With growing recognition of the duality of language and culture, the TESOL profession is placing increasing emphasis on the importance of understanding intercultural dynamics in the second language classroom. Currently, however, there is a lack of empirical information and measurement instruments to aid understanding within the field of cross-cultural communication. In response to this lack of instrumentation, Kelley and Meyers (1993) recently created the Cross-Cultural Adaptability Inventory (CCAI), a 5 0-item, self-perception inventory designed to measure cross-cultural adaptability through a total score and four contributing dimensions: Emotional Resilience, Flexibility/Openness, Perceptual Acuity and Personal Autonomy. The two primary purposes of this study were: (1) to add to a limited empirical base by studying the effect of four independent variables--host culture contact, cultural distance, second language proficiency, and length of previous experience abroad--on the dependent variable of cross-cultural adaptability; (2) to explore the possibility of using the CCAI for cross-cultural training in the TESOL profession. Two hundred and forty-five college/university students from two schools participated in the study. Subjects were selected based on location and length of previous cross-cultural experience abroad. Twenty-eight subjects with academic minors in TESOL were also specifically selected. The statistical methodology of this study differed from that of Kelley and Meyers in its treatment of the CCAI Likert scale data as ordinal rather than interval data. After creating an index based on rank scores, one-way analysis of variance and Pearson's correlation coefficient were used for statistical analysis. Overall, the four primary variables of the study were shown to be significantly related to self-perceptions of cross-cultural adaptability. Of the four, cultural distance showed the weakest relationship. One scale, Personal Autonomy, stood out for consistently different results than those of the other three scales. Results were also discussed for TESOL vs. non-TESOL minors, age, gender, and satisfaction with sojourn abroad.

This study investigated relationships among and between psychological hardiness, coping style, and burnout in 101 female hospital nurses. The third generation (50-item) hardiness scale, scored by the revised scoring procedure, was used to measure hardiness and its components. The Maslach Burnout Inventory was used as the measurement for burnout. Coping style was assessed by the COPE Inventory. The components of hardiness, commitment, control, and challenge, were hypothesized to be negative predictors of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and positive predictors of personal accomplishment. In addition, hardiness and its components were postulated to be positively related to adaptive coping styles and negatively related to maladaptive coping styles. Emotional exhaustion and depersonalization were thought to be related positively to maladaptive coping styles and negatively related to adaptive coping styles. Personal accomplishment was thought to be positively related to adaptive coping style and negatively related to maladaptive coping style. Simple and multiple regressions were used.

The establishment of physiological norms for psychologically hardy vs. non-hardy individuals was attempted by examination of levels of salivary cortisol and urinary norepinephrine before and after a mid-term examination stressor. Normative data was collected on the reported frequency of stressors and their severity one week prior to the examination, and self-reported ratings of stress immediately prior to the examination. Performance on the examination as a function of hardiness was explored. Associations between demographic variables and psychological hardiness were also studied. Results from this study were inconclusive in establishing physiological norms for psychologically hardy individuals. Associations were found between: 1) hardiness and frequency of stressors; 2) hardiness and age; and 3) self-reported ratings of stress and anxiety as measured by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI).

The overarching purpose of this work is to investigate the effect of pupil-linked arousal systems and heart rate-linked arousal systems on behavior and the use of pupil dynamics as an index for adaptive behavior. These arousal systems are correlated with behavior states which have modulatory effects on perception and neural coding and are therefore integral in carrying out complex behaviors, such as decision-making. Additionally, cholinergic transmission is proposed to be critical for adaptive behavior via its modulation of thalamic neurons. While the first two chapters focus on the behavior output and the non-invasive ways to index arousal and behavior, the third aim attempts to investigate the neural circuits that underlie arousal’s effect on adaptive behavior by studying the pattern of cholinergic axons between brainstem nuclei and the thalamus, opening avenues for future investigation of their mechanistic impact on adaptive behavior. For characterization of the influence of arousal indexed by pupil dynamics and heartbeat dynamics, we simultaneously recorded electrocardiogram (ECG) and pupil size in head-fixed rats performing tactile discrimination tasks. We found both heartbeat dynamics and pupil size co-varied with behavioral outcomes, indicating behavior was dependent upon arousal indexed by both physiological signals. The potential difference between the effects of pupil-linked arousal and heart-rate linked arousal on behavior were estimated by constructing a Bayesian decoder predicting animals’ behavior from both signals prior to stimulus presentation. The decoder performed significantly better when using both physiological signals as inputs, suggesting both arousal systems, pupil-linked and heart rate-linked are not completely redundant. Additionally, the pupil size-based decoder failed to correctly predict animals’ behavior on a substantial portion of trials correctly predicted by the heart rate-based decoder, furthermore suggesting that both arousal systems exert different influences on animals’ behavior (Y.Liu, S. Narasimhan, B.J.Schriver, & Q.Wang, 2021). For characterization of how adaptive behavior in response to changing sensory environments depends on pupil-linked arousal, we recorded pupil size and behavioral output simultaneously during a similar tactile Go/No-Go discrimination task while systematically varying the statistics of the sensory environment. For each session, the probability of the presence of reward linked-stimuli (S+/Go) was randomly set at 80%, 50% or 20%. Animals adapted their behavioral responses and the task evoked pupil responses were bigger when the probability of S+ was lower. Impulsive licking (pre-stimulus response) decreased as the probability of S+ was lower. Animals became more liberal as the probability of S+ increased, in line with signal detection theory, indexed by a decrease in the decision criterion. We additionally found that reaction time decreased as the probability of S+ increased. A hierarchical drift diffusion model (HDDM) was used to model the decision-making process in these paradigms. We found the drift rate to monotonically vary with task difficulty. Animals performed sub-optimally to adaptively change their action in response to changes in the sensory environment and this adaptive adjustment in decision-making was indexed by their pupil dynamics. For studying the pattern of cholinergic axons between brainstem nuclei and the thalamus, we used two different AAV-retrograde constructs with two different reporters (mCherry and GFP) injected in the left and right hemisphere of the ventral-posterior-medial (VPM) thalamic nucleus of recombinant ChAT-cre mice. In agreement with previous studies done with conventional tracing methods, labelled projecting cells were traced to the LDT and PPN in the brainstem. Labelled cells were found in a clustered area of the LDT, suggesting a topographic distribution of the projections between the LDT and the VPM. A larger quantity of labelled cells was found in the PPN than the LDT. Additionally, bilateral injections with double reporters enabled us to find that a majority of cells project from the brainstem to the VPM project ipsilaterally while still displaying lateralization. This work provides methods and tools for future investigation of the functional impact of these projections between LDT, PPN and the VPM.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Current research on medical students' death experiences is either outdated or produces conflicting results. This research aims to address these issues by analyzing in-depth interviews in order to explore how medical students view and cope view death. The sample consists of twenty third and fourth year students attending a large Midwestern medical school. Grounded theory analyses techniques of line-by-line coding were used to analysis the interviews. The study revealed that students predominantly cope with patient death by talking and that contrary to much of the findings of previous research concerning medical socialization and physicians, students do not always view death as a failure. Beyond the students' death experiences, the study also captured students' perceptions and reactions towards various socialization stages in their medical careers, such as gross anatomy lab. Student beliefs as to what constitutes a good and bad death are also explored as well as their attitudes towards physician assisted suicide. Although these findings are not generalizable to any medical student population, they do provide important qualitative information as to how medical students experience and cope with death.

The present investigation evaluated whether dispositional use of emotional approach coping partially accounts for the association between parental response to emotional expression and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) in a sample of 252 trauma-exposed individuals drawn from a pool of college students and college-age members of the community at-large. An online survey assessed parental reactions to participants' negative emotions during childhood (i.e., offspring retrospective report), as well as participant trauma history, PTSS, and use of emotional approach coping. Findings complement literature illustrating the long-lasting implications of the parent-child relationship, such that both supportive and unsupportive parenting were related to PTSS. Supportive parental reactions also were related to emotional expression, but not emotional processing, and unsupportive reactions did not significantly relate to either aspect of emotional approach coping. Notably, emotional approach coping strategies were unrelated to PTSS in the full sample, and thus the indirect effects models were not supported. Post hoc analyses indicated preliminary support for the indirect effect of emotional expression on the relation between supportive parenting and PTSS in the local college student sample (n = 117). Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.

Evidence indicates that flexible self-regulation is a key mechanism of adaptation to major life stressors. To date, various domains of flexible regulation and their role in adaptation to a major life stressor, including coping strategies, affective regulation, and cognitive abilities have been conceptualized and studied in isolation. Further, there is limited understanding of the longitudinal impact of dimensions of flexible coping in the context of bereavement. This dissertation filled several gaps in the literature with three empirical studies. Study 1 clarified the longitudinal impact of divergent sets of coping strategies that underlie flexible coping following the loss of a loved one. Study 2 determined how separate, validated domains of flexibility would empirically cluster together, and tested the cross-sectional impact of the empirically derived latent composites on adaptation following a significant potentially traumatic event (PTE). Study 3 augmented findings from Study 2 by using the empirically derived composites to predict longitudinal adaptation following a PTE, exploring the moderating role of demographic variables, and comparing the predictive utility of the latent composites versus their original features. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.

This study focuses on the coping responses of the bereaved immediate family and close friends of persons who died as a result of the volcanic eruption of Mt. St. Helens in southwestern Washington on May 18, 1980. Three major research questions were addressed: Is there a relationship between illness and three life events: presumed death of a close relative or friend, confirmed death of a close relative or friend, and loss of one's permanent of recreational residence? Do self-efficacy and social supports act as intervening variables to buffer the negative effects of stress on one's health when coping with loss? What are the perceived effects of the media on coping with loss following a disaster? Subjects for this study included 155 respondents. Mailed questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data approximately 11 months post-disaster from bereaved, property loss and control subjects. Data were gathered primarily by standardized measures and were analyzed by univariate, multi-variate, correlational, and content-analysis techniques. The first study question results indicate that when compared to controls, the bereaved of confirmed dead were adversely affected by their loss in areas of negative life events, hassles, depression, and somatization; the bereaved of presumed dead reported being adversely affected by negative life events and depression; the permanent-property loss subjects adversely affected by negative life events. The second study question compared the combined bereaved group (n = 69) and the control group (n = 50) to examine the buffering roles of self-efficacy and social support. For the bereaved, stress accounted for 35% of the variance (p < .001) in depression. After statistically controlling for stress, both self-efficacy and social support were significant predictors of depression (p < .05). In contrast, stress accounted for 44% of the variance in depression for the controls, but neither self-efficacy nor social support made additional contributions in the prediction of any of the health outcome variables. Findings from the third study question indicate that the confirmed bereaved reported significantly more (p < .05) negative effects resulting from the media than any of the other study groups. Factors that might account for the findings and clinical interventions were suggested.

This study involved a search for statistically significant relationships between age and particular areas of maladjustment measurable by The Adjustment Inventory in a population of delinquent girls.

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