Experimental Analysis of Behavior Commons^™

Variation In Personality Among Semi-Wild Myanmar Timber Elephants, Sateesh Venkatesh

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines two personality traits: exploration and neophobia, which could influence human-elephant conflicts. Thirty-one semi-wild elephants were tested over two trials using a custom novel puzzle tube containing three tasks and three rewards. Our studies show that elephants do vary significantly between individuals in both exploration and neophobia.

Uncovering The Neural And Behavioral Factors That Underlie Changes In Processing Visual Orientation, Patrick Sadil

Doctoral Dissertations

From moment to moment, the visual environment appears stable; despite prolonged scrutiny, the edge of a desk is not perceived to change. But this apparent stability emerges from perceptual and decisional systems that undergo continuous modulation. In two chapters, I focus on two different kinds of modulation to the processing of visual orientation (i.e., the tilt of an edge). In both chapters, the form of modulation is latent, obscured by standard analyses. To detect those latent changes in perceptual decisions, I develop in this dissertation new statistical tools, at both behavioral and neural levels. In the first chapter, I consider …

Assessment Of Dopaminergic And Serotonergic Receptor Antagonists In Male Rats Trained To Discriminate 4-Methylmethcathinone (Mephedrone), Rachel L. Burroughs

Masters Theses

Preclinical drug discrimination studies of the synthetic cathinone, 4-methylmethcathinone (mephedrone) have demonstrated its effects are comparable to those of other popular psychostimulant drugs. Few studies have directly examined the contribution of specific neurotransmitter receptors to mephedrone’s discriminative stimulus effects. The present study investigated the role of dopamine and serotonin receptors in these effects. Eight adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were trained to discriminate 3.0 mg/kg mephedrone from saline. After dose-response curves were determined with mephedrone (0.375-3.0 mg/kg), a series of stimulus antagonism tests were conducted with dopamine antagonists (Sch 23390, haloperidol) and serotonin antagonists (WAY 100,635, MDL 100,907, pirenperone) administered as …

Politeness Theory: Compliance And Paralinguistic Cooperation, Jamie Jacqueline Osborn

Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract

This manuscript is comprised of three research studies focused on politeness, shame, and cooperation. Study one is a pretest to develop stimuli for the subsequent experiment. The stimuli are comprised of messages that vary by both the type and degree of politeness. There are two types of politeness: regard for another’s identity and regard another’s independence (autonomy). There are also two degrees of politeness: presence and absence of regard. Presence of regard is considered politeness and absence of regard is considered impoliteness. This creates four conditions: identity politeness, autonomy politeness, identity impoliteness, and autonomy impoliteness. This study included exemplars …

The Youthful Pandemic, Brook Sahlemariam

Nursing | Senior Theses

This paper attempts to examine the neurological, physical, and societal effects of e-cigarette use among youth and young-adults in North America. Furthermore, the paper investigates the parallels between e-cigarette users, tobacco users, and dual users in regard to behavioral patterns, reasons for use, and age of initiation.

Personality And Mood For Non-Player Characters: A Method For Behavior Simulation In A Maze Environment, Noah L. Paige

Master's Theses

When it comes to video games, immersion is key. All types of games aim to keep the player immersed in some form or another. A common aspect of the immersive world in most role-playing games -- but not exclusive to the genre -- is the non-playable character (NPC). At their best, NPCs play an integral role to the sense of immersion the player feels by behaving in a way that feels believable and fits within the world of the game. However, due to lack of innovation in this area of video games, at their worst NPCs can jar the player …

Envisioning Success: A Naturalistic Investigation Into Prospective Memory Performance, Reminder Use, And Memory Strategies In An Academic Context, John Whittemore

Honors Theses

Prospective memory encompasses the ability to remember to carry out future intentions. Prospective memory performance is essential for students. College students are expected to remember and complete a variety of assignments on a daily basis. In these naturalistic experiments taking place before and after COVID-19, college students were required to set academic goals for themselves for three consecutive days following specific guidelines. Each day, the participant identified a time specific academic goal and a non-time specific academic goal. Participants were randomizing assigned experimental or control condition. The experimental group performed an episodic future thinking exercise during encoding. Additionally, each time …

Effects Of Alcohol Intoxication On Hostile Attribution Bias And Relational Aggression In Women, Alita M. Mobley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Alcohol intoxication is consistently linked to physical and sexual aggression in men, but not women. The lack of evidence supporting the relationship between alcohol and aggression for women could be due to a failure to measure relational aggression (i.e., harmful social manipulation), the form of aggression more commonly employed by women. Further, alcohol intoxication may interfere with the interpretation of social cues, resulting in greater perceived provocation in ambiguous social interactions and increased aggression. The current study examined the relationship between alcohol intoxication and relational aggression in women and the extent to which interpretation of social cues (i.e., hostile attribution …

Application Of The “Idisco” Full-Brain Tissue Clearing Method: A View Of Dopamine And Inflammation In The Hiv-1 Transgenic Rat, Kristin Nickole Kirchner

Theses and Dissertations

The iDISCO (immunolabeling-enabled three-dimensional imaging of solvent-cleared organs) method is a quick, inexpensive, and easily adaptable tissue staining and clearing procedure that allows neuroscientists to study a protein of interest in a whole, unaltered tissue sample. While the iDISCO method was initially tested and validated for mice embryos and brains, the current experiment sought to adapt the method for use in the rat using HIV-1 transgenic (Tg) rat brain tissue. Antibodies for tyrosine hydroxylase and Iba-1 were validated in the HIV-1 Tg rat and in F344/N control rats using iDISCO. Confocal images were taken of tyrosine hydroxylase positive neurons in …

Wrongful Conviction Documentaries: Influences Of Crime Media Exposure On Mock Juror Decision-Making, Patricia Y. Sanchez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Psychology and law researchers have urged colleagues to collaborate with the makers of popular media, such as documentary filmmakers, in efforts to educate the general public about wrongful convictions (Kassin, 2017; Wells et al., 2000). Recently, programs depicting wrongful convictions, such as Making a Murderer (Demos & Ricciardi, 2015) and When They See Us (DuVernay, 2019) have garnered substantial viewership. Research on general and case-specific pretrial publicity (Daftary-Kapur et al., 2014; Kovera, 2002) and the effects of crime media (Baskin & Sommers, 2010; Schweitzer & Saks, 2007) demonstrate that although consuming crime-related media and being exposed to information about a …

Conversations With The Oregon Trail And The Silent Generation, Jose A. Camacho Quiroz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to explain the reason behind my art practise and process as it stands in August 2020, its context and relation to my life and experience as an outsider in the American culture. This process culminates in the documentation of experiences through the use and preparation of displays of personal artifacts as physical evidence and mechanisms of my transformation to my american persona through a continuing acculturation process and drift from the american generational archetype.

It is important to outline my current work state diverges from my past work since it no longer serves a …

Assessing Sex Differences In The Effects Of Short-Term Rem Sleep On Anxiety- And Depressive-Like Behaviors In Rats, Nadia Meshkati

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Findings from both human and animal studies suggest rapid eye movement (REM) sleep disturbances following a traumatic event can lead to inability to extinguish the fear association, and eventually influence the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Additionally, research has demonstrated that sleep disruptions, including REM sleep deprivation (RSD), increases anxiety- and depressive-like behaviors and states in animals and people, with evidence of sex differences. Furthermore, it has yet to be determined whether short-term RSD, a more natural animal model of PTSD, can influence affective state of subjects. The present study applied short-term RSD to investigate sex differences in the …

Using Video Modeling To Teach Staff How To Implement Preference Assessments, Megan Weaver

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Identification of reinforcers through preference assessments for individuals with disabilities is an important task because it increases the probability of skill development, including academic tasks, self-help skills, social skills, and behavior modification. Teachers of students with disabilities often experience problems with training paraprofessionals to implement preference assessments using written instructions alone. In this study, researchers will investigate whether video modeling will be more effective than written instruction to staff to implement preference assessments. Participants will include three to five paraprofessionals in a classroom setting with no previous behavior analysis training on preference assessments and three to five students in a …

Establishing Auditory Discrimination And Echoic Stimulus Control With An Auditory Matching Procedure, Clare Christe

Dissertations

A generalized auditory matching repertoire is considered an early milestone in the development of verbal behavior (Greer & Keohane, 2006). Previous literature has demonstrated that the auditory matching (AM) protocol can improve echoics in individuals with developmental delays (Brown, 2005; Choi, Greer & Keohane, 2015; Du, Speckman, Medina, & Cole-Hatchard, 2017). However, some children experience difficulties with the match-to-sample (MTS) format of the AM protocol, if they are unable to perform delayed MTS tasks.

One alternative to MTS is the go/no-go procedure (Serna, Dube, & McIlvane, 1997), which requires the student to make a simple discrimination (i.e., same/different) between two …

Coping Self-Efficacy As A Potential Moderator Of The Relationship Between Sexual Orientation And Negative Mental Health Outcomes, James M. Macchia

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Sexual minority individuals (i.e., those who identify as a sexual orientation other than heterosexual) have consistently been linked to an increased risk of negative mental health outcomes. The process of coping can impact the content and severity of said outcomes, and one’s ability to cope is often predicted by the concept known as coping self-efficacy (i.e., one’s belief in his or her ability to cope). This study aimed to assess the effects of sexual orientation, coping self-efficacy, and their interactions on mental health by looking at different aspects of coping self-efficacy as potential moderating variables. Self-perceptions of coping skills were …

Peer Verbal Sexual Harassment In Early Adolescence: A Feminist And Sexual Scripts Theoretical Approach., Shawn M. Rolfe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Until recently, sexual harassment research has focused primarily on adults and college and high school students with little attention given to younger students. While recent research has noted sexual harassment occurs among younger students, the literature addressing sexual harassment among middle school students is still sparse. Additionally, most studies of sexual harassment have focused on sexual harassment generally, with no distinction made between verbal and sexual harassment. In fact, only limited research has been exclusively conducted on verbal sexual harassment. Using self-report data, the current study adds to the literature by examining the nature of verbal sexual harassment as well …

Previous Experiences Drive Attention, Sunghyun Kim

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Traditionally, the allocation of attention was understood within goal-driven and stimulus-driven factors. However, the traditional approach cannot fully account for the mechanism of attentional orienting. Instead, a growing body of evidence shows that previous search experiences, irrelevant to both goal-driven and stimulus-driven factors, influence attentional allocation. For example, when contexts predict information of targets, the contexts guide attention toward the stimuli having the information predicted by the contexts: contextual cueing. In addition, more valuable stimuli attract more attention: value-driven attentional capture. However, two critical issues are present. First, contextual cueing has been found largely when the contexts and the target …

The Behavioral And Neural Effects Of Audiovisual Affective Processing, Chuanji Gao

Theses and Dissertations

In everyday life, we receive affective information from a multisensory environment. What we see and what we hear jointly influence how we feel, think and act. Outstanding questions still remain about the essential behavioral and neural mechanism underlying how we combine visual and auditory affective signals. In this dissertation, I report a series of behavioral, EEG and fMRI experiments addressing this question. I found behaviorally there are congruency, visual dominance, and negativity dominance effects. Using ERPs, I showed that these behavioral effects can map onto different time course in audiovisual affective processing. Time-frequency analyses of EEG data showed that there …

Testing For Differential Attention To Features In Evaluative Conditioning, Christine E. Weber

Theses and Dissertations

One eye tracking and one behavioral experiment examined the possible roles of contingency awareness and attention to stimulus features in evaluative conditioning. These experiments tested whether evaluative conditioning altered the saliency of positive and negative features in consumer products (Study 1) and attitudinal responses to ambivalent pictures (Study 2). Based on the conceptual categorization model, pairing of ambivalent conditioned stimuli with liked or disliked unconditioned stimuli was predicted to result in enhanced attention to affectively congruent features. Study 1 tested this prediction by recording eye movements to determine how attention to features and responses to ambivalent stimuli were altered as …

Distress Tolerance In Relation To Treatment Persistence, Engagement, And Improvement In An Exposure-Based Treatment For Sexually Abused Incarcerated Women, Ilana S. Berman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Incarcerated populations are disproportionately affected by traumatic experiences and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Many effective treatments for PTSD utilize exposure-based techniques which require engaging with emotionally distressing content. However, individuals with PTSD and low distress tolerance (DT) are more likely than those with PTSD and higher DT to engage in avoidant coping behaviors and have relatively high treatment attrition rates in general. This study explored relations between DT and treatment persistence, engagement, and improvement in incarcerated women (N = 85) enrolled in an 8-week exposure-based sexual assault recovery group at a minimum-security prison. I hypothesized lower baseline levels …

Scope Of Attention Variation As A Function Of Anxiety And Depression, Kathleen O'Donnell

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

As a social species, correct emotional perception is so vital, that the human brain has evolved a mechanism to control attentional choices by exerting a narrowed field of perception during danger, called the scope of attention (SoA). The SoA determines what information will be focused on or ignored by blocking the perception of non-relevant items and increasing selective focus on danger; even if danger is merely a sad-face. The emotional items blocked from perception cannot be remembered because they were never perceived. But, attention-control to emotional stimuli also varies with mood, as seen in mood-disorders. A mood-disorder’s effect upon the …

A Screenplay For Bystander Intervention For Sexual Harassment Scenarios For College Students, Shanti Herzog

Journalism

This project was developed to describe the drafting of a screenplay for an interactive, virtual reality sexual harassment training module for students of the California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo. The research began with the examination of the prevalent and persisting issue of sexual harassment within college campus communities, and how to present college students with the tools to intervene as bystanders, thus encouraging them to intervene when encountering sexual harassment scenarios. The resulting screenplay was written to provide college students at Cal Poly with strategies to identify and take action when encountering sexual harassment, especially in small group gatherings …

Estimating Predictors Of Mental Well-Being Through Analysis Of Children’S Drawings: The Case Of Syrian Refugees, Stephanie Smith

Master's Theses

There are currently over 65 million individuals that have been forcibly displaced globally. The cumulative trauma that comes from the refugee experience and exposure to violence has proven to have long-term negative psychological outcomes and thus negative impacts on human capital in the long run. Given that over 50% percent of the global refugee population are children, the ability to efficiently and accurately assess their mental well-being is of critical importance. Using data from over 2000 refugee children in Jordan, I use machine learning techniques to find key predictors of psychological distress, PTSD, and exposure to violence found in children’s …

Using Object-Choice Tasks To Investigate Sensory Perception In Sunda Pangolins (Manis Javanica), Joshua Dipaola

Theses and Dissertations

Pangolins are one of the most heavily poached, yet least understood mammals in the world. In this study, we used an object-choice task to assess the ecological relevance and use of sensory information in Sunda pangolin foraging behavior. This is the first controlled experiment on pangolin behavior to our knowledge.

The Effects Of Childhood Trauma On Romantic Support And Adult Problem Behavior, Keiva R. Brannigan

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a common topic in research investigating outcomes of abused or traumatized children. Previous literature on ACEs have established that high levels of ACEs are associated with both higher levels of problem behaviors in adulthood and lower quality of support in romantic relationships in adolescence/early adulthood. However, the potential for high levels of romantic support and other healthy relationship qualities to act as a buffer against the negative effects of ACEs on later problem behaviors has yet to be addressed in the literature. Thus, the present study utilizes data from an ongoing longitudinal study on social …

Assessing The Utility Of A Brief Abstinence Test To Reduce Smartphone And Social Media Use, Taylor B. Stanley

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the efficacy of implementing a Brief Abstinence Test (BAT) for reducing smartphone and social media (SM) use among college students. A BAT is a temporally condensed version of contingency management (CM), a reinforcement-based behavioral intervention. Participants (N = 32, males = 6) self-reported using an iPhone updated to iOS 12 and using SM on their iPhones for at least two hours per day. Once enrolled, participants completed an online battery of health-related questionnaires and learned how to capture electronically their smartphone-use data. Participants experienced a BAT for one week, during …

The Maze Of Personality: Latency And Electric Organ Discharge In A Mormyrid Fish, Gnathonemus Petersii Gunther 1862 (Mormyridae, Teleostei), Abbey C. Lipe

Theses and Dissertations

Personality is individual differences in behavior, consistent across contexts. Among Gnathonemus petersii we investigated, we hypothesized that fish could be grouped by: (1) slow/fast maze performance, (2) low/high electric frequencies, (3) correlated latency and frequency. Our first two hypothesis were not supported. Our third hypothesis was partially supported.

The Relation Between Positive Stereotypes, Negative Stereotypes, And Discriminatory Behavior Toward Hispanic And White Populations, Aileen Ynez Lovitt

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Research examining positive stereotypes has suggested a possible connection between positive stereotype endorsement and prejudice. This literature, however, has not investigated the relation between positive and negative stereotypes endorsement. Additionally, the combined impact of positive and negative stereotype endorsement predicting prejudice or discrimination has not been considered. Two studies were conducted to address the limitations in past research and gain a better understanding of positive stereotypes relating to behaviors toward out-group racial groups using Hispanic and White participants. Positive stereotypes endorsement was hypothesized to be positively associated with negative stereotype endorsement and was expected to increase the predicted power of …

Is It Only The Thought That Counts; Or Do Gift Cost, Social Approval, And Relationship Satisfaction Matter Too?, Farah Binte Abdul Malik

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This study investigated the effects of gift cost, social network (SN) approval, and relationship satisfaction on a gift receiver’s perception of the giver’s commitment to their romantic relationship. In addition to predictions of positive main effects (H1 to H3), it was predicted that relationship satisfaction would moderate the effects of gift cost (H4) and SN approval (H5). Participants were 227 undergraduates from Singapore who completed a survey online. A hierarchical moderated regression analysis was conducted, and the results supported all the hypotheses except H5. The novel findings were that receivers perceived their partners to be more committed when their SN …

Calling Out The Trolls: Responses To Witnessing Use Of The “Troll” Label As A Defense In An Online Group Context, Dene E. M. Wamsley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although the term “troll” has existed since the 1980s, its meaning has shifted in recent years as social media use has increased. People provide contrasting and imprecise definitions for what constitutes “trolling,” and often apply the term subjectively to describe online discussants who are uncivil, who are deviant, and who and present counter-attitudinal opinions. Exposure to deviance, counter-attitudinal information, and incivility often leads to unwanted psychological effects. In theory, labeling an uncivil, counter-attitudinal deviant as a “troll” proposes that their intention is to disrupt the conversation and upset other discussants, which provides a reason for why incivility is used, and …