Theses and dissertations

This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students. 

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Role of cognitive shift in resilient adaptation to difficult events

Description
Sometimes difficult life events challenge our existing resources in such a way that routinized responses are inadequate to handle the challenge. Some individuals will persist in habitual, automatic behavior, regardless of environmental cues that indicate a mismatch between coping strategy and the demands of the stressor. Other individuals will marshal…

Sometimes difficult life events challenge our existing resources in such a way that routinized responses are inadequate to handle the challenge. Some individuals will persist in habitual, automatic behavior, regardless of environmental cues that indicate a mismatch between coping strategy and the demands of the stressor. Other individuals will marshal adaptive resources to construct new courses of action and reconceptualize the problem, associated goals and/or values. A mixed methods approach was used to describe and operationalize cognitive shift, a relatively unexplored construct in existing literature. The study was conducted using secondary data from a parent multi-year cross-sectional study of resilience with eight hundred mid-aged adults from the Phoenix metro area. Semi-structured telephone interviews were analyzed using a purposive sample (n=136) chosen by type of life event. Participants' beliefs, assumptions, and experiences were examined to understand how they shaped adaptation to adversity. An adaptive mechanism, "cognitive shift," was theorized as the transition from automatic coping to effortful cognitive processes aimed at novel resolution of issues. Aims included understanding when and how cognitive shift emerges and manifests. Cognitive shift was scored as a binary variable and triangulated through correlational and logistic regression analyses. Interaction effects revealed that positive personality attributes influence cognitive shift most when people suffered early adversity. This finding indicates that a certain complexity, self-awareness and flexibility of mind may lead to a greater capacity to find meaning in adversity. This work bridges an acknowledged gap in literature and provides new insights into resilience.
ContributorsRivers, Crystal T (Author) / Zautra, Alex (Thesis advisor) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Kurpius, Sharon (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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Language in Trauma: A Pilot Study of Pause Frequency as a Predictor of Cognitive Change Due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Description
With the rise of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among adults in the United States, understanding the processes of trauma, trauma related disorders, and the long-term impact of living with them is an area of continued focus for researchers. This is especially a concern in the case of current and former…

With the rise of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among adults in the United States, understanding the processes of trauma, trauma related disorders, and the long-term impact of living with them is an area of continued focus for researchers. This is especially a concern in the case of current and former military service members (veterans), whose work activities and deployment cycles place them at an increased risk of exposure to trauma-inducing experiences but who have a low rate of self-referral to healthcare professionals. There is thus an urgent need for developing procedures for early diagnosis and treatment. The present study examines how the tools and findings of the field of linguistics may contribute to the field of trauma research. Previous research has shown that cognition and language production are closely linked. This study focuses on the role of prosody in PTSD and pilots a procedure for the data collection and analysis. Data consist of monologic talk from a sample of student-veterans and analyzed with speech software (Praat) for pauses greater than 250 milliseconds per 100 words. The pause frequency was compared to a PCL-5 score, an assessment used to check for PTSD symptoms and evaluate need for further assessment and possible diagnosis of PTSD. This pilot study found the methods successfully elicited data that could be used to measure and test the research questions. Although the findings of the study were inconclusive due to limitations of the participant pool, it found that the research model proved effect as a model for future linguistic research on trauma.
ContributorsSouthee, Richard Aaron (Author) / Prior, Matthew T. (Thesis advisor) / Pruitt, Kathryn (Committee member) / Pereira, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020