The purpose of this study was to investigate how associative and inductive reasoning processes develop over trials in feature positive (FP) and feature negative (FN) discrimination learning. Younger and older adults completed initial and transfer tasks with either consistent or inconsistent transfer. Participants articulated a rule on every trial. The measure of discrimination learning was the number of trials it took participants to articulate the exact rule. In the initial task, older adults articulated the rule more slowly than younger adults in FP discrimination and took marginally more trials to articulate the rule in FN discrimination than younger adults. Age differences were greater in FP discrimination than in FN discrimination learning because younger adults performed well in FP discrimination learning. In the transfer task, older adults articulated the FP rule more slowly than younger adults and both groups articulated the rule more quickly with consistent than inconsistent transfer. Older adults articulated the FN rule slower than older adults. The differences in trials to articulate the FN rule for the two groups were somewhat larger for inconsistent transfer than consistent transfer. Discrimination learning was explained in terms of associative and inductive reasoning processes reasonably well. The measure of associative processes was forgotten responses, whereas the measures of inductive reasoning processes were irrelevant cue shifts and perseverations. In FP discrimination learning in the initial task, older adults had a greater proportion of forgotten responses, irrelevant cue shifts, and marginally more perseverations than younger adults. Therefore, older adults had more difficulty with associative and inductive reasoning processes than younger adults in FP discrimination. In FN discrimination, older adults had a greater proportion of forgotten responses than younger adults. Older and younger adults had a similar number of irrelevant cue shifts and perseverations. Therefore, in FN discrimination older adults had more difficulty with associative processes than younger adults. Both groups had difficulty with inductive reasoning processes. In FP discrimination in the transfer task, older adults had a greater proportion of forgotten responses, irrelevant cue shifts, and perseverations than younger adults, and these proportions were similar in consistent and inconsistent transfer. Therefore, in FP discrimination older adults had more difficulty than younger adults with both associative and inductive reasoning processes. Both processes were similar with regards to consistent and inconsistent transfer. In FN discrimination, older adults had a greater proportion of forgotten responses than younger adults, and the proportion of forgotten responses was greater in inconsistent than in consistent transfer. Both groups made a similar number of irrelevant cue shifts, and there was a marginal difference in consistent and inconsistent transfer for this measure with a greater number in inconsistent transfer. Older adults had a greater proportion of perseverations than younger adults. However, there were no differences in the number of perseverations for consistent and inconsistent transfer. Thus, older adults had difficulty with associative and inductive reasoning processes. Younger adults' inductive reasoning skills improved. The associative and inductive reasoning processes in FN discrimination were not as efficient in inconsistent transfer as in consistent transfer.

The purpose of this study is to assess the efficacy of violence prevention programs on the attitudes toward guns and violence among students in grades three through seven. This study represents an attempt to prove that third through sixth grade students who receive anger control training and seventh grade students who receive conflict resolution training will show a significantly lower attraction towards guns and violence than students receiving no such training. By understanding interrelation between adolescents' attitudes towards guns and violence and their psychosocial functioning, the public can seek out ways of preventing violence. To measure the impact and to provide information about the program's strengths and weaknesses, the Attitudes toward Guns and Violence Questionnaire (AGVQ) was used. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was utilized to assess the differences in attitudes towards guns and violence between groups that participated in violence prevention programs and those who did not. Anger control training and conflict resolution training, as conducted in this manner and in this setting, did not lead to a significantly lower attraction towards guns and violence.

The purpose of this study was to test the premise of peer cluster theory which suggests that individual drug use is primarily the result of psychosocial characteristics that influence one's peer associations which, in turn, directly influences individual drug use. Using the results of a 1996 drug and alcohol survey of 1312 Western Kentucky University college students, path analysis was used to measure the influence of seven of Beauvais and Oetting's (1986) psychosocial characteristics (sex, religious importance, parental attitudes about the use of alcohol, family use of alcohol and/or drugs, success in school, age of first use, and peer associations) on the percentage of the respondent's college friends who use alcohol and/or marijuana. All of these variables were then regressed on the respondent's drug use. The results did show some support for peer cluster theory. The direct effect of the student's association with drug-using peers on individual alcohol and marijuana use was shown to have the strongest direct influence on this outcome variable. However, a few limitations of this theoretical perspective were identified. The causal model for alcohol use showed that the indirect influence of three of these psychosocial characteristics (parental attitudes on alcohol use, success in school, and age of first use) was weaker than their direct influence on individual alcohol use.

The purpose of the current study is to examine the influence of relational views on adolescents' subjective understanding of interactions in the context of their romantic relationships. Relational view is an attachment system construct comprised of three specific measures of attachment: attachment style, rejection sensitivity and self-silencing. To examine the influence of relational views on individual's subjective understanding, we are employing an innovative multimodal methodology: The video-recall system (Welsh & dickson, 2005). This system assesses adolescent participants' subjective understanding of their feelings and behaviors during a video-taped interaction with their romantic partner as well as trained observers' interpretations of the interaction. In order to isolate the pathway between relational views and the interpretation of the interaction, we control for the observer coding which provides a more objective and consistent interpretation of the interaction. This study is unique in our inclusion of both adolescent participants' perspectives of their interactions with their romantic partner as well as the perspectives of trained coders, 209 adolescent couple's were examine who completed the video-recall procedure as well as a series of questionnaires. We examine two outcomes: Power and Negative Affect.Our hypothesis that adolescents who hold more vulnerable relational views will interpret their interactions more negatively was supported. Structual Equation Modeling in AMOS, which allowed for the use of latent variables, indicated that relational views directly influence interpretations of Power and Negative Affect in adolescents above and beyone what was expected based on the observers' ratings. This finding has important implications because it supports the tenets of general attachment theory in that it shows that attachment not only influences the behaviors in an interaction but also the way those behaviors are interpreted. Possible explanations for the influence of relational views and their implications are discussed in further depth.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-83). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Syracuse University, 2009. / "Publication number: AAT 3381558."

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.

<p> The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between perceived norms of heavy peer alcohol use and self-reported heavy alcohol use among college students from a large public university. A total of 865 participants completed a survey in Fall 2008 and 506 of those participants completed the follow-up survey in Spring 2009. As hypothesized, the perceived injunctive norm was found to predict additional unique variance in heavy alcohol use above and beyond gender, year in school, residence hall, retrospective high school alcohol use and the perceived descriptive norm. The interaction between the perceived injunctive norm and perceived descriptive norm was not significant in the prediction of heavy alcohol use, as hypothesized. This suggests that the combined effect of the perceived injunctive norm and perceived descriptive norm in predicting heavy alcohol use is additive and not multiplicative. In a secondary hypothesis, the relationship between the perceived descriptive norm and heavy alcohol use was stronger for males than females. Lastly, as predicted, the results revealed that the relationship between perceived norms of heavy alcohol use and self-reported heavy alcohol use are stronger among more proximal than distal groups. These results suggest that social norms marketing campaigns aimed at reducing heavy alcohol use among college students should include the injunctive norm, target males, and use more proximal reference groups such as the student&rsquo;s own residence hall rather than more distal reference groups such as the typical university student.</p>

<p> In the United States, women&rsquo;s persistent gains in structural power may cause backlash among those motivated to preserve the status quo. The proposed study examines the conditions that prompt men and women to endorse sexism and promote gender stereotypes. System justification theory proposes that people are motivated to justify the socio-political system that governs them and threats to the stability of their system can increase individual&rsquo;s motivated defenses. I expect men to show the strongest motivated defenses when the hierarchy is threatened or viewed as unstable, because to protect group-based interests men will reinforce the legitimacy of the system through stronger endorsement of system defenses. In contrast, women will show the strongest system defenses when the hierarchy is viewed as stable, to avoid feeling trapped in an unchanging system that oppresses them. To test these ideas, 430 men and women were exposed to a gender status hierarchy that was portrayed as stable or unstable and then they responded to several measures of sexism and gender stereotypes. Support for the hypothesis was only found on one measure of gender stereotypes. Men reported more system justifying stereotypes of traditional women in the unstable condition, while women showed the opposite pattern. Exploratory results demonstrate that men&rsquo;s and women&rsquo;s reports of agentic stereotypes for traditional and nontraditional women depended on whether they were exposed to a stable or unstable gender hierarchy. Future directions and limitations are discussed in consideration of these exploratory findings.</p>

published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts