Matching Items (242)
Description
In a cross memoir and essay format, I examine what connection barriers veterans face when communicating with civilians. I interviewed veterans after adapting an interview schedule and model release form. Additionally, I researched creative nonfiction, guided autobiography, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. I chose to focus mainly on soldiers returning from recent conflicts. Once I collected my interviews, I synthesized the stories I heard with personal memoir. The thesis focuses on three parts: coming home, communication barriers, and connection. Weaving in both my personal reflection and the voices of the soldiers I interviewed, I evaluate possible ways veterans and civilians fail to connect. I address the discrepancy between the apparent warm reception of soldiers and the feelings of disconnection soldiers express by noting the ways in which both the solider and the civilian struggle to communicate. Looking at reintegration struggles, I briefly note the transition difficulty post deployment soldiers face. From the responses I received, I reflect on how empty gestures, perceived ignorance, and an outsider effect contribute to communication barriers between soldiers and veterans. While I address how ignorance can be broken down into misunderstanding military jargon, detaching from war, hearing euphemisms, and having expectations, I also consider the ways in which situation and vagueness surrounding the war contribute to communication barriers surrounding perceived ignorance. From my reflection of communication barriers, I offer tools for soldiers and veterans making connections. I recommend that both soldiers and civilians stay informed about the military engagements as best they can, deconstruct expectations and generalizations, use empathy and active listening, and start being direct. Knowing the nuanced complexity of war and communication, I weave in my own reflections in contribution to the larger conversation.
ContributorsFletcher, Jessica Marie (Author) / Wells, Cornelia (Thesis director) / deLusé, Stephanie (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / College of Letters and Sciences (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Objectives: The goal of this study was to compare older adults (ages 60 to 80) with a fixed sleep schedule compared to a restricted sleep schedule. The purpose was to determine if reducing one's sleep by an hour each night for 12 weeks, led to worse cognition and mood over time. Study Design: The study contained two groups: older adults with their sleep restricted and older adults with their sleep un-restricted. Participants were recruited by researchers at Arizona State University and The University of Arizona by advertising in newspapers, on flyers in senior centers, and on radio stations. After rigorous screening for health conditions, current sleep patterns and depression, individuals entered the study. Participants completed the Geriatric Depression Scale after two weeks of baseline, and again after treatment week 14 of the study. Likewise, males and females performed three cognitive tests after two weeks of baseline, and again after treatment week 14 of the study. These cognitive tests included Stroop Color and Word Test, Trail making and PVT. Results: The depression scale and three cognitive tests showed that there was no significant difference with cognition and mood over 14 weeks between individuals with a fixed sleep schedule compared to a restricted sleep schedule. Conclusions: Reducing older adult's sleep duration by an hour each night for 14 weeks does not produce negative effects, and does not provoke signs of depression or weakened cognition.
ContributorsSchneck, Morgan Gail (Author) / Youngstedt, Shawn (Thesis director) / Petrov, Megan (Committee member) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Arizona State University. College of Nursing & Healthcare Innovation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Climate change presents a significant threat to human health, both mental and physical; as a result, it has become one of the most commonly discussed phenomena of the 21st century. As many people are aware, a wide range of social and physical factors affects mental health. However, many people fail to realize that these increases global temperatures also have a significant impact on mental health as a result of increased vulnerability that is often manifested through one's emotions. By analyzing perceptions of people across the globe, in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Fiji, we were able to pinpoint these emotions and trace them individual's feelings of worry, distress, and hope that resulted from their perceived impacts on climate change. Overall, we found that people tend to have overall more negative emotional reaction when it comes to the perceived effects of climate change. Of the respondents, more men than women expressed concern regarding the various negative implications. Finally, those in the United Kingdom exhibited a stronger emotional response, followed by those in New Zealand and Fiji, respectively.
ContributorsSmith, Austin Lee (Author) / Wutich, Amber (Thesis director) / du Bray, Margaret (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
The fight for equal transgender rights is gaining traction in the public eye, but still has a lot of progress to make in the social and legal spheres. Since public opinion is critical in any civil rights movement, this study attempts to identify the most effective methods to elicit public reactions in support of transgender rights. Topic analysis through Latent Dirichlet Allocation is performed on Twitter data, along with polarity sentiment analysis, to track the subjects which gain the most effective reactions over time. Graphing techniques are used in an attempt to visually display the trends in topics. The topic analysis techniques are effective in identifying the positive and negative trends in the data, but the graphing algorithm lacks the ability to comprehensibly display complex data with more dimensionality.
ContributorsWilmot, Christina Dory (Author) / Liu, Huan (Thesis director) / Bellis, Camellia (Committee member) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
For many years now, early word learning in children has been an important subject among many researchers. There are many ways in which children learn word-object pairings including using co-occurrences, forwards integration, and backwards integration. This study primarily focuses on backwards integration. Backwards integration entails using learned information to be able to recall a word-object pairing from a previous time. In this thesis, three different studies were conducted with children aged 3-7 years old. In the general task, children were presented with a computerized word-learning task in which they could track word-referent pairings using co-occurrence statistics, forward integration, and backward integration. The goal of Study 1 and Study 2 was to determine the best task design to study backwards integration. The goal of the final study, Study 3, was to provide preliminary data on backwards integration. The overall results indicate that a between subjects design is the most beneficial way to test backwards integration because as a group, children were learning when compared to chance. In addition, the results from Study 3 showed that children were not learning in the task. In general, this suggests that this task may have been very difficult for children to complete. One limitation of Study 3
was that there was a small sample size of only 29 children. In order to account for this, the sample sizes in Study 2 and Study 3 were combined. This combined data did show that children succeeded at the backwards integration condition. It is noteworthy to mention that backwards integration was above chance in Study 2 and in the Study 2 and 3 combination. Therefore, the overall results suggest that children may possibly be able to backwards integrate; however, no evidence of learning in any of the other conditions were present.
was that there was a small sample size of only 29 children. In order to account for this, the sample sizes in Study 2 and Study 3 were combined. This combined data did show that children succeeded at the backwards integration condition. It is noteworthy to mention that backwards integration was above chance in Study 2 and in the Study 2 and 3 combination. Therefore, the overall results suggest that children may possibly be able to backwards integrate; however, no evidence of learning in any of the other conditions were present.
ContributorsLalani, Hanna Alyssa (Author) / Benitez, Viridiana (Thesis director) / Kupfer, Anne (Committee member) / Fabricius, William (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
This paper explores the importance of teacher preparation and quality as evidenced by three of the top-performing countries, Canada, Finland, and Singapore, on the 2015 Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA). All three of these countries have exemplary teacher preparation programs that are consistent nationwide with rigorous entry requirements, a demanding course load, and numerous opportunities to gain in-field experience. They also all compensate their teachers at a comparable salary to that of other occupations to incentivize more people to enter the field. In the United States, on the other hand, society devalues teachers, teachers are not paid what they deserve, and there is a lack of consistency in teacher preparation programs, specifically in regards to out-of-field teaching and the alternate ways people can become certified. These two issues have plagued America's educational system, and they have resulted in under-prepared teachers and lower-performing students. Not only is there inconsistency in the way that teachers enter into the profession, but teacher preparation programs themselves vary in their requirements. In order to improve its educational system, America must obtain more rigorous teacher preparation programs, increase teacher salary, provide prospective teachers with more classroom experience, and have specific admission requirements to be a part of the teaching profession. There is much that the United States can learn from the 2015 PISA results and the many successful educational systems around the world, and it is time that America pays attention to the wealth of international educational research available to better its teacher preparation programs and obtain more quality teachers.
ContributorsDunay, Angela Gilda (Author) / Guerrero, Karen (Thesis director) / Smudde, Christopher (Committee member) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in word learning ability when assessing phonological and semantic representations in elementary-age children with typical development. Methods: The study included 116 2nd graders and 25 6th graders who were tested using the Assessment Battery for Children - Word Learning. Children played virtual pirate games that tested their ability to store, retrieve, and recall phonological and semantic representations of nonwords. Results: Based on effect sizes, the largest differences in word learning ability occurred for tasks requiring phonological working memory. Overall, 6th graders had higher performance means in all aspects of word learning. Both groups performed better on tasks that required less phonological or semantic detail. Discussion: Findings align with previous research reporting that as children develop, their capacity to store, retrieve, and recall phonological information increases as a result of increased phonological loop capacity and rehearsal speed. Similarly, as children age they perform better on tasks requiring visuospatial working memory such as storing and recreating the semantic representations of new words. These findings have implications for the word learning process in children with typical development.
ContributorsCantrell, Lauren Taylor (Author) / Gray, Shelley (Thesis director) / Restrepo, Laida (Committee member) / Department of Speech and Hearing Science (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12
Description
Token economies are a type of behavioral reinforcement that are particularly useful in classroom settings for increasing student compliance, for both typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder. During this study, we implemented a token economy in an inclusive preschool classroom with tokens contingent on compliance to classroom rules. Three participants, two with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and one considered typically developing, were included in the study. Results indicated that levels of compliance increased for both the typically developing participant and participants with autism, and did not drop below baseline levels during the withdrawal phase, suggesting there was no lack of intrinsic motivation. Further, the typically developing participant and one of the participants with autism spectrum disorder had very similar levels of compliance, while the other participant had much higher levels of compliance throughout every phase, suggesting that the compliance levels for peers with more advanced repertoires with autism may differ from both typically developing peers and peers who have less developed repertoires. The implications of these results are discussed as they relate to compliance from an ABA perspective.
ContributorsEggen, Kelly (Author) / Hahs, Adam (Thesis director) / Cavanaugh Toft, Carolyn (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12
Description
Within our current educational infrastructure, there’s a lack of substantial preventive care knowledge present among elementary schoolchildren. With education cuts occurring statewide, many schools are left impoverished and schools are incapable of implementing various programs to benefit their local communities. This endeavor aims to visit public and charter elementary schools in the Phoenix Valley to educate youth regarding easily avoidable health risks by implementing healthy eating habits and exercise. Project BandAid will immerse students ages 7-9 in hands-on activities to enhance their knowledge on hygiene, healthy eating habits, and safety. This project incorporated funding from the Woodside Community Action Grant and Barrett, the Honors College as well as the help from Alpha Epsilon Delta (AED) volunteers.
ContributorsCovarrubias, Sidney Alicia (Co-author) / Kothari, Karishma (Co-author) / John, Benson (Co-author) / Fette, Donald (Thesis director) / Holechek, Susan (Committee member) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / School for the Future of Innovation in Society (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
College-aged women are at an increased risk for the development of subclinical levels of eating disordered symptoms, which have been correlated to lasting deleterious cognitive, physical, and academic effects. The Body Project (TBP) is a universal group-based eating disorder prevention program that targets undergraduate women and challenges thin ideal messages through cognitive dissonance. Burlingame, Strauss, and Joyce (2013) in a meta-analysis of group treatments proposed five factors that independently and congruently work to promote individual change in group treatments: formal change theory, patient characteristics, leader characteristics, structural factors, and small group processes. A host of literature within TBP exists surrounding four of these factors, however, little research has been conducted on the small group processes that moderate individual change within this eating disorder prevention program.
The current study was designed to replicate and extend previous findings on the prevalence of the lemming effect within TBP, as well as examine how the lemming effect is related to outcome of treatment at a 3-month follow-up. Thirty-two participants aged 18-24 were examined. Groups ranged from 3 to 21 participants, including peer leaders. Twenty-nine audio recordings of session one of TBP were coded for lemming effects by the main research, and ten were coded by blind raters for inter-rater reliability measures. Three scales, the Ideal Body Stereotype Scale-Revised (IBSS-R), the Body Parts Satisfaction Scale-Revised (BPSS-R), and the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q), were used to measure levels of thin-ideal internalization, body satisfaction, and frequencies of eating disordered (ED) behaviors, respectively.
Partial correlations revealed nonsignificant relationships between the number of lemming effects and the change in thin-ideal internalization and body satisfaction from baseline to follow-up. Additionally, a reliable change index revealed that the majority of change from baseline to follow-up was reliable for the IBSS-R, and the majority of change for the BPSS-R was unreliable. Lastly, chi-square tests of independence revealed nonsignificant relations between the number of lemming effects and change in ED behaviors.
Due to the small sample and lack of findings, future research would benefit from including a larger sample. This would enable larger power to detect effects and allow for more thorough statistical analyses to be performed to compare the relation of lemming effects to changes in outcome. However, this was the first study to look at the lemming effect variable as a small group process within TBP and added to the growing literature on how small group processes result in efficacious outcomes of treatment within group treatments.
The current study was designed to replicate and extend previous findings on the prevalence of the lemming effect within TBP, as well as examine how the lemming effect is related to outcome of treatment at a 3-month follow-up. Thirty-two participants aged 18-24 were examined. Groups ranged from 3 to 21 participants, including peer leaders. Twenty-nine audio recordings of session one of TBP were coded for lemming effects by the main research, and ten were coded by blind raters for inter-rater reliability measures. Three scales, the Ideal Body Stereotype Scale-Revised (IBSS-R), the Body Parts Satisfaction Scale-Revised (BPSS-R), and the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q), were used to measure levels of thin-ideal internalization, body satisfaction, and frequencies of eating disordered (ED) behaviors, respectively.
Partial correlations revealed nonsignificant relationships between the number of lemming effects and the change in thin-ideal internalization and body satisfaction from baseline to follow-up. Additionally, a reliable change index revealed that the majority of change from baseline to follow-up was reliable for the IBSS-R, and the majority of change for the BPSS-R was unreliable. Lastly, chi-square tests of independence revealed nonsignificant relations between the number of lemming effects and change in ED behaviors.
Due to the small sample and lack of findings, future research would benefit from including a larger sample. This would enable larger power to detect effects and allow for more thorough statistical analyses to be performed to compare the relation of lemming effects to changes in outcome. However, this was the first study to look at the lemming effect variable as a small group process within TBP and added to the growing literature on how small group processes result in efficacious outcomes of treatment within group treatments.
ContributorsStadheim, Jenna Lynn (Author) / Perez, Marisol (Thesis director) / Doane, Leah (Committee member) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05