Health Psychology Commons^™

The Role Of Appearance In Perceptions Of Personal Trainers 2013., Patrick R. Boerner

Master's Theses

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The field of personal training in the United States is believed to have begun in the late 1970‟s and the early 1980‟s (Brooks, 2004). Today, personal training is a healthy profession that, according to the United States Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2012), is expected to grow 24% (60,400 jobs) between 2010 and 2020. In comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2012) predicts the average growth rate for all occupations within the U.S. to be only 14% during the same ten-year span. Rapid growth within the field of personal training has brought an increased scrutiny on …

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Interactive Video Gaming: Do We Feel Like We Are Exercising?, Antonio Santo, Shaelee Allen, Janet Dufek, Paul Hafen, Michael Jarrett, Krystina Moschella, Robert Rietjens, James Navalta, Richard Tandy, Jacob E. Barkley

Interdisciplinary Research Scholarship Day

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The primary purpose of this study was to determine if the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) and hedonics (liking or enjoyment) changed during 30 contiguous minutes of playing select, interactive video games on the Nintendo Wii system. A secondary purpose was to determine if RPE and liking differed among games.These data suggest that individuals do perceive difference in the amount of work they are performing during extended play of the same game or among sedentary and physically interactive games. Additionally, liking was similar during extended game play and among games suggesting that the physical interaction with the game may be …

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Lateralized Difference In Tympanic Membrane Temperature: Emotion And Hemispheric Activity, Ruth E. Propper, Tad T. Brunyé

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

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We review literature examining relationships between tympanic membrane temperature (TMT), affective/motivational orientation, and hemispheric activity. Lateralized differences in TMT might enable real-time monitoring of hemispheric activity in real-world conditions, and could serve as a corroborating marker of mental illnesses associated with specific affective dysregulation. We support the proposal that TMT holds potential for broadly indexing lateralized brain physiology during tasks demanding the processing and representation of emotional and/or motivational states, and for predicting trait-related affective/motivational orientations. The precise nature of the relationship between TMT and brain physiology, however, remains elusive. Indeed the limited extant research has sampled different participant populations …

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From College Student To Change Agent: A Triadic Model Of Self-Efficacy, Attribution, And Appraisal, Joshua M. Garrin

Journal of Sustainable Social Impact

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Beyond their newfound emancipation and opportunities for self-discovery, college students in the young adult stage of development are expected to achieve balance between their autonomous new world and the impending pressures of postgraduation life. The college student must not only reconcile issues related to identity formation, goal pursuits, and career exploration, but is expected to begin the process of identifying and developing the skills required to address salient social themes. How students establish competency beliefs, negotiate controllability over future outcomes, and appraise challenges have deep implications in their capacity to discover their social change “voice.” The following discussion proposes a …

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Intellectual Functioning And Multi-Dimensional Attentional Processes In Long-Term Survivors Of A Central Nervous System Related Pediatric Malignancy, Robert W. Butler, Diane L. Fairclough, Ernest R. Katz, Anne E. Kazak, Robert B. Noll, Ryan D. Thompson, Olle Jane Z. Sahler

Faculty Publications - Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) Program

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Abstract

Aims

Central nervous system (CNS) malignancies and/or their treatment in pediatric cancer survivors are known to be associated with deficits in neuropsychological functions. We report findings from a nation-wide study of childhood cancer survivors to investigate intelligence and attention/concentration from a multi-dimensional perspective in a diverse sample from this population.

Main methods

Four hundred forty-four pediatric cancer survivors between 6 and 17 years of age, who had suffered CNS involvement associated with their malignancy, were evaluated. All patients completed a measure of general intelligence. Attention was measured by a continuous performance test (CPT) and by parental report using a …

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Designing An "Information-Experience" Using Creativity Science Theory And Tools, Stephanie Belhomme

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

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An “information-experience” encapsulated by a technological/digital audio-visual tool presents data and potentially meaningful information to prompt actionable knowledge concerning: “unspoken creative process elements;” their profound impacts on both how well our “physiology of creativity” functions; but also on how well foundational creative thinking and behavioral prerequisites (energy, motivation, imagination, and ownership) are leveraged.

The product: 1) introduces the user to one component of the CPS (Creative Problem Solving) Facilitation Process - Exploring the Challenge; 2) features a content specific component which prompts exploration of the many correlations between societal, organizational / community, human physiological / behavioral data, and the direct …

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Testing The Indirect Effect Of Trait Mindfulness On Adolescent Cigarette Smoking Through Negative Affect And Perceived Stress Mediators, C. Anderson Johnson, David S. Black, Joel Milam, Steve Sussman

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

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Mindfulness refers to an enhanced attention to and awareness of present moment experience. This study examined how trait mindfulness, as measured with six items from Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale, might influence adolescent cigarette smoking frequency through its impact on depressive affect, anger affect and perceived stress mediators. Self-reported data from Chinese adolescents (N = 5287, mean age = 16.2 years, SD = 0.7; 48.8% females) were collected within 24 schools. The product of coefficients test was used to determine significant mediation paths. Results from baseline cross-sectional data indicated that trait mindfulness had a significant indirect effect on past 30-day …

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Increasing Parity Is Associated With Cumulative Effects On Memory, Laura M. Glynn

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

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BACKGROUND: The purpose of this investigation was to determine if reproductive experience is associated with cumulative effects on human memory performance during pregnancy and if these effects persist into the postpartum period.

METHODS: Verbal recall memory performance was assessed in 254 women four times during pregnancy and at 3 months postpartum. The relation between parity and memory function was evaluated with hierarchical linear modeling and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA).

RESULTS: The data indicate that the previously documented adverse effects of pregnancy on memory performance are compounded with successive pregnancies. During gestation and postpartum, multiparity was associated with poorer memory function, …

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Pain Tolerance And Thresholds In Women With Dyspareunia: Do Pain And Sex Primes Have Differential Effects?, Lea Thaler

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

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Dyspareunia, defined as recurrent pain in the genital/pelvic region during sexual intercourse, is one of the most common types of female sexual dysfunction, affecting approximately 15% of women between the ages of 18 and 24. Women with dyspareunia display similar cognitive and emotional styles evidenced in other chronic pain conditions (e.g. hypervigilance for pain information, catastrophization, and negative affect); however, dyspareunia is a unique pain disorder in that it directly involves sexual functioning. This pairing of pain and sex raises the issue of conditioning. Is it possible that because intercourse is painful for women with dyspareunia, the presentation of any …

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The Effect Of Priming A Thin Ideal On The Subsequent Perception Of Conceptually Related Body Image Words, Conor T. Mclennan

Psychology Faculty Publications

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Our research examined the effects of thin ideal priming on the perception of body image words in participants without an eating disorder. Half of the participants were primed by viewing thin models, and half were primed with gender-neutral shoes. Subsequently, all participants (N=56) completed a Stroop task for three categories of words: neutral (BOOKS), shoe (CLOGS), and body (THIGHS). Lastly, all participants completed a body dissatisfaction questionnaire. We predicted that body dissatisfaction scores would be correlated with the Stroop effect. We found a significant correlation between body dissatisfaction and the body effect of slower color naming times for the body …

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Examining The Relationship Between Body Work And Muscle Dysmorphia Symptoms, Katharine J. Reynolds

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

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The purpose of this study was to investigate whether men with a large amount of Muscle Dysmorphia symptoms had a more favorable outlook and opinion of body work. Participants in the current study were a convenience sample of men recruited from undergraduate classes at Western Kentucky University and the community of Bowling Green Kentucky and Somerset Kentucky. A total of 215 men completed the study. Participants completed the Muscle Dysmorphia Inventory (MDI) and the Attitude-Behavior Questionnaire (ABQ). Results indicate scores on the MDI were significant predictors of scores on the ABQ. This suggests that men with a high number of …

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Knowledge Of Nonsuicidal Self-Injury In Populations That Self-Injure, Darcy Leanne Cates

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

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Archived data was utilized for the present study which examined knowledge about non-suicidal self-injury, or NSSI, in individuals who engage in various degrees of the behavior and those who do not self-injure. Knowledge about NSSI was measured in three groups of respondents: those with no history of self-injurious behavior (no NSSI group), those with more limited experience with NSSI who reported 1-30 incidences of NSSI (limited NSSI group), and those with an extensive history (extensive NSSI group) who reported over 30 incidences of NSSI. To measure knowledge, participants were asked level of agreement with myths and facts about NSSI using …

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Locus Of Control And The Age Difference In Free Recall From Episodic Memory, Paul Amrhein, Judith K. Bond, Derek Hamilton

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

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The authors investigated the relation of locus of control (LOC) to age differences in free-recall memory performance. Older and younger participants completed P. C. Duttweiler's (1984) Internal Control Index (ICI) and subsequently performed free-recall memory tasks. Compared with the younger participants, the older participants exhibited poorer recall with more intrusions and uncorrected repetition errors as well as reduced categorical clustering. For the older participants with less internal LOC, recall proportion and item-pair associative recall clustering were lower than for the older participants with more internal LOC. By contrast, the younger participants did not exhibit any LOC effects in their recall …

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Listen Carefully: The Risk Of Error In Spoken Medication Orders, Conor T. Mclennan

Psychology Faculty Publications

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Clinicians and patients often confuse drug names that sound alike. We conducted auditory perception experiments in the United States to assess the impact of similarity, familiarity, background noise and other factors on clinicians' (physicians, family pharmacists, nurses) and laypersons' ability to identify spoken drug names. We found that accuracy increased significantly as the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio increased, as subjective familiarity with the name increased and as the national prescribing frequency of the name increased. For clinicians only, similarity to other drug names reduced identification accuracy, especially when the neighboring names were frequently prescribed. When one name was substituted for another, …

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An Examination Of Body Dissatisfaction And Media Exposure, Richard H. Kirchmeyer

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

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The goal of the current study was to examine the relationship between muscle magazine consumption and body dissatisfaction. The study also examined the relationship between muscle magazine consumption and the amount of disparity between ideal and real body shape. Participants (N = 108) were recruited via study board, and also on a volunteer basis, from a mid-Western university with a population of 20,674 students. The first hypothesis stated that men with greater exposure to muscle magazines would indicate that their actual body shape falls further away from their ideal body shape, in terms of both muscularity and fat level, than …

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Attachment: The Antidote To Trauma, Joshua Straub

Faculty Publications and Presentations

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Trauma and loss in life are inevitable. And all too often the traumatic experience itself can be enough to paralyze the mental, emotional, and spiritual state of any given person. Unable to interpret the traumatic experience, many instead are left defined by it. Helping clients discern the objective experience and their subjective reactions to it will help free them from the emotions and beliefs that subsequently control their lives. Based on the most relevant attachment theory research and clinical techniques, this workshop teaches the attentional strategies necessary to helping clients overcome trauma.

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A Pilot Study Of Bibliotherapy To Reduce Alcohol Problems Among Patients In A Hospital Trauma Center, Paul Amrhein, Timothy Apodaca, William R. Miller, Carol R. Schermer

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

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Because alcohol use plays a major role in many injuries that require hospital care, there is increasing interest in developing interventions to address alcohol problems among emergency department and trauma center patients. The aim of the current study was to extend past research on brief interventions by investigating the use of a self-help manual to treat problem drinkers in a hospital trauma center. Forty injured patients who were either intoxicated at the time of injury or screened positive for harmful drinking were randomly assigned to receive either a brief assessment and a self-help booklet with no more than 5 minutes …

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Health Anxiety And Cognition: Chronic Awareness Of Health Concerns Or Situational Activation Of Latent Dysfunctional Assumptions About Illness?, Desmon Craig Mitchell

Dissertations

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Rationale: This study investigated if health anxious individuals have chronically aroused illness-related concerns or if these concerns remain latent, only to be activated when first primed by illness-related stimuli. To test these alternatives this study examined whether participants, with varying levels of health anxiety, differed as to their (a) performance on an emotional Stroop task that included health-related words, (b) memory tasks (free recall and recognition tasks), and (c) the participants' dream content, after either being exposed, or not exposed, to an illness-related trigger. Hypotheses: If illness concerns are chronically activated in health anxious individuals, then participants will perform worse …

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The Effects Of Acute Nicotine Abstinence On Vigilance And Verbal Memory In Non-Diagnosed Smokers, David W. Ayer

Dissertations

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Research has shown a differential prevalence of smoking in the schizophrenic population compared to other psychiatric and non-diagnosed populations. The three most commonly investigated reasons for this differential prevalence in schizophrenics are: the self-medication hypothesis, side effects hypothesis, and sociological hypothesis. The self-medication hypothesis which proposes that schizophrenics smoke at a higher rate to ameliorate cognitive deficits is the most substantiated by the research. Of current interest is the possible role of nicotine in improving performance on vigilance and verbal memory, the two areas shown to be most related to impaired social functioning in schizophrenics. It is difficult to make …

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Social Attributions Of Asymptomatic Women Towards Anorexia Nervosa: A Qualitative Study, Natalie Mcdonald

Theses : Honours

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Anorexia nervosa (AN) has been identified as a complex, potentially lethal medical and psychological disorder, typically associated with a poor prognosis (Nordbo, Espeset, Gulliksen, Skarderud, & Holte, 2006; Signorini, De Filippo, Panico, De Caprio, Pasanisi, & Contaldo, 2007, 2007; Strober, Freeman, Lampert, Diamond, Teplinsky, & DeAntonio, 2006). The current review highlights the social and psychological elements attributed to AN by sufferers (Kelley, 1973; Nordbo et al., 2006; Woolrich, Cooper, & Turner, 2006), and through a social-cognitive explanation of attribution theory, identified the conceptual relevance of lay attributions towards AN and the lack of researched connection between the two concepts (Furnham …

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Investigating The Effects Of Real-Time Visual Feedback On Computer Workstation Posture, Sigurdur Oli Sigurdsson

Dissertations

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The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a package intervention that included discrimination training, real-time visual feedback, and self-monitoring on postural behavior at a computer workstation in a simulated office environment. A total of 21 participants were screened for participation, and eight of those participated throughout the study. A non-concurrent multiple baseline design across participants was used to assess the effects of the interventions across three postural variables. Following an information-only phase, participants were exposed to the intervention for the lowest stable postural variable. For most targeted postural variables, the intervention implemented in this study led …

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Brighter Noise: Sensory Enhancement Of Perceived Loudness By Concurrent Visual Stimulation, Yoav Arieh, Eric C. Odgaard, Lawrence E. Marks

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

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Two experiments investigated the effect of concurrently presented light on the perceived loudness of a low-level burst of white noise. The results suggest two points. First, white noise presented with light tends to be rated as louder than noise presented alone. Second, the enhancement in loudness judgments is resistant to two experimental manipulations: varying the probability that light accompanies sound and shifting from a rating method to a forced choice comparison. Both manipulations were previously shown to eliminate a complementary noise-induced enhancement in ratings of brightness. Whereas noise-induced enhancement of brightness seems to reflect a late-stage decisional process, such as …

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Perceived Control, Voluntariness And Emotional Reactions In Relocated Areas Of Russia, Ukraine And Belarus, Carol Jeniffer Figueiredo, Britt-Marie Drottz-Sjöberg

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

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[Excerpt] "The Chernobyl accident occurred at a time of considerable social and economic changes in the former Soviet Union. The contamination due to the accident still covers parts of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Some areas were considered too contaminated to suit long-term human settlement and a considerable number of people were therefore moved from their homes and resettled in other areas. Resettlement policies often differed between the states. Some variations in state policy included the duration before implementation of the decision to resettle people from certain areas, the swiftness of the transition, and the acceptance of personal initiatives in the …

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Predictors Of Social Physique Anxiety In Elite Female Youth Athletes, Jeffrey J. Martin, Hermann J. Engels, John C. Wirth, Kari L. Smith

Kinesiology, Health and Sport Studies

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The purpose of this study was to examine predictors of social physique anxiety (SPA). SPA, self-esteem, body-esteem, public body consciousness (PBC) and percent body fat (%BF) were assessed with elite female youth athletes (N = 68) competing in either figure skating, soccer or gymnastics. Stepwise multiple regression analyses, controlling for BF%, accounted for 59% of the variance in SPA. Self-esteem entered first, and BF%, followed by body-esteem and PBC. The psychological variables accounted for 57% of the variance with self-esteem contributing the most (R square change = 45%). Contrary to previous research, BF% did not significantly contribute to SPA. …

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Effects Of Age On Motor Preparation And Restructuring, Paul Amrhein, Noreen Goggin, George Stelmach

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

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Age-related decrements in motor plan restructuring were investigated. In this experiment, older and younger adults performed a discrete aiming task that involved responses that were precued and responses that were modified at the time of an imperative signal. On 75% of the trials, the precue specified the response-stimulus (valid trials) with respect to the movement parameters of the arm (left or right) and direction (toward or away). On the remaining 25% of the trials, the response-stimulus was different from the precue (invalid trials) in that the subject was required to modify a planned movement by changing the arm to be …

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