Matching Items (28)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: psychology
- Creators: Duran, Nicholas
- Creators: Grimm, Kevin
- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Description
Students' ability to regulate and control their behaviors during learning has been shown to be a critical skill for academic success. However, researchers often struggle with ways to capture the nuances of this ability, often solely relying on self-report measures. This thesis proposal employs a novel approach to investigating variations in students' ability to self-regulate by using process data from the game-based Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) iSTART-ME. This approach affords a nuanced examination of how students' regulate their interactions with game-based features at both a coarse-grained and fine-grain levels and the ultimate impact that those behaviors have on in-system performance and learning outcomes (i.e., self-explanation quality). This thesis is comprised of two submitted manuscripts that examined how a group of 40 high school students chose to engage with game-based features and how those interactions influenced their target skill performance. Findings suggest that in-system log data has the potential to provide stealth assessments of students' self-regulation while learning.
ContributorsSnow, Erica L (Author) / McNamara, Danielle S. (Thesis advisor) / Glenburg, Arthur M (Committee member) / Duran, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Delay discounting is the decline in the present value of a reward with delay to its receipt. (Mazur,1987). The delay discounting task is used to measure delay discounting rate, which requires the participants to choose between two options: one involves immediate delivery of a reward, and other involves delivery after a delay, and the immediate rewards are adjusted in value until the subject feels there is no difference between the immediate and the delayed reward. Some previous studies (Robles and Vargas, 2007; 2008; Robles et al., 2009) found that the order of presentation of the immediate rewards (ascending or descending) significantly influenced the estimated delay discounting rate, which is known as the order effect. Uncertainty about the future and impulsivity could explain delay discounting behavior. The purpose of this study was to explore the order effect in delay discounting assessment. The current study found that the order effect in the delay discounting task can be explained by risk aversion, loss aversion and impulsivity. In the current study, the two kinds of fixed procedure (ascending and descending), and the titrating delay discounting task were used to estimate the degree of delay discounting. Also, two gambling tasks were applied to measure risk and loss aversion indices. The BIS-11 scale was used to assess the level of trait impulsivity. The results indicated that impulsivity biases individuals to choose the immediate small reward rather than the large delayed reward, resulting in lower area under the discounting curve (AUC) when estimated with the ascending-sequence delay discounting task. Also, impulsivity moderated the relationship between loss aversion and AUC estimated with the descending-sequence delay discounting task.
ContributorsLi, Yaqi (Author) / Robles, Elías (Thesis advisor) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Duran, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Anxiety disorder diagnosis is a risk factor for alcohol use disorders (AUDs), but mechanisms of risk are not well understood. Studies show that anxious individuals receive greater negative reinforcement from alcohol when consumed prior to a stressor, but few studies have examined whether anxious individuals receive greater negative (or positive) reinforcement from alcohol in a general drinking context (i.e., no imminent stressor). Previous studies have also failed to examine possible moderating effects of specific drinking contexts (e.g., drinking in a group or alone). Finally, no studies have investigated mediating variables that might explain the relationship between anxiety and reinforcement from alcohol, such as physiological response to alcohol (e.g., cortisol response). Data for this study were drawn from a large alcohol administration study (N = 447) wherein participants were randomized to receive alcohol (target peak BAC: .08 g%) or placebo in one of four contexts: group simulated bar, solitary simulated bar, group sterile laboratory, solitary sterile laboratory. It was hypothesized that anxiety would be associated with positive subjective response (SR) under alcohol (above and beyond placebo), indicating stronger reinforcement from alcohol. It was also hypothesized that social and physical drinking context would moderate this relationship. Finally, it was hypothesized that anxiety would be associated with a blunted cortisol response to alcohol (compared to placebo) and this blunted cortisol response would be associated with stronger positive SR and weaker negative SR. Results showed that anxiety was not associated with positive SR in the full sample, but drinking context did moderate the anxiety/SR relationship in most cases (e.g., anxiety was significantly associated with positive SR (stimulation) under placebo in solitary contexts only). There was no evidence that cortisol response to alcohol mediated the relationship between anxiety and SR. This study provides evidence that anxious drinkers expect stronger positive reinforcement from alcohol in solitary contexts, which has implications for intervention (e.g., modification of existing interventions like expectancy challenge). Null findings regarding cortisol response suggest alcohol’s effect on cortisol response to stress (rather than cortisol response to alcohol consumption) may be more relevant for SR and drinking behavior among anxious individuals.
ContributorsMenary, Kyle Robert (Author) / Corbin, William (Thesis advisor) / Chassin, Laurie (Committee member) / Meier, Madeline (Committee member) / Grimm, Kevin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Literature was reviewed about how synchrony occurs in infant-parent dyads, in emotion, and physiologically in couple dyads. Social baseline theory suggests that both conversation and interpersonal touch confer benefits by reducing burden on the participants through coregulatory processes. The current study examined how affectionate touch and positive conversation influenced physiological synchrony, a potential mechanism of physiological coregulation, in couples. Because synchrony is believed to occur within the autonomic nervous system, in the present study, physiological synchrony was measured using cardiac interbeat interval (IBI) as an indicator of autonomic nervous system activation. Couples were assigned to one of four conditions: interpersonal touch with positive conversation, interpersonal touch without conversation, positive conversation with no interpersonal touch, and neither interpersonal touch nor conversation. We hypothesized that 1) IBI synchrony between spouses within the real data would be significantly higher than within a phase-shuffled version of the data; and 2) synchrony would be strongest in the touch-talk condition, followed by the touch-no talk condition, followed by the talk-no touch- condition, and finally by the no touch-no talk condition. We also investigated whether there was a tendency for husbands or wives to serve as leader or follower in the four conditions. Using windowed lagged cross-correlations, we found that synchrony within the real data was stronger than synchrony within the shuffled data, suggesting that it reflects an ongoing interpersonal process. Next, we found that there was significantly greater synchrony in the touch-talk than in the touch-no talk condition, marginally greater synchrony in the touch-no talk condition than in the no touch-talk condition, and significantly greater synchrony in the no touch-talk than in the no touch-no talk conditions, suggesting that talk, rather than touch, was driving these synchrony levels. We also found that the only condition with a significant level of leading-following pattern was the no touch-talk condition. More husbands than wives led the covariation in IBI when couples were conversing but not touching. When touch was included this effect did not occur. Future research should include potential moderators such as marital satisfaction and investigate whether seeing one’s partner influences synchrony.
ContributorsMcAfee, Ashley Nicole (Author) / Burleson, Mary (Thesis advisor) / Duran, Nicholas (Committee member) / Roberts, Nicole (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
The present study aimed to test the effect of role socialization processes on declines in drinking after marriage. Role socialization as it relates to marriage theorizes that after occupying a role, individuals are likely to change their behaviors to conform to role expectations of marriage, such as reductions in drinking (Yamaguchi & Kandel, 1985). Previous literature has examined declines in drinking behaviors after marriage and inferred that role socialization was the underlying process. This study is the first to directly test whether beliefs that alcohol is harmful to the marital role predicted declines in frequency of drunkenness after marriage. Ordered probit regression was used to test the effect of marriage-related motives to limit drinking on declines in frequency of drunkenness from before marriage to after marriage. Analyses revealed that marriage-related motives to limit drinking were not significantly predictive of declines in frequency of drunkenness after marriage. Only partner drinking emerged as a significant predictor of declines in frequency of drunkenness after marriage. These results highlight the need for a reliable and valid measure of role socialization processes as they relate to the marital role. Furthermore, future studies should consider studying participants at different time points after marriage and consider measuring commitment to the marital role as a moderator. Such studies will help to better understand the results of this study as well as better understand the marriage effect on drinking.
ContributorsSternberg, Ariel (Author) / Chassin, Laurie (Thesis advisor) / Grimm, Kevin (Committee member) / Corbin, Will (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
There is a growing trend among community samples of young, adult women to initiate drug use for weight loss (Boys, Marsden, & Strang, 2001; Mendieta-Tan, Hulbert-Williams, & Nicholls, 2013). Research has suggested that consequential weight loss may maintain drug use (Cohen, et al., 2010; Ersche, Stochl, Woodward, & Fletcher, 2013; Sirles, 2002), which is compounded by women's perception that drugs are convenient and guarantee weight loss (Mendieta-Tan, et al., 2013). Stimulants, including cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine, and ecstasy, are notable drugs of use among college students (Johnston, et al., 2014; Teter, McCabe, LaGrange, Cranford, & Boyd, 2006). With known appetitive and metabolic effects, stimulants may be particularly attractive to college women, who are at elevated risk for increased body dissatisfaction and experimenting with extreme weight loss techniques (Grunewald, 1985; National Eating Disorder Association, 2013). A preliminary epidemiological study of 130 college women between 16- and 24-years old (Mage = 18.76, SDage = 1.09) was conducted to begin to investigate this phenomenon. Results showed women who reported use for weight control (n = 19, 14.6 %) predominantly used stimulants (68.4%), and this subgroup was severely elevated on global and subscales of eating pathology compared with college norms. Moreover, the odds of stimulant use were doubled when women engaged in a compensatory behavior, such as excessive exercise, self-induced vomiting, and laxative use. Although preliminary, these results suggest that a desire for weight control may be associated with stimulant use among college women. Women engaging in more extreme weight loss behaviors are at high risk for initiating and maintaining illicit stimulant use for weight-related reasons.
ContributorsBruening, Amanda B (Author) / Perez, Marisol (Thesis advisor) / Grimm, Kevin (Committee member) / Chassin, Laurie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Clinically meaningful emotional and behavioral problems are thought to be present beginning in infancy, and may be reliably assessed in children as young as 12 months old. However, few studies have investigated early correlates of emotional and behavioral problems assessed in infancy. The current study investigates the direct and interactive contributions of early infant and caregiver characteristics thought to play an important role in the ontogeny of behavior problems. Specifically, the study examines: (1) the links between temperamental reactivity across the first year of life and behavior problems at 18 months, (2) whether children high in temperamental reactivity are differentially susceptible to variations in maternal sensitivity, (3) the extent to which child temperamental risk or susceptibility may further be explained by mothers’ experiences of stressful life events (SLEs) during and before pregnancy. Data were collected from 322 Mexican American families during prenatal, 6-, 12-, 18-, and 24-week home interviews, as well as during 12- and 18-month lab interviews. Mother reports of SLEs were obtained between 23-40 weeks gestation; temperamental negativity and surgency at 6 weeks and 12 months; and internalizing and externalizing behaviors at 18 months. Maternal sensitivity during structured mother-infant interaction tasks at the 6-, 12-, 18-, and 24-week visits was assessed by objective observer ratings. Study findings indicated that maternal SLEs before birth were associated with more infant negativity across the first year of life, and that negativity in turn was associated with more internalizing problems at 18 months. Ecological stressors thought to be associated with sociodemographic risk factors such as low-income and ethnic minority status may begin to exert cascades of influence on children’s developmental outcomes even before birth.
ContributorsLin, Betty (Author) / Crnic, Keith A (Thesis advisor) / Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn S (Committee member) / Luecken, Linda J. (Committee member) / Grimm, Kevin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This paper investigates a relatively new analysis method for longitudinal data in the framework of functional data analysis. This approach treats longitudinal data as so-called sparse functional data. The first section of the paper introduces functional data and the general ideas of functional data analysis. The second section discusses the analysis of longitudinal data in the context of functional data analysis, while considering the unique characteristics of longitudinal data such, in particular sparseness and missing data. The third section introduces functional mixed-effects models that can handle these unique characteristics of sparseness and missingness. The next section discusses a preliminary simulation study conducted to examine the performance of a functional mixed-effects model under various conditions. An extended simulation study was carried out to evaluate the estimation accuracy of a functional mixed-effects model. Specifically, the accuracy of the estimated trajectories was examined under various conditions including different types of missing data and varying levels of sparseness.
ContributorsWard, Kimberly l (Author) / Suk, Hye Won (Thesis advisor) / Aiken, Leona (Committee member) / Grimm, Kevin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This dissertation examined how anxiety levels and social competence change across the course of early elementary school, as well as how individual differences at the transition to kindergarten may influence these trajectories. Previous research has supported unidirectional relations among anxiety and social competence, but few studies explore how inter- and intra-individual changes in social competence and anxiety may be related across time. From a developmental perspective, studying these trajectories following the transition to kindergarten is important, as cognitive and emotion regulation capacities increase markedly across kindergarten, and the relative success with which children navigate this transition can have a bearing on future social and emotional functioning across elementary school. In addition, given gender differences in anxiety manifestation and social competence development broadly, gender differences were also examined in an exploratory manner. Data from parent and teacher reports of a community sample of 291 children across kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grades were analyzed. Results from bivariate growth models revealed steeper increases in anxiety, relative to peers in the sample, were associated with steeper decreases in social competence across time. This finding held after controlling for externalizing behavior problems at each time point, which suggests that relations among anxiety and social competence may be independent of other behavior problems commonly associated with poor social adjustment. Temperament variables were associated with changes in social competence, such that purportedly "risky" temperament traits of higher negative emotionality and lower attention control were associated with concurrently lower social competence in kindergarten, but with relatively steeper increases in social competence across time. Temperament variables in kindergarten were unrelated with changes in anxiety across time. Gender differences in relations among anxiety in kindergarten and growth in social competence also were revealed. Findings for teacher and parent reports of child behavior varied. Results are discussed with respect to contexts that may drive differences between parent and teacher reports of child behavior, as well as key developmental considerations that may help to explain why kindergarten temperament variables examined herein appear to predict changes in social competence but not changes in anxiety levels.
ContributorsParker, Julia Humphrey (Author) / Pina, Armando A. (Thesis advisor) / Grimm, Kevin (Committee member) / Doane, Leah D. (Committee member) / Valiente, Carlos (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
The gameplay experience can be understood as an interaction between player and game design characteristics. A greater understanding of these characteristics can be gained through empirical means. Subsequently, an enhanced knowledge of these characteristics should enable the creation of games that effectively generate desirable experiences for players. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between gameplay enjoyment and the individual characteristics of gaming goal orientations, game usage, and gender. A total of 301 participants were surveyed and the data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). This led to an expanded Gameplay Enjoyment Model (GEM) with 41 game features, an overarching Enjoyment factor, and 9 specific components, including Challenge, Companionship, Discovery, Fantasy, Fidelity, Identity, Multiplayer, Recognition, and Strategy. Furthermore, the 3x2 educational goal orientation framework was successfully applied to a gaming context. The resulting 3x2 Gaming Goal Orientations (GGO) model consists of 18 statements that describe players' motivations for gaming, which are distributed across the six dimensions of Task-Approach, Task-Avoidance, Self-Approach, Self-Avoidance, Other-Approach, and Other-Avoidance. Lastly, players' individual characteristics were used to predict gameplay enjoyment, which resulted in the formation of the GEM-Individual Characteristics (GEM-IC) model. In GEM-IC, the six GGO dimensions were the strongest predictors. Meanwhile, game usage variables like multiplayer, genre, and platform preference, were minimal to moderate predictors. Although commonly appearing in games research, gender and game time commitment variables failed to predict enjoyment. The results of this study enable important work to be conducted involving game experiences and player characteristics. After several empirical iterations, GEM is considered suitable to employ as a research and design tool. In addition, GGO should be useful to researchers interested in how player motivations relate to gameplay experiences. Moreover, GEM-IC points to several variables that may prove useful in future research. Accordingly, it is posited that researchers will derive more meaningful insights on games and players by investigating detailed, context-specific characteristics as compared to general, demographic ones. Ultimately, it is believed that GEM, GGO, and GEM-IC will be useful tools for researchers and designers who seek to create effective gameplay experiences that meet the needs of players.
ContributorsQuick, John (Author) / Atkinson, Robert (Thesis advisor) / McNamara, Danielle (Committee member) / Nelson, Brian (Committee member) / Savenye, Wilhelmina (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013