The quality of life of children with Tourette Syndrome, a neurodevelopmental condition characterised by chronic tics, is impacted greatly by both the symptoms themselves and their social consequences. Habit Reversal Therapy, a behavioural therapy for tic management, has substantial empirical support in its individual form, but this approach has never been investigated in a group format. Group based delivery of Habit Reversal Therapy could increase access to therapy, improve the cost-effectiveness of treatments and potentially offer additional therapeutic benefits. This randomised controlled pilot study evaluated the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of Habit Reversal Therapy compared to psycho-educational groups for 33 children aged 9 to 13 years with Tourette Syndrome and Chronic Tic Disorders. Outcomes of the groups were evaluated in terms of reductions in tic severity and improvements in quality of life. Good attendance rates in both groups suggested feasibility and acceptability of the interventions. Improvements in tic severity and quality of life were found in both groups, although to a lesser extent compared to previous studies of individual behavioural therapy for tics. Motor tic severity showed greater improvements in the Habit Reversal Therapy group on the main outcome measure (Yale Global Tic Severity Scale) but not on a direct observational measure of tic frequency. Given the potential for such groups to provide additional treatment options for families, further research is warranted. Clinical implications and suggestions for improvements to the current design for a larger study are outlined as well as indications for wider reaching future research.

This thesis traces the paths and trajectories that one substance - the plant stimulant Catha edulis (Forssk.), known in Kenya as 'miraa' - takes in the course of its 'social life' from production, through exchange, to its points of consumption. The thesis attempts to draw out the richness in this social life through an in-depth ethnographic examination of these trajectories, emphasising in particular their socially-embedded nature. By following an approach influenced by the volume The social life of things (Appadurai [ed.] 1986) the thesis is able to tease out much of the significance the substance has for those people who animate its social life. The trajectories covered vary greatly in range, from those involving local consumption in the area in which it is grown - the Nyambene Hills district of Kenya - to those that take it thousands of miles away to Europe and North America. The vast range of the substance allows for the generation of many different meanings and associations, and many of these are brought out over the course of the thesis. The trade of the substance (trade that relies much on trust) and its consumption are seen as in many ways socially cohesive, while in other respects socially divisive: while substances like miraa can build bridges, they can also build fences. Of especial importance to the thesis is the character of Nicholas, whose relationship with miraa demonstrates how individuals can take on board shared meanings concerning a substance, whilst creating many new meanings of their own through processes of convergence and divergence. The study addresses both the significance of miraa and its social life for wider debates in anthropology and its significance within the lives of farmers, traders, and consumers, and anyone engaged in debating its merits.

The hypothesis of this study is: Transitional care patients reinforced for displaying a particular affective verbal habit (either positive or negative) opposite their original affective verbal habit (either negative or positive) will increase their tendency to display the reinforced affective verbal habit.

The temporomandibular disorders (TMD) diminish quality of life and can be costly for both individuals and the health care system. Stress from a variety of factors, including daily hassles and maladaptive thought patterns, has been commonly cited as a contributing factor in TMD. Support for this hypothesis comes from research demonstrating masseter muscle hyperactivity in response to experimental stressors, such as painful or frustrating stimuli. Many believe the link between stress and increased masseter muscle pain is parafunctional oral habits, including teeth clenching, grinding, and lip biting. Habit reversal has been used effectively to treat parafunctional oral behaviors and facial pain. Treatment entails teaching individuals to detect, interrupt, and reverse maladaptive oral behaviors. Positive results have been achieved in a group treatment format. Problems with prior research suggest that high attrition resulted from scheduling demands of the group treatment format. To address these problems, this study modified the habit reversal protocol used by Gramling, et al. (1996, 1999) into a minimal contact therapy (MCT) format. MCT has been applied effectively with many problem behaviors, including chronic headaches. Twenty individuals (10-treatment and 10-waitlist control) participated in the seven-lesson, manualized treatment. Participants completed a pre- and post-treatment assessment and an 18-month follow-up. Individuals met with the therapist one time and received weekly feedback via telephone or e-mail. Participants submitted homework and quizzes for each lesson. Those in the control condition spoke with the therapist on a weekly basis as an attention control. Treatment lasted a mean of about 20 weeks. Significant improvement in pain severity including mean pain levels, highest weekly pain levels, and number of pain free days was noted in the treatment group relative to controls. The number and frequency of maladaptive oral habits revealed a strong trend towards lower levels from pre- to post-treatment for individuals in the treatment condition relative to controls. Additional measures of pain symptomotology and personality functioning also revealed significant improvements in the treatment group. Results suggest that a standardized treatment for facial pain is well suited for adaptation to a MCT format. Minimal contact therapy is flexible and as effective as similar group treatments.

The first chapter investigates whether East German women became used to the requirement of working full-time under communism and thereby continued to work much longer hours than did their counterparts in the West after unification. The second chapter develops a rational habit formation model in labor supply using the idea of habits outlined in the first chapter. I show that the proposed model avoids the extreme behavior observed in the standard model in the literature where in the long-run hours of work could increase indefinitely or decrease to zero over time. The third chapter examines whether disabled elders who have private long-term care insurance consume fewer acute or post-acute Medicare covered services. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2004. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Thesis advisor: James E. Anderson / Thesis advisor: Rosen Valchev / The effect of uncertainty on firms' behavior and on the macroeconomy is generally negative in the literature. Extensive research has also demonstrated that financial frictions limit the extent of firms' activities and growth prospects. In the first two chapters of this dissertation, I study both empirically and theoretically how a specific type of uncertainty, exchange rate uncertainty, interacts with financial frictions to affect the behavior of exporting firms. In line with the existing literature, I find in the first chapter that exports of manufacturing sectors in which firms are more financially constrained decrease by more in times of high uncertainty. Having more tangible capital, which can potentially be used as collateral, makes the effect of uncertainty less negative, especially im sectors where firms are large. Relying more on external financing, on the other hand, makes the effect more negative and affects sectors with small firms more. Current theoretical models have little to say about the effect of uncertainty on heterogeneous firms. To address this issue, I introduce in the second chapter a model of financially-constrained heterogeneous exporting firms in which credit conditions depend on the degree of exchange rate uncertainty. Firms in different sectors face different types of financial constraints, and are therefore differently affected by uncertainty. I use the calibrated model to evaluate potential policies that could be implemented to alleviate the negative effect of exchange rate uncertainty on exports. The uncovered interest parity puzzle is the empirical finding that countries with higher risk-free interest rates tend to see their currencies appreciate in the short run. Typical two-country macroeconomic models instead predict that high interest-rate currencies depreciate, with arbitrage opportunities eliminating profitable carry trade strategies. The international finance literature responded to this puzzle by providing several alternative theoretical models able to explain the puzzle. In the third chapter of this dissertation, I study how the predictions of two of these alternative models - the habit model of Verdelhan (2010) and the distorted belief model of Gourinchas and Tornell (2004) - are affected when re-cast in a standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium framework. I investigate how the mechanisms rely on specific parameter values in order to find under which conditions, if any, they can explain the UIP puzzle. In addition, I obtain business cycle moments from model simulations and compare them to the moments obtained from a standard two-country DSGE model and from the data. My results show that for the first model, the habit model, the UIP results disappear under realistic calibrations. For the second model, the distorted beliefs model, UIP properties remain under some calibrations. In addition, business cycle predictions remain close to empirical evidence. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T14:23:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Adelino de Castro Oliveira Simoes Gala.pdf: 265343 bytes, checksum: 526395f0997b919e252c59260d83f588 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-04-17 / This dissertation aims at researching the concepts of habit that emerged in philosophy, and then introduce it in the Cognitive Science program through a nondualistic approach. After discussions on methodologies and the researcher´s motivations, the first chapter starts with a survey of the most important philosophers from medieval philosophy that dealt with the theme: Aristotle, Thomas de Aquinas and mainly Duns Scotus. After exploring and identifying the concepts of intentionality and habit, it advances to the twentieth century philosophy into Husserl´s studies, who is recognized as the founder of phenomenology. Afterwards, in order to seek for an alternative to the dualism that underlies Husserl´s research of mind, chapter two engages in the understanding of Merleau-Ponty´s works and mainly his phenomenology of perception. The next step is to link M-Ponty´s philosophy and the Cognitive Science program. This is done in chapter three which contextualizes Varela´s research and how it constrains both fields. Finally, the conclusion suggests a definition of the concept of habit as a cognitive operator, and shows possible future paths for the present work / Esta dissertação tem como objetivo de pesquisa examinar os conceitos filosóficos do hábito, introduzi-lo no campo das Ciências Cognitivas dentro de uma abordagem não-dualista e defini-lo como operador cognitivo. Após introdução metodológica e apresentação das reflexões e motivações do trabalho, começa no primeiro capítulo com um levantamento dos principais autores que abordaram o tema na filosofia medieval, observando Aristóteles, Tomás de Aquino e enfatizando Duns Scotus. Destacados os entendimentos e conceitos chaves do hábito e da intencionalidade, avança para a filosofia do século XX através dos estudos de Husserl, autor compreendido como sendo o pai da fenomenologia. Em seguida, com o intuito de buscar uma alternativa ao dualismo característico dos estudos da mente de Husserl, o capítulo dois aplica-se na compreensão fenomenológica de Merleau-Ponty, da noção do corpo como mente e do hábito incorporado. Como ponte entre a filosofia e as Ciências Cognitivas, o capítulo três apresenta o trabalho de Varela contextualizado na filosofia de M-Ponty e na história e paradigmas das Ciências Cognitivas. Por final, sugere na conclusão uma definição para o hábito como operador cognitivo e possíveis caminhos de desenvolvimento futuro da pesquisa

This paper chronicles the creation of the smartphone application, `Waste Not, Want Not'. The application is designed to create sustainable habits and change wasteful behaviors in order to reduce personal waste production. The paper explores related works in the fields of environmental science, psychology, and computer science. These related studies establish the need for an application focused on personal waste reduction and the means to build such an application. The design process for the application follows User Experience Design's four phases: Research, Sketch, Design, and Evaluation. The target audience for the application is surveyed and imagined. Next, a basic outline of the application's functionality is created. From this outline, a prototype of the application is built. This prototype undergoes usability testing. It ranks above the average for each of the three usability metrics: effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. The paper then explores possible expansions and implementations of the application.

Operant (instrumental) conditioning is a laboratory method for investigating voluntary behavior and involves training a particular response, such as pressing a lever, to earn a reinforcer. Operant behavior is generally divided into two categories: actions and habits. Actions are goal-directed and controlled by response-outcome (R-O) associations. Habits are stimulus-driven and controlled by stimulus-response associations (S-R). Behavior is determined to be goal-directed or habitual by whether or not it is sensitive (action) or insensitive (habit) to reinforcer/outcome devaluation. Many brain regions have been linked to the learning and/or expression of actions and/or habits. This dissertation investigates a few different brain regions in goal-directed and habitual behavior, and determines more specific roles for the prelimbic cortex, infralimbic cortex, prelimbic cortex to dorsomedial striatum pathway, and Crus I/II of the cerebellum. Chapter two investigates the prelimbic and infralimbic cortices in goal-directed behavior. We trained rats on a two-response paradigm, where one response was extensively-trained, and a second response was minimally-trained in a separate context. This maintained both responses as goal-directed. In experiment 1, inactivation of the prelimbic cortex at time of test resulted in an attenuation of responding, but only for the minimally-trained response. This implicates the prelimbic cortex in the expression of goal-directed behavior, but only when that goal-directed behavior is minimally-trained. In experiment 2, we repeated the procedure with infralimbic cortex inactivation and found an attenuation of the extensively-trained response. This implicates the infralimbic cortex in the expression of extensively-trained behavior that is goal-directed. The third chapter examines the role of the prelimbic cortex-to-dorsomedial striatal pathway in minimally-trained operant behavior. Both regions have been implicated in operant behaviors and have strong anatomical connections, but few studies have directly linked them together in the mediation of operant behaviors. After minimal instrumental conditioning, we silenced projections from the prelimbic cortex to the dorsomedial striatum and found that instrumental behavior was reduced, implicating this PL-DMS pathway in the expression of minimally-trained operant responding. The final chapter examines the role of Crus I/II of the cerebellar cortex in the expression of goal-directed and habitual behavior. The cerebellum is well-characterized as a mediator of motor coordination via its connections with the motor cortex. There is also evidence of connections between Crus I/II and non-motor regions of the prefrontal cortex. Additionally, recent studies have pointed towards a role for Crus I/II in non-motor function. In experiment 1, rats learned one minimally-trained and one extensively-trained response, and both responses were goal-directed. Inactivation of Crus I/II attenuated responding only in rats that had undergone reinforcer devaluation. Residual responding in rats that have undergone reinforcer devaluation is attributed to habit, suggesting that Crus I/II may be involved in habit expression. In a follow-up experiment, we extensively-trained a single response and verified that it was expressed as a habit. This time, Crus I/II inactivation at time of test had no effect. Overall, this complex pattern of results suggests the possibility that Crus I/II of the cerebellar cortex is only engaged in habit expression when two responses are trained, but further experiments will be necessary to verify this.

Research on components of habit reversal suggests that awareness training alone may be an effective and efficient intervention for reducing nervous habits. This study evaluated the effectiveness of awareness training for the reduction of three nervous habits that manifest in public speaking: filled pauses, tongue clicks, and inappropriate use of the word "like." Four university students delivered short speeches during baseline and assessment sessions. Awareness training consisted of response description and response detection. Awareness training resulted in meaningful reductions in target behaviors for all participants. Booster awareness training sessions were necessary for all participants to achieve further reductions in target behaviors. Generalization probes conducted in front of a small audience indicated that treatment effects generally maintained at low levels. Social validity scores indicated that the treatment was acceptable, and participants indicated not only decreased use of verbal fillers, but also improved overall public speaking ability post-treatment. Although awareness training was effective, it was not more efficient than simplified habit reversal.