Search Results

open access

Learned Helplessness: The Result of the Uncontrollability of Reinforcement or the Result of the Uncontrollability of Aversive Stimuli?

Description: This research demonstrates that experience with uncontrollable reinforcement, here defined as continuous non-contingent positive feedback to solution attempts of insoluble problems, fails to produce the proactive interference phenomenon, learned helplessness, while uncontrollable aversive events, here defined as negative feedback to solution attempts of insoluble problems, produces that phenomenon. These results partially support the "learned helplessness" hypothesis of Seligman (1975) which pr… more
Date: August 1975
Creator: Benson, James S.
open access

A Longitudinal Examination of Factors Associated with Custodial Grandparenting: A Test of Moderated Mediation

Description: The purpose of this study was to explore the following relationships: (a) how moderating factors (gender, age, ethnicity, social support, marital status, reason for role assumption and number of grandchildren in the home) can influence the mediating role of resiliency, and (b) how resiliency may mediate the negative effects of raising grandchildren (role demands, life disruptions, and difficulties with grandchildren) on grandparent adjustment over time. Resiliency was hypothesized to have the g… more
Date: December 2009
Creator: Moske, Amanda Kay
open access

Marital Satisfaction in Returning Female Students

Description: One area which may be expected to play an important role in a married woman's decision to return to school. as well as in determining the magnitude of the difficulties she will be confronted with, which is marital satisfaction. The present study explored the roles of sex-role identification, sex-role stereotypy were found to exert a significant influence on marital satisfaction. The present study explored the roles of sex-role identification, ex-role stereotypy, self-esteem, maternal employment… more
Date: December 1982
Creator: Outland, Debra Ann
open access

Mock Juror Effects of Blame and Conviction in Rape Cases: Do Attitudes, Beliefs, and Contact with Homosexuals Matter?

Description: The current case involves a female rape victim. Research has shown the level of victim blaming can be elevated if the victim is a lesbian woman compared to a heterosexual woman. Mock jurors’ responses to personality trait questionnaires (e.g., Belief in a Just World, Attitudes Toward Women, Attitudes Toward Lesbians) and amount of contact they have with homosexual people were employed as predictors of how they would decide victim blaming and perpetrator guilt. Personality trait findings were no… more
Date: May 2016
Creator: Hurst-McCaleb, Dawn

Modeling Marijuana Use Willingness and Problems as a Function of Social Rejection and Social Anxiety

Description: Marijuana is the second most commonly used substance in the US. A growing literature suggests that socially anxious individuals use marijuana to manage their symptoms in social situations, which may explain why they are also more likely to experience problems. Unfortunately, the majority of the literature is based on research conducted with adult samples or the co-occurrence of diagnoses in adolescent samples. The proposed study sought to test the link between social anxiety (SA) and proxies fo… more
Access: Restricted to UNT Community Members. Login required if off-campus.
Date: May 2019
Creator: Cloutier, Renee
open access

Operant Conditioning of the Tongue Flicker Response of Snakes

Description: Sixteen Nerodia rhombifera were used in each of two experiments investigating operant conditioning of the tongue flicker response. A yoked pair design was utilized throughout phases of baseline, continuous reinforcement, partial reinforcement, and extinction. During partial reinforcement, one-half of the experimental animals were reinforced FR-4 and the other half were reinforced continuously. Control subjects were treated as were their experimental partners, with the exception of noncontingent… more
Date: May 1981
Creator: Ward, Rocky
open access

The Organizational Socialization of a Dynamic Workforce: A Focus on Employee and Contract Worker Knowledge Transfer

Description: Within the last decade, more organizations are utilizing a non-traditional workforce. Specifically, these organizations are utilizing contract workers as resources to provide services and manufacture products. While this change in workforce provides benefits to organizations, the change also presents numerous challenges such as turnover. The turnover involved in such a relationship along with the addition of newcomers translates into an organizational socialization and knowledge transfer (KT) i… more
Date: August 1999
Creator: Lahti, Ryan K.
open access

An Osmoreceptive Zone Around the Nucleus Circularis

Description: The nucleus circularis has been linked to a role in regulating osmotic thirst but evidence has also shown that full bilateral destruction of the nucleus circularis was not necessary to achieve a deficit in drinking behavior after an osmotic challenge. The present study attempted to answer two primary research questions. The first question was whether osmoreceptive cells existed around the nucleus circularis in a homogeneous fashion or if these cells existed in a structured fashion stretching fr… more
Date: August 1985
Creator: Wallace, Forrest Layne
open access

Passive and Active Avoidance Learning in Depressives

Description: In order to aid in the understanding of the personality components that contribute to the symptoms of depression, the learning process of persons labeled as depressed was examined. Twenty female subjects who were either receiving or being evaluated for psychotherapy participated in this study. Based on MMPI and DACL scores, 10 depressed and 10 nondepressed subjects were placed in avoidance learning situations. An active avoidance situation required making the correct button press to avoid a sou… more
Date: December 1979
Creator: Weeks, Randall E.
open access

Patient Behaviors: Development of a Rating System

Description: The patient's failure to cooperate effectively in the patient/physician (patient and physician) interaction has been shown to be a problem of significant magnitude. In the present study, an attempt was made to identify specific, patient behaviors which might be related to physician judgment of a good patient and progress of treatment. A checklist of 37 behaviors was compiled. A series of 100 patients was observed during their interaction with physicians and occurrences of behaviors from the che… more
Date: May 1980
Creator: Martin-Cannici, Cynthia Elaine
open access

Patterns of Relationship Violence among Low Income Women and Severely Psychologically Abused Women

Description: Little research has addressed the degree to which domestic violence is mutual and whether patterns are stable across women's relationships. Studies that exist have conflicting results. This study addressed these issues and the effects of sustaining past violence on women's expressions of violence in their current relationship. Archival data from a sample of severely psychologically abused community women (N = 92) and a sample of low-income community women (N = 836) were analyzed. Results showed… more
Date: August 1998
Creator: Weston, Rebecca
open access

Peer Counselor Effectiveness in a Study Skills Course

Description: Research has demonstrated the efficacy of attitudinal-motivational counseling in conjunction with study skills training. However, it has not been clear whether group or individual counseling was most beneficial. This research attempted to evaluate the usefulness of peer counselors in group and individual counseling sessions. Using students voluntarily enrolled in a study skills program, it was demonstrated that all students improved in study habit scores. However, only individual-peer counselin… more
Date: May 1980
Creator: Till, Steven Michael
open access

Police Attitudes Toward Rape

Description: Research has demonstrated that the general public accepts many rape myths and that rape attitudes are strongly connected to other deeply held and pervasive attitudes. However, it has not been clear whether police officers reflected similar attitudes. This research attempted to ascertain if police share the same antecedents of rape myth acceptance as the general public. Using officers from two police departments, it was demonstrated that attidudes regarding sex role stereotyping, sexual conserva… more
Date: August 1981
Creator: Best, Connie Lee
open access

Postoperative Neuropsychological Outcomes in Pediatric Patients Undergoing Temporal Lobe Epilepsy Surgery

Description: The purpose of this study was to investigate the neuropsychological outcomes of pediatric subjects undergoing temporal lobe surgery, and then compare the outcomes between subjects in the iMRI and the standard operating suites. This study involved 77 children ages one to 21 years (M = 11.98) at time of surgery for intractable epilepsy. Forty-seven returned for repeat neuropsychological assessment. At baseline, subjects with early onset of epilepsy (≤ 7 years) scored worse on a measure of attenti… more
Date: December 2013
Creator: Bailey, Laurie J.
open access

Provocative Versus Neutral Role-Playing Prompts and Assertive Behavior

Description: The behavior role-playing task (BRPT) has become a popular method of assessing assertive behavior. However, current research suggests that situational factors can affect the outcome of such assessments, independently of the subject's level of assertiveness. The present study investigated the effects of one such factor: the type of prompt delivered during the BRPT. It was hypothesized that subjects would respond more assertively to provocatively prompted scenes than to neutral scenes. Twenty nur… more
Date: December 1979
Creator: General, Dale A.
open access

The Relationship between Team Leader Behaviors and Team Performance and Satisfaction

Description: The purpose of this study, a quasi experimental design, was to investigate the relationship between team leader behavior and team performance and satisfaction. This field research tested leader behavior dimensions from two theoretical models of team effectiveness: Hackman's (1992) "expert available coaching," and Cohen's (1994) "encouraging supervisory behaviors." The relationship between coaching behaviors and team performance, employee, and customer satisfaction was assessed. Manager behavior… more
Date: August 1996
Creator: Burress, Mary Ann

The Relationship of Self-Monitoring to Team Leader Flexibility and Work Environment Preference

Description: This research explores the relationship of self-monitoring with team leader behavior and work environment preference. Those who are high on self-monitoring demonstrate flexibility in their actions with others and are socially perceptive. They perform well in a variety of leadership positions and are viewed as leaders by group members. High self-monitoring types choose "socially" based careers, including teacher and psychologist, in which they adapt their interaction styles to effectively mee… more
Access: Restricted to UNT Community Members. Login required if off-campus.
Date: August 2000
Creator: Nichols, Judith Ann
open access

Response to Sexual Trauma in Relation to Event Centrality and Objectified View of Self

Description: This study examined the potentially differing emotional consequences of sexual versus non-sexual traumas in both a student and a community residing treatment seeking sample of women. The extent to which a trauma survivor considers the traumatic event central to her identity (CES) was examined as a potential mediator between traumatic events and PTSD. Additionally, the extent to which a women views herself and her body as a sexual object, to be valued based on her appearance and sexual usefuln… more
Date: August 2012
Creator: Knowles, Laura R.
open access

The role of resilience in mediating outcomes associated with grandparents raising their grandchildren.

Description: The occurrence of custodial grandparents is increasing greatly. These grandparents face added stress and many adversities that arise from caregiving. Findings of current research tends to be mixed on the effects of grandparents raising grandchildren experience. Much research concludes that grandparent caregivers experience negative declines in overall health and well-being, while other research points out that the caregiving role may actually be a positive experience for the grandparent. Th… more
Date: December 2009
Creator: Davis, Shanna R.
open access

Sex Differences in Performance Expectancies

Description: Previous research demonstrates expectations predict actual performance. These studies evaluated the influence of other variables, specifically task sex orientation, biological gender, and sex-role identification, on performance expectancies. Two studies investigated sex differences in performance expectancies: Study 1 used a task normatively favoring males; Study 2 used a task normatively unbiased by gender. Subjects were 207 undergraduates, approximately equal numbers of males and females. Exp… more
Date: August 1982
Creator: Horne, Amy Beth
open access

Skills Acquisition and Cognitive Restructuring Operations in Training Assertive Behaviors

Description: Behavioral and cognitive skills training for increasing assertive behavior in college students were compared to an equally credible expectancy-control. One significant multivariate function successfully discriminated between the behavioral and control groups, and between the cognitive and control groups. This function was interpreted as showing enhanced behavioral/cognitive construction competencies in the behavioral and cognitive groups. A second function, though not significant, suggested tha… more
Date: May 1979
Creator: Lefebvre, R. Craig
open access

Structural Aspects of Loevinger's Model of Ego Development

Description: The study reviews the structural and psychometric underpinnings of Loevinger's theory of ego development. It is noted that the current literature investigating the validity of Loevinger's model has not adequately addressed the structural assumptions of the theory. "Process" variables are hypothesized to vary depending on the process of structural change. Two such variables, cognitive complexity and the organization of cognitive constructs, were measured in 73 college students, staff, and facult… more
Date: August 1985
Creator: Harrison, James Ray
open access

Tachistoscopic Versus Free Inspection Presentation of the Müller-Lyer Illusion

Description: This study was designed as an attempt to extend Schneider and Shiffrin's (1977) automatic versus controlled processing distinction into the area of visual perception. Hasher and Zacks (1979) proposed a continuum of automatic processes, with processes which encode the fundamental aspects of the flow of information as the anchor of the continuum. They presented evidence that depressed people perform more poorly than nondepressed on effortful (controlled) memory tasks, but not on automatic tasks. … more
Date: August 1984
Creator: Ellington, Jane Elizabeth
open access

Terror Management Theory and Body Image

Description: Research has not explicitly examined the link between key components of terror management theory (TMT) and body image without the use of mortality salience. This project explored the link between cultural worldview, self-esteem, body image, and death anxiety. Multiple measures were used to create a structural equation model examining relationships between body image and death anxiety as mediated by body image in the context of TMT. The proposed model did not fit the data. Minor modification… more
Date: December 2011
Creator: Fish, Joshua Stephen Andrus
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