Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 41-44). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 41-44). Also available on the Internet.

Title from title page of PDF (University of Missouri--St. Louis, viewed February 23, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 53-60).

Pregnancy is a time of alternating states of inflammation. The establishment of pregnancy is marked by controlled inflammation and transition toward an anti-inflammatory state for much of the gestational period before returning to an inflammatory state at the onset of labor. Stress and depression trigger the HPA Axis to produce cortisol and levels are maintained in a state of elevation during pregnancy and continue to rise before parturition. The aim of this research was to explore the relationship of gestational age at delivery with mid-pregnancy levels of cytokines, stress and depression. Participant samples (N = 122) were collected between 16 and 26 weeks gestation and analyzed for 14 cytokines using a bead-based multiplex assay. Plasma cortisol was also measured along with demographic variables and measures of perceived stress and dysphoric mood. Results of Pearson's correlations showed that gestational age at delivery was significantly inversely correlated with pro-inflammatory cytokine IFN-ã and anti-inflammatory IL-13. A significant positive correlation was noted with the number of pregnancies in the obstetric history and pregnancy length. Both cortisol and stress were not correlated with gestational age at delivery.

Despite the theoretical importance of goal-related deficits in individuals with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), relatively empirical research has examined goal generation and perceived goal attainment in depression vulnerable individuals. The current project sought to examine the impact of depressive status on perceived goal attainment in currently depressed, remitted depressed, and never-depressed women. In addition, perceived problem-solving skills, a construct thought to be critical for goal striving and in goal attainment was also examined. Unexpectedly, no effects of depressive status on perceived goal attainment or overall perceived problem-solving skills were observed. Results did however reveal group differences in perceived control in problem-solving, and this was associated with perceived goal attainment. These surprising results suggest that developing positive expectations for goal pursuit may serve to aid in goal pursuit among depression-vulnerable populations. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

Previous research has shown that chronic exercise positively impacts body image in women. Research defining the modality that yields the best results following an acute session of exercise has yet to be determined. This research attempted to show the psychological benefits that exercise could have on female body image after only one bout of exercise. PURPOSE: The purpose of the current study was to examine the effects of three different modalities of acute exercise on state body image in women. This study aimed to determine which modality, if any, is more effective in increasing state body image. METHODS: Twenty-five female participants (20.2 ± 2.2 years; 23.6 ± 4.0 BMI, 25.5 ± 6.0 body fat percent) attended laboratory sessions on six different occasions; the initial informed consent, risk stratification, and descriptive data session, the familiarization session, the three exercise sessions, and the control session. During the familiarization session, each participant was acquainted with each exercise modality. The aerobic (AE) session consisted of a five-minute warm-up, 30 minutes of treadmill exercise, and a five-minute cool-down. The interval circuit (IC) session involved a five-minute warm-up, two circuits containing five bodyweight exercises each, and five minutes of cool-down stretching. The resistance (RE) session included a five-minute warm-up, three sets of eight repetitions of the bench press, bent-over row, overhead press, squat, deadlift, and lunge exercises, and five-minutes of cool-down stretching. The control session included 40 minutes of quiet reading. Ratings of perceived exertion and heart rate were monitored and recorded during each trial. State body image, positive mood, and negative mood were measured immediately before and after each experimental session. RESULTS: Following the AE and RE sessions, state body image significantly improved from pre- to post-session (AE: 5.2 ± 1.2 to 5.7 ± 1.0; RE: 5.4 ± 1.4 to 5.9 ± 1.2; p < 0.05). Only the RE post-session state body image (5.4 ± 1.4) was significantly different from the CO post-session state body image (5.4 ± 1.1; p < 0.05). The AE and RE sessions significantly increased positive mood and decreased negative mood from pre- to post-session (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Participation in the aerobic and resistance sessions significantly improved body image from pre- to post-exercise. Resistance exercise was the only research modality that yielded significantly higher post-exercise state body image as compared to the control session. Thus, a single resistance exercise session may help individuals to improve their state body image.

Most cases of lung cancer have a commonly-understood behavioral etiology. Thus, individuals with lung cancer are often blamed for their illness by others and may therefore seek to avoid this blame by concealing their diagnosis from others. This study sought to determine the prevalence of diagnosis concealment, examine potential predictors of concealment, and test parts of a cognitive-affective-behavioral model of the effects of concealing a concealable stigma among individuals receiving treatment for lung cancer. With regard to predictors of concealment, it was hypothesized that concealment would be positively associated with male gender, introversion, and trait social anxiety and would be negatively associated with social support and the use of seeking guidance and support as a coping strategy. Hypothesized correlates of concealment included poorer self-esteem as well as greater anxiety, cancer-specific distress, and social avoidance. A sample of 117 participants receiving chemotherapy or radiation for stage I-IV non-small cell lung cancer and limited to extensive stage small cell lung cancer was recruited during routine outpatient visits. A medical chart review was conducted to assess clinical factors and participants completed a standard demographic questionnaire as well as measures of coping strategies, introversion, trait social anxiety, social avoidance, social support, anxiety, depression, cancer-specific distress, self-esteem, perceived stigma, public self-consciousness, and private self-consciousness. Results indicated that 31% of participants concealed their diagnosis from others since their diagnosis and 26% concealed their diagnosis in the month preceding their participation in the study. Hypotheses regarding predictors and correlates of concealment were not supported. However, exploratory analyses identified use of alcohol, recency of a recurrence of lung cancer, use of positive reappraisal as a coping strategy, and social support as predictors of concealment as well as internalized shame as a correlate of concealment. These findings serve to extend existing literature on concealing a concealable stigma and support parts of an existing model on the effects of concealment. Future research should aim to test the impacts of concealment in the context of certain social situations to examine longitudinal relationships between predictors and consequences of concealment.

In theory, all relevant information is incorporated in stock prices timely and completely and therefore prices respond related news quickly in efficient financial markets. In today's information age, technological advances provide investors with fast access to a vast number of information resources. One can argue that these advances can help market efficiency due to easy and quick access to relevant information. On the other hand, these technological advances not only facilitate availability of relevant information but also facilitate availability of all types of information--both relevant and irrelevant information signals. In essence, one can argue that there is (over)exposure to information which may come with a cost in the form of distraction and limited attention to relevant information. After considering these previous points, this study sheds more light on investor distraction and its impact on stock prices in two essays. My first essay introduces a new type of investor distraction, which arises from the discrepancy between investors' mood state and the content of the firm news. My second essay shows the importance of culture to explain investors' information processing .Moreover; the findings of my second essay are consistent with an investor distraction effect caused by cultural factors which are assumed as irrelevant factors in investors' information environment. In my first essay titled "Overexposure to Unrelated News and Investor Distraction: Earnings News and Big Sports Games", I use mood-generating events - proxied by big sports games -that contain no information on firm fundamentals but occur concurrently with earnings vi announcements to test the hypothesis that investors' attention shifts away from financial news that is incongruent with investors' mood states, thereby leading to underreaction. I empirically confirm the existence of mood-conflicting distraction. I find stronger post-earnings announcement drift and delayed response ratio, and weaker immediate volume reaction, when the earnings announcing firm's local investors' sports mood is inconsistent with the earnings news' content (good vs. bad). This effect strengthens with firm's proximity to the location of the mood source. In my secon essay titled "Post-Earnings Announcement and Religious Holidays", I show the role of culture, proxied by religion, in financial information processing and the impact of culture on financial outcomes through investor inattention. I examine whether and how the religious holiday calendar affects investors' information processing by investigating price reactions to U.S. firms' earnings announcements that occur during Easter week. I find different patterns for short-term and delayed responses to Easter week earnings surprises. Moreover, there is a stronger immediate (delayed) reaction to good (bad) news, primarily found in less religious, predominantly Protestant areas. The results are consistent with a religion-induced investor distraction effect. The findings also show the role of religious characteristics in firms' information environment and the locality of stock prices.

Following Smith's (1991, 1997) two-component theory, this dissertation investigates the structural characteristics and the semantic properties of the temporal system, including tense, mood, viewpoint aspect, situation aspect and discourse modes, of Iquito, a highly endangered and moribund language spoken in the northern Peruvian Amazon. Iquito has three tenses: Extended Current Tense, Recent Past Tense, and Distant Past Tense. Extended Current Tense gives a Reference Time (RT) frame from the day which includes Speech Time (SpT) to the infinite future. Therefore, situations occurring earlier on the same day or unrealized situations both appear in sentences with this tense. The temporal interpretation is inferred from the combination of aspect and mood morphology. Recent Past Tense gives a frame of RT from yesterday to one to two years prior to SpT. Distant Past Tense gives a frame of RT from one to two years prior to SpT extending backward to the infinitely remote past. Temporal boundaries among the tenses are not rigidly fixed in terms of a metrical conception of time. Iquito has seven perfective aspects, including a General, a Momentary, a Remote, two Deictic, an Allative, and an Ablative Perfective Aspect and one Imperfective Aspect. Remote Perfective Aspect incorporates an adverbial component while Ablative and Allative Perfectives incorporate directional components and Deictic Perfectives incorporate deictic components. The system of perfective aspects in Iquito manifests the importance of expressing the realization of an event in conjunction with information about the time of the day, location, and routing in terms of location. Regarding situation aspect, I propose that there are six types in Iquito, including States, Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements, Semelfactives and Motions, which all manifest language-specific correlates. With respect to grammatical moods, realis and irrealis moods are manifested in Iquito through a typologically unique strategy: word order change and vowel hiatus resolution. Regarding Discourse Modes, I find four modes in Iquito, including Narrative, Report, Description and Information. In addition, Quoted Speech manifests an interesting mixture of modes. This dissertation adds another dimension to the close connections among tense, aspect and mood, and contributes to linguistic documentation and advances the structural and semantic analysis of Iquito and Amazonian languages. It also contributes to research on the crosslinguistic variation of temporal semantics and to linguistics in general through an interesting case study. / text

Recent work in anthropology has translated systemic disjuncture to individual subjectivity, under the premise that "disordered" political economies cause "disordered" identities. However this work underplays the role of affect in "gathering" subjectivity amidst external transformation. The following thesis proposes a concept of "mood" as a set of conjoined, low-level affects that provides continuity in contexts of neoliberalism and change. It investigates women's "moods" in an urbanizing region of Uttarakhand, India. Drawing from ethnographic interviews in a village, and a migrant community, mood is shown to involve components of capitalist anxiety that articulate with attitudes of docility and duty. Experiences typically described as "postmodern" including "incompleteness", "estrangement" and "alienation", are common to, and produce "classical" gendered affects in both rural and urban settings. Although anxiety can be destabilizing, it joins paradoxically with these affects to lubricate women's sense of "belonging" in a place.