Matching Items (47)
Description
Family influences are known predictors of adolescent health and well-being trajectories, yet little research has investigated how adolescents’ orientation to family may be associated with their physiological stress responses. Influenced by the strength-based approach to culture, this study evaluated 418 Hispanic adolescents' familism values and perceived life stress in family, school, and peer domains to investigate prospective associations with hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis stress responses to the Group Public Speaking Task for Adolescents (GPST-A). Prior growth-mixture modeling on this sample revealed a five-class solution of cortisol responding to the GPST-A that was used here as the dependent variable: one class showed a more pronounced pattern of reactivity, potentially indicative of hyper-responsivity to the stress task; two classes showed evidence of a low to moderate cortisol response, potentially indicative of an adaptive physiological response to the challenge; and two classes showed patterns of non-responsivity, potentially indicative of hypo-responsivity. Results demonstrate that the role of familism is nuanced in the context of stressors, potentially offering both promotive and risk-amplifying effects for the physiological stress response system. This study offered several novel findings in the relation between cultural factors, salient stressors of adolescence, and HPA activity.
ContributorsSmola, Xochitl Arlene (Author) / Gonzales, Nancy (Thesis director) / Presson, Clark (Committee member) / Doane, Leah (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Besides acquiring group status via dominance or force, as in other animals, human beings can acquire status via prestige, which follows from other group members valuing one’s expert knowledge. Past research has shown a preference for prestigious leaders over dominant leaders. That is, people prefer leaders who are expert over those who are domineering. In this research, I explored whether the preference for prestige over dominance applies to preferences for actual political figures with facial features that appear dominant or prestigious. I also asked whether the same links between dominance, prestige, and voter preference would hold for both men and women. American participants (recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk) rated European politicians’ faces on traits associated with prestige and dominance and indicated their likelihood of voting for this person as a governor of their state. Findings suggest ratings of both prestige is a strong predictor of leadership preference than dominance. However, strong correlations between variables suggest prestige and dominance are two closely related concepts. In addition, participants indicated a marginal to significant preference for female leaders, depending on their perceived dominance and prestigiousness.
ContributorsMartos, Christopher Robert (Author) / Kenrick, Douglas (Thesis director) / Barlev, Michael (Committee member) / Presson, Clark (Committee member) / Adi, Wiezel (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
There are currently no disease-modifying treatments to halt or attenuate the progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Transgenic rodent models have provided researchers the ability to recapitulate particular pathological and symptomological events in disease progression. Complete reproduction of all features of AD in a rodent model has not been achieved, potentially lending to the inconclusive treatment results at the clinical level. Recently, the TgF344-AD transgenic rat model has started to be evaluated; however, it has not been well characterized in terms of its cognition, which is fundamental to understanding the trajectory of aging relative to pathology and learning and memory changes. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to identify cognitive outcomes at 6, 9, and 12 months of age in the TgF344-AD rat model. Sixty female transgenic (Tg) and wildtype (WT) rats were tested on the water radial arm maze, Morris water maze, and visible platform task to evaluate cognition. Results from the asymptotic phase of the water radial arm maze showed that the 6 mo-Tg animals had marginally impaired working memory compared to 6 mo-WT rats, and 12 mo-Tg rats had significantly impaired working memory compared to 12 mo-WT rats. The 9 mo-Tg animals did not demonstrate a significant difference in working memory errors compared to the 9 mo-WT animals. This pattern of impairment, wherein Tg animals made more working memory errors compared to WT animals at the 6 and 12 month time points, but not at the 9 month time point, may be indicative of an inflammatory response that proves helpful at incipient stages of disease progression but eventually leads to further cognitive impairment. These results provide insight into the potential earliest time point that prodromal cognitive symptoms of AD exist, and how they progress with aging. Brain tissue was collected at sacrifice for future analyses of pathology, which will be used to glean insight into the temporal progression of pathological and cognitive outcomes.
ContributorsBulen, Haidyn Leigh (Co-author) / Bulen, Haidyn (Co-author) / Bimonte-Nelson, Heather (Thesis director) / Presson, Clark (Committee member) / Conrad, Cheryl (Committee member) / Woner, Victoria (Committee member) / Peña, Veronica (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Previous research has shown that there is a significant relation between one’s attentional abilities and one’s motor coordination. However, little research has been done that compares attention’s effects on the two major motor skills and what that could mean for one with significant attention problems. Additionally, there has not been much research done on this topic among a population of preschool-aged children. The current study sought to explore the relation between attention and motor coordination among a sample of preschoolers. A comparison of gross motor skills and fine motor skills was also assessed in order to address any potential differing effects. A sample of twenty-six preschool children participated in an experiment consisting of completing fine motor tasks, gross motor tasks, and an attention task. Additionally, parent and teacher surveys were collected that asked both parents and teachers to report their child’s behaviors at home. It was hypothesized that attention would have a significant relation with fine motor skills because past research has found that the variable of inattention is highly correlated with weaker fine motor skills. However, the current study found that attention had a more significant relation with gross motor skills. This finding was reflected across the experiments that the children completed and across the parent/teacher surveys.
ContributorsGoldentyer, Gabriela (Author) / Amazeen, Eric (Thesis director) / Kupfer, Anne (Committee member) / Presson, Clark (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Bipolar disorder will affect an estimated 4.4% of adults in the U.S (Bipolar Disorder, 2017). This study addresses the hypothesis that individuals endorsing mania symptoms also tend to show increased creativity. There has been some empirical support linking mania and creativity, as well as anecdotal evidence of highly creative individuals posthumously being diagnosed with some form of bipolar disorder. To our knowledge, however, no prior studies have sought to link specific symptoms of mania with creativity. Participants in this study completed two separate creativity tasks, measuring convergent and divergent thinking, respectively; the Remote Associates Test (RAT) and the Alternate Uses Test (AUT). Two questionnaires followed: The Behavioral Inhibition/Activation Scale (BIS/BAS; Carver & White, 1994) with subscales for Drive, Fun Seeking and Reward Responsiveness and the Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS; Stanton, McArtor & Watson, 2017) with subscales for an individual’s level of Modesty, Charisma, Activation, Intellectual Confidence and Lability. Multiple regression analyses revealed that scores on Activation, Intellectual Confidence, and Modesty significantly predicted creative test scores. Future studies may seek to replicate the study with a different community or use different measures of creativity.
ContributorsBreiten, Riley (Co-author, Co-author) / Shiota, Michelle (Thesis director) / Presson, Clark (Committee member) / Gruber, June (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Research into criminal fantasies has thus far primarily focused on homicidal. Here, we broaden the study of criminal ideation by examining a wide range of violent and non-violent criminal fantasies. Specifically, we aimed to compare the magnitude of sex difference in actual crimes to sex differences in crime fantasies. Using a questionnaire design, participants were asked about the frequency and recency of multiple categories of criminal fantasies, including violent and non-violent crimes. Reports of crime fantasies from this questionnaire were compared to national rates of arrest and incident for these actual crimes. Results indicated that men not only commit crimes more frequently than women do, they also fantasize about crimes more frequently. At the same time, such sex differences in crime fantasies were smaller than sex differences in actual crimes. Future studies should continue to explore the purpose of crime fantasies and their relation to behavioral regulation mechanisms.
ContributorsBaldwin, Lauren (Co-author, Co-author) / Kenrick, Douglas (Thesis director) / Barlev, Michael (Committee member) / Presson, Clark (Committee member) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Substance use during adolescence is a significant predictor of developing a later substance use disorder. An encouraging trend is that there have been recent declines in rates of adolescent substance use, including alcohol and marijuana. However, these two substances may be decreasing differently from one another as a result of age, period, and cohort effects. Therefore, the overall trend of decreased substance use in more recent generations of adolescents may be greater for one substance than the other. The current study tested declines in adolescent alcohol and marijuana use across two generations measured in 1988-1990 and 2006-2012. Methodological strengths include controls for demographic characteristics and for parental alcohol disorder (as a proxy for genetic risk). Moreover, we tested whether findings would replicate using two methods—first comparing all assessed members of one generational cohort with all assessed members of the other generational cohort, and then comparing only matched parent-child pairs. Testing this second matched sample removes some potential demographic and risk confounds that might occur across cohorts in typical epidemiological studies. Results demonstrated that the younger cohort of adolescents used both substances less than the older cohort, and this effect was stronger for alcohol than for marijuana. These results were replicated in both samples over and above demographic variables. The parent-child sample showed that children used less alcohol and marijuana than did their parent during the same age period, suggesting that these trends cannot simply be due to changes in the demographics of the adolescent population over time. Taken together with epidemiological studies, these findings suggest encouraging declines in adolescent substance use rates but also indicate less decline in marijuana use compared to alcohol use. This prompts further surveillance to determine if marijuana use rates may start increasing among adolescents in the future.
ContributorsWatters, Shannon Marie (Author) / Chassin, Laurie (Thesis director) / Presson, Clark (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05