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Background: Premature infants may be at risk for lower effortful control, and subsequent lower academic achievement, peer competence, and emotional and physical wellness throughout the lifespan. However, because prematurity is related to obstetrical and neonatal complications, it is unclear what may drive the effect. Effortful control also has a strong

Background: Premature infants may be at risk for lower effortful control, and subsequent lower academic achievement, peer competence, and emotional and physical wellness throughout the lifespan. However, because prematurity is related to obstetrical and neonatal complications, it is unclear what may drive the effect. Effortful control also has a strong heritable component; therefore, environmental factors during pregnancy and the neonatal period may interact with genetic factors to predict effortful control development. In this study, I aimed to dissect the influences of genetics, prematurity, and neonatal and obstetrical complications on the development of effortful control from 12 months to 10 years using a twin cohort. Methods: This study used data from the Arizona Twin Project, an ongoing longitudinal study of approximately 350 pairs of twins. Twins were primarily Hispanic/Latinx (23.8%-27.1%) and non-Hispanic/Latinx White (53.2%-57.8%), and families ranged in socioeconomic status with around one-third falling below or near the poverty line. Of the twins, 62.6% were born prematurely. Effortful control was assessed via parent report at six waves. Results: There was not a significant relationship between gestational age and effortful control regardless of whether obstetrical and neonatal complications were controlled for. Biometric twin modeling revealed that the attentional focusing subdomain of effortful control was highly heritable. Gestational age did not moderate genetic and environmental estimates. Conclusions: The findings help inform the risk assessment of prematurity and provide evidence for differing etiology of each subdomain of effortful control and the strong role of genetics in effortful control development.
ContributorsPickett, Janna (Author) / Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn (Thesis advisor) / Su, Jinni (Committee member) / Eggum, Natalie D (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
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Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by difficulties in aspects of executive functioning such as inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2022). These challenges may impact learning and information retrieval, leading to variations in academic, vocational, and social skill development (APA, 2022). Precise assessment of these

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by difficulties in aspects of executive functioning such as inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2022). These challenges may impact learning and information retrieval, leading to variations in academic, vocational, and social skill development (APA, 2022). Precise assessment of these skills is crucial for understanding the diverse cognitive, behavioral, and emotional challenges associated with an ADHD diagnosis. Despite a global prevalence rate between 5-10%, no standardized assessment method has been established (Neprily et al., 2023). The development of digital tools like the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery (NTCB) and Test of Variables of Attention (T.O.V.A.) offer enhanced accessibility and efficacy in early detection (Greenberg et al., 2007; Weintraub et al., 2013).The study evaluates select NTCB measures of executive functioning, assessing their convergent and discriminant validity alongside established neuropsychological tests. It also investigates whether the T.O.V.A. and NTCB can identify unique cognitive profiles in an ADHD sample, further evaluating sex- and age-based profile differences. Correlation analyses using SPSS (Version 28) revealed strong convergent and discriminant validity of the NTCB Flanker, Dimensional Change Card Sort, and Pattern Comparison tests, with variable discriminant validity on the List Sorting test. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to identify distinct profiles using NTCB and T.O.V.A. tests within a sample of 213 participants between the ages of 5 and 26 years diagnosed with ADHD. Analyses were performed using MPlus8 statistical software, with missing data being accounted for by using full information likelihood estimation (FIML). Model selections were based on the number of fit indices and criteria (Nylund et al., 2013). By adjusting unique combinations of subtests and scores from both measures, 2 to 3 distinct profiles emerged within the data, underscoring the heterogeneity and complexity of this clinical population. The data did not support sex-based performance differences; however, older cohorts demonstrated stronger NTCB working memory and processing speed performances. The results highlight the versatility of the NTCB and T.O.V.A. in identifying unique neurocognitive profiles. Future research should explore their efficacy in diagnosing ADHD within diverse medical and psychiatric cohorts, aligning with emerging neuronal circuit theories.
ContributorsSchaefer, Amber Nicole (Author) / Capielo Rosario, Cristalís (Thesis advisor) / Truong, Nancy (Committee member) / Nicholls, Christopher J (Committee member) / Lavoie, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
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Description
Brain volume increases throughout early development in predictable patterns and is an important indicator of brain health. Hippocampal development and volume are related to many complex phenotypes, such as depression and anxiety. While basic brain development is genetically driven, environmental influences also influence individualized brain growth and regression. Epigenetics is

Brain volume increases throughout early development in predictable patterns and is an important indicator of brain health. Hippocampal development and volume are related to many complex phenotypes, such as depression and anxiety. While basic brain development is genetically driven, environmental influences also influence individualized brain growth and regression. Epigenetics is one mechanism by which development is impacted by environment. Both animal and post-mortem human studies suggest that early life environments shape epigenetic regulation of genes involved in depression and anxiety in the hippocampus. Further, much research suggests that these environmentally driven changes in epigenetics are also reflected in buccal cells. However, little is known about the relationship between peripheral and brain epigenetics, especially in young and healthy cohorts. In an effort to close the gap between the peripheral epigenome and brain structure in a pediatric population, it was investigated whether DNA methylation (DNAm) levels of stress-related genes (NR3C1, FKBP5, and SLC6A4) measured in buccal cells predict hippocampal volume in a healthy, pediatric population (N = 255; females = 113; age range < 2 months – 14 years, Mage = 5.17, SDage = 3.61). Using multiple linear regression, results indicate that DNAm values across the whole gene and individual CpG sites of NR3C1, FKBP5, and SLC6A4 predict bilateral hippocampal volume. Results also indicate an age interaction such that the relationship between hippocampal volume and HPA gene DNAm is stronger in younger participants (0-6 years old), whereas serotonin transporter gene DNAm is stronger in older participants (6-14 years old). These results indicate that buccal DNAm of NR3C1, FKBP5, and SLC6A4 may be useful predictors of hippocampal volume early in development. These results validate the utility of peripheral epigenetics in the study of early life stress and brain structure. Further, these results emphasize the importance of considering developmental stages between which the relationship between brain and peripheral epigenetics may differ and highlight the possibility that diverse biological systems may be more or less relevant at different ages.
ContributorsHanson, Taena Christine (Author) / Lewis, Candace R (Thesis advisor) / Braden, Brittany B (Committee member) / Gewirtz, Jonathan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
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Description
For decades, researchers have found that jurors are consistently unable - or unwilling - to disregard inadmissible evidence when instructed to do so by a judge. The legal system ignores the problem entirely: judges have repeatedly affirmed that a judge’s instructions to disregard are a sufficient safeguard of defendants’ constitutional

For decades, researchers have found that jurors are consistently unable - or unwilling - to disregard inadmissible evidence when instructed to do so by a judge. The legal system ignores the problem entirely: judges have repeatedly affirmed that a judge’s instructions to disregard are a sufficient safeguard of defendants’ constitutional rights, regardless of whether the jury actually disregards the inadmissible evidence. This study tested four interventions derived from psychological research to identify the combination that most effectively helped jurors disregard inadmissible evidence (operationalized by lower conviction rates). It was hypothesized that the most effective interventions identified in Study 1 would yield significantly lower conviction rates when compared to traditional instructions to disregard in Study 2. The interventions were tested in Study 1 using Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST) methodology to identify the optimized intervention package through regression analysis. Study 2 served as a randomized controlled trial in which treatment as usual (a judge’s instructions to disregard) was compared to the optimized intervention package. Participants were randomly assigned to either (1) be exposed to no inadmissible evidence, (2) receive inadmissible evidence and treatment as usual, (3) receive inadmissible evidence, treatment as usual and the optimized intervention package, or (4) receive the inadmissible evidence without objection. Logistic regression revealed that jurors who were given an instruction to disregard produced lower conviction rates when they also received the optimized intervention package. Interpretation, limitations, and calls to action are discussed.
ContributorsSandberg, Pamela Nicole (Author) / O'Hara, Karey L. (Thesis advisor) / Neal, Tess M.S. (Committee member) / Hall, Deborah L. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
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When questioning children during courtroom testimony, attorneys are instructed to use questions that are short and simple to address children’s cognitive abilities; however, this typically leads to anaphora. Anaphora occurs when a word is substituted for a previously mentioned word, phrase, or concept. For example, the pronoun “he” in “Bill

When questioning children during courtroom testimony, attorneys are instructed to use questions that are short and simple to address children’s cognitive abilities; however, this typically leads to anaphora. Anaphora occurs when a word is substituted for a previously mentioned word, phrase, or concept. For example, the pronoun “he” in “Bill is moving to New York. He is very excited.” indicates an anaphora since the word “he” replaces the name Bill. When asked a question that includes a pronoun-specific anaphora, the respondent must use cognitive skills to refer back to the initial referent. This likely means that as the number of conversational turns between the initial referent and the end of the reference increases, there will be more probable miscommunications between children and attorneys in cases of alleged Child Sexual Abuse (CSA). In this thesis, I analyzed 40 testimonies from cases of alleged child sexual abuse (5-10 years old, 90% female), located attorney use of pronoun anaphora, backward reference distances, and identified probable misunderstandings. I identified 137 probable misunderstandings within 2,940 question-answer pairs that included pronoun anaphora. Attorneys averaged 4.1 questions before clarifying the referent (SD = 10.14), sometimes extending up to 146 lines, leading to considerable backwards referencing. The distance between the anaphora and referent had a significant effect on misunderstandings, where each additional Q-A pair made misunderstandings more likely to occur. To reduce misunderstanding, attorneys should avoid pronoun anaphora of excessive length that require children to backward reference.
ContributorsRuiz-Earle, Ciara Aisling (Author) / Stolzenberg, Stacia (Thesis advisor) / Fine, Adam (Committee member) / Yan, Shi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
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Dual language use is thought to afford certain cognitive advantages to bilingual children and may function as an additional resource to help low-income Mexican-American children achieve academically. Emotion regulation and executive functioning (e.g., inhibition) have been found to be particularly important in studies investigating pathways to early academic achievement. Understanding

Dual language use is thought to afford certain cognitive advantages to bilingual children and may function as an additional resource to help low-income Mexican-American children achieve academically. Emotion regulation and executive functioning (e.g., inhibition) have been found to be particularly important in studies investigating pathways to early academic achievement. Understanding how we can capitalize on children’s bilingual abilities to strengthen their executive functioning and emotion regulation, or to offset problems in these domains, may be important to promote better educational outcomes and inform policy. Thus, the current study investigated the relation between emerging bilingualism, inhibition, emotion regulation, and academic achievement across early childhood in sample of 322 low-income, Mexican-American children. Data were collected in a laboratory space at child ages 36-, 54-, and 72-months. Bilingualism was indexed as the interaction of Spanish and English vocabulary, and a mediated moderation model was examined. Results provided further evidence that inhibition positively predicts academic achievement during early childhood. Greater Spanish language vocabulary indirectly predicted academic achievement while controlling for English language vocabulary, suggesting that children from immigrant families may benefit from maintaining their Spanish language abilities as they begin to immerse themselves in an English-speaking classroom. Advancing our understanding of the development of self-regulatory abilities within bilingual, immigrant populations could have significant implications for educational policy.
ContributorsWinstone, Laura K (Author) / Crnic, Keith (Thesis advisor) / Gonzales, Nancy (Committee member) / Benitez, Viridiana (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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Risk assessments are key legal tools that can inform a number of legal decisions regarding parole sentencing and predict recidivism rates. Due to assessments being historically performed by humans, they can be prone to bias and have come under various amounts of scrutiny. The increased capability and application of machine

Risk assessments are key legal tools that can inform a number of legal decisions regarding parole sentencing and predict recidivism rates. Due to assessments being historically performed by humans, they can be prone to bias and have come under various amounts of scrutiny. The increased capability and application of machine learning technology has lead the justice system to incorporate algorithms and codes to increase accuracy and reliability. This study researched laypersons’ attitudes towards these algorithms and how they would change when exposed to an algorithm that made errors in the risk assessment process. Participants were tasked with reading two vignettes and answering a series of questions to assess the differences in their perceptions towards machine learning and clinician-based risk assessments. The research findings showed that individuals lent more trust to clinicians and had more confidence in their assessments when compared to machines, but were not significantly more punitive when it came to attributing blame and judgement for the consequences of an incorrect risk assessment. Participants had a significantly more positive attitude towards clinician-based risk assessments, noting their assessments as being more reliable, informed, and trustworthy. Participants were also asked to come to a parole decision using the assessment of either a clinician or machine learning algorithm at the end of the study and rate their own confidence in their decision. Results found that participants were only significantly less confident in their decision when exposed to previous instances of risk assessments with error, but that there was no significant difference in their confidence based solely on who conducted the assessment.
ContributorsMa, Angeline (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Powell, Derek (Committee member) / Smalarz, Laura (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
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Research in intercollegiate athletics has provided a relatively large body of findings about the kinds of stressors found in high profile intercollegiate athletic environments and their effects on student-athletes. Research is less robust regarding stress and its effects on head coaches in high profile collegiate athletics. This study focuses on

Research in intercollegiate athletics has provided a relatively large body of findings about the kinds of stressors found in high profile intercollegiate athletic environments and their effects on student-athletes. Research is less robust regarding stress and its effects on head coaches in high profile collegiate athletics. This study focuses on the types, frequencies, and intensities of stress experienced by NCAA, Division I head coaches. The purpose of the study is to identify the types, frequency, and intensity of stress common to 20 head basketball coaches participating in the study, as well as differences in their experiences based on gender, race and the intersectionality of race and gender. The participants in the study are 20 head coaches (five Black females, five Black males, five White females, and White males). The conceptual framework guiding the study is a definition of stress as an interaction between a person and her or his environment in which the person perceives the resources available to manage the situation to be inadequate (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The study’s design is an adaptation of prior research conducted by Frey, M., 2007 and Olusoga, P., Butt, J., Hays, K., & Maynard, I., 2009, and Olusoga, P., Butt, J., Maynard, I., & Hays, K., 2011. This study used qualitative and quantitative methods that triangulated results scores on Maslach’s Burn-out Inventory and the Perceived Stress Scale with the thick data collected from semi-structured interviews with the 20 head coaches from each of the three data sources to enhance the validity and reliability of the findings. The researcher analyzed the data collected by placing it in one of two categories, one representing attributes of the participants including race and gender; the second category was comprised of attributes of the Division I environment.
ContributorsRousseau, Julie B (Author) / Gray, Rob (Thesis advisor) / Vega, Sujey (Committee member) / Wilson, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
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Due to numerous instances of police brutality in the U.S., researchers and policymakers have urged police to shift their job orientation to become more guardian-oriented (i.e., prioritizing community safety and building relationships) and less warrior-oriented (i.e., prioritizing physical control and fighting crime). Using the group engagement model and the expectancy

Due to numerous instances of police brutality in the U.S., researchers and policymakers have urged police to shift their job orientation to become more guardian-oriented (i.e., prioritizing community safety and building relationships) and less warrior-oriented (i.e., prioritizing physical control and fighting crime). Using the group engagement model and the expectancy disconfirmation hypothesis, this study examined: (1) young adults’ desire for police to be warrior- or guardian-oriented, (2) their perceptions of the extent to which police in their community are warrior- or guardian-oriented, and (3) the association between participants’ perceptions of the discrepancy between what police in their community should be versus are perceived to actually be and police legitimacy. In this study, a racially and ethnically diverse sample of young adults aged 18-25 in the United States (N = 436) responded to a self-report survey. Participants preferred police to have more of a guardian than warrior orientation and reported that police are not as guardian oriented as they wanted them to be. Further, if police did not meet their guardian expectations, young adults had more negative perceptions of police legitimacy. Expectations for police behavior may influence police legitimation and, within the context of police reform, young adults support the call for police to be more guardian-oriented by prioritizing community safety and building relationships. Fostering a guardian orientation in police is particularly important for police departments that are interested in promoting perceptions of legitimacy among the communities they serve.
ContributorsCross, Allison (Author) / Fine, Adam D (Thesis advisor) / Stolzenberg, Stacia (Committee member) / O'Hara, Karey (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
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Several states within the United States have recently passed the Victim Life Photo Act, which allows prosecutors to present photographs of alleged murder victims when they were alive during the guilt phase of a trial. Critics argue that these photographs do not offer any relevant information about the crime or

Several states within the United States have recently passed the Victim Life Photo Act, which allows prosecutors to present photographs of alleged murder victims when they were alive during the guilt phase of a trial. Critics argue that these photographs do not offer any relevant information about the crime or the defendant’s potential guilt and might bias jurors to vote guilty based on their sympathy for the victim—perhaps disproportionally so for high-status victims. Two mock trial experiments tested whether online participants who viewed alleged murder victim photographs would convict more because they increase anger, disgust, fear, sadness, and/or sympathy. Mock jurors who saw photographs of White (but not racial minority) victims while they were alive reported more sympathy for the victim relative to those who saw the same evidence without a photograph of the living victim—but the sympathy did not increase convictions (Study 1). Study 2 extended this study by testing whether the living victim photographs are more impactful in conjunction with seeing gruesome photographs of the victim after her death, creating a particularly disturbing contrast effect versus seeing the living photograph alone. Study 2 found that (a) living victim photographs on their own again had no effect on participants’ verdicts, (b) gruesome photographs on their own increased convictions through increased disgust, and (c) participants who saw both living and gruesome murder victim photographs (versus gruesome alone) were more conviction prone due to increased anger and sympathy. These studies inform current debates regarding the controversial Victim Life Photo Act: Admitting living victim photographs during the guilt phase—if presented along with gruesome photographs—can make jurors more sympathetic and angry, which can increase convictions.
ContributorsAdamoli, Madison Marie (Author) / Salerno, Jessica M (Thesis advisor) / Neal, Tess (Committee member) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020