavior, Miles Bennett

Dissertations

This study contains five different experiments that examine the effects of several variables influencing the effectiveness of the In-Street sign and various In-Street sign configurations. Experiment 1 and 2 compared the effects of the Gateway configuration using R1-6 signs to blank fluorescent yellow-green signs arranged in the Gateway configuration on motorist yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks. The results showed that the blank signs produced an increase in yielding from 7% to 33%, while the addition of the message and symbols to the sign increased yielding to 78%. Experiment 1, 2, and 4 examined the effects of different configurations of the …

Behavior Analysis Program To Improve Habits Of Physical Activity, Eating, And Sleeping, Ivan Noe Martinez Salazar

Dissertations

An Internet-based five-week duration program to improve “health habits” using behavior analysis principles and eHealth technology was developed and evaluated. The “health habits” include recurring behaviors that impact health status such as eating, sleeping, and physical activity.

Ten adult participants were recruited online from Mexico. A multiple baseline design was used and participants were randomly assigned into two different groups (i.e., ABBAA and AABBA groups). Participants received online training using videos describing the characteristics of the program and its components. Each participant recorded selected health behaviors using a Microsoft Excel® tool designed specifically for this program’s goal achievements. Participants reported …

Effects Of Amplitude Modulation On Sound Localization In Reverberant Environments., Paul W. Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Auditory localization involves different cues depending on the spatial domain. Azimuth localization cues include interaural time differences (ITDs), interaural level differences (ILDs) and pinnae cues. Auditory distance perception (ADP) cues include intensity, spectral cues, binaural cues, and the direct-to-reverberant energy ratio (D/R). While D/R has been established as a primary ADP cue, it is unlikely that it is directly encoded in the auditory system because it can be difficult to extract from ongoing signals. It is also noteworthy that no neuronal population has been identified that specifically codes D/R. It has therefore been proposed that D/R is indirectly encoded in …

What We See Changes How We See : Analyzing The Plasticity Of The Horizontal Effect., April Marie Schweinhart

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The relationship between the processing of orientations by the human visual system has been related to the orientation content of the natural environment; horizontal orientations, while predominant in natural environments, are perceived less well than vertical and oblique orientations are perceived best, though they are least prevalent in the natural world. This ‘horizontal effect’ has further extended the well-studied relationship between visual encoding and natural scene statistics as the differential perception of orientations in broadband scenes inversely matches their differential representation in the natural environment. However, the original hypothesis that this relationship may have evolved across millennia in order to …

A Kinematic Analysis Of Visual And Haptic Contributions To Precision Grasping In A Patient With Visual Form Agnosia And In Normally-Sighted Populations, Robert Whitwell

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Skilled arm and hand movments designed to obtain and manipulate objects (prehension) is one of the defining features of primates. According to the two visual system hypothesis (TVSH) vision can be parsed into two systems: (1) the ventral ‘stream’ of the occipital and inferotemporal cortex which services visual perception and other cognitive functions and (2) the ‘dorsal stream’ of the occipital and posterior parietal cortex which services skilled, goal-directed actions such as prehension. A cornerstone of the TVSH is the ‘perception-action’ dissociation observed in patient DF who suffers from visual form agnosia following bilateral damage to her ventral stream. DF …

Effects Of Early-Adolescent, Mid-Adolescent, Or Adult Stress On Morphine Conditioned Place Preference, Chloe Shields

Senior Theses

In light of previous work demonstrating that stress can increase subjective drug reward in adult rats, the present study investigated the influence of stress on morphine conditioned place preference (CPP) in early-adolescent, mid-adolescent, and adult male Sprague-Dawley rats. Subjects in each age group were assigned to either a no stress condition or a stress condition in which they were exposed to an unpredictable eight-day schedule of elevated platform and synthetic fox odor stressors. Place conditioning then evaluated subjective morphine reward in all animals. Using a biased procedure, subjects were assigned to receive morphine on the initially non-preferred side of the …

Differential Effects Of Methylenedioxypyrovalerone (Mdpv) And Mephedrone In Rats Trained To Discriminate Mdma Or A D-Amphetamine+Mdma Mixture, Eric Louis Harvey

Masters Theses

Recent reports on the abuse of novel synthetic cathinone derivatives call attention to serious public health risks of these substances. In response to this concern, a growing body of preclinical research has characterized the psychopharmacology of these substances, particularly mephedrone (MEPH) or methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV), noting their similarities to MDMA and cocaine. The present study employed drug discrimination methodology to assess the discriminative stimulus effects of MEPH and MDPV in male Sprague-Dawley rats trained to discriminate 1.5 mg/kg 3,4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) or a mixture of 1.5 mg/kg MDMA and 0.5 mg/kg d-amphetamine (MDMA+AMPH). After establishing dose response functions with each training …

Effects Of Altering Motivation In Pigeons Performing A Titrating-Delayed-Matching-To-Sample Task, Zachary J. Zimmermann

Masters Theses

In order to better understand the role motivating operations (MOs) serve in preceding and evoking behavior, it is useful to examine the effects of whether manipulating motivation can influence performance on tasks with known behavioral outcomes. It is well established that altered stimulus control is responsible for changes in responding on tasks of generalization and discrimination. Therefore, if stimulus control could be influenced by MOs, then perhaps stimulus discriminations could be improved by manipulating the relevant MO. To this end, the effects of altering motivation via food deprivation were examined in pigeons using a titrating-delayed-matching-to-sample task. Additional pharmacological variables (i.e., …

An Investigation Of Short-Term Memory Functioning In A Neurodevelopmental Rat Model Of Schizophrenia, Ashley M. Moyett

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Schizophrenia is a debilitating disorder characterized by positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms. Cognitive deficits affect one’s learning and memory due to a dysfunction in the brain, inhibiting a normal functioning life. The self-medicating hypothesis states that ninety percent of people with schizophrenia smoke, because nicotine use improves these cognitive deficits. The cytokine hypothesis states that inflammation due to prenatal infection is associated with schizophrenia. These increased proinflamatory cytokines can damage the brains of the fetuses, which can cause schizophrenic-like symptoms in rats. The present study used Lipopolysaccharides to activate the cytokine-mediated inflammatory response injected into pregnant dams. A T-maze was …

The Effects Of Tylenol On Non-Social Emotional Memory, Renato Puga

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The present study proposes utilizing a slide-show presentation analogous to the one employed in Puga, Spelman, and Bohannon (2014). However, a new series of precritical, critical, and post-critical slides will be utilized, counterbalancing perceptuallycentral/peripheral items across all ofthem as well as counterbalancing the pre-critical and post-critical slides. The ultimate goal of this manipulation is twofold: To provide a strong methodological scenario in which (1) the "preceding information effect" found in Puga, Atkinson, and Bohannon (2012) as well as (2) the acetaminophen-post critical effect found in Puga, Spelman and Bohannon (2014) can both be re-tested and solidified.

Delay And Probabilistic Discounting Of Alcoholic Beverages, Frank L. Galante

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Discounting tasks were used to determine the degree to which college undergraduates discounted delayed and probabilistic alcoholic beverages. Tasks were framed in terms of gains (i.e.,obtaining a hypothetical amount of alcohol) and losses (i.e., losing a hypothetical amount of alcohol). In all gain and loss conditions, discounting was evident and was generally well described by a hyperboloid function. Gains were discounted more steeply then losses. There were no correlations between the median delay gain discounting rates and the median delay loss discounting rates. Likewise, there were no correlations between the median probabilistic gain discounting rates and the median probabilistic loss …

Judging Laura, Rebecca E. Richardson

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Laura Audax is a sixteen-year-old girl who has an interesting set of characteristics. She is a dynamic mixture of compassion, stubbornness, brilliance, recklessness, imagination, and arrogance. The way the world understands these personality traits has transformed and evolved over time. If a girl like Laura lived in four different time periods, society would react differently to her in each era, but the overall question is how different these reactions really are. Does the definition of what makes certain personality traits “good” or “bad” change over time?

The following four stories take place in 1850, 1920, 2015, and 2100 respectively, and …

Delay Discounting: Are Magnitude Effects Moderated By Domain Effects?, David A. Williams Jr.

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Delay discounting is a phenomenon wherein a commodity loses its value as the delay to its receipt increases. It may be conceptualized as a measure of patience, or impatience. There are several aspects of a commodity that contribute to its loss in value, in addition to the delay to its receipt. Specifically, there are differential rates in delay discounting across commodity types (domain effects) and commodity amounts (magnitude effects). Interestingly, magnitude effects occur almost exclusively in relation to a particular commodity type: monetary rewards. The present study sought to isolate magnitude effects from a particular quality of monetary rewards: fungibility. …

Mass Shootings And Mental Illness Perception, Sierra M. Korb

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This study focused on the relationship between mass shootings and mental illness stigma. Specifically, this study looks at how learning about mass shootings affects the extent to which people with mental illness are stigmatized. Participants were asked to read a short story and then answer survey questions about their opinions of the mentally ill. The main finding of this study was that participant’s preferred greater social distance from people with mental illness after learning about mass shootings, even when it was not explicitly mentioned that the shooter was a person with mental illness.

Illusory Correlations In Mental Illness Stigma, Katrina Aberizk

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The purpose of this research is to examine people’s readiness to form an association between those diagnosed with a mental health condition and negative behavior in the absence of objective evidence for that association. The research expands on a traditional illusory correlation paradigm to include social group information and two types of negative behavioral statements. The traditional paradigm exposes research participants to a series of statements describing the behaviors of members of two different social groups, including desirable and undesirable behaviors, and participants are then required to recall behavioral information and rank members of both groups on a series of …

Expanding Openness: The Effect Of Actor Emotional Expression On Audience Openness To Experience, Amalia Golomb-Leavitt

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Commonly regarded as one of the Big Five domains of personality, openness to experience has the social potential to deepen group connection, increase team growth and performance, and strengthen diverse relationships. In the current study I hypothesize that emotional expression on the part of an actor has the potential to increase the levels of openness to experience of the audience. To test this hypothesis, I administered the Big Five Inventory (BFI-44) to assess baseline levels of openness to experience, randomly assigned participants to view either three videos high in levels of emotional expressivity or three videos low in emotional expressivity, …