Losing My Religion? The Impact Of Spiritual Cues On Noncognitive Skills,
2016
Rice University
Losing My Religion? The Impact Of Spiritual Cues On Noncognitive Skills, Daniel H. Bowen, Albert Cheng
Journal of Catholic Education
Studies consistently show that Catholic schools produce positive impacts on educational outcomes. Many charter school networks in the United States now provide, what are essentially, secularized versions of the Catholic education model. However, charter schools cannot legally replicate the overt religious curriculum and mission of Catholic schools. Although difficult to disentangle its impacts from confounding variables, research suggests that religiosity is a positive predictor of educational outcomes. This relationship might suggest that religious-based education produces effects on outcomes of public value that could be difficult to replicate in secularized contexts. To examine this question we conducted an experiment where 180 …
Effects Of Aging And Reward Motivation On Non-Verbal Recognition Memory,
2016
Western Kentucky University
Effects Of Aging And Reward Motivation On Non-Verbal Recognition Memory, Meagan D. Luttrell
Masters Theses & Specialist Projects
There is a long history of research on the effects of reward motivation on memory, but there are still questions concerning how such motivational variables affect memory. In a study that examined the influence of reward anticipation on episodic memory, Adcock, Thangavel, Whitfield-Gabireli, Knutson, and Gabrieli (2006) found that memory was better for scenes preceded by high value reward cues than low value cues (see also Cushman, 2012; Spaniol, Schain, & Bowen, 2013). More recently, Castel, Murayama, Friedman, McGillivray, & Link (2013) observed that anticipation of reward influences selective attention to “to be remembered” (TBR) words and the memories that …
A Pilot Study Of Comparison Gesture Analysis In Motion Driven Video Games,
2016
Technological University Dublin
A Pilot Study Of Comparison Gesture Analysis In Motion Driven Video Games, Fabrizio Valerio Covone, Brian Vaughan, Charlie Cullen
Conference Papers
This study investigates whether there are significant differences in the gestures made by gamers and non-gamers whilst playing commercial games that employ gesture inputs. Specifically, the study focuses on testing a prototype of multimodal capture tool that we used to obtain real-time audio, video and skeletal gesture data. Additionally, we developed an experimental design framework for the acquisition of spatio-temporal gesture data and analysed the vector magnitude of a gesture to compare the relative displacement of each participant whilst playing a game.
Prejudice Toward Atheists In The United States As Related To Perceived Prevalence,
2016
Old Dominion University
Prejudice Toward Atheists In The United States As Related To Perceived Prevalence, Wanda D. Brooks
Psychology Theses & Dissertations
By manipulating mortality salience (MS) in place of life-threatening events to stimulate death-related thoughts, the current research contributes to the body of research supporting Terror Management Theory. It was hypothesized that religious participants should exhibit cultural worldview defense by scoring higher in anti-atheist prejudice following the MS manipulation than would those in the control condition. Further, this research extends the current research into Terror Management Theory as a cause for conflict among out-groups and explores its effects on cultural worldviews in the area of prejudice toward atheists. This includes examining how the perception of an increasing prevalence of atheists contributes …
The Interaction Between Perfectionism And Rumination Predicting State Self-Compassion,
2016
Gettysburg College
The Interaction Between Perfectionism And Rumination Predicting State Self-Compassion, Caitlin A. Sharp
Student Publications
Recent research has revealed self-compassion to be associated with many aspects of mental wellness. The present study investigates the relationship between perfectionism and rumination in predicting state self-compassion separately for both conscientious and self-evaluative forms of perfectionism. We hypothesized that perfectionism would interact with rumination in predicting state self-compassion such that there would be a negative association between occurrence of rumination and state-self compassion that would be more prominent in those with lower levels of perfectionism in regards to self-evaluative, but not conscientious perfectionism. To test these predictions, participants filled out a perfectionism inventory and completed a four minute ruminative …
Observational Assessment Of Empathy In Parent-Child Verbal Exchanges And Their Influence On Child Behavior,
2016
CUNY Graduate Center
Observational Assessment Of Empathy In Parent-Child Verbal Exchanges And Their Influence On Child Behavior, Patty Carambot
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Empathy, the ability to both experientially share in and understand others’ thoughts, behaviors, and feelings, is vital for human adaptation. Deficits in empathy development have implications across the lifespan for the development of prosocial behavior, social functioning, mental health disorders, and risk for antisocial behavior (e.g., Guajardo, Snyder, & Petersen, 2009; Moreno, Klute & Robinson, 2008). In light of these societal and individual burdens, it is imperative to foster and strengthen the development of this ability early in life to prevent or ameliorate such negative outcomes. This type of prevention can take a variety of forms, but parent and child …
Series Of Intermittent Heroin Injections Enhances Acquisition Of Operant Responding For Cues Paired With Natural Rewards,
2016
CUNY Graduate Center
Series Of Intermittent Heroin Injections Enhances Acquisition Of Operant Responding For Cues Paired With Natural Rewards, Jennifer Morrison
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Repeated-intermittent heroin use has been implicated in altering learning processes. Ranaldi et al. (2009) and Morrison et al. (2011) demonstrated that repeated-intermittent heroin administration leads to an enhancement of conditioned reinforcement by a food-paired light stimulus; however, the mechanism governing this effect is still largely unknown. The aims of the present study were to examine modifications in Pavlovian and operant associations for cues paired with natural rewards after a series of intermittent heroin injections. The study consisted of three phases: (1) Pavlovian Conditioning Phase (4 days)- in which three groups of rats had a light stimulus paired with food, and …
Physiological Regulation, Psychosocial Adversity, And Proactive Versus Reactive Aggression: A Longitudinal Study,
2016
CUNY Graduate Center
Physiological Regulation, Psychosocial Adversity, And Proactive Versus Reactive Aggression: A Longitudinal Study, Wei Zhang
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Two types of aggression in children and adolescents have been identified: reactive aggression (RA) and proactive aggression (PA). Despite the accumulating evidence suggesting differential temperamental, behavioral, cognitive, social-environmental, and neurobiological correlates in relation to the two types of aggression, no study has examined emotion regulation in children with RA vs. PA using psychophysiological approaches. In this study a sample of eight to 10 years old children participated in an emotion regulation task in which they were required to either induce or inhibit their emotions. They also reported their aggressive behavior using the Reactive-Proactive Aggression questionnaire (RPQ; Raine et al., 2006). …
Motivational Situations Of Choice,
2016
Kennesaw State University
Motivational Situations Of Choice, Charles N. Elliott, Paul A. Story
The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research
The present research explores situations that demonstrate enhancing effects on motivation based on the amount of choice seen by individuals. Individuals who are intrinsically motivated see more choice in certain academic settings, including those that foster self-regulation and autonomy. Extrinsically motivated individuals are predicted to see more promise in reward and external regulation strategies. We identified six separate situations: a free will situation, a learning of materials situation, an instructor feedback situation, an extra credit situation, and two time-based situations. Four of these situations target a certain type of motivation, either intrinsic or extrinsic. The other two situations were used …
Ptsd From Childhood Trauma As A Precursor To Attachment Issues,
2016
Counseling
Ptsd From Childhood Trauma As A Precursor To Attachment Issues, Christy Owen
Fidei et Veritatis: The Liberty University Journal of Graduate Research
The past 20 years have been turbulent regarding Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), with conflicting research about its causes, effects, treatment, and prognosis. The current diagnostic criteria in the DSM-5 fails to adequately address this disorder. A number of deviant and maladaptive behaviors common amongst children with RAD are not even mentioned in the diagnostic criteria. As such, the diagnostic definition is almost unidentifiable or incompatible with real-life conduct manifestations of the disorder. Rather, this author contends that RAD is foundationally a unique and extreme form of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from Early Childhood Trauma. The child endured unspeakable neglect and/or …
Introspection And Anecdotes Won’T Prove What Animals Are Thinking And Feeling,
2016
University of Otago
Introspection And Anecdotes Won’T Prove What Animals Are Thinking And Feeling, Michael Colombo, Melissa Johnston
Animal Sentience
We review Part Three, “Whines and Pet Peeves,” of Safina’s book Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. Part Three is concerned mainly with the evidence for Theory of Mind in nonhuman animals. Like Safina, we believe that animals have a Theory of Mind, and like Safina, we question the utility of such concepts. There are many studies that Safina could have used to support his argument, and although some are mentioned, he prefers to make his point mainly by relying on anecdotes and introspection. The end result, we believe, is to devalue the scientific process.
Spice: A Software Tool For Studying End-User’S Insecure Cyber Behavior And Personality-Traits,
2016
University of New Orleans
Spice: A Software Tool For Studying End-User’S Insecure Cyber Behavior And Personality-Traits, Anjila Tamrakar
LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
Insecure cyber behavior of end users may expose their computers to cyber-attack. A first step to improve their cyber behavior is to identify their tendency toward insecure cyber behavior. Unfortunately, not much work has been done in this area. In particular, the relationship between end users cyber behavior and their personality traits is much less explored. This paper presents a comprehensive review of a newly developed, easily configurable, and flexible software SPICE for psychologist and cognitive scientists to study personality traits and insecure cyber behavior of end users. The software utilizes well-established cognitive methods (such as dot-probe) to identify number …
Perceived Emotional Invalidation In A Developmental Context: Does Gender Matter?,
2016
University of South Carolina
Perceived Emotional Invalidation In A Developmental Context: Does Gender Matter?, Brian B. Johnson
USC Aiken Psychology Theses
Emotional invalidation is the dismissal, minimization, or punishment of an individual’s emotional experience (Linehan, 1993). Although it has been sparsely studied, the research that has been conducted indicates that it is likely implicated in a multitude of psychopathology and adjustment issues. The current study had three main objectives. The first of these was to investigate the current perceptions of emotional invalidation in a peer interaction for emerging adults and how that is predicted by gender, perceptions of childhood emotional invalidation via caregivers, and gender of the caregivers. The second objective of this study was to investigate the propagation of emotionally …
Impulsivity, Rejection Sensitivity, And Reactions To Stressors In Borderline Personality Disorder,
2016
Gettysburg College
Impulsivity, Rejection Sensitivity, And Reactions To Stressors In Borderline Personality Disorder, Kathy R. Berenson, Wesley Ellen Gregory, Erin Glaser, Aliza Romirowsky, Eshkol Rafaeli, Xiao Yang, Geraldine Downey
Psychology Faculty Publications
This research investigated baseline impulsivity, rejection sensitivity, and reactions to stressors in individuals with borderline personality disorder compared to healthy individuals and those with avoidant personality disorder . The borderline group showed greater impulsivity than the avoidant and healthy groups both in a delay-discounting task with real monetary rewards and in self-reported reactions to stressors; moreover, these findings could not be explained by co-occurring substance use disorders. Distress reactions to stressors were equally elevated in both personality disorder groups (relative to the healthy group). The borderline and avoidant groups also reported more maladaptive reactions to a stressor of an interpersonal …
Exploring Animacy As A Mnemonic Dimension,
2016
Purdue University
Exploring Animacy As A Mnemonic Dimension, Joshua Edward Vanarsdall
Open Access Dissertations
There is a great deal of evidence across cognitive science that animacy, or more generally, the features that make up what it means to be a living thing, is a foundational dimension of human cognition. In perception, animates both capture attention (Pratt, Radulescu, Guo, & Abrams, 2010) and are relatively immune to change blindness (New, Cosmides, & Tooby, 2007). Developmental work places the animate-inanimate distinction as one of the first categories children learn (Opfer & Gelman, 2011). Work in neuroscience points toward a fundamental role for animacy in semantic memory (Caramazza & Mahon, 2003), and linguists have identified animacy as …
Socio-Emotional Development In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder,
2016
University of Southern Mississippi
Socio-Emotional Development In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Christiana K. Whitley
Honors Theses
The purpose of the present study was to determine which lesson from a social skills program would result in the greatest improvement in duration of social interaction for children with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) between the ages of five and fifteen. The Superheroes Social Skills Program (Jensen et al., 2011) includes lesson plans that focus directly on helping children with ASD develop communication skills in group settings. The data indicate that one specific lesson, Participation and Joining In, was responsible for the largest mean increase in duration of social interactions of participants. Social skills lessons were introduced …
Recognition Training For Faces Across Age Gaps,
2016
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Recognition Training For Faces Across Age Gaps, William Blake Erickson
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Face recognition is a problem that has theoretical and applied value. However, the fact of facial aging is rarely addressed in research and unmentioned in the major theories of face recognition. Facial aging also has ramifications for missing persons and fugitive cases, confounding attempts by law enforcement to recover these people whose last known images are years or decades out of date. This dissertation reports three studies aimed at measuring baseline age-gap recognition ability and testing various training regimens designed to increase accuracy rates for this unique kind of recognition task.
Global/Local Processing In Incidental Perception Of Hierarchical Structure,
2016
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Global/Local Processing In Incidental Perception Of Hierarchical Structure, Mark S. Mills
Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
The goal of the current thesis is to provide a framework for investigating and understanding visual processing of hierarchical structure (i.e., local parts nested in global wholes, such as trees nested in forests) under incidental processing conditions—that is, where processing of information at global and local levels is both uninformative (cannot aid task performance) and task-irrelevant (need not be processed to perform the task). To do so, a novel method combining two widely-used paradigms (spatial cueing and compound stimulus paradigms) is used for implicitly probing observers’ perceptual representations over the course of processing. This compound arrow cueing paradigm was used …
Discriminative Stimulus Effects Of 3,4-Methylenedioxypyrovalerone And 4-Methylmethcathinone,
2016
Western Michigan University
Discriminative Stimulus Effects Of 3,4-Methylenedioxypyrovalerone And 4-Methylmethcathinone, Michael D. Berquist
Dissertations
Recent escalation in the popularity of recreational synthetic cathinone (“bath salts”) use has prompted numerous scientific investigations of the neurochemical and behavioral effects of 3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) and 4-methylmethcathinone (4-MMC), two of the more common chemical constituents of these illicit “bath salts”. Previous neurochemical and electrophysiological studies have revealed that MDPV functions as a blocker, and 4-MMC as a substrate, at monoamine transporters, and both produce transient increases in extracellular monoamines. In addition, previous research has demonstrated that MDPV and 4-MMC support self-administration in nonhuman experimental subjects, and their rewarding effects are observed when paired with contextual cues in nonhuman models …
Establishing A Link Between Personality And Social Rank In A Group Of Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus),
2016
University of Southern Mississippi
Establishing A Link Between Personality And Social Rank In A Group Of Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus), Erin Elizabeth Frick
Master's Theses
Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) have been documented to possess personality traits that remain consistent over time (Highfill & Kuczaj, 2007) and across contexts (Kuczaj, Highfill, & Byerly, 2012). Such individual differences are thought to play an important role in various social contexts such as hierarchical dominance (Highfill & Kuczaj, 2010). The present study investigated the relationship between personality and social rank within a captive group of bottlenose dolphins housed at the Roatan Institute for Marine Science (RIMS). Social rank was established using questionnaires distributed to the RIMS experienced staff. Personality traits were derived from behavioral coding using context-specific …
