Applied Behavior Analysis Commons^™

A Functional Analysis Of Losses In A Risky Choice Procedure, David W. Sottile

Dissertations

Loss chasing is a maladaptive pattern of risky behavior in which the frequency of risky behavior temporarily increases after a loss. The conditions under which loss chasing occurs are not well understood. Conditioned reinforcement appears to play a role in loss chasing, but the consideration of antecedent variables is necessary for a complete account. The purpose of this study was to test the role of (1) a stimulus that indicated the number of trials left in the session (i.e., a trial counter), and (2) the effect of the ordinal value of a trial in a risky choice task on loss …

A Parametric Analysis Of The Sunk Cost Effect, Amanda F. Devoto

Dissertations

Sunk costs are previous investments of time, effort, or money toward a goal that cannot be recovered. People often honor sunk costs by continuing to pursue a goal, despite the availability of an alternative path that would pay off faster, a phenomenon called the sunk cost effect. Prior research has identified variables that influence the sunk cost effect. One variable found in hypothetical scenario-based research and in behavior-based research (Pattison et al., 2011) has been percent of goal completed. The current study was designed to (1) replicate and extend research by Pattison and colleagues and (2) compare results from the …

Know Your User: Building A Predictive Model Of Consumer Preference For Driverless Cars, Mattie Nicole Milner

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

INTRODUCTION: This dissertation identifies factors significantly predicting participants' preference for riding in an autonomous vehicle rather than flying on a commercial aircraft. A plethora of research has investigated these two transportation industries independently; however, scarcely any research has considered the impact these two industries will have on each other. Travelers’ preference for riding in an autonomous vehicle rather than a commercial aircraft was investigated through four different scenarios.

METHOD: A regression equation was created to predict participants’ preferred travel method and validated through a two-stage process. Stage 1 involved the creation of the regression equation, and a total of 1,008 …

Does Diversity In Team Members’ Agreeableness Benefit Creative Teams?, Sean T. H. Lee, Guihyun Park

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Although deep-level diversity among team members are often discussed as important catalysts of team creativity, little is currently understood about the impact of diversity in team members’ personality on team creativity and team satisfaction. We propose that diversity in team members’ agreeableness would reduce the effectiveness of creative teams through its impact on team conflict experienced. To test our hypotheses, we recruited 93 student teams to participate in a laboratory study where each member had their personality traits assessed before engaging in a team creativity task. We found that diversity in team members’ agreeableness was positively associated with team task …

Why Do Cosmopolitan Individuals Tend To Be More Pro-Environmentally Committed? The Mediating Pathways Via Knowledge Acquisition And Emotional Affinity Toward Nature, Kenichi Ito, Angela K. Y. Leung, Tengjiao Huang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Past research offered evidence that cosmopolitan individuals behave more pro-environmentally. The current study systematically examined two mechanisms explaining why. One the one hand, cosmopolitan individuals acquire knowledge about global challenges concerning environmental crises and become aware of mitigating strategies. On the other hand, cosmopolitan individuals extend their prosociality beyond humankind and develop an emotional affinity toward the natural environment. We set out to provide the first empirical support for these cognitive and emotive pathways accounting for why cosmopolitan individuals tend to be more environmentally friendly. We recruited a total of 1,159 participants to systematically investigate the simultaneous mediation of cognitive …

A Toolkit To Deal With Negative Reactions In The Covid-19 Crisis, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Understanding our own and others’ biases helps us respond better to difficult situations. Adopt what I call the 3Rs approach - refrain, reflect and resolve, to deal with negative events and manage our negative gut emotions and reactions.

Personal Beliefs About The Effectiveness Of A Primary Seat Belt Law In Virginia Versus North Carolina, Rochelle A. Rushlow

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Seat belt law strength (primary versus secondary) affects the ability of law enforcement to enforce consistent seat belt use, especially in secondary seat belt law states. Certain demographics correlate with seat belt law effectiveness beliefs and overall seat belt use. The current study used an overall omnibus model to determine the strength of the relationship among demographics and beliefs in the effectiveness of primary seat belt laws. A survey was deployed to Mechanical Turk (MTurk) users who were Virginia or North Carolina residents, held a valid United States driver’s license, and were at least 18 years old. Three hundred twenty-four …

Effects Of Transparency And Haze On Trust And Performance During A Full Motion Video Analysis Task, Sarah C. Leibner

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Automation is pervasive across all task domains, but its adoption poses unique challenges within the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) domain. When users are unable to establish optimal levels of trust in the automation, task accuracy, speed, and automation usage suffer (Chung & Wark, 2016). Degraded visual environments (DVEs) are a particular problem in ISR; however, their specific effects on trust and task performance are still open to investigation (Narayanaswami, Gandhe, & Mehra, 2010). Research suggests that transparency of automation is necessary for users to accurately calibrate trust levels (Lyons et al., 2017). Chen et al. (2014) proposed three levels …

Multiculturalism And Diversity Issues In Applied Behavior Analysis, Brian M. Conners

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The topic of training in diversity and multiculturalism in the field of applied behavior analysis (ABA) has only been discussed within recent years. Minimal research has examined this topic particularly within the scope of training at the graduate level in higher education. Therefore, this paper focuses on examining full time ABA faculty perceptions of multiculturalism and diversity training within their own graduate programs. Furthermore, this paper also presents a call to action related to diversity issues in the field of ABA in terms of graduate students and graduate preparation training and curriculum.

Using Data To Inform An Educational Staff Training Manual: Pilot Study, Jillian Dawes, John Lum, Jennifer Silber Carr, Nathan Lambright, Stephanie Child

Journal of Human Services: Training, Research, and Practice

Evidence-based staff training in education is limited in the research literature. While several targeted components of staff training exist, no prior research has combined evidence-based procedures into a multi-component staff training manual. The purpose of the current pilot study was to improve training for new staff in a special education setting. A needs assessment indicated social validity in developing and implementing programs for behavior support plan training and phasing-in staff during training. Based on this data, a manual was developed to include comprehensive training procedures. While the amount of data was limited, results indicate some initial support for the manualized …

Motivational Antecedents To Fandom And The Resultant Effects In The Foreign Contemporary Music Market, Hyun Sang An, Wooyang Kim, C. Anthony Di Benedetto

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Comparing Intersubject Correlation (Isc) Between Autism Spectrum Disorder And Typically Developed Groups To Better Understand Biological Motion Processing, Elena Skaribas

SMU Journal of Undergraduate Research

In this study, we addressed significant neurological differences between autistic and typically developed individuals, specifically when processing biological motion, using Intersubject correlation (ISC) analysis methods. ISC is a tool used to analyze functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data acquired under naturalistic stimuli. Using ISC, it is possible to pinpoint common brain responses within a group of individuals as they react to a specific stimulus. ISC is also used to highlight the different brain responses two different groups might have while experiencing the same stimulus. In this experiment, we used two subject groups, one group of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) individuals …

Evaluation Of Unm's Parental Leave Policy, Julia Fulghum, Karlyn A. Edwards, Charlie Christian, Steven Verney, Lisa A. Marchiondo, Teagan Mullins

ADVANCE Reports

Experiences with UNM’s parental leave policy C215 have been evaluated using the ADVANCE 2018 Main Campus Faculty Climate Survey, a series of junior faculty interviews, and concerns brought to the ADVANCE leadership. Key findings are:

• Women and STEM faculty are more hesitant to use family-leave policies, and perceive greater disadvantage in using them than men and non-STEM faculty
• Sharing of information about, and implementation of, parental leave varies significantly between units
• The attitude of the department chair and senior faculty strongly influence the experience of faculty who use parental leave
• Appropriately implemented, the parental leave policy contributes to faculty recruitment …

Fixation Patterns Of Driving Scenes As A Function Of Task Load And Task Goal, Anastasia N. Diamond

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Distracted driving has been a heavily researched area, and the negative impacts it has on driving performance is well known. Eye movement patterns of distracted drivers have also been studied, though insight into what the driver specifically looks at is not as well known. Researchers have studied eye movement metrics like average fixation durations, eyes-off-road glance times, time to first fixation, among other eye movement variables, over an entire drive, but not as much attention has been given to what the driver is looking at in a specific moment in time. The current study uses the Tobii Pro X2-60 eye …

Positivity Can Strengthen Immunity, Sean Teck Hao Lee, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In the laboratories of Carnegie Mellon University some years ago, 95 men and 98 women volunteered to have live cold and flu viruses sprayed directly into their noses.

Mate Preferences For Warmth-Trustworthiness Predict Romantic Attraction In The Early Stages Of Mate Selection And Satisfaction In Ongoing Relationships, Katherine A. Valentine, Norman P. Li, Andrea L. Meltzer, Ming-Hong Tsai

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

People seek warm and trustworthy individuals as long-term mates for numerous reasons. Indeed, such individuals are prone to cooperation, have strong parenting skills, have the ability to fulfill our need to belong, and may provide a relationship that is characterized by greater closeness, protection, acceptance, and safety. Although prior work has shown that both sexes indicate equally strong preferences for these traits in potential mates, few studies have examined whether people actually respond favorably to partners high in warmth-trustworthiness in live mating contexts. We, thus, demonstrated that people’s stated preferences for warmth-trustworthiness (a) predicted their attraction to potential mates in …

A Functional Analysis Of Physical Activity In Children With Intellectual And Developmental Disabilities, Alexandra Knerr

Thesis Projects

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends children get 60 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each day, but few children with intellectual and developmental disabilities meet these guidelines. Determining the function of physical activity may lead to more effective interventions for increasing physical activity levels in these children. The present study adapted the methods of Larson, Normand, Morley, and Miller (2014) to conduct a functional analysis of physical activity in children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. For two subjects, rates of physical activity were measured using pedometers in five conditions: Verbal attention, adult interaction, music, ignore, and control. …

The Author’S Reflections On No B.S. (Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe In Black People Enough Not To Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear About Black People, Ivory A. Toldson

Numeracy

Toldson, Ivory. A. 2019. No BS (Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe in Black People Enough Not to Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear About Black People (Boston, MA: Brill-Sense) 194 pp. ISBN 978-9004397026.

This essay provides an introduction to No BS (Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe in Black People Enough Not to Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear About Black People. In the essay, the author discusses how cynical views about the educational potential of Black children motivated him to write a book that challenges negative statistics. The essay also outlines the harmful …

Validity Analysis Of A Modified Questions About Behavioral Function (Qabf) Assessment: Preliminary Analysis, Christina Marie Sheppard

Thesis Projects

The Questions About Behavioral Function (QABF) is a 25-item rating scale about the variables that are potentially maintaining problem behavior, and it is administered in an interview format to an informant. According to previous research, the psychometric soundness (such as validity) of the QABF and other indirect assessments is low, yet these instruments are used frequently in practice. The purpose of the current study was to determine whether specifying a recall period would improve the validity of the QABF (i.e., correspondence of QABF results with functional analysis results). A QABF, a modified version with timeframes (QABF-M), and a functional analysis …

Does Clicker Training Lead To Faster Acquisition Of Behavior For Dog Owners?, Brian J. Burton

Theses and Dissertations

Clicker training is a method of dog training that has increased in popularity over the past 20 years (Feng et al., 2017). However, while there has been an increased use of clicker training, studies examining the claims that clicker training leads to faster acquisition of new behavior (Skinner, 1951; Pryor, 1999) has only been investigated in a handful of studies with domesticated animals. In addition, all known published studies comparing a clicker-plus-food group to a food-only group have found no significant difference in acquisition of a novel behavior (Dorey & Cox, 2018; Feng et al. 2017), which suggests that a …