Theses by Psychology Students

The objectification theory suggests that women are subjected to more comments about their appearance than men, but in the field of athletics and sports analysts, newer perspectives suggest that there are fewer distinctions between how male and female athletes are portrayed. The present study examined whether there were differences in broadcast commentary of men’s and women’s Olympic basketball gold medal games, including comments about the players looks and appearance, their physicality and athleticism, and the pattern of name used. The coding method employed was developed based on previous research and used to quantify the frequency of each category. Two coders completed all ratings and interrater reliability was strong to very strong. The average ratings from the coders were calculated and analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U nonparametric analysis of independent samples. The null hypotheses could not be rejected for almost all categories with the exception of intelligence & mental skill which had a higher mean rank for the commentators of the women’s game as compared with the men’s game. Implications and future directions of research are discussed.

The study assessed the factors contributing to expected ages of marriage in two student populations that are presumed to differ in academic achievement and goals. A primarily goal of this study was to describe the influence that adult attachment style has upon a person's expected age at marriage. A secondary goal was to explore other social and goal-oriented influences on timing of marriage in the two populations. There were no significant differences in attachment style for men and women. The more Avoidantly a person ranked, the later the age at which they expected to get married. University students' ideas about marriage were more influenced by educational goals than the community college sample. There were significant differences between men and women in expected age at marriage and the degree of influence of certain goals. It was found was that the community college students considered themselves to be adults at a younger age than the university group and ideally wanted to start a family at an earlier age.

Stroke is a leading cause of long-term disability with most patients suffering from persistent unilateral upper-limb impairments. These impairments impede daily living and independence as well as impose many other social and financial burdens. Current rehabilitation methods focus on compensatory movements relying largely on the nonimpaired limb. Unfortunately, the current methods of rehabilitation do not effectively promote full recovery of motor skills on the impaired body side. Rehabilitation in a mouse model of stroke has shown promising results, however, the training regimen used is much more intensive than the rehabilitation that human survivors receive, and the minimum amount of intensity required to promote functional benefits is unknown. The current study aims to investigate the effects of intensity of rehabilitation on motor function in the mouse model. Mice were trained preoperatively on a skilled reaching task then given a unilateral photothrombotic stroke. Postoperatively, mice received either traditional training (15 minutes or 100 reaches daily), low intensity training (10 minutes or 50 reaches daily), or modified traditional training (10 minutes or 50 reaches, twice daily). All groups were assessed on the original skilled reaching task after 28 training sessions. The results of this pilot study were inconclusive. Further research should be done to determine if the rehabilitation groups in this study are effective at promoting full recovery of function, with the intent to close the gap between the animal model and human outcomes.

Compared to many other species, including non-human primates, dogs perform exceptionally well on social reasoning tasks such as locating a hidden object by following a human point. One such task, understanding false beliefs (FB)--that another individual may possess a belief contrary to both one’s own belief and reality--serves as a pinnacle in understanding social reasoning. Humans understand FB but whether nonhumans do remains controversial. We predicted that dogs, given their unusual social savvy, may understand FB. We presented dogs with a stage and a duck resting on it. The dog and researcher watched the duck move inside one of two boxes positioned on either end of the stage. An occluder then obscured the researcher so they could not see events on stage. While the researcher’s vision was occluded, the dog watched as the duck moved to the opposite box. The occluder dropped to reveal the researcher, who then reached either toward the box where they had last seen the duck (as animals possessing FB understanding would expect) or to the box where the duck actually was (as animals possessing FB understanding would find unusual). Results suggest that dogs do not look longer (an indicator of surprise) when the researcher searched the unexpected box, suggesting that, contrary to our predictions, dogs may not understand FB. However, an alternative explanation is that we did not have enough statistical power to detect a significant difference in looking time due to COVID-19 and the unanticipated global shutdown.

Synesthesia is a phenomenon that has captivated the interest of many researchers, as it is a unique experience of the blending of the senses. The following study was conducted in an effort to understand whether synesthetic experiences can be learned, as Bor, Rothen, Schwartzman, Clayton, & Seth (2014) claimed. While there has been much research demonstrating that synesthesia is more common in the population than previously thought, and likely to develop in young children as a learning mechanism (Watson et al., 2017a), there have not been as many event-related brain potential (ERP) studies conducted on synesthesia. ERP studies are important for synesthesia, since neural phenomena are often best measured through brain monitoring technologies, such as magneto/electroencephalography (MEG/EEG), ERP, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). The current study utilizes the measurement of continuous neural data through a pre- and post-test ERP study monitoring changes occurring at the Pz electrode site for the visual N100, auditory N100, and the P300 ERP components in 15 neurotypical, non-synesthetic college-age adults. The goal of this study was to understand whether non-synesthetes can have a synesthetic experience or are merely forming a learned association after 4 weeks of grapheme-color task, and chromesthesia task training. The results show that while participants can be trained to form learned associations between letters and colors, and sounds and color as shown by a significantly reduced P300 amplitude, they do not seem to have synesthetic experiences as was previously indicated—as demonstrated by the nonsignificant change in both N100 components.

Treatments for chronic pain, such as opioid prescription, have proven successful in pain reduction but also have significant drawbacks such as incomplete efficacy and high abuse potential. Thus, there is a need for alternative pain treatments. One such potential treatment is spinal cord stimulation (SCS), wherein an electrode is inserted into the spinal cavity and emits electronic stimulation to disrupt pain signals on their way to the brain. The present study was conducted to investigate the effects of different spinal cord stimulation parameters in a rat model of chronic pain (spared nerve injury; SNI), and used three methods of data analysis to determine the most efficient and sensitive way to compare changes in paw sensitivity across groups, days, and paws. Rats (N=49) were assigned to one of seven treatments: Naive, Sham, SNI- no treatment, High-Density Active Balance stimulation, High-Density Passive Balance stimulation, Low-Density Active Balance stimulation, or Low-Density Passive Balance stimulation. Paw pain sensitivity was assessed using the von Frey method of withdrawal threshold measurement at Baseline (before SNI), five days Post-SNI Lesion, and 48 hours Post-Stimulation Treatment. SNI lesions had the expected effect of increasing paw sensitivity on the injured side. All treatments except Low-Density Passive Balance were effective in alleviating paw sensitivity, but only Low-Density Active Balance group pain thresholds returned to baseline. The most effective way to analyze changes in rat pain sensitivity was the Baseline as Control method: between-groups repeated measures ANOVAs with successive paired-sample T-Tests, using each group's Baseline sensitivity levels as a control for comparison to respective groups' pain sensitivity levels on succeeding days.

Stroke is a leading cause of disability worldwide. Focused training of the impaired limb has been shown to improve its functional outcome in animal models. However, most human stroke survivors exhibit persistent motor deficits, likely due to differences in rehabilitation intensity between experimental (animal) and clinical (human) settings. The current study investigated the effect of training intensity on behavioral outcome and neural plasticity in a mouse model of stroke. After learning a skilled reaching task, mice received a unilateral photothrombotic stroke. Post-operatively, animals received either daily rehabilitative training, intermittent rehabilitative training (every other day), or no rehabilitative training. Antibody staining was used to determine the relationship between differing training intensities and synaptic density in the peri-lesion cortex post-training. Assessment of the impaired limb illustrated that daily training resulted in significantly better performance than no training, while the intermittent group fell between the two. Though the current study sought to evaluate the effect of training intensity on synaptic density, the data were inconclusive. Results indicate that intensity of rehabilitation is important for optimal recovery, with higher intensity training being necessary for improved functional outcome.

Stroke is a debilitating insult to the brain occurring from a blockage in blood supply (ischemic), or a bleed (hemorrhagic) in one hemisphere of the brain. Worldwide, approximately 10 million people are left with moderate to severe disability due to stroke; the most common deficit is upper extremity impairment. Current stroke rehabilitation strategies utilize task specific training of a skill, meaning one practices the specific skill they want to regain. However, it is possible that there are more generalized types of therapy that can be as effective in rehabilitating debilitated skills. The current study utilizes several skilled reaching tasks in mice which show striking parallels to human dexterous movements in order to observe the effects of task-specific versus generalized upper extremity rehabilitation post-stroke. Our findings through statistical and kinematic analysis have implications that task-specific rehabilitative strategies may promote more true recovery than compensation due to the lesser degree of abnormalities in movement post-training as compared to generalized therapy and control groups. Findings also support the validity of a skilled reaching task used in the rodent model; however, further studies and analysis are necessary.

Functioning in our everyday lives requires that humans rely on organizing and categorizing our world. This ability to categorize rests on object individuation, the ability to track the identity of objects when they leave and reenter sight. Objects can be individuated using three types of information: spatiotemporal, object property and object kind. Surprisingly, noun comprehension may affect infants’ use of object kind information (Xu 1999; Xu 2002). However, research using a comparative approach suggests that the ability to use kind information to aid in object individuation may not be unique to humans: great apes, rhesus monkeys and dogs all successfully individuate objects using spatiotemporal and property/kind information (Brauer & Call 2011; Phillips & Santos 2005; Uller 1997). Little is known about non-linguistic animals’ ability to individuate objects using kind information alone. Here we explore the effect of a language cue on dogs’ ability to use kind information for object individuation. We recruited 24 dogs to participate in a violation of expectation paradigm and subsequently analyzed mean looking times in expected versus unexpected outcomes. Results did not support our predictions: dogs looked equally long at expected and unexpected outcomes for all individuation cues. However, our methodology may have lacked appropriate controls, thus future research into this topic is warranted.

Domestic dogs have a stronger understanding of human social cues, prosociality, and collaboration than the somewhat anti-social and competitive chimpanzee, human’s closest evolutionary relatives. The origin of dogs’ deep understanding of human social cues has been a topic of debate in the field of comparative cognition. Two opposing hypotheses attempt to explain this: domestication and human exposure. The domestication hypothesis asserts that dogs’ understanding of human social cues, intentions, and emotions arises from their side-by-side evolution with humans. In contrast, the human exposure hypothesis asserts that dogs’ level of understanding is determined by their individual life history with humans. The current study takes an ontogenetic approach and explores the effects of a dog’s recent human exposure, (e.g., in a shelter vs as a pet), on their social cognition. The study’s procedure includes three social cognition measures; an “Impossible Toy” task, an object-choice task, and a gaze-following task, as well as a nonsocial control: a self-control task. Results of the study reveal no differences in social cognition between shelter dogs and pet dogs, providing support for the domestication hypothesis and casting doubt on the human exposure hypothesis. Implications for shelter dogs and further studies are discussed.