Biological Psychology Commons^™

Middle School Teachers' Perceptions Of Barriers Of Managing Student Behavior, Winifred Nicole Whitlock

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite training and support, many middle school teachers struggle to create, implement, and enforce research-based strategies to manage students' behaviors. The purpose of this case study was to examine teachers' perceptions about the barriers of managing student behavior. The research questions investigated 9 teachers' perceived barriers of managing student behavior at one middle school and the observed actions of these teachers' reactions to student behavior. Each participant was asked to participate in a 45-minute semistructured interview to examine their perceived barriers of managing student behavior and the strategies they use to manage student behavior relative to McGregor's theories X and …

The Relationship Between Depression And Cognitive Deterioration In Older Adults, Rakesh Chand

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The population structure of the United States is changing; the older age group is increasing in size relative to the younger generation. The trend is expected to continue, especially starting in 2020, when the baby boomer population---estimated at 80 million---will be reaching their 65 th birthday, a time associated with increasing health complications, including depression and dementia. The study employed a holistic paradigm as the conceptual framework to examine the association between depression and dementia in older adults, and generated a grounded theory to illuminate the relationship between depression and dementia. This theory was then used to assess the efficacy …

The Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence And Literacy Achievement Of Secondary Students, David P. Jones

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Proficiency in language arts and communication skills is essential to success in the global workforce. Most states assess students in language arts literacy (LAL) through standardized tests that assess a student's ability to read, interpret literature, and write expressively. Although educational reformers strive to improve the foundations that prepare students in literacy, reforms have not fully incorporated the theory of emotional intelligence (EI), which explains a student's ability to use, understand, perceive, and manage their emotions in order to think critically, make decisions, and solve problems. Although it is not known whether EI directly correlates to literacy, emotional skills are …

The Impact Of Company Grade Officer Self-Sacrificial Behavior On Subordinate Assessments Of Leader Charisma, Danjel Bout

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Newly commissioned officers in the U.S. Army are taught to lead their soldiers from the front and to voluntarily make personal sacrifices in the service of the nation. Although this facet of military culture is seen as critical to the integrity of the force, there are few research studies describing the impact of leader self-sacrifice in the U.S. Army. Research evolving from the transformational leadership literature indicates that civilian leaders who engage in self-sacrificial behavior are viewed as more charismatic than their counterparts and that this perception is particularly pronounced in crisis situations. The current study extended this research to …

Effect Of Stress, Emotional Lability And Depression On The Development Of Pregnancy Complications, Servitje, Estibalitz Laresgoiti Servitje

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Chronic stress and other emotional factors may have relevant impacts on pregnancy outcomes because they are related to neuroendocrine changes that lead to alterations in immunomodulation during pregnancy. In this quantitative prospective cross-sectional study, the relationship of emotional lability, depression, and stress during pregnancy and the development of preterm labor, preeclampsia, placental abruption, and low birth weight for gestational age babies was examined. Additionally, social support scores were compared to levels of stress/anxiety, depression, and emotional lability in pregnant women. Two hundred and forty two pregnant women who received prenatal services at the National Institute of Perinatology in Mexico City …

Exploration Of The Project Management Practitioner's Emotional Intelligence Competencies, Linda A. Hooper

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The success rate of information technology projects is on a downward trend, with reported losses in the billions of dollars. Recent studies indicate a 50--56% project success rate based on quality, budget, and on-time criteria. Building upon the conceptual framework of the emotional intelligence and knowledge management theories, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how project management practitioners apply self- and cultural-awareness competencies to affect project outcomes. Using a purposeful sampling method, 24 experienced U.S.-based project management practitioners participated in a web-based questionnaire. Following Giorgi's data reduction process resulted in numeric data coding. Thematic analysis revealed themes …

Do We Know What We Know? Self- Assessment Across The Lifespan, Courtney Clare Lee

Master's Theses

Self-knowledge can play a critical role in navigating physical, cognitive, and social changes in late life. To protect and preserve one's sense of self against these changes, individuals may engage in self-enhancing and self-serving biases in areas important to self-esteem. The importance attached to these areas may change with age, and self-knowledge of these psychological processes may vary with age. We investigated self-enhancing biases and metacognitive awareness of abilities in adulthood. Participants ranging in age from 20 to 80 completed a series of tests assessing the better than average effect across a variety of age-relevant domains as well as objective …

Information Acquisition And Sociality Among Migratory Birds, Zoltán Németh

Dissertations

Information use is a key feature of adaptive behavior: the better informed an individual, the better it is able to adjust its behavior to meet the demands of a variable world. Therefore, most animals attempt to reduce environmental uncertainty by gathering information when it is available. However, tracking unpredictable ecological factors may carry costs as individuals invest valuable time and energy in the process of information acquisition. Social learning (i.e., use of social information inadvertently produced by other individuals) enables the individual to gain rapid and more complete assessment of its novel environment. This process may be particularly important for …

Examining The Inner Experience Of Left-Handers Using Descriptive Experience Sampling, Aadee Mizrachi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Research suggests that there are anatomical asymmetries of the human brain in relation to hand preference. In addition, left-handedness has been related to a wide range of psychological and physical problems. Despite these relationships, little is known about the inner experience of left-handers. The present study used Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) to explore the inner experience of 6 left-handed participants. Descriptive Experience Sampling is a nonquantitative sampling method designed to explore and describe inner experience. Undergraduate psychology students were recruited from UNLV to participate in the study. Recruitment consisted of three phases: screening, qualification, and sampling. Students who reported writing …

Neuropsychological And Emotion Processing Abnormalities In Bipolar Disorder I And Ii, Carol Randall

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Bipolar disorder illness is marked by emotional lability and mood disturbance, as well as various neuropsychological deficits, and the neuroanatomical correlates of many of these deficits are beginning to be identified. Numerous studies have implicated specific cortical and sub-cortical abnormalities in areas associated with executive function, memory, motor function, and the processing of emotion. Although a large body of research has been devoted to the investigation of cognitive and emotion-processing deficits in bipolar disorder, relatively few studies have been devoted to the investigation of how these deficits differ among bipolar disorder subtypes. This is surprising in light of known symptomatological …

Taking Charge Of Adult Adhd, P. S. Mcmillen

Library Faculty Research

Barkley is one of the leading researchers and most prolific writers on attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) across the life span, having produced materials for mental health professionals and self-help books like this volume.

Effect Of Depression On Attention Via Mood Induction In A Healthy Population, Cheryl Mae Calvano

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

This project continues research into the cognitive attention of persons with a sad mood similar to that experienced by dysthymia. The project utilizes the Dot Probe Task to evaluate attention to affective stimuli presented in the International Affective Picture Set (IAPS). Participants were psychology students recruited from La Sierra University. Participants completed a word task that intended to induce a sad or neutral mood. The Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) was used to evaluate the efficacy of the mood induction. Overall, participant’s negative PANAS scale did not differ between groups. Groups differed between administrations of the PANAS on the …

Immune Function And Health Outcomes In Women With Depression, Cherie Howk, Mary P. Bennett

Nursing Faculty Publications

This research reports immune function and health outcomes in women with depression, as compared with a nondepressed control group. Using Psychoneuroimmunolgy theory and a descriptive comparison design, scores on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) were used to divide 40 non-hospitalized Caucasian women between the ages of 18 and 65 years into either the control or depression comparison group. Women with depression were found to report significantly more incidences of illness over the previous two months and they were found to have significantly more indicators of illness at the time of the exam as compared to the controls. However, contrary to …

Neural Dedifferentiation In Relation To Risk For Alzheimer's Disease, Nathan C. Hantke

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research indicates that as an individual's age increases, the task-related spatial extent of neural activation increases. This decrease in neural specificity, or dedifferentiation, is often demonstrated by older adults during challenging cognitive tasks. Cognitively intact individuals at-risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD), as deemed by having an apolipoprotein-E ε4 allele or a family history of AD, demonstrate increased fMRI activation as compared to individuals at lower risk. Using a low effort, high accuracy event-related semantic memory task involving the presentation of famous and non-famous names, we examined spatial neural specificity through a measure of dedifferentiation using …

Cognitive And Psychiatric Predictors To Psychosis In Velocardiofacial Syndrome: A 3-Year Follow-Up Study, Kevin M. Antshel, Robert J. Shprintzen, Wanda Fremont, Anne Marie Higgins, Stephen V. Faraone, Wendy R. Kates

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

Objective: To predict prodromal psychosis in adolescents with velocardiofacial syndrome (VCFS). Method: 70 youth with VCFS, 27 siblings of youth with VCFS and 25 community controls were followed from childhood (Mean age = 11.8 years) into mid-adolescence (mean age 15.0 years). Psychological tests measuring intelligence, academic achievement, learning/memory, attention and executive functioning as well as measures of parent and clinician ratings of child psychiatric functioning were completed at both time point. Results: Major depressive disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder diagnoses increased in the VCFS sample. With very low false positive rates, the best predictor of adolescent prodromal …

Neuropsychological Functioning And Attrition Rates In Outpatient Substance Dependence Treatment, Sandra M. Adams

Dissertations (1934 -)

Numerous neuropsychological factors have been associated with substance dependence, however, very few studies have evaluated the relationship of the neuropsychological functioning and attrition rates in substance dependence treatment. This study examined the relationship of neuropsychological functioning and attrition rates in 68 homeless, substance dependent men participating in outpatient treatment at the 7C's Community Counseling Clinic located in the Guesthouse of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A neuropsychological battery including the Delis Kaplan Executive Functioning System, the Conners' Continuous Performance Test II, the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI) and the Wechsler Test of Adult Reading was given to all participants to evaluate neuropsychological …

Effects Of Chlordiazepoxide On Predator Odor-Induced Reductions Of Playfulness In Juvenile Rats, Stephen M. Siviy, Courtney L. Steets, Lauren M. Debrouse

Psychology Faculty Publications

The extent to which a non-sedative dose of chlordiazepoxide (CDP) is able to modify the behavioral responses toward a predator odor was assessed in juvenile rats. Play behavior was suppressed and defensive behaviors were enhanced in the presence of a collar previously worn by a cat, when tested 24 hours later in the same context as that where the exposure occurred, and when tested in a context different than that in which the exposure occurred for up to 3 hours after exposure. CDP had no effect on the ability of cat odor to suppress play when rats were tested in …

Effects Of Cb2 Receptor Activation On Variable Chronic Mild Stress (Cms) Induced Depression And Hippocampal Dependant Spatial Learning, Eli Shobin

Psychology Honors Papers

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) accounts for approximately 10% of all diagnosed chronic illness in the United States. The most common treatments for MDD is serotonergic manipulation via pharmacological treatments such as monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAO-I) or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI). However, not only have these treatments proven to be ineffective for a portion of the population, but they also fail to treat some of the physiological damages that occur in the hippocampus during MDD due to over-activation of inflammatory cells known as microglia. Activation of the CB2 receptor in the hippocampus has been shown to inhibit microglial cells and …

Environmental Enrichment Attenuates Nucleus Basalis Lesion Induced Impairments To Attention, Brandee Leianne Kinney-Hurd

Theses Digitization Project

This experiment examined the effects of environmental enrichment on performance in an attention-dependent learning task in rats with selective lesions of the cholinergic nucleus basalis magnocellularis (NBM). The findings demonstrate that environmental enrichment can enhance attention-dependent learning performance in normal animals as well as attenuating NBM lesion-induced impairments otherwise seen following rearing in standard conditions.

Effects Of Chronic Paroxetine And Fluoxetine Treatment On Markers Of Suicidal Behavior In Adolescent Rats, Leslie Renee Horn

Theses Digitization Project

Major depression is a common problem in adolescents. Unfortunately, one of the most effective antidepressants in adults, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) paroxetine, is not clinically effective in pediatric populations. There are many variables that increase the risk of suicide including genetic, social, psychological, and biological factors, making the evaluation of the effect of SSRIs on suicidal behavior difficult to assess in human adolescents. The goal of the present investigation was to compare the effects of paroxetine and fluoxetine in adolescent rats on markers associated with depression and suicidal behavior in humans.