Abstract The concept of waiting has received limited attention in the world of research. In modern society, waiting has become a commonplace event, especially in healthcare. Although the waiting experience can produce anxiety, healthcare environments can be easily manipulated in order to increase human comfort and reduce situational anxiety. One such way of accomplishing this is to introduce music to an environment. This paper will discuss the findings related to short wait periods, anxiety, and music within the literature, and the findings within this research study. This study found listener-selected music to be statistically effective in reducing anxiety for patients waiting in the exam room to be seen by a primary healthcare provider in an urgent care clinic.

The phenomenon of attentional bias to alcohol, where drinkers demonstrate a preference in allocating visual attention towards alcohol-related stimuli rather than neutral stimuli, is well-established. Studies detecting this phenomenon typically utilize computer-administered stimulus presentation tasks such as the visual dot probe task. Despite their frequency of use, these tasks do not represent the ways in which individuals typically encounter alcohol outside of the laboratory. Typical environments where alcohol is present allow individuals to move about freely and encounter alcohol while also being exposed to many other stimuli. This dissertation sought to implement a novel approach to assessing attentional bias in vivo, and identify how alcohol consumption might influence such in vivo attentional bias. This two-study dissertation utilized an in vivo task where participants looked freely around a room representing a recreational setting containing numerous objects while portable eye-tracking glasses monitored what an individual looked at and for how long. Target items of alcohol and neutral beverages were placed throughout the environment and fixation time spent on these objects was recorded. The first study of this dissertation examined attentional bias to alcohol-related objects across two identical testing sessions to understand the impact of novelty on allocation of in vivo attention. The second study tested individuals using the same in vivo assessment following a 0.30 g/kg dose of alcohol, a 0.65 g/kg dose of alcohol and a placebo. Participants also completed the visual dot probe task in order to measure and compare their attentional bias in a more traditionally implemented task to the novel in vivo approach. Results from the first study indicate that as the novelty of stimuli begins to wane and habituation to neutral stimuli occurs, attentional bias to alcohol-related objects emerges. This attentional bias was shown to be related to drinking habits, where heavier drinkers demonstrated increased attentional bias. The second study in this research found no discernible effect of alcohol consumption on in vivo attentional bias, but did identify a satiating effect of consumption on bias as measured by the visual dot probe task. Additional visual dot probe findings suggest the specificity of the effect of alcohol consumption on attentional bias. Together, these findings help inform whether there is benefit in utilizing an ecological model of measuring attentional bias and how the phenomenon might be measured in laboratory settings in the future.

Navigating the formal employment interview has long been an imposing obstacle to acquiring gainful employment in the white-collar world, particularly that of the United States. Conventional wisdom offers a wide variety of suggestions for achieving the best possible outcomes from the interview, for instance smiling, having a firm handshake, demonstrating interest in the company, and “being yourself.” Much of this common knowledge is based primarily in intuition and carry-over from standard conversational best practices, rather than rigorous empirical testing. As such, this literature review sets out to bring together the various works of interview research that currently exist, with the goal of determining A) what candidate behaviors are most conducive to high interview ratings, B) strategies for coping with the effects of interview and interviewer characteristics on the interview’s reliability and validity, and C) areas of this still-growing topic that would benefit most from further research. By implementing the findings discussed in this review, employers and employees alike will be better equipped to make the best, most mutually beneficial use of the formal job interview.

Navigating the formal employment interview has long been an imposing obstacle to acquiring gainful employment in the white-collar world, particularly that of the United States. Conventional wisdom offers a wide variety of suggestions for achieving the best possible outcomes from the interview, for instance smiling, having a firm handshake, demonstrating interest in the company, and “being yourself.” Much of this common knowledge is based primarily in intuition and carry-over from standard conversational best practices, rather than rigorous empirical testing. As such, this literature review sets out to bring together the various works of interview research that currently exist, with the goal of determining A) what candidate behaviors are most conducive to high interview ratings, B) strategies for coping with the effects of interview and interviewer characteristics on the interview’s reliability and validity, and C) areas of this still-growing topic that would benefit most from further research. By implementing the findings discussed in this review, employers and employees alike will be better equipped to make the best, most mutually beneficial use of the formal job interview.

Anger rumination, or persistently dwelling on feelings of anger, is associated with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and related features, such as aggressive behavior and cognitive distortions. To develop more effective treatments, it is crucial to understand why individuals with BPD engage in anger rumination despite its negative outcomes. The activation of energy associated with anger, as well as feelings of justification and validation, may be experienced in the short-term as rewarding. This may prevent individuals with BPD from attempting to reduce their rumination. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioral methods were utilized to examine this theory in a sample of women diagnosed with BPD (n=13) and healthy controls (n=15). In an initial session, all participants were an administered a diagnostic interview for BPD, as well a series of self-report measures. In a second session, all participants completed an essay-writing task prior to the fMRI scan. All participants were provided with identical, highly critical feedback about their essays from a supposed essay evaluator. In response to this interpersonal provocation, participants with BPD demonstrated higher activation in brain regions associated with self-conscious reactivity to errors (insula, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex). Subsequent directed provocation-focused thought, compared to neutral-focused thought, produced greater activation in regions previously associated with anger rumination (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, lateral orbitofrontal cortex) across groups. As hypothesized, anger rumination, relative to neutral-focused thought, produced greater activation in brain regions associated with reward and pleasure (nucleus accumbens) for the BPD group only. No significant differences were observed for self-focused thought. Following the directed rumination task, participants completed a competitive reaction time task that provides an opportunity for participants to act aggressively, supposedly against their essay evaluator. The BPD group demonstrated significantly higher levels of aggressive behavior; however, no significant group differences emerged in neural functioning during the task. These findings suggest that anger rumination may be positively reinforcing for individuals with BPD, which has implications for treatment approaches.

Cognitive bias and thought suppression are two maladaptive patterns of thinking that have been associated with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Negative cognitive biases related to BPD include thoughts that they are bad, powerless, or vulnerable and that the world is dangerous. Thought suppression is a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy where unwanted thoughts are intentionally pushed out of one’s consciousness. However, previous research has connected thought suppression and cognitive biases to BPD only via self-report measures. The present study examined whether a laboratory task meant to measure cognitive bias and thought suppression (Scrambled Sentences Test) would predict BPD features over and above self report measures of cognitive bias and thought suppression. A sample of 153 undergraduates completed self-report measures of BPD features, thought suppression, and negative cognitive biases, as well as the Scrambled Sentences Test (SST). Results showed that while the SST was a good predictor of cognitive biases, it did not predict thought suppression when self report measures were included. Recognizing the importance of negative cognitive bias in BPD may be useful in continued treatment development. Further research into other ways of measuring thought suppression and cognitive biases in the lab may be warranted.

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Taste potentiation--Spatial and temporal contiguity--No-choice suppression of ingestion--Palatable and unpalatable tastes--Distal auditory stimulus--Variant distal locations.

Potential risk factors for development of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are still unclear. One potential risk factor for the development of PTSD is an individual’s cardiovascular reactivity and recovery in response to stressor tasks. The current study was conducted with 763 Army National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers. Participants completed a stressful induction along with self-report measures prior to deployment. Post-deployment, self-report measures were completed to assess PTSD symptomatology and experiences related to deployment and combat. Multiple regression was used to determine the ability of blood pressure response to stress to predict PTSD symptoms immediately and one-year after return from deployment. Results indicated that soldiers who had a less reactive systolic blood pressure response to and recovery from stressor tasks reported more PTSD symptomatology immediately after and one year after return from deployment. These results suggest that soldiers who develop PTSD after deployment have less pre-deployment emotion regulation ability.