<p> Behavioral sensitization is an increase in a behavioral response (e.g., locomotor activity or stereotypy) induced by previous drug exposure. The present study examined one-trial methamphetamine behavioral sensitization in male and female rats during early or late adolescence. During pretreatment, male and female rats received methamphetamine (0.0&ndash;6.0 mg/kg) in the home or in a novel chamber during early (PD 38) or late (PD 48) adolescence. After 24 hours, rats received a 1 mg/kg methamphetamine challenge test dose in the novel chamber to assess for sensitization. The results showed that rats in both age groups exhibited robust locomotor activity to the acute effects of methamphetamine. However, male and female rats at either age group did not exhibit one-trial methamphetamine behavioral sensitization. Overall, females exhibited greater locomotor activity than males, while males exhibited greater stereotypy. These findings do not provide evidence that the ontogeny of one-trial methamphetamine sensitization emerges during adolescence.</p>

<p>The aim of this dissertation, Do No Harm: Trauma-Informed Lens for Trauma-Informed Ministry: A study of the Impact of the Helping Churches in Trauma Awareness Workshop (HC-TAW) on Trauma Awareness Among Predominantly African- and Caribbean-American leaders in Church of God 7th Day churches in the Bronx and Brooklyn, New York, is to conduct an experimental study assessing whether HC-TAW is an effective intervention to increase trauma awareness among participating leaders?pastors and lay leaders. The study used a trauma-informed quiz as a pretest to measure trauma awareness of 41 participants (participants from churches in the two experimental groups)) prior to participation in HC-TAW. The same trauma-informed quiz was given to participants as a posttest to assess whether change in levels of trauma awareness occurred. A control group of 10 participants also completed the trauma-informed quiz but did not participate in HC-TAW. Chapter 1 develops the purpose, goal, ministry context, and general scope of this study. Chapter 2 provides a review of germane literature related to the need for trauma awareness, nature and impact of psychological trauma, healing trauma, the fundamental elements of trauma-informed care (TIC)/trauma-informed ministry (TIM), and biblical and theological literature advocating for trauma-informed ministry. Chapter 3 sets forth the research methodology utilized in recruiting and selecting participants, description of instrument used to collect and measure data, and a description of how the intervention was executed. Chapter 4 presents an analysis of the findings. Chapter 5 assesses the data and points to strategies for areas of further research of trauma awareness among leaders in the Church of God 7th Day and leaders in other denominations or faith-based organizations.

<p> Research investigating the impact of religion and religiosity on aggression and prosocial behavior is mixed. The reason for these inconsistent results may be due to the multifaceted nature of religion. This study was the first to investigate both the impact of different aspects of religion (e.g., spirituality, institutional religion, good and evil supernatural agents, etc.) as well as views of God as punitive on subsequent aggressive behavior. Results indicated that more punitive perceptions of God were correlated with lower levels of aggression. Furthermore, there was a marginal interaction between religious orientation and type of religious priming. Although simple effects and subsequent post-hoc tests did not reach standard levels of statistical significance, the direction of the effect for Christian participants was that priming with evil supernatural agents reduced aggressive behavior but this trend was in the opposite direction for non-Christians.</p>

This study examined (1) how verbal self-instruction (VSI) affects behavioural self-restraint and (2) individual differences in impulsiveness and verbal regulation of behaviour (VRB) in children. The review of Luria's interpretation of VRB and other related works suggested that VRB can be examined at different levels of generality. The elementary level concerns the execution and inhibition of simple motor responses; the intermediate level involves control of more complicated behaviour by detailed self-instructions, while the highest level of abstraction relates to the role of speech in the socio-cultural development in Man. The first three experiments focussed on the elementary motor responses and demonstrated that self-instruction was detrimental to motor performance. There was no evidence to support the assumption that verbal responses were superior to motor responses. However, verbal and motor responses tended to co-ordinate with each other temporally and this feature was utilized in differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate (DRL) experiments, which showed that self-instruction aided behavioural restraint. However, the content of self-instruction was not important, but how it was said. Behavioural measures of self-restraint and responsiveness to verbal instructions were related to individual differences in cognitive style (measured by the Matching Familiar Figures Test) and personality (measured by self-rated questionnaires and a teacher'srating scale designed for the purpose). Whereas the use of self-instructions tended to override any individual differences related to behavioural self-restraint, the results supported the hypothesis that cognitive impulsivity was related to measures of anxiety, and behavioural impulsiveness to anxiety and psychoticism. There was no evidence that impulsiveness was related to extraversion. In view of the theoretical discussion on cognitive impulsivity by Kagan and Block, and on impulsiveness in personality by Eysenck and Gray, it seems that behavioural, cognitive and personality impulsiveness cannot be conceptualized as a unitary concept.

It was considered from the relevant literature that the most satisfactory explanation of the behavioural effects of noise would be in terms of an arousal/distraction model (Teichner et al, 1966), Monetary incentives appeared to have the most satisfactory physiological and behavioural evidence as an arouser. An explanation of incentives and other arousers was offered by Kahneman (1973), in his model of effort and attention. The first experiment was designed to examine Kahneman's model more closely. Monetary incentives, 3 task difficulty levels, incidental learning (the colour of the word) and intentional learning (free recall of item) were incorporated in a two by three factorial design. The results favoured incentives as an arouser but not in the way envisaged by Kahneman. The data suggested that incentives increased capacity above and beyond the demands of the task (a la Davies and Jones, 1975). Further, the increased use of order recall coupled with increased item recall was not consistent with Domic's conception of order as a lower memory process. On the contrary, order appeared to be a successful STM retrieval strategy. The personality analysis could not make any distinctions between Eysenck's (1967) and Gray's (1972) theories. However, it did support the notion of incentives operating an arousal mechanism (extraversion).The second experiment was of a similar design but three levels of noise (60db, 80db and l00db), instead of incentives, were the main arousers. There was no significant evidence for noise acting as a distractor. Noise only appeared to affect neurotics significantly, particularly in the harder task where they appeared to "give up" (cf. Wiener and Schnieder 1970).The third, fourth and fifth experiments were designed to examine the role of order and other retrieval cues under incentives and noise. The results suggested that order enhances recall in both noise and incentive conditions. However, word locations were only successfully utilised by incentive groups. This again suggests that incentives 'broaden' attention whilst noise 'narrows' attention. The final chapter discussed the differential role of order under noise and incentives, and also the possibility that an explanation of many of the effects may lie in the masking properties of noise.

<p> This dissertation sheds light on two important aspects of Arabic morphology: the status and representation of roots and that of templates (or word patterns). The main purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the role of these controversial word constituents in the representation and processing of the non-linear morphological structure of words in two varieties of Arabic: Emirati Arabic (EA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). </p><p> Chapter 2 presents a linguistic investigation of the verbal morphological system of EA, with some focus on how it compares to the MSA system and in light of the main claims made by Doron (2003) in her account of Hebrew verbal templates. In this chapter, I provide arguments for separating the verbal root from templates and affixes in the analysis of Arabic and, by extension, Semitic morphology. Specifically, I argue that verbal meaning is a combination of at least two syntactic heads: Voice and little v, and a lexical head: the consonantal root. I further show that the interaction of the semantics and argument structure of the root with little v and Voice within a unified syntactic structure captures the regularities as well as the exceptions in the interpretation of the verb forms of EA. </p><p> Chapter 3 presents experiments using the subliminal speech priming technique, as developed by Kouider and Dupoux (2005) and used by Schluter (2013), and magnetoencephalography (MEG), as applied to auditory morphological processing (Ettinger, Linzen, &amp; Marantz, 2013). Both these techniques are relatively new and are applied to EA for the first time. The subliminal speech priming technique has the advantage of tapping into the earliest stages of auditory word recognition, allowing an investigation of the relevance of the consonantal root in the processing of the EA verbal forms. The results of this study suggest that the discontinuous consonantal root in EA is an independent lexical unit, a finding consistent with root-based models of Semitic morphology. The results also point to the effectiveness of the subliminal speech priming technique as a promising way to explore unwritten dialects of Arabic such as Emirati Arabic. </p><p> In Chapter 4, I exploited a standard visual lexical decision task with concurrent MEG recordings to explore the neural correlates of morphological decomposition in MSA by examining the early stages of visual word recognition in this language. The results obtained show that words in MSA go through the same stages of word recognition, beginning with extraction of the consonantal root, in a manner completely parallel to the decomposition of words into stems and affixes in concatenative languages like English, arguing for the obligatory decomposition model of word recognition in Arabic non-linear morphology. The results of this study also hold significant implications for the long-lasting debate surrounding the status of the consonantal roots in Arabic and morphological theory in general. </p><p> The behavioural and MEG studies reported in this dissertation support the hypothesis that morphological decomposition in language processing is the same across non-linear and affixal languages, ratifying the linguistic analysis of non-concatenative morphology as essentially affixal. Additionally, the general results of this dissertation adds new and original support for the claims that the Arabic consonantal root is an essential cognitive unit in representations and processing.</p>

<p> Individuals who are victimized by bullying during adolescence demonstrate an increased incidence of psychiatric disorders both acutely and later in life. Many of these disorders are characterized by deficits in complex cognitive functions that are mediated by the mesocortical dopamine system. The substantial maturation of the mesocortical dopamine system during adolescence may render it particularly vulnerable to insult from psychosocial stressors such as bullying. Using a rodent model of adolescent social defeat to replicate the imbalance of power inherent in teenage bullying, it was previously demonstrated that defeated rats exhibit various behavioral and neurochemical indications of mesocortical dopamine hypofunction in adulthood. The experimental chapters of this dissertation aim to further understand the consequences of victimization stress during adolescence by 1) evaluating the effects of adolescent social defeat on dopamine dependent cognitive processes and 2) investigating the potential mechanisms by which adolescent social defeat results in mesocortical dopamine hypofunction. Adult rats defeated in adolescence and their controls were initially tested on two separate tasks of working memory known to be dependent on mesocortical dopamine activity, the delayed alternating T-maze task and the delayed win-shift task. Results found a direct link between adolescent social defeat and adult working memory deficits, with previously defeated rats demonstrating impaired performance in the maintenance and utilization of information following delays of 90 seconds and 5 minutes on the T-maze and win-shift tasks respectively. In a separate experiment, quantitative autoradiography revealed increased expression of the dopamine transporter (DAT) in the infralimbic region of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of adult rats defeated in adolescence. Further investigation of mPFC DAT function utilizing <i>in vivo</i> chronoamperometry demonstrated that previously defeated rats exhibit decreased dopamine accumulation in response to pharmacological DAT inhibition, indicating enhanced DAT function that may increase clearance of dopamine in the mPFC. Combined, these results suggest that increased functional expression of DAT in the mPFC following adolescent social defeat leads to enhanced clearance of dopamine, contributing to deficits in mPFC dopamine activity and associated cognitive processes. Having identified a putative mechanism by which adolescent social defeat causes mesocortical dopamine hypofunction, the results of these experiments can assist in directing the clinical application of novel and existing pharmacotherapies to counteract the deleterious effects of adolescent stress.</p>

<p> This study examined the relationship between social-emotional intelligence and risky sexual behaviors in adolescence. Despite the introduction of sex education in public schools, there continue to be high rates of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases in the teenage population. Researchers have demonstrated numerous positive life outcomes for individuals with greater levels of social and emotional abilities. However, studies have failed to examine the precise relationship between such abilities and sexual behavior. In the current study, data was collected from 49 high school students in New York State. Using the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory Youth Version and a researcher-designed questionnaire on risky sexual behavior, teenagers with higher Interpersonal Emotional Intelligence reported less sexual risk taking. A significant relationship was also demonstrated between Risky Sexual Behaviors and a control variable, Delinquency. Due to limited participation and a homogeneous sample, the results of this study cannot be meaningfully generalized to the greater population. Therefore, these findings support the need for further research to clarify the relationships among these variables and validate the importance of teaching explicit social-emotional training in sex education curricula.</p>

<p> Depression affects about 20% of the U.S. population at some point in their lifespan (Gotlib &amp; Hammen, 2002). One symptom of depression is impairment in cognitive functioning. Extensive research has previously identified a link between depressed mood and memory difficulties (Burt, Zembar, &amp; Niederehe, 1995; O'Conner, Pollitt, Roth, Brook, &amp; Reiss, 1990; Watkins &amp; Teasdale, 2004). The purpose of the current study is to better understand the relationship between negative affect and memory impairment. I hypothesized that rumination would moderate the relationship between negative affect and working memory such that individuals who respond to negative affect with rumination would be particularly likely to show impairment in working memory. This was a single time point study in which participants were randomly assigned to one of two possible conditions. In each condition, participants were given a stressor task, the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT). This was followed by either failure feedback or success feedback. 146 undergraduate students, ages 18 to 30 were recruited and randomly assigned to one of the two conditions. The sample was approximately 79% female and 78% Caucasian and had a mean age of 18.77 (SD = 1.36). Participants completed measures of current depressive symptoms, trait rumination, affective state pre and post stressor task, and working memory. This study's findings lend support to previous research in that these results yielded a significant main effect of both the failure condition (F (1, 143) = 124.20, p = .00, partial &eegr;² = .47) and self-reported negative mood (F (3, 145) = 14.59, p = .00, R² = .22) on lower working memory scores. Greater rumination appeared to have a main effect of lower working memory scores (F (2, 139) = 12.59, p = .00, partial &eegr;² = .15) with rumination accounting for approximately 4% of the difference in working memory scores. However, results did not find support for a moderated model (F (2, 139) = .02, p = .98, partial &eegr;² = .00). Although negative affect and rumination predicted working memory scores, rumination did not moderate the relationship suggesting that a different model may explain the cognitive effects of depression.</p>

<p> While the notion that sugar consumption leads to hyperactivity has repeatedly been unsupported in the literature, little research has attended to the effects of accepting the widely held belief. The present study aimed to investigate how one's perception of a child's behavior is affected when the individual believes in the sugar-hyperactivity myth and is provided information regarding the child's sugar consumption prior to observing behavior. Findings indicated that participants who were informed that the children ingested sugar prior to the observation rated the male child's and the female child's hyperactivity significantly higher than participants who were told that the children had ingested a sugar-free product.</p>