<p> Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) come from different ethnicities and backgrounds. With the growing Hispanic population and increased prevalence of ASD, it is imperative that our evidence-based practices support and assist Hispanic families. Behavioral Skills Training (BST) is a supported practice that satisfies evidence-based criteria and has been used to train caregivers in applied behavior analysis (ABA) techniques to teach their children new skills and manage challenging behaviors. We completed a quality improvement project on a BST based parent training program used to teach parents ABA interventions. We evaluated the fidelity of implementation of the intervention during a training provided in English via a video interpreter and fidelity of implementation during a training provided with cultural accommodations (a bilingual clinician and documentation translated into the participant&rsquo;s dominant language). Fidelity of implementation was evaluated with a clinician and with the participant&rsquo;s child during in-vivo trials. This program was completed with three participants using a nonconcurrent multiple baseline across skills for each participant. BST with cultural accommodations was needed for training to mastery in at least one ABA intervention across all participants, however the skill that required accommodations varied. For some, there was a clear difference between rates of acquisition in clinician trials and in-vivo trials. Social validity measures showed that parent preference for treatment presentation was related to their response on level of proficiency in either language.</p><p>

abstract: The goal of the present study was to investigate whether a rest period following the end of chronic stress would impact fear extinction. Past research has indicated that chronic stress leads to impairments in the learning and recall of fear conditioning extinction. Moreover, the effects of chronic stress can return to levels similar to controls when a post-stress “rest” period (i.e., undisturbed except for normal husbandry) is given prior to testing. Male rats underwent chronic restraint stress for 6hr/day/21days (STR-IMM). Some rats, underwent a post-stress rest period for 6- or 3-weeks after the end of stress (STR-R6, STR-R3). Control (CON) rats were unrestrained for the duration of the experiment. In Experiment 1, following the stress or rest manipulation, all rats were acclimated to conditioning and extinction contexts, fear conditioned with 3 tone-foot shock pairings, and then had two days of extinction training. All groups froze similarly to the tone across all training sessions. However, STR-R6/R3 froze less in the non-shock context than did STR-IMM or CON. During extinction training, STR-IMM showed high levels of freezing to the non-shock context, leading to a concern they may be generalizing across contexts. Consequently, a follow-up experiment tested for context generalization. In Experiment 2, STR-IMM rats underwent a generalization test in an environment that was either different or the same as the conditioning environment, using STR-R6 as a comparison. STR-IMM and STR-R6 showed similar relative levels of freezing to tone and context, regardless of their conditioning environment to reveal that STR-IMM did not generalize and instead, maybe expressing hypervigilance. Thus, the present study demonstrated the novel finding that a rest period from chronic stress can lead to reduced fear responsiveness in a non-shock environment. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2018

Exercise programs that utilize resistance training, a specialized type of conditioning that provides stress (resistive loads) to the muscles, have appealed to athletes and recreational participants alike, due to its documented benefits for performance and overall health. Teaching the correct form for these skills is imperative for a safe and proficient execution of these movements. TAGteach™, a form of behavioral coaching, is a procedure that utilizes immediate acoustical feedback in the form of a clicker as a reinforcer for the desired behavior. TAGteach has been successfully used to teach novel or enhance existing athletic skills in many domains such as football, dance, yoga, pitching, golf and even surgical techniques (TAGteach International, 2012). The present study employed a multiple probe across behaviors design to evaluate the effectiveness of the TAGteach method to train three resistance training movements (deadlift, overhead press, and front squat) for adult novice participants. Results demonstrated an improvement in performance of each skill from baseline probes following training. Improved performance also generalized to heavier weight than those utilized during training. This generalization is a key to achieving progressive overload as a part of the typical practice in resistance training programs. / Applied Behavioral Analysis

Prior research on corporations finds that there exists a large unexplained firm-specific heterogeneity in corporate behaviors stemming from the effects of managers. This research identifies managerial personalities and tests their effects on corporate behaviors both experimentally and empirically. First, the effects of managerial personalities on corporate financing decisions are tested using a laboratory experiment with managers in South Korea. The laboratory experimental market is à la Modigliani and Miller but with two frictions, bankruptcy costs and corporate taxation. Leverage choices of managers with particular personality traits are compared against the optimal capital structure computed from the static trade-off theory. The results show that extravert managers choose higher leverage ratios, with the effect being financially meaningful although not statistically significant. Secondly, I identify extravert CEOs and empirically measure its effects on corporate financing choices using Chief Executive Officers’ avocation data and corporate financial data of public, nonfinancial US companies between 1992 and 2011. The results of mean comparisons by group, fixed effects regressions, difference-in-difference regressions, and changes of leverages around CEO turnovers show that extravert CEOs tend to issue risky debt more when accessing external finance and maintain higher leverage ratios than their peers. Thirdly, I test the effects of managerial extraversion on executive compensation. I first offer an empirical compensation model of managerial bargaining power, and then empirically tests the prediction by identifying a personality trait relevant to bargaining power using a novel set of managerial hobbies data. The results provide an evidence that CEO bargaining power has an increasing effect on CEO compensation.

<p> The importance of effective leadership practices as related to environmental issues and climate change is well established by climate change policy negotiators and there has been an increasing trend in leadership roles being created in organizations to address environmental issues. Organizational change efforts focused on social responsibility initiatives, such as changing environmentally relevant behaviors, often generate significant costs for organizations without contributing to desired results and messages from leaders to stakeholders in organizations do not frequently align with performance related to those messages. The science of behavior analysis focuses on the prediction and influence of socially significant behavior and provides principles to address performance in organizational settings. In the current study, principles of behavior analysis were applied to examine the relationship between a leader&rsquo;s verbal behavior with an employee and that employee&rsquo;s performance. Antecedent rule statements about climate change and human behavior were emailed by a leader to employees to examine the effect of those communications on employee energy consumption as related to each individual employee&rsquo;s values about anthropogenic climate change. In an analysis of employee reported values as related to human-caused climate change and the effects of leader communication on energy consumption behavior based on those individual values, results provided additional information about the potential utility of tailoring leader communication to employee values and also provided findings that informed future research directions in the area of the effect of a leader&rsquo;s verbal behavior on employee performance in context of values.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Jon S. Bailey, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Psychology. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Apr. 9, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

<p> Understanding the variables that maintain reinforcer effectiveness has important implications for basic research to inform applied behavior analysis. The goal of the current study was to investigate the combined effects of rate of reinforcement and variability in duration and delay of reinforcement on within-session changes in operant responding in two experiments. In each experiment, Wistar rats (<i>Rattus norvegicus</i>) lever pressed for liquid sucrose on three fixed interval (FI) schedules of reinforcement. In Experiment 1, subjects lever pressed for liquid sucrose on either a constant or a varied duration of access to reinforcement. In Experiment 2, subjects were exposed to a constant or variable delay of reinforcement. Results showed two fundamental properties of behavior undergoing habituation. First, within-session decreases in responding were steeper (greater habituation) at higher rates of reinforcement than at lower rates. Second, within-session rates of responding declined more slowly (slower habituation) when access to the reinforcer was presented in a variable versus constant manner. Because habituation occurs for both ingestive and noningestive stimuli, the present study adds to the body of literature on habituation and can inform clinical practice on the variables that sustain operant behavior through varying the delivery of the reinforcer.</p>

Anxiety and depressive disorders are common conditions for adolescents and are associated with significant impairments in functioning. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment modality for these youth, and the behavioral components of CBT protocols, in particular, are thought to be one of the active mechanisms through which positive symptom changes are produced. However, few procedures are available to measure the behavioral changes taking place in adolescents’ daily lives as they make therapeutic progress. This study examined adolescents’ “behavioral engagement” throughout treatment, a construct defined as time spent in social, athletic and academic activities. Behavioral engagement was measured using the Daily Phone Diary (DPD), a validated measure of daily activities utilized in the child health literature, which employs the principles of Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA). Twenty-four adolescents reported each activity they engaged in throughout the day, in chronological order, over the past 24 hours. Participants were diverse in their ages, ethnicities, socioeconomic statuses and internalizing disorder diagnoses. Activities were reported during phone calls scheduled before, during, and after treatment using a transdiagnostic formulation of CBT and, for a randomized subset of the sample (N=8), both before and following a Waitlist comparison condition. Results indicated that “behavioral engagement” is a construct that is measurable and that daily phone diaries are an acceptable method of data collection for this population. Based on theoretical and empirical literature, three key categories of activities on the DPD comprised behavioral engagement: 1) Time spent socially engaged with others; 2) Time spent on any physical or athletic activity; and 3) Time doing homework. Results supported good inter-rater reliability and potentially reasonable test-retest reliability; data collection via the DPD was feasible and acceptable in this context. Tests of convergent validity with other measures of anxiety and depressive symptoms suggested that prior to treatment, more time spent in some activity categories was associated with more internalizing symptoms for those with anxiety disorders only, but fewer internalizing symptoms for those with depression as well as anxiety. Tests of convergent validity with other measures of weekly mood were promising. Future studies will explore alternate definitions of behavioral engagement, examine this construct in a larger sample that has completed a full course of CBT, and explore this construct’s potential role as a mediator of clinical improvement.

<p> The dominant theory of PTSD and, subsequently, current gold standard PTSD treatments are based on a model of dysregulated fear. However, a growing body of research suggests that other emotional responses, like shame, are important contributors to PTSD symptom maintenance. The current study sought to forward the trauma literature by using an experimental paradigm to test if trauma survivors, especially those distressed by an interpersonal (vs. non-interpersonal) trauma, experience shame in response to day-to-day experiences of fear. This experimental study used a pre-post between group design in which participants (N = 178) were randomized to receive either a fear or neutral emotion prime with postmanipulation state shame serving as the outcome measure. As predicted, the fear emotion prime interacted with PTSD symptom level to significantly predict postmanipulation state shame. Among participants who reported an interpersonal index trauma and received the fear emotion prime, those with high PTSD symptom levels reported significantly more postmanipulation shame than those with low symptom levels. Interestingly, among participants who reported a non-interpersonal index and received the fear emotion prime, those with high PTSD symptom levels reported significantly less postmanipulation shame than those with low symptom levels. Exploratory analyses did not implicate emotion regulation skill deficits in this relationship. This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating the relationship of shame to daily experiences of fear in the maintenance of PTSD symptoms, but further exploration into the dynamics of fear, shame, and PTSD represents a priority for the field of traumatology. This is, in part, because shame may impede the treatment and emotional processing of traumas in current gold standard exposure-based treatments.</p>

Ecommerce sales were expected to increase to $4.8 trillion dollars in 2021 for online retailers in the United States. Behavioral marketers increase sales and revenue by targeting potential customers based on the use of ecommerce consumers' personal information. This correlational research study was framed with the theory of planned behavior. The participants were behavioral marketers based in the United States who completed an online survey. The data were analyzed using multiple regressions and analysis of variance analyses to answer the research question. The results of the analysis answered the research question regarding the correlation between behavioral marketer's attitudes, social norms, and perceived behavioral control (PBC), especially concerning the collection of ecommerce consumers' personal information. The results of the analyses indicated attitude is a strong predictor for behavior intention, as indicated by a positive correlation. The ρ value was greater than .05; therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected. The social norms and PBC variables were not significant. Social norms resulted in F (14,18) = 2.298, ρ = .026. The p value is less than .05; therefore, the null hypothesis was accepted. PBC results were F (78,5) = 4.263, ρ = .048. The p value was less than .05; therefore, the null hypothesis was accepted. The findings showed that behavioral marketers have a strong correlation between their attitude and intention to protect ecommerce privacy. Behavioral managers might benefit from this study and contribute to social change by taking the lead in their organizations to change data collection methods to reduce the number of security breaches.