Psychiatry and Psychology Commons^™

Caffeine Consumption In A Long-Term Psychiatric Hospital: Tobacco Smoking May Explain In Large Part The Apparent Association Between Schizophrenia And Caffeine Use, Manuel Arrojo-Romero, Carmen Armas Barbazán, Javier D. López-Moriñigo, Ramón Ramos-Rios, Manuel Gurpegui, José M. Martinez-Ortega, Dolores Jurado, Francisco J. Diaz, Jose De Leon

Psychiatry Faculty Publications

This study further explores the association between schizophrenia and caffeine use by combining two prior published Spanish samples (250 schizophrenia outpatients and 290 controls from the general population) with two Spanish long-term inpatient samples from the same hospital (145 with schizophrenia and 64 with other severe mental illnesses). The specific aims were to establish whether or not, after controlling for confounders including tobacco smoking, the association between schizophrenia and caffeine is consistent across schizophrenia samples and across different definitions of caffeine use. The frequency of caffeine use in schizophrenia inpatients was not significantly higher than that in non-schizophrenia inpatients (77%, …

Distinguishing Originality From Creativity In Adhd: An Assessment Of Creative Personality, Self-Perception, And Cognitive Style Among Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Adults, Jean-Pierre J. Issa

Creative Studies Graduate Student Master's Theses

Debates over whether Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) relates to high levels of creativity have been hampered by a lack of rigor when defining creativity. The purpose of the present study was to go beyond the rhetoric by empirically investigating creative personality, creative self-perception, and cognitive style among 49 ADHD adults. Comparative analysis to studies of non-ADHD samples revealed distinctive tendencies: A mean group score of 115.71 (SD=18.02) on the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI) indicated preferences for originality, nonconformity, paradigm-breaking, and low efficiency that was over one standard deviation higher than average non-ADHD population scores. Combined inattentive/hyperactiveimpulsive subtypes (n …

Frontal Lobe And Psychopathy, Shawna Germain

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

This research paper presents an analysis of the functions of the frontal lobe and how damage to the frontal lobe correlates to psychopathy. Initially, it will look at how damage to the frontal lobe obstructs frontal lobe functions. The decrease in executive function, due to a reduction of blood flow to the frontal lobe following a subarachnoid hemorrhage, is explored. The correlation between cortical thickness and impulsiveness in adolescence is examined. Subsequently, the issue is then examined through the observation of groups with psychopathy and how the diagnosis relates to their frontal lobes. One study compares individuals with psychopathy to …

The Skinny On Eating Attitudes, Body Image, And The Thin-Ideal In College Women, Lyndsay N. Greene

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

There is evidence of a link between body image and disordered eating among females, and some research that suggests exposure to the media exacerbates both body dissatisfaction and eating pathology. Despite these claims, little research has been done on the effects that exposure to photo-shopped images specifically has on body dissatisfaction and eating pathology. The present study sought to further understand the relationship between cognitive distortions of body image and eating attitudes and to examine the effects that exposure to the thin-ideal found in the media has on body dissatisfaction among college aged women. Eighty female college students answered questions …

The Role Of Medical Comorbidities On The Risk For Severe Dementia, Institutionalization, And Death In Alzheimer's Disease: A Population Study In Cache County, Utah, Mac J. Gilbert

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive disease that impairs cognitive and functional abilities. Without a cure, it is estimated there will be 81 million cases of Alzheimer’s disease by 2040. Life for the individual with Alzheimer’s disease, and their family, changes drastically when the affected individual experiences significant problems with memory, thinking, and ability to complete daily tasks. Some become so debilitated that they need to be placed in a nursing home for supportive care. Until a cure is discovered, it will be important to identify what can be done to help those with Alzheimer’s disease minimize time spent experiencing severe …

Effects Of Differential Rates Of Alternative Reinforcement On Resurgence Of Human Behavior: A Translational Model Of Relapse In The Anxiety Disorders, Brooke M. Smith

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Brooke M. Smith, graduate student in the Combined Clinical, Counseling, and School Psychology program at Utah State University, proposed and completed this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements of Master of Science in Psychology.

Anxiety disorders are the most common psychological disorders in the world, and they place a substantial burden on society. Although successful psychological treatments for anxiety are available, many people still experience relapse once treatment ends. When consequences that follow a behavior increase its future probability, this is termed “reinforcement.” One common treatment approach for anxiety is to attempt to decrease problematic behavior, such as avoidance, …

Personality And Relational Aggression In College Students: The Role Of Social Anxiety And Rejection Sensitivity, Daniel Locke Deason

Master's Theses

Relational aggression involves the intentional infliction of harm via damaging one’s relationships or sense of belonging. Previous research suggests that relational aggression among children and early adolescents is correlated with social ostracism, poor psychological adjustment, anxiety, and depression in victims, and there is increasing evidence that many of these correlates apply to relational aggression among older adolescents and emerging adults. Efforts to identify predictors of relational aggression are underway; however, many variables which have been influential in understanding other forms of aggression have not yet been examined. The Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality is one example, as it has …

The Role Of Attention In Ego-Depletion, Garrett Pollert

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The resource model of ego-depletion is unable to account for the results of several ego-depletion studies, whereas a recent mechanistic revision by Inzlicht and Schmeichel (2012) has focused on the role of attention and motivation in an effort to explain the phenomenon. Assessment of attention's role in restrained and unrestrained eaters may provide evidence that motivation and attention work in tandem to affect one's ability to exert self-control. In this experiment, college-aged females participated in two studies to examine the role of attention in ego-depletion effects. Study 1 evaluated the effect of ego depletion on attention via a dot probe …

Effect Of Sensory Cues On Hand Hygiene Habits Among A Diverse Workforce In Food Service, Robert Pellegrino

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Poor hand hygiene is a leading cause of foodborne illnesses in the foodservice industry. A series of complex motivational interventions must be employed to permanently change the behavior of workers, to increase their compliance and sustain appropriate levels of proper hand hygiene. Unlike the healthcare industry, which uses large, costly multi-modal behavior modification strategies, the foodservice industry must deploy rapid, cost-efficient strategies that are focus on accommodating these goals with the constraints of high employee turnover rates and diverse demographics. This research was twofold, 1) examining differences in emotions and hand hygiene behavior among participants of two cultures when handling …

Failure To Launch? Understanding Variations In Emerging Adult Flight Patterns, Christina Ashley Williams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

What does the transition to adulthood look like for emerging adults? This study proposes that popular cultural ideas like "failure to launch" imply an oversimplified dichotomy that does not account for the multiple "flight patterns" into adulthood. Focusing on the narratives of six interview cases selected from the larger sample of interviewees from Wave 4 of the National Study of Youth and Religion and drawing on the quantitative data from the broader survey sample, this mixed-methods approach examines in-depth, narrative experiences and the ways structural barriers vary between upper-middle, lower-middle, and working class emerging adults. We find that emerging adulthood …

Exploring The Relationship Between Early Childhood Attentional Control And Language Ability, Jaima S. Price

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Relatively few studies have investigated the relationship between early childhood attentional control and later cognitive outcomes, especially language development. The current study is an investigation of the relationship between the executive functioning (EF) component of attentional control and language ability in the second year of life. More specifically, the predictive nature of two aspects of attentional control, attentional focus and resistance to distraction, was be the primary focus of the proposed study. Although it was expected that children both high in attentional focus and resistance to distraction would have significantly superior language development than infants with lower attentional capacities, analyses …

Previous Mental Illness Diagnoses Predict Perceptions Of Current Mental Illness: A Cultural And Gender Differences Analysis Of The United States And India, Kimberly N. Hunter, Stephen Rice, Keegan Kraemer, Korhan Oyman

Aeronautics Faculty Publications

The disparities in mental health care around the world have led to differences in the way mental illness is treated, diagnosed, and stigmatized. The studies conducted revealed in this article investigated differences between the United States and India in terms of their willingness to agree with a possible mental illness diagnosis. Each study was conducted online using FluidSurveys®. Participants were recruited via Amazon's® Mechanical Turk® (MTurk), which is a website that provides access to an online, highly diverse participant pool. For Study 1, we hypothesized that there would be significant differences in agreement rates between the two countries and that …

Measuring Patient Experience In A Safety Net Setting: Lessons Learned, Nina Shabbat, Katy Dobbins, Sonja Seglin, Kristin Davis

Patient Experience Journal

Safety net providers have faced barriers in administering patient experience surveys due to a lack of resources and survey expertise, but this problem has received little attention in the literature. In this manuscript, we offer lessons learned from the administration of a patient experience survey at a mid-size behavioral health care agency serving a safety net population. Specifically, we discuss resource needs, methods of increasing response rate among transient populations, methods for engaging stakeholders and clinical staff in quality improvement initiatives, and considerations for responding to setbacks and challenges dynamically. We also offer insight on the effective dissemination of results …

Evidence Consistent With The Multiple-Bearings Hypothesis From Human Virtual Landmark-Based Navigation, Martha R. Forloines, Kent D. Bodily, Bradley R. Sturz

Psychology: Faculty Publications

One approach to explaining the conditions under which additional landmarks will be learned or ignored relates to the nature of the information provided by the landmarks (i.e., distance versus bearings). In the current experiment, we tested the ability of such an approach to explain the search behavior of human participants in a virtual landmark-based navigation task by manipulating whether landmarks provided stable distance, stable direction, or both stable distance and stable direction information. First, we incrementally shaped human participants’ search behavior in the presence of two ambiguous landmarks. Next, participants experienced one additional landmark that disambiguated the location of the …

The Plight Of The Lucluc: Examining The Deadly Mystery Of Nodding Syndrome, Ethan K. Mcgann

Senior Honors Theses

Nodding syndrome (NS) is an emerging epidemic neurological disease that is shrouded in mystery. It is currently only found in the post-conflict regions of South Sudan, northern Uganda, and Tanzania. NS occurs in children from the ages of five to fifteen and is characterized by a loss of motor control in the neck muscles. Seizure episodes can range in intensity from atonic to tonic-clonic, and the onset of the first episode generally marks the beginning of a decline in the child’s physical and mental health. NS is a progressive disease that generally results in physical wasting, stunted growth, behavioral difficulties, …

2nd Place Contest Entry: Treatment Of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder In A Veteran Population: Efficacy Of Complementary And Alternative Medicine Therapies, Brooke D. Snelgrove

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This is Brooke Snelgrove's submission for the 2014-2015 Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize, which won second place. She wrote about the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among veterans with Complementary and Alternative Medicine therapies. You can read the final essay that came out of her research here.

The Domestic Dogs’ (Canis Familiaris) Understanding Of Intentional And Goal Oriented Action, Kirili Stauch, Stephanie Aubuchon, Ellen Furlong

John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

Domestic dogs possess unique sensitivity to human social cues, perhaps due to our shared evolutionary history. We explored whether dogs share social cognitive abilities - understanding intentions and goals - humans demonstrate from infancy. In Study 1, dogs watched a researcher either unable (i.e. she dropped a treat) or unwilling (i.e. she offered and then withdrew a treat) to provide food. Dogs demonstrated sensitivity to intentions by spending more time close to the researcher during unable than unwilling trials. In Study 2, dogs watched a researcher reach for a ball and ignore a duck. Next, the ball and the duck …

Is It Ethical To Hold A Person Culpable For His Actions If He Cannot Recognize Right And Wrong, Tabitha E.H. Moses

Student Works

The field of neuroscience has opened up a proverbial can of worms when it comes to questions of free will and culpability. The more we know about the mind the more it appears that no one has any real choice in their actions. The ethical implications of this assumption are astronomical. Guilt and culpability come into question; it would seem unjust to punish a person for a crime if he had no choice but to commit it. While these are interesting questions for an ethicist they are impractical for society as they might affect how society functions. As such, the …

Handling Human Hacking: Creating A Comprehensive Defensive Strategy Against Modern Social Engineering, Charles Snyder

Senior Honors Theses

Social engineering is one of the most devastating threats to any company or business. Rather than relying upon technical flaws in order to break into computer networks, social engineers utilize a suave personality in order to deceive individuals through clever conversation. These devious conversations frequently provide the attacker with sufficient information to compromise the company’s computer network. Unlike common technical attacks, social engineering attacks cannot be prevented by security tools and software. Instead of attacking a network directly, a social engineer exploits human psychology in order to coerce the victim to inadvertently divulge sensitive information. Further complicating the issue, the …

Sexual Orientation Competence: Psychologists’ Perceived Competence And Relationships To Multicultural Competence, Training, Engagement, And Exposure To Lesbian, Gay, And Bisexual Individuals, Marty A. Cooper

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Attitudes toward sexual orientation, specifically towards those who identify as lesbians, gay men, and bisexual (LGB) individuals, have varied temporally. Given the pervasiveness of heterosexism in American culture, it becomes quite important to understand if we, as psychologists, could unintentionally create heterosexist environments with our clients. This study looked at the following research question: What are the unique contributions of the predictor variables: exposure to persons of sexual minority status, training experience in sexual minority populations, perceived multicultural competence, and engagement in sexual minority specialization and practice to the criterion variable perceived sexual orientation competence within United States (US) licensed …