Experimental Analysis of Behavior Commons^™

Building A Statistical Model Of The Drivers Of Self-Presentation, Kathleen Jocoy

Theses and Dissertations

The attempt to maintain a consistently positive public image is known as self-presentation; however, the structure of self-presentation has not been adequately explored. This paper aimed to identify a theory-based model for self-presentation by examining the relationship between personality traits and utilization of self-presentational behaviors. A review of the literature suggested self-presentation would be best modeled with a second order two-factor model with second order factors of Evaluation and Response. The second order factor of Evaluation is expected to explain the first order factors Perceived Anonymity, Sociability, and Communality while the second order factor of response is expected to explain …

An Empirical Examination Of Contemporary American Spiritualism And Mediumship At Lily Dale, New York, Diana Ali

Western Research Forum

American Spiritualism is an American religion that was born in 1848 in Hydesville, New York. Its central principles state that there is life after death and that mediums have the capability to communicate with discarnate beings. Mediums are persons who claim they can communicate with the dead. Today, Lily Dale, New York is the largest surviving community of American Spiritualism, with a population of mediums that host an annual festival that draws large crowds from around the world upwards of 20,000-30,000 visitors. The author of the present interdisciplinary study outlined a historical overview of American Spiritualism and conducted empirical research …

Competitive Frontoparietal Interactions Mediate Implicit Inferences, Martijn E. Wokke, Tony Ro

Publications and Research

Frequent experience with regularities in our environment allows us to use predictive information to guide our decision process. However, contingencies in our environment are not always explicitly present and sometimes need to be inferred. Heretofore, it remained unknown how predictive information guides decision-making when explicit knowledge is absent and how the brain shapes such implicit inferences. In the present experiment, 17 human participants (9 females) performed a discrimination task in which a target stimulus was preceded by a predictive cue. Critically, participants had no explicit knowledge that some of the cues signaled an upcoming target, allowing us to investigate how …

Individual Differences In Cyber Security, Christopher Conetta

McNair Research Journal SJSU

A survey of IT professionals suggested that despite technological advancement and organizational procedures to prevent cyber-attacks, users are still the weakest link in cyber security (Crossler, 2013). This suggests it is important to discover what individual differences may cause a user to be more or less vulnerable to cyber security threats. Cyber security knowledge has been shown to lead to increased learning and proactive cyber security behavior (CSB). Self-efficacy has been shown to be a strong predictor of a user’s intended behavior. Traits such as neuroticism have been shown to negatively influence cyber security knowledge and self-efficacy, which may hinder …

Will Society Break Down When Women Earn More Than Men?, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Relationships may be even happier when females pull in the big bucks

Child Welfare: Trauma Informed Practice At Time Of Child Removal, Ester Garcia

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

As of 2018, approximately 442,995 children are in the foster care system in the United States according to the federal statistics from the Children’s Bureau. Entry into the foster system involves the removal of children from their home, making it a traumatic experience. The purpose of this study was to examine social workers’ perceptions of what trauma informed practice means and what it looks like in child welfare removals. The study also clarifies what trauma informed practice (TIP) is and how it can be applied in child welfare’s organizational structure. This was a qualitative study in which child welfare social …

Are Menstrual Cycles A Biological Determinant Of Well-Being Amongst Sierra Leonean Schoolchildren?, Ashwini Shridhar

Master's Theses

The influence of hormones and biology on behavior is a topic that is rife with controversy, especially when it comes to sexual hormones. There is even more murkiness when it comes to the topic of menstruation and knowledge about women’s menstrual cycles. Recent research on this topic have seen a link between the hormonal fluctuations during menstrual cycles and various behavioral implications on competition, cooperation, and risk behavior. This study tries to expand existing knowledge by examining whether there is a link between hormonal fluctuations during menstrual cycles and risk preferential behavior using economic experiments in the largely understudied context …

How Internalized And Externalized Behaviors In Adolescents Impact Academic Achievement In Faith-Based Institutions, Subira Brown, Chioma Tait, Jade Callahan, Deyana Cox

Adventist Human-Subject Researchers Association

The purpose of this literature review is to address how internalized and externalized behaviors in adolescents impact academic achievement in faith-based institutions. This research intends to bring awareness to the prevalence of mental health concerns faced by adolescents, as well as the need for mental health services in the education system. This research will also identify the relationship between internalizing and externalizing behaviors, and academic achievement. Based on the findings, the next steps will be to evaluate the deficits within the Adventist school system and begin developing programs and resources necessary to support the mental health needs of children and …

Its Skin Is My Skin, Bryan Page

Graduate School of Art Theses

This text examines the complexity of attempting to empathize with bodies that are vastly othered from my own. This broad yet nuanced subject crosses epistemological boundaries and complicates the dualities between both the mind and body, and between the corporeal and the virtual. My desire to better understand the conditions of another’s experience originates from a painful traumatic loss which caused me to feel isolated and incomplete. In response to this suffering, I long to emotionally connect with other beings and create artwork that attempts to bridge the qualia of individual experience.

I am interested in the capacity (or lack …

The Influences Of Education, Antisocial Behavior, And Involvement In The Criminal Justice System On Adult Legal Understanding, Lily Alpers, Mark Fondacaro

Student Theses

The current study examined the legal understanding and decision-making capacities of young adults compared to older adults. Furthermore, the current study examined these two age groups on the basis of a history of criminal justice involvement, antisocial behavior, and education level, in order to determine whether these variables also affect legal understanding and decision-making. One hundred and one subjects participated in this study, grouped by age into younger adults (18-34 years old) and older adults (35 years and older). The results of the current study found that participants with the lowest levels of education performed more poorly on the measure …

Rationale, Design, And Baseline Characteristics Of Walkit Arizona: A Factorial Randomized Trial Testing Adaptive Goals And Financial Reinforcement To Increase Walking Across Higher And Lower Walkable Neighborhoods, Marc A. Adams, Jane Hurley, Christine Phillips, Michael Todd, Siddhartha Angadi, Vincent Berardi, Melbourne F. Hovell, Steven Hooker

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Little change over the decades has been seen in adults meeting moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) guidelines. Numerous individual-level interventions to increase MVPA have been designed, mostly static interventions without consideration for neighborhood context. Recent technologies make adaptive interventions for MVPA feasible. Unlike static interventions, adaptive intervention components (e.g., goal setting) adjust frequently to an individual's performance. Such technologies also allow for more precise delivery of “smaller, sooner incentives” that may result in greater MVPA than “larger, later incentives”. Combined, these factors could enhance MVPA adoption. Additionally, a central tenet of ecological models is that MVPA is sensitive to neighborhood environment …

Rapid Demand Curves: Reward Valuation Using Behavioral Economics, Charles Nastos

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Within the past few decades, the psychological field of operant behaviorism has converged with the field of economics to aid in the description and interpretation of behavior. In doing so, more stringent, empirical methods of measuring and analyzing behavior have been produced. Laboratory experiments with both human and non-human animals have been used to study concepts that are integral to both fields, such as supply and demand, scarcity, and choice behavior. One goal of behavioral-economic research is to establish a demand function; that is, how does a change in the price of a commodity influence changes in its consumption? Consequently, …

Gradually Transitioning To A New Taxonomy: Thinning, Shaping, And Fading, Melanie Agrachov

Capstone Projects

Currently, there is a large body of work in the basic and applied literature about schedule thinning and the underlying concepts associated with these procedures. However, some of the terminology used in this research area (e.g., shaping, fading, and thinning) has been applied inconsistently, suggesting that researchers and practitioners might misunderstand these terms. In this paper, I will discuss the unsystematic use of terminology found in the literature describing schedule thinning procedures, as well as other gradual change procedures, more generally. Additionally, I will propose a new taxonomy of gradual behavior change procedures in the hope of creating a more …

Music, Language, And Rhythmic Timing, Rhimmon Simchy-Gross

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Neural, perceptual, and cognitive oscillations synchronize with rhythmic events in both speech (Luo & Poeppel, 2007) and music (Snyder & Large, 2005). This synchronization decreases perceptual thresholds to temporally predictable events (Lawrance et al., 2014), improves task performance (Ellis & Jones, 2010), and enables speech intelligibility (Peelle & Davis, 2012). Despite implications of music-language transfer effects for improving language outcomes (Gordon et al., 2015), proposals that shared neural and cognitive resources underlie music and speech rhythm perception (e.g., Tierney & Kraus, 2014) are not yet substantiated. The present research aimed to explore this potential overlap by testing whether music-induced oscillations …

To Thank Or Not To Thank: Understanding The Differences Between Gratitude And Indebtedness After Receiving A Favor Through Emotion Appraisals, Motivations And Behaviors, Ze Ling Nai

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Objective: This study aimed to distinguish between daily experiences of gratitude and indebtedness through three stages - emotional appraisals, motivations to reciprocate and behavioural tendencies. Through these three stages, I aimed to gain a better insight into the emotional process involved before and after receiving favours. Method: 196 participants were recruited from Singapore Management University to take part in a 14-day diary study. Every two days, participants were asked to report a favour they received over the past two days and evaluate the favour based on their appraisals of the experience. They were also asked to report their motivation to …

A Comparison Of Social Learning In Domestic Canines, Beatrice Chenkin

Master's Theses

Domestic canines (Canis familiaris) provide a unique insight into the processes by which species can grow to cooperate efficiently with humans. Few studies have compared whether their behavior is more affected by humans or other canines. This study uses a two-action feeder (an apparatus that can be opened in one of two ways) to look into the methods of social learning they use and compares how they learn from humans vs. other canines. Sixty-four dogs from the Humane Society of varying backgrounds, ages, sexes, and reproductive statuses were tested on their ability to open the two-action feeder and the amount …

Paper Prototyping Comfortable Vr Play For Diverse Sensory Needs, Louanne E. Boyd, Kendra Day, Ben Wasserman, Kaitlyn Abdo, Gillian Hayes, Erik J. Linstead

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

We co-designed paper prototype dashboards for virtual environments for three children with diverse sensory needs. Our goal was to determine individual interaction styles in order to enable comfortable and inclusive play. As a first step towards an inclusive virtual world, we began with designing for three sensory-diverse children who have labels of neurotypical, ADHD, and autism respectively. We focused on their leisure interests and their individual sensory profiles. We present the results of co-design with family members and paper prototyping sessions conducted by family members with the children. The results contribute preliminary empirical findings for accommodating different levels of engagement …

Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops Truncatus) Vocal Responses To Sonar And Spectrally Pink Background Noise, Maria Zapetis

Dissertations

As human populations rise, the level of man-made noise increases globally. Naval sonar and boat traffic are underwater sound sources of particular concern to marine mammal welfare. To better understand the impact of these noise increases on cetaceans, studies can explore animals’ behavioral changes in response to noise. Studies have investigated the ‘dose-response’ relationship between the received sound pressure level of sonar signals and the behavior of cetaceans in the wild, but exposure studies in controlled environments are limited. The studies in this dissertation examined bottlenose dolphin vocal modifications during various experimental noise treatments. Acoustic recordings previously obtained for bottlenose …

Familiarization Through Ambient Images Alone, Nia Imani Gipson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The term “ambient images” has begun to show up in much of the current literature on facial recognition. Ambient images refer to naturally occurring views of a face that captures the idiosyncratic ways in which a target face may vary (Ritchie & Burton, 2017). Much of the literature on ambient images have concluded that exposing people to ambient images of a target face can lead to improved facial recognition for that target face. Some studies have even suggested that familiarity is the result of increased exposure to ambient images of a target face (Burton, Kramer, Ritchie, & Jenkins, 2016). The …

Effects Of Genre Tag Complexity On Popular Music Perception And Enjoyment, Lauren Shepherd

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The popular online streaming platform Spotify added over 1400 genre tags in the last two years. Despite that numerous artists and composition competitions claim to seek projects that “transcend the traditional notion of genre,” the industry has only added more complex and mystifying genre labels. This dichotomy between artists and industry ignores the effects these labels have on consumers. Do more complex genre tags enhance the listening experience for the average consumer by providing additional information about what they are about to hear? The current research seeks to examine the effects of the granularity of genre tags on popular music …