Background. Diabetes brings with it a regimen that has a major impact on an individual's daily life Results from the Diabetes Complication and Control Trial (DCCT) note that insulin dependent diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease requiring intensive daily management. This ten-year trial provides unarguable evidence of the importance of self-management. The findings of the DCCT have been widely publicized, yet many individuals continue to manage their diabetes very poorly. A significant nursing problem encountered in the care of patients is the “why” behind an individual's application or non-application of self-management. Although there has been a great deal of speculation about what influences self-management, the application of the emotional intelligence model provides new insight into this familiar nursing problem. Objective. This dissertation research examined the relationship among emotional intelligence, self-management, and glycemic control in adults with type 1 diabetes. Method. A descriptive correlational study design was employed. A sample of 90 adults with type 1 diabetes was obtained from a hospital affiliated diabetes center and via networking. The Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale was utilized to measure total and four branch scores of emotional intelligence. The Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities was utilized to measure self-management. Results. Data provided partial support for hypothesis 1, in adults with type 1 diabetes, there is a significant relationship between emotional intelligence and self-management practices; support for hypothesis 2, in adults with type 1 diabetes, there is a significant relationship between emotional intelligence and glycemic control in nudes only; and partial support for hypothesis 3; in adults with type 1 diabetes, there is a significant relationship between self-management practices and glycemic control. Conclusions. This study has added to the knowledge regarding the factors that influence self-management behavior. The data generated in this exploratory study are a beginning effort to see the relationship of emotional intelligence, self-management, and glycemic control and provide an impetus to look beyond what has traditionally been examined in the hopes of gaining a better understanding of self-management. Emotional intelligence may be a factor in enriching this understanding.

Hallucinations are one of the defining criteria for a diagnosis of schizophrenia, but extremely difficult to measure. This is simply because hallucinations are private events and the community does not have access to information within the skin. There are several measures of hallucinations, but most are cumbersome, expensive, and have questionable psychometric properties. This investigation attempted to look at the relationship between a clients' self-report of a hallucination and observable indicators of hallucinations. Participants in the study were chronically mentally ill individuals taking medication, but suffering from hallucinations. This study advanced a previous thesis on the same topic by revising the self-report tool, operationally defining hallucinatory behavior with a well-established instrument, and collecting reliability data. It was hypothesized that there would be a correlation between a client's self-report of hallucinations and observable indicators reported by staff (e.g., client talking to self or laughing while alone outside). The staff at a residential treatment center for the chronic mentally ill collected data on client hallucinatory behavior and correlated it with a revised self-report measure of hallucinations. The data indicated there is no relationship between a client's self-report of hallucinations and the staff report. The data did show however, that the staff reported more symptomology than the clients reported during the same time period.

Cole, Coll, and Schoenfeld developed a self-control paradigm in 1982, which is based upon refrainment from consumption during the presentation of a reinforcer. Their paradigm has been shown to be successful in training pigeons and rats to refrain from food consumption and rats to refrain from drinking. This experiment used Cole et al.'s procedure to explore another area of animal consumatory behavior, sexual behavior. Using a changing criterion design, 10 male rats were trained to refrain from approaching a sexually receptive female rat for up to 10 s. The training took place in a two compartment shuttle box apparatus. After the refrainment time elapsed the male rat was required to press a lever in order gain access to the female rat for one sexual intromission. The results were analyzed graphically and statistically. All 10 male rats successfully refrained for 10 s on 80% of the trials. This finding demonstrates that Cole et al.'s refrainment procedure is successful in establishing effective sexual refrainment and that sexual behavior can come under schedule control.

A recent trend in the field of behavioral assessment and treatment has been the use of functional analyses. This assessment technique has been utilized with success to reduce self-injurious, stereotypic, and aggressive behavior in individuals with developmental disabilities. However, few studies have used an extended functional analysis to assess off-task behavior in children with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The present study evaluated the use of an extended functional analysis and subsequent interventions for three children with ADHD. Results suggested that automatic reinforcement and access to peer attention maintained the off-task behavior of the participants. Function-based interventions, one designed for automatic maintained behavior and two designed for peer-attention maintained behavior, were then evaluated. All of these interventions eliminated or reduced off-task behavior to low rates in all participants. Implications for the further development and use of this procedure with this population and target behavior are discussed.

The scant body of research regarding hallucinations shows a significant deficit in the area of definition and measurement of this phenomena. The methods most commonly used are self-report and observation of the client's behavior, such as laughing, talking, mumbling, gesturing, and grimacing to no apparent stimuli. The purpose of the present study was to compare participants' self-report of hallucinations to staff observations of participants' behavior to determine if there was a relationship between them. It was hypothesized that the two reports would correlate significantly, strengthening the case for the validity and usefulness of these approaches as measures of hallucinations. Twenty-eight persons diagnosed with schizophrenia or other major mental illnesses and reporting auditory hallucinations living in a group home participated in the study. Participants reported their symptomology on an hourly basis and these reports were compared to staff reports of 10 possible hallucinatory indicators. Participants were provided with token reinforcement for their participation. Three hundred forty-eight staff and participant reports were correlated using the Pearson Product Moment correlation. The results were nonsignificant at the p $<$.05 level. This indicates that observations made by staff of possible hallucinatory indicators have no reliable relationship to schizophrenics' self-reports of hallucinations.

Even though there has been extensive research on depression in adults, relatively little is known about depression in adolescents and children. This is especially true for adolescents and children of different ethnic backgrounds. Because depression at younger ages has been shown to predict depression in adults, and because we are becoming more ethnically diverse as a nation, the paucity of research in this area is a serious oversight. The goal of the present study was to identify the prevalence of depression in an ethnically diverse group of adolescents, as well as to identify demographic variables that may contribute to depression and life dissatisfaction in this group. The present study investigated 11 ethnic groups of adolescent males and females: Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Laos/Hmong, Chinese, Japanese, Pacific Islander, Filipino, and other. Participants were recruited from a public high school in the Stockton Unified School District. Each participant was administered the Reynold's Adolescent Depression Scale (RADS), a self-report measure of depression; the DSM Scale for Depression (DSD), a DSM-IV -referenced measure of major depressive disorder; and the Life Satisfaction Scale for Adolescents (LSS-A), a measure of life satisfaction for specific domains of adolescent life. Results showed that females scored significantly higher on both depression measures. Ethnic differences were found on the measure for overall life satisfaction. Cambodians, compared to other ethnic groups, showed the lowest life satisfaction. Other significant differences were found between males and females on specific domains of life satisfaction. Socioeconomic status, family structure, and immigration status were found to contribute significantly to higher depression scores.

No description available.

No description available.

The present work initiates a research line in the study of artificial life, through a preliminary characterization of a computational approach to evolutionary interpretations of Pavlovian-conditioning phenomena. The approach was implemented through a Neuro-Computational/Genetic-Algorithm (or NC-GA) hybrid model. The NC model described the fimctioning of neuron-like processing elements that were interconnected forming artificial neural networks (ANNs). The GA consisted of a set of rules for selecting ANNs for mating and reproduction. ANNs were developed from virtual chromosomes encoding variables determining the course of a neurodevelopmental program motivated by general concepts from developmental neuroscience. All chromosomes had a fixed length and encoded for the same set of variables. Also, that program involved a one-many relation, for most of the variables encoded by the chromosomes were probabilistic. The NC-GA model was characterized through computer simulations. Four simulation experiments were performed, each consisting of two kinds of simulations, evolution and test. In the evolution simulations, the GA was used to evolve ANNs that were trained in a Pavlovian procedure. ANNs with higher conditional-response proportions had a higher probability of being selected for mating and reproduction. In the test simulations, the behavioral competence of the evolved ANNs was determined by exposing them to conditions different from the ancestral ones. In general, the results from the evolution simulations demonstrated that the mean chromosomic overlap and the mean population fitness increased as negatively accelerated functions of generations. Also, most ANNs at the beginning of evolution showed no learning, whereas ANNs by the end of evolution showed learning. In Experiment 1, ANNs were selected for increased responding under forward-delay procedures in which the interstimulus interval (ISI), and the kind of CS were manipulated. After evolution, ANN sizes increased as a function of ISIs, and ANN performances in the test simulations were consistent with ISI functions, optimal-ISI noninvariance, and CS nonequipotentiality. In Experiment 2, two CSs were independently paired with the US. After evolution, ANN sizes increased as a nonmonotonic function of the ISI, and ANN performances in the test simulations showed generalization, discrimination, and blocking. In Experiments 3 and 4, ANNs were selected for orthogonal and nonorthogonal discrimination, respectively. Performances in the test simulations of both experiments also showed generalization, discrimination, and blocking. Collectively, these results are consistent with the pursuit of general-process approaches to learning. However, such approaches also allow for interpretations in which biological constraints on learning are seen as emerging from variations in general neurobiological processes, and as imposing limits on the range of variation of general biobehavioral processes.

The positioning component of the human arm has four kinematic degrees of freedom (DOF), three of which are used to position the end-effector. The fourth DOF, here denoted $\gamma,$ does not affect the hand position (it exclusively affects the elbow position) and may thus be considered redundant. It may be hypothesized that, in the absence of any other constraints, $\gamma$ is chosen such that some task related cost is minimized. In this work, we investigate the particular hypothesis that $\gamma$ is chosen such that the sum of the squared torques at the shoulder and elbow is minimal. A particular feature of this minimum principle is that it associates costs with both movement and static posture. This feature distinguishes the minimum-torque principle from zero-static-cost (ZSC) principles such as the well-known minimum-jerk (Flash and Hogan, 1985) and minimum-torque-change (Uno, Kawato, & Suzuki, 1989) principles. The main objectives of this work are to (1) reject the validity of ZSC principles and (2) to expose the predictions that arise from the minimum-torque principle and to compare these predictions with observed behavior. Human performance is assessed in tasks which consist of the following three components: (1) A movement that places the end-effector in a specified position, (2) a period of posture maintenance of specified duration, and (3) a movement that returns the arm to its initial position. Only one dependent variable is considered: the $\gamma$ associated with the static posture adopted during the posture maintenance period. Performances from three experiments are analyzed. The results of the first experiment disconfirm the validity of ZSC principles, the results of the second experiment are ambiguous, and the results of the third experiment provide some evidence in support of the minimum-torque principle.