Students with internalizing behavioral concerns are an overlooked and underserved segment within education. The trend unfortunately results in poor academic and societal outcomes. In response, early prevention and identification through universal screening practices has become an important method for combating internalizing problems in education. However, additional research in the field is needed, including better psychometric understanding of the instruments available and what types of informants provide the best evidence for proper identification. Therefore, the purpose of the following study was to investigate how student and teacher informants of internalizing behaviors influence outcomes in the context of universal screening. Comparison of these two informants were done by analyzing the relationship between a teacher completed screener, the Student Internalizing Behavioral Screener (SIBS) and a student completed behavior rating scale, the Behavioral Assessment System for Children – 2nd edition (BASC-2). In addition to exploration of informant agreement, discrepancies in test score outcomes for different student age groups were investigated along with criterion relatedness of the SIBS when using student self-report as a criterion measure. Results included low agreement between teacher and student informant, as well as poor discriminate ability of the SIBS when using student self-report as a criterion. Findings also revealed a small but significant age discrepancy in the total score for the SIBS when comparing a child vs. adolescent sample. Implications of the findings suggest teachers as a sole informant about internalizing behaviors of students may not be sufficient for desired outcomes of proper identification with internalizing behaviors. Moreover, age may be a factor in monitoring internalizing problems across development and current psychometric evaluation of screeners (e.g., type of validity) should also include other informants. Based on the findings, future directions of research are also proposed. This includes exploration of the impact teachers and teacher training as well as considerations for multi-informant screening procedures.

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Nearly one third of all Americans believe religion to be the most important part of their life. Nearly two thirds of Americans believe religion to be an important part of their life. The majority of Americans (94%) claim to have a belief in a supreme deity or God. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between spirituality and religion and selected risk taking behaviors in college underclassmen. Presently in the published literature, there are no studies that examined the relationship between levels of spirituality and religion and their interaction with select risk-taking behaviors, while delineating these variables to the college underclassmen. The risk-taking behaviors that were of interest to the researcher in this study were episodic and heavy drinking and sexual behaviors. This research effort employed a non-experimental, descriptive study design. The study population consisted of college underclassmen enrolled in an introductory wellness course in a teaching-intensive institution in the Mid-Atlantic United States. Results indicated a significant interaction between religion and all of the sexual risk behaviors under analysis. Results also indicated a significant interaction between spirituality and three of the four sexual risk behaviors under analysis. A significant interaction was found between frequency of church attendance and all of the sexual risk behaviors under analysis. Finally, when cross tabulated with all measures of spirituality and religion, risk behaviors related to alcohol usage reported statistically insignificant on all data indices. / Ph. D.

Thesis advisor: John P. Christianson / The perception of others as safe or threatening informs how we respond to others in a social setting. These social affective behaviors require the detection of sensory stimuli and the appraisal of others’ affective states to orchestrate adaptive behavioral responses. This process is also informed by one’s own internal state and environment. The neural circuitry underlying this behavior consists of a wide network of brain regions that communicate to execute social behaviors. However, the neural mechanisms mediating social affective behavior require further investigation. Therefore, the objective of this dissertation is to add detail to our understanding of the specific brain circuits involved in social affective behavior. The insula is a key node within this circuitry, necessary for approach and avoidance behaviors in a social affective preference (SAP) test where adult rats prefer interactions with stressed juveniles but avoid interactions with stressed adults. Here, I investigated the roles of a basolateral amygdala projections to the insula and insular projections to the PL in SAP testing and present evidence indicating the necessity of both these tracts to social affective behaviors. The results described here along with the reviewed literature support a potential amygdalar-insular-prefrontal circuit responsible for detecting social valence, integrating external stimuli with internal states, and selecting and executing context-appropriate social affective behaviors. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Psychology and Neuroscience.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how levels of stress among caregivers beginning a behavioral parent training program are related to caregiver and child variables. Research questions were answered using archival data collected from 474 caregivers who participated in HOT DOCS, a behavioral parent training program, between January 2009 through July 2010. The three objectives of the study were to (a) examine caregivers' perceived stress in relation to caregiver demographic variables (i.e., gender, marital status, level of education); (b) examine caregivers' perceived stress in relation to child demographic variables (i.e., levels of externalizing and internalizing behavior and presence or absence of a diagnosis); and (c) determine how levels of caregiver stress were related to number of parent training sessions completed. Results showed that female caregivers beginning a behavioral parent training program have higher levels of perceived stress than their male counterparts. Additionally, caregivers with a higher level of education reported less stress than caregivers with less education. No differences were found among those of different marital statuses. With regard to child variables, parents' perceptions of their child's externalizing behavior, as measured by the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) Externalizing score, were a significant predictor of caregiver perceived stress, but internalizing behavior (also as measured by the CBCL) and presence/absence of a diagnosis were not. Perceived stress upon entering the behavioral parent training was not a significant predictor of number of sessions completed. Implications of the study for parent training for caregivers raising young children with challenging behaviors are discussed.

Research examining the relationship between psychological distress and health behaviors is limited, as most of these studies examine one type of psychological distress and relate it to one type of health behavior. To address this limitation, an exploratory study was conducted that included online self-report measures of a wide range of positive health behaviors (Health Behavior Checklist; HBC) and a wide range of different types of psychological distress (Brief Symptom Inventory; BSI). Participants were 762 undergraduate students from the University of Central Florida (55% female). Results revealed that the total BSI score showed statistically significant negative correlations with the HBC total score and all four HBC subscales. Thus, participants reporting more overall psychological distress reported that they engaged in fewer positive health behaviors, across all health behavior subtypes. Stepwise regressions that examined the nine BSI subscales and their relationship with the HBC total score revealed that the Hostility subscale of the BSI was the strongest and most consistent predictor of positive health behaviors (in a negative direction). Stepwise regressions also revealed additional relationships of the BSI subscales of Depression and Phobia to particular HBC subscales. The results of this exploratory study provide an initial model on the relationships of particular types of psychological distress that are related to particular types of health behaviors, which will inform future studies on this important topic area.

The association between constructive and destructive conflict and children’s (age three) externalizing behaviors was examined utilizing the Building Strong Families (BSF) data set. The study included 3,328 mothers and 3,148 fathers reporting on conflict behavior, and mother’s reports on children’s externalizing behaviors. My hypotheses indicated that the more constructive conflict, the less externalizing behaviors exhibited while the more destructive conflict, the more externalizing behaviors shown by the children. The majority of the literature demonstrated similar results to my hypotheses, however primarily focusing on mother’s conflict rather than the father’s conflict methods. Similarly, there was little focus on constructive conflict in the literature. Younger children (age three) were of interest for this study due to the lack of research involving these variables and this age group. The specific emotions theory was utilized to shape and inform my hypotheses. The results for this study supported my hypothesis concerning destructive conflict, but rejected the other discussing constructive conflict. Mothers’ correlations of conflict methods with externalizing behaviors were statistically significant while the fathers’ correlations were not. These analyses indicate further research of constructive conflict and its effects on younger children.

This is the keynote presentation delivered at The Sixth Conference on Problem-Based Learning in Finland: Constructing knowledge in information society, Tampere, 2006 June 6-7. Abstract: Finding information, especially accurate, timely, and relevant information, is increasingly important in nearly all human endeavors. Accordingly, numerous studies have examined the processes information seekers employ, as well as the strategies information providers use to meet their needs. Most models emphasize satisfaction or closure as the criterion for successful completion of an information search; thus the emphasis is on solving a specific problem. But often, information seeking is part of some larger process, which is invisible to the information provider and often unclear even to the seeker. Successful search may lead not so much to eliminating an existing, well-defined problem, as to delineating a new problem within a complex, ill-defined space. This paper examines information seeking from an inquiry, or problem-based perspective, and argues that the fields of information seeking and problem-based learning can benefit from closer dialogue.

During the last twenty years rapid developments in technology have led to changes in the way we work, play and learn. Technology has become an integral part of societyâ s everyday information environment. Children growing up during what has been called the technological or digital revolution have never known a world without instantaneous communication and easy access to vast quantities of information using multiple formats, text types, graphics and multimedia. For the â Net Generationâ (born after 1985) of users and consumers who are surrounded by information, technology is transparent and a part of their social, economic and educational landscape. The terms tech-savvy, web-savvy, Internet-savvy and com-puter-savvy are being used to describe young people in major educational policy documents and population studies worldwide. While educators recognise that their students have a different culture of use when using and seeking information delivered electronically, they struggle to come to terms with the changes the integration of technology brings to the teaching-learning environment. The implications for educators, teacher librarians and librarians being raised in current research on the information seeking of the Net Generation, is whether students have an intuitive/instinctive grasp of how to access and use elec-tronic information or is this just an illusion borne of familiarity with the technology? This paper presents a brief summary of the research and popular literature about the information seeking behavior of the Net Generation and outlines future research to be conducted as part of this thesis. It also proposes a leader-ship role for libraries and their personnel in designing programs to ensure that young people have ade-quate information skills that will enable them to use evolving technologies effectively and efficiently when searching for information.