Experimental Analysis of Behavior Commons^™

Gesture Sequence In Captive Orangutans (Pongo Pygmaeus), Amanda Leone Carner

All Master's Theses

The most flexible form of communication may be gestures used by large body apes. The current study focused on gesture sequence in five captive orangutans at Woodland Park Zoo. We observed 305 gestures with 185 gestures (60.65%) occurring in 61 sequences in 2,482 minutes of data. Overall, orangutans used 272 tactile gestures (89 .18% ), 29 visual gestures (9 .50%) and 4 facial expressions ( 1.31 % ). In sequence, orangutans used 176 tactile gestures (95.14%), 7 visual gestures (3.78%), and 2 facial expressions (1.08%). Overall, a two-way repeated measure ANOV A showed significantly more tactile (x=26.9) than visual (x=2.9) …

Exercise Habits, Mindfulness, And Indicators Of Mental Health Among College Students, Emily R. Faust

All Master's Theses

The differences in levels of mindfulness and indicators of mental health were examined between groups of individuals currently engaging in various types of exercise. Eighty-two undergraduate and graduate-level college students completed an online survey regarding their past and current exercise habits and their levels of mindfulness, stress, anxiety, and affect. Four exercise groups, matched on age and gender, were created based on the types of exercise that participants reported currently engaging in: (a) yoga plus any other type of exercise; (b) aerobic exercise only; ( c) more than one type of exercise; ( d) no current activity. The results showed …

The Politics Of The Face-In-The-Crowd, Mark S. Mills, Kevin B. Smith, John R. Hibbing, Michael Dodd

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Recent work indicates that the more conservative one is, the faster one is to fixate on negative stimuli, whereas the less conservative one is, the faster one is to fixate on positive stimuli. The present series of experiments used the face-in-the-crowd paradigm to examine whether variability in the efficiency with which positive and negative stimuli are detected underlies such speed differences. Participants searched for a discrepant facial expression (happy or angry) amid a varying number of neutral distractors (Experiments 1 and 4). A combination of response time and eye movement analyses indicated that variability in search efficiency explained speed differences …

Long-Term Impacts Of Adolescent Risperidone Treatment On Behavioral Responsiveness To Olanzapine And Clozapine In Adulthood, Jing Qiao, Qinglin Zhang, Ming Li

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This preclinical study investigated howa short-termrisperidone treatment in adolescence impacts antipsychotic response to olanzapine and clozapine in adulthood. Antipsychotic effect was indexed by a drug's suppressive effect on avoidance responding in a rat conditioned avoidance response (CAR) model. Male adolescent Sprague–Dawley rats were first treated with risperidone (1.0mg/kg, sc) or sterile water and tested in the CAR model for 5 consecutive days from postnatal days P 40 to 44. After they became adults (~P 80–84), they were switched to olanzapine (0.5mg/kg, sc), clozapine (5.0mg/kg, sc) or vehicle treatment and tested for avoidance for 5 days. During the adolescent period, repeated …

Empathy: A Possible Link Between Charismatic Megafauna And Environmental Concern, Anthony Joseph Carr

All Master's Theses

Environmental organizations have long used charismatic megafauna - popular large animals - as strategic figureheads to summon support for conservation actions. While the animals chosen as flagship species usually have anthropomorphic features, such as large body size and forward-facing eyes, there is no commonly accepted explanation for why these similarities influence people's willingness to help these species. In this study, empathy was found to be predictive of perceived need and willingness to help in a conservation scenario. While framing a threatened ecosystem as the habitat of an unspecified animal species with cultural characteristics increased reports of situational empathy, perceived need …

Behavioral Relaxation Training: A Stress Management Tool For Graduate Students, Natalie Anne Juhlin

All Master's Theses

Stress can have maladaptive effects on health and academic performance. This study examined the effectiveness of teaching Behavioral Relaxation Training (BRT) as a stress management technique for graduate students. BRT is a form of relaxation training that teaches individuals 10 relaxed behaviors to use when experiencing distressing emotions. A concurrent multiple probe design across four participants was used in conjunction with pretest and follow-up scores from the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). Following baseline probes, participants received two BRT training sessions focusing on acquisition and proficiency of relaxed body postures. Results revealed that after BRT training all participants achieved greater than …

Wheel Of Innovation : How Leaders' Attitudes And Behaviors Drive Disruptive Technology In The U.S. Navy, Eddy Wayne Witzel

Dissertations

Problem and Purpose

Innovative solutions in national defense are needed to respond to national security threats in our uncertain environment. Leader attitudes and behaviors have a substantial impact on innovation. Unfortunately we did not completely understand the effect of leader attitudes and behaviors on innovation and the team dynamics that lead to innovation, especially in the military. The purpose of this study was to determine how leadership attitudes and behaviors contribute to product innovation within the U.S. Navy and how leadership emerges within this complex adaptive system of innovation.

Method

The research was a qualitative design based on a multiple …

Health Promotion In Multiple Domains: Capitalizing On The Spillover Effect, Gabrielle Maria D'Lima

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Lifestyle behaviors, such as physical activity and food consumption choices, play a critical role in the development of chronic diseases and ultimately mortality. Optimally, multiple health-related behaviors are changed to reduce risk rather than targeting only one risk behavior. The purpose of the current research was to examine the potential utility of the spillover effect in the application of a multiple health behavior intervention. The online intervention developed in this study aimed primarily to foster self-regulation, bolstered by impulsivity control and self-efficacy, in one health-related behavior (i.e., physical activity) in order to potentially affect change in other health-related behaviors (e.g., …

Level P300: An Erp And Working Memory Evaluation Of Gamers And Non-Gamers, Derek Matthew Ellis

All Master's Theses

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) estimates that the average U.S. household owns at least one video game console. The ESRB also notes that 66% of parents believe video games offer mental stimulation or education. Few studies have analyzed the impact of video game play on cognition. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the impact of video games on both behavioral and neurophysiological measures (event-related potentials) of working memory. Stimuli used during the neurophysiological portion of the study were based on the visual odd-ball paradigm in which participants had to respond to standard and rare occurring visual …

Which Way Is Which? Examining Global/Local Processing With Symbolic Cues, Mark Mills, Michael Dodd

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

A new method combining spatial-cueing and compound-stimulus paradigms draws on involuntary attentional orienting elicited by a spatially uninformative central arrow cue to investigate global/local processing under incidental processing conditions, wherein global/local levels were uninformative (do not aid performance) and task-irrelevant (need not be processed to perform the task). The task was peripheral target detection. Cues were compound arrows, which were either consistent (global/local arrows oriented in same direction) or inconsistent (global/local arrows oriented in opposite directions). Global/local processing was measured by spatial-cueing effects (response time [RT] difference between target locations validly cued by an arrow and targets at different locations), …

An Anti-Bullying Intervention For Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Catherine Rex

CMC Senior Theses

The effects of a video modeling intervention, given to six children with ASD, were evaluated through a multiple-baseline and multiple-probe design across children. The research targeted teaching children with ASD to assertively respond to physical bullying, verbal bullying, and social exclusion, as well as telling one’s mother. In baseline, the participants demonstrated inconsistent to no skills for responding to the bullying in the vignette movies (SAAS) and the generalization probe skits. During intervention the participants watched a video of a person assertively responding to bullying, and were assessed through VM questions and SAAS. Post-intervention the children participated in generalization probe …

Perceived Importance Of Job Analysis Influencing Motivation And Competencies Among Blue-Collar And White-Collar Employees, A.K.M. Mominul Haque Talukder

Business Review

Job analysis is pivotal in identifying the tasks that new recruits are expected to undertake. It is useful to examine whether or not existing job descriptions, person specifications or competency profiles are appropriate for future needs. The study explored perceptual differences of job analyses significance within blue-collar employees (BCEs) and white-collar employees (WCEs) in a manufacturing firm. Data were obtained based on structured questionnaire. Results indicated significant positive relationship of performance appraisal with competencies in case of white-collar employees. In contrast, training was positively related to competencies with regard to blue-collar employees. Other dimensions including selection process, rewards and job …

Animals' Capability To Bond And The Implications That Follow, Falyn Goldfarb

Honors College Theses

This paper explores the ways in which humans have historically viewed animals, with a focus on Descartes theory automata. Further concepts of the problem of different minds, inherent value, empathy, love, friendship, grief, isolation, anthropomorphism, and biochemistry (focusing on oxytocin, cortisol and the prefrontal cortex) are all explored. Numerous literature reviews are used as examples to fight against the argument that animals are merely machines and can therefore be used and abused. Animal social bonds, including parent-child, purely social, and animal-human, are analyzed for their evolutionary and biological purposes in attempt to highlight the relationships that are not obviously valuable …

An Evaluation Of The Penn Resiliency Program For Disruptive Preadolescents In An Elementary School Setting, Mildred Howard

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Penn Resiliency Program in decreasing disruptive behavior, modifying negative automatic thoughts and improving academic achievement. Forty-eight students from two Title I schools in Georgia participated in this study. The Behavior Assessment Scale for Children, Second Edition, Progress Monitor, The Children's Automatic Thoughts Scale and report card grades were used to evaluate program effectiveness. Research results suggest the program effectively reduced negative automatic thoughts and improved academic performance.

Stimulus Modality And The Rotational Error: An Examination Of The Various Reorientation Accounts In Humans Using A 3d Virtual Environment, Samuel P. Police

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Reorientation occurs when an organism enters a novel environment and utilizes cues within said environment to get its bearings. Though reorientation occurs, little is known about which cues are utilized to reorient and the mechanism underlying this reorientation process. Three competing accounts of how the reorientation process occurs were presented and discussed in terms of which cues are predicted to be utilized in reorientation: the geometric module, the associative strength model, and the adaptive-combination view. In the present experiment, human participants were trained in an immersive, 3D virtual environment trapezoid to local a goal location in the presence of either …

Acute Effects Of Alcohol On Simulated Driving Performance And Self-Perceptions Of Impairment In Dui Offenders, Nicholas A. Van Dyke

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Licensed drivers arrested for driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol have increased rates of vehicle crashes, moving violations, and traffic tickets (Evans, 2004). To date, no research has examined specific self-regulatory mechanisms of the DUI driver under a dose of alcohol that might underlie risky driving behavior. The present study examined the degree to which DUI drivers display an increased sensitivity to the acute impairing effects of alcohol on driving performance and overestimate their driving fitness following alcohol consumption. Adult drivers with a history of DUI and a demographically-matched group of control drivers without a DUI were tested following …

A Bittersweet Investigation Of Availability And Nutritive Value As Determinants Of Volitional Sucrose Consumption, Milan D. Valyear

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Rats given ~24 h access to a 4% sucrose solution every 3^rd day (E3DA) consume about 100 g more solution than rats with continuous, everyday access (EDA). Under the same EDA-E3DA conditions rats will consume similar amounts of a more concentrated 8 or 16% sucrose solutions (Eikelboom, Hewitt, & Adams, Unpublished). It maybe that with these more concentrated solutions rats hit a satiety limit that prevents a difference between EDA and E3DA consumption from being evident. Experiment 1 was conducted to investigate the effect of adding quinine to 4% and 8% sucrose solutions with the intention of reducing consumption …

Message Matters: Application Of The Theory Of Planned Behavior To Increase Household Hazardous Waste Program Participation, Amy Dyer Cabaniss

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Removing household hazardous waste (HHW) from the municipal solid waste stream is important to protect health, safety and the environment. Communities across the U.S. separate HHW from regular trash for disposal with hazardous waste, however nationally, participation rates are low with only five to ten percent of households estimated to participate in any given collection. This two-part study used the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to understand individuals’ beliefs and attitudes toward HHW collections, and to develop a print message intervention to increase participation. In Study 1, respondents (N = 983) completed a survey administered to homeowners in the Connecticut …

Effects Of Vibrotactile Display Position And Shape On Extrapersonal Localization, Adam D. Sitz

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Vibrotactile displays are capable of conveying extrapersonal spatial information to users navigating or operating within a three-dimensional environment (e.g., aircraft pilots). Although vibrotactile displays can be applied to many parts of the body, recent applications have focused on torso-based displays that egocentrically reference distal targets. However, these displays may be poorly suited to convey elevation because of the generally cylindrical shape of the human torso. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the relative effectiveness of handheld vibrotactile displays configured either in a cylindrical or spherical-shape as compared to a torso-based display. Due to its shape, the spherical …

A Heart-Based Sufi Mindfulness Spiritual Practice Employing Self-Journeying, Faruk Arslan

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Spiritual Psychology is the study and practice of the art and science of the human evolution of consciousness. The heart occupies an important place in Sufism and is considered to contain the divine spark that leads to spiritual realization. Fethullah Gülen’s action-oriented Sufi methods described in his book series “The Emerald Hills of the Heart” provides the basis for a heart-based therapeutic intervention through self-journeying, which is the objective of this thesis. These self-purification and mindfulness-related transpersonal methods generate a form of treatment that is culturally sensitive. Through my reflections in this research, I transformed my personal experiences into …