Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
Diagnosing psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES) requires admission to an epilepsy monitoring unit, which is a lengthy and expensive process. Despite the cost of and time commitment to this inpatient evaluation, a definitive diagnosis at the end isn’t always guaranteed. Therefore, predictor variables such as demographic information and psychological testing scores can help improve the accuracy of diagnosing PNES or epilepsy at the end of a patient’s EMU admission. Locke et al. have demonstrated that the SOM scale and SOM-C subscale on the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) are the best indicators for predicting PNES diagnosis, with an optimal cut score of T≥70 on both of these scales. The aim of the current study was to determine whether evaluating male and female performance separately on these relevant PAI scales improves the accuracy of diagnosing PNES. The results support the hypothesis, such that male optimal cut scores on the SOM and SOM C scales are T=80 and T=75, respectively, and female optimal cut scores on the SOM and SOM C scales are T=71 and T=72, respectively. Utilizing the results of this study can help clinicians diagnose patients with PNES or epilepsy at the end of EMU evaluation with more certainty.