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Item Psychological Stress, Stress Reactivity and Blood Glucose Metabolization During Pregnancy(North Dakota State University, 2020) Strahm, Anna MarieGestational diabetes mellitus impacts between 3-10% of pregnancies, and increases the risk of pregnancy complications and lifelong health effects for mother and child (Bellamy, Casas, Hingorani, & Williams, 2009; Ross, 2006; Ryser Rüetschi et al., 2016). About half of cases occur without an evident risk factor (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), 1994; Dode & Santos, 2009). The present study was designed to examine possible psychophysiological connections linking psychological stress and stress reactivity, the magnitude of an individual’s response to stress, to blood sugar metabolization during mid-pregnancy between 24-28 weeks gestation. Participants were recruited from Sanford Health in Fargo, where patients underwent routine Oral Glucose Tolerance Testing (OGTT) a diagnostic assessment in which higher results indicate less blood sugar metabolization. They also completed a Virtual Trier Social Stress Task while psychological and physiological markers of stress reactivity were assessed. Additionally, maternal stress and stress reactivity were assessed using psychosocial questionnaires. There was support for proposed psychophysiological connections, including models in which positive associations between OGTT and maternal stress and anxiety were moderated by psychological stress reactivity. Results suggest that both the presence of stress and a women’s responses to that stress are influential over blood glucose metabolization during pregnancy. Continuing research in this area may have implications for improving outcomes of women at higher risk of GDM and other adverse pregnancy and perinatal outcomes.Item Facilitating Attentional Guidance in Driving Scenes: Adult Age Differences in the Effectiveness of Directional Cues(North Dakota State University, 2018) Elliott, Dustin MichaelAging negatively impacts multiple processes of visual attention that can influence driving performance and safety. However, spatial orienting in response to visual cues remains relatively intact into late adulthood. The two experiments in the present study were aimed to determine the extent to which two types of directional visual cues effectively guide spatial orienting of older (60-80 years) and younger (18-35 years) adults in driving scenes. In Experiment 1, I utilized a Posner cuing task to investigate reflexive orienting to a target (a car at an intersection) in response to peripheral onset and central arrow cues. Both younger and older adults showed orienting benefits to valid directional cues and costs to invalid directional cues, and older adults showed greater attentional costs and benefits than younger adults. Furthermore, only younger adults showed general alerting effects following non-directional cues. In Experiment 2, I tested whether peripheral onset cues could effectively orient younger and older adults’ attention to a car’s location in video clips of simulated driving. Both age groups showed attentional benefits and costs from directional cues as well as alerting effects from neutral cues. Older adults showed larger overall cuing effects, which were driven primarily by costs from invalid cues. The age differences in the magnitude of cuing effects persisted, for the most part, after reducing the influence of general slowing. The two experiments of the present study demonstrated the effectiveness of visual cues in guiding attention in driving scenes. The findings suggest that the visual attention of both younger and older adults can be facilitated by visual cues in a driving environment, and the findings serve as a stepping-stone to the applied integration of cues into automobiles.Item The Benefits of Metaphoric Thinking: Using Individual Differences in Metaphor Usage to Understand the Utility of Conceptual Metaphors(North Dakota State University, 2013) Fetterman, Adam K.Metaphor representation theory posits that people often think, rather than merely speak, metaphorically. Particularly, concrete domains (e.g., tactile experiences) are recruited to represent abstract concepts (e.g., love). Based upon this theory, three assumptions can be derived. The first assumption is that metaphors should be common in speech and are not relegated to the realm of poetics. Second, the manipulation of metaphoric mappings should activate associated domains. The final assumption is that the use of conceptual metaphors facilitates the understanding of concepts with no physical referents (e.g., emotion). Research has supported the first two assumptions. The current studies were the first empirical test of the third assumption. A metaphor usage measure was developed and validated in the first study. Two additional studies directly tested the third assumption. Study 2 demonstrated that the metaphor usage measure predicted emotional understanding. Study 3 demonstrated that low metaphor usage predicted dysfunctional responses to negative daily events to a greater extent than high metaphor usage. Those scoring higher in metaphor usage also showed the established sweetness-pro-sociality metaphor effect to a greater extent than those low in metaphor usage. These findings empirically support the idea that metaphor use is associated with an increased understanding of concepts lacking physical referents, an important theoretical question in the metaphor literature. A foundation for future research is provided.Item Awakening the Social Self: Nostalgia Regulates Loneliness by Energizing Approach-Related Social Motivation(North Dakota State University, 2017) Abeyta, Andrew AllenChronic loneliness is predictive of poor health. Therefore, it is vital to identify psychological resources that combat loneliness and encourage social connection. However, loneliness is difficult to overcome, in part because it is associated with a maladaptive high avoidance and low approach motivation orientation that limits a person’s ability to connect with others. I hypothesized that nostalgia, a positive emotional experience that involves reflecting on cherished memories that are typically social in nature, is a psychological resource that regulates the tendency for lonely people to be less oriented toward social approach goals and motivation. I tested this hypothesis across 3 studies. Studies 1 and 2 examined whether nostalgia mitigates the inverse relation between loneliness and approach-related social goals, intentions, and behaviors. Studies 2 and 3, explored whether nostalgia mitigates the inverse relation between nostalgia and general approach/avoidance motivation. The results provided mixed support for the hypothesis. Nonetheless, there was preliminary evidence that feelings of nostalgia may weaken the relationship between loneliness and deficits in approach-related goals and intentions.Item School Counselors' Use of Movement in Small Group and Individual Counseling Sessions(North Dakota State University, 2024) Geinert, AmyAlthough there is a research base for incorporating movement into teaching and classroom lessons, there currently is a lack of research on incorporating movement into school counseling practices. The present mixed methods exploratory study aimed to identify school counselor attitudes, beliefs, and practices regarding the use of movement in individual and small group counseling sessions. A concurrent embedded strategy was utilized to survey practicing school counselors in the United States. By sharing requests through the ASCA Member Community and state school counselor association communications, study participants were invited to complete an anonymous survey online. Study participants indicated they find incorporating movement useful in individual and small group sessions. Although participants self-report higher levels of knowledge on incorporating movement into counseling sessions at schools, most participants had not received any training on the topic. Recommendations include providing training for practicing school counselors and school counselors-in-training regarding how to incorporate movement into sessions and its benefits. Focus of training should also include advocacy efforts and how to address identified barriers.Item Aging, Object-Based Inhibition, and Online Data Collection(North Dakota State University, 2020) Huether, Asenath Xochitl ArauzaVisual selective attention operates in space- and object-based frames of reference. Stimulus salience and task demands influence whether a space- or object-based frame of reference guides attention. I conducted two experiments for the present dissertation to evaluate age patterns in the role of inhibition in object-based attention. The biased competition account (Desimone & Duncan, 1995) proposes that one mechanism through which targets are selected is through suppression of irrelevant stimuli. The inhibitory deficit hypothesis (Hasher & Zacks, 1988) predicts that older adults do not appropriately suppress or ignore irrelevant information. The purpose of the first study was to evaluate whether inhibition of return (IOR) patterns, originally found in a laboratory setting, could be replicated with online data collection (prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic). Inhibition of return is a cognitive mechanism to bias attention from returning to previously engaged items. In a lab setting, young and older adults produced location- and object-based IOR. In the current study, both types of IOR were also observed within object boundaries, although location-based IOR from data collected online was smaller than that from the laboratory. In addition, there was no evidence of an age-related reduction in IOR effects. There was some indication that sampling differences or testing circumstances led to increased variability in online data.The purpose of the second study was to evaluate age differences in top-down inhibitory processes during an attention-demanding object tracking task. Data were collected online. I used a dot-probe multiple object tracking (MOT) task to evaluate distractor suppression during target tracking. Both young and older adults showed poorer dot-probe detection accuracies when the probes appeared on distractors compared to when they appeared at empty locations, reflecting inhibition. The findings suggest that top-down inhibition works to suppress distractors during target tracking and that older adults show a relatively preserved ability to inhibit distractor objects. The findings across both experiments support models of selective attention that posit that goal-related biases suppress distractor information and that inhibition can be directed selectively by both young and older adults on locations and objects in the visual field.Item Neural Synchrony and Asynchrony as Mechanisms for Perceptual Grouping and Segmentation(North Dakota State University, 2010) Clarke, AaronThe question of whether neural synchrony has functional significance for cortical processing has been an issue of contention in the recent scientific literature. Although the balance of evidence now seems to be favoring a vie,v that synchrony does indeed play a significant functional role, this role's mechanisms and its behavioral consequences have not been fully elucidated. In this research I add to the growing body of evidence in favor of a significant functional role for neural synchrony in cortical processing. By leveraging a modified version of Cheadle, Bauer, Parton, Muller, Bonneh and Usher (2008)'s psychophysical paradigm and through experiments of own design, I find evidence suggesting that when contrast oscillations serve as inputs to the visual system, the system produces behavior that may be more synchronous than the stimulus or less synchronous than the stimulus depending on whether or not the oscillations occur on elements of a common object or on elements of separate objects respectively. The current paradigm has the potential to test behavioral manifestations of the underlying neural dynamics that heretofore were largely thought to be confined to physiological measures. Furthermore, I provide a biophysical model that predicts this behavior and other related electrophysiological findings.Item Group Marginalization Promotes Hostile Affect, Cognitions, and Behaviors(North Dakota State University, 2012) Betts, Kevin RobertThe present research investigates relationships between group marginalization and hostility. In particular, I focus on the experiences of small, contained groups that are intentionally rejected by multiple out-group others. An integrative framework is proposed that attempts to explain how group processes influence (a) coping with threatened psychological needs following marginalization, (b) affective states, (c) cognitions regarding the marginalization and its source, and ultimately (d) hostile behavior. Study 1 describes a unique paradigm that effectively manipulates interpersonal rejection. Study 2 then implements this paradigm to empirically test relationships between the components of the integrative framework and examine differences among included and rejected individuals and groups. Results reveal partial support for the framework, particularly in regard to the impact of group marginalization on psychological needs and hostile affect, cognitions, and behaviors. Implications for natural groups such as terrorist cells, school cliques, and gangs are considered.Item Intense Emotion Reactions Predict Enhanced Well-Being and Adaptive Choices(North Dakota State University, 2020) Klein, Robert JohnExisting evidence has linked individual differences in emotion reaction intensity to both enhanced and decreased psychological well-being. We propose that this contradiction is related to methodological shortcomings in some existing research. We present a novel emotion reactivity task capable of addressing these methodological shortcomings by continuously measuring the subjective intensity of individual emotion episodes with high temporal resolution. Four studies were conducted (total n = 499). In Studies 1, 2, and 4, participants continuously reported their emotions while viewing objectively pleasant or unpleasant images. Thousands of reaction intensities were coded using algorithms developed for this purpose. We expected that people showing more intense emotion reactions, regardless of valence, would report greater subjective well-being in the lab and in daily life. One reason that such situationally-congruent reactions might be beneficial is that that they enable more flexible situationally-appropriate behavior. In Study 3, participants were asked to rate their emotional responses to pleasant and unpleasant images. Following this, people choose a location for their Self avatar within a computerized environment that included one image of each valence. We expected that the tendency to report intense emotion responses to these images would predict both adaptive location choice and subjective well-being. Results confirmed most major hypotheses: more intense reactions to both positive and negative stimuli were predictive of greater subjective well-being in the lab and in daily life, and analogous reactivity patterns were associated with more flexible, adaptive avatar placement. The results suggest that a key feature of maladaptive emotion generation systems (and lower well-being) may not be overly intense reactions as has been suggested, but a failure to flexibly adapt emotion output to match changing circumstances.Item I Want to Break Up: Testing an Integrative Framework for Understanding and Predicting Romantic Relationship Dissolution(North Dakota State University, 2021) Semanko, Anna MaruskaRomantic relationships are desired by the majority of individuals. Despite this prevalent desire, romantic relationships end often. What are the underlying motivations and reasons for breaking up with a romantic partner? The current research investigated this question through an innovative theoretical approach. First, salient beliefs associated with breaking up with a committed romantic partner were elicited (Study 1). Based on the prominent themes associated with breaking up, measures were designed to test a unique integrative framework for understanding and predicting romantic relationship dissolution (Study 2). This integrative framework is largely based on the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2011) and the theory of interpersonal behavior (Triandis, 1977), elaborated to include select factors important in goal setting literature (Bagozzi & Warshaw, 1990; Gollwitzer, 1999). Results from a path analytic test of the integrative framework highlighted that attitudinal, affective, and social factors were particularly relevant for understanding and predicting intentions for romantic relationship dissolution. In all, the evidence gathered relating to the integrative framework contributes to our understanding of romantic relationship dissolution intentions and behavior. Furthermore, the integrative framework advances theoretical considerations for behavioral intention models, while also providing insights for behaviors and research regarding romantic relationships.