Traumatic events have the capability to alter people’s psychological, biological, and social functioning to a significant degree (van der Kolk & McFarlane, 1996). As a result, there has been a growing need to develop increasingly more sophisticated models to understand the complexities of people’s responses to trauma (Luxenberg & Levin, 2004). Undergraduate students (N = 391) completed surveys designed to measure past trauma, trauma-related symptoms, self-regulation, executive functioning, and coping abilities. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire, a modified version of the Early Trauma Inventory Self-Report – Short Form (ETISR-SF; Bremner, Vermetten, & Masure, 2000), the Trauma Symptom Inventory – Alternate Form (TSI-A; Briere, 1995), the Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX; Wilson, Alderman, Burgess, Emslie, & Evans, 1996), the Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SRQ; Brown, Miller, & Lawendowski, 1999), and the Coping Resources Inventory for Stress – Short Form (CRIS-SF; Curlette & Matheny, 2008). Structural equation modeling (SEM) was utilized to simultaneously assess the relationships between variables. On average, participants reported experiencing 2.5 non-interpersonal traumatic events and 3.5 interpersonal traumatic events. Results revealed that overall, self-regulation, executive functioning, and tension control were important mediating variables in the relation between experiencing a trauma and resulting symptoms. Implications for clinicians working with individuals who experienced trauma and implications for future research are discussed.

Advances in cancer treatment have led to a significant increase in the number of pediatric oncology survivors. These survivors often have late effects in their cognitive, academic, executive, and psychological functioning subsequent to their chemotherapy and radiation treatment. In particular, executive functioning (EF), which is crucial for cognitive and academic functioning, has been recognized as an area that is impacted by treatment. Several studies have described cognitive remediation programs that seek to improve EF skills in pediatric oncology survivors. Although these programs have led to improvements in EF skills, they are often difficult to replicate due to the extensive time requirement. Many survivors also experience distress and anxiety and would likely benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy, which has been shown to be an effective intervention for children with internalizing disorders. Thus, a brief intervention that combines treatment for executive functioning and psychological distress is warranted. A mixed methods study was conducted to evaluate the impact of a nine-week blended cognitive remediation and cognitive behavior therapy group for pediatric oncology survivors and their parents. Participants were pediatric cancer survivors, age 9-14, and their parents who were referred through a local children's hospital that specialized in oncology treatment. Pre and post measures of EF, psychological functioning, and parental stress were examined. Semi-structured interviews with participants and their parents were completed and analyzed to learn more about the function of short-term group therapy for pediatric oncology survivors. Content analysis of the parent support group sessions was also conducted. Significant changes were found for youth internalizing symptoms, youth adaptive skills, youth executive functioning, and parental stress. There was also a positive correlation between parental stress and parent-rated youth internalizing problems as well as parent-rated youth behavioral symptoms and a negative correlation between parental stress and parent-rated youth adaptive behavior. Qualitative interviews indicated that participants felt that the intervention was helpful. Themes from the parent group included the challenge of managing late effects, balancing multiple roles, and coping with distress. Implications, limitations, and recommendations for further areas of research are presented. / text

Deception is not only part of daily life for adults, but it is also part of typical development throughout childhood. Research has shown that the ability to deceive improves with age and has been found to be related to the development of cognitive skills such as executive functioning processes, theory of mind, and intelligence. However for some children, lie-telling becomes problematic and atypical. For children with conduct problems, deception is one of the most common presenting symptoms and has been found to be pervasive across childhood and into adolescence. While most studies analyze the lying behaviours of these children based on parent and teacher reports, no studies have yet empirically evaluated the actual deceptive behaviours of children with severe conduct problems. The current study investigated the antisocial and prosocial deception rates and abilities of children with and without severe conduct problems. Additionally, cognitive measures and parental reports of lying and parenting styles were considered in order to determine how such variables may be related to deception. A total of 66 children participated in the current study with half of the sample originating from a community agency for children with behaviour problems and the other half consisting of an age- and gender-matched control sample. Results demonstrated that compared to their typically developing counterparts, children with conduct problems were more likely to behave antisocially by committing antisocial transgressions, and subsequently lying. These children were also less likely to tell prosocial lies. Consistent with previous research, many cognitive measures, such as Executive Functioning (e.g., inhibition) and Theory of Mind (1st and 2nd Order) were found to be related to deception for the typically developing sample, though fewer and different cognitive measures were found to be predictive of deception within the clinical sample. Parent ratings of lie-telling frequency were not predictive of antisocial or prosocial deception, though they were predictive of antisocial lie-telling sophistication. Parenting styles were minimally predictive of deception. Results suggest that the mechanisms used by children with conduct problems during deception differ from a typically developing sample. Limitations as well as implications are discussed.

Deception is not only part of daily life for adults, but it is also part of typical development throughout childhood. Research has shown that the ability to deceive improves with age and has been found to be related to the development of cognitive skills such as executive functioning processes, theory of mind, and intelligence. However for some children, lie-telling becomes problematic and atypical. For children with conduct problems, deception is one of the most common presenting symptoms and has been found to be pervasive across childhood and into adolescence. While most studies analyze the lying behaviours of these children based on parent and teacher reports, no studies have yet empirically evaluated the actual deceptive behaviours of children with severe conduct problems. The current study investigated the antisocial and prosocial deception rates and abilities of children with and without severe conduct problems. Additionally, cognitive measures and parental reports of lying and parenting styles were considered in order to determine how such variables may be related to deception. A total of 66 children participated in the current study with half of the sample originating from a community agency for children with behaviour problems and the other half consisting of an age- and gender-matched control sample. Results demonstrated that compared to their typically developing counterparts, children with conduct problems were more likely to behave antisocially by committing antisocial transgressions, and subsequently lying. These children were also less likely to tell prosocial lies. Consistent with previous research, many cognitive measures, such as Executive Functioning (e.g., inhibition) and Theory of Mind (1st and 2nd Order) were found to be related to deception for the typically developing sample, though fewer and different cognitive measures were found to be predictive of deception within the clinical sample. Parent ratings of lie-telling frequency were not predictive of antisocial or prosocial deception, though they were predictive of antisocial lie-telling sophistication. Parenting styles were minimally predictive of deception. Results suggest that the mechanisms used by children with conduct problems during deception differ from a typically developing sample. Limitations as well as implications are discussed.

Chronic pain patients have poorer pain inhibition, self-regulatory ability, executive functioning and autonomic inhibition than those without pain, supporting the view that suppressing pain is mentally taxing. In the current study, an alternate explanation was proposed; namely, that pain inhibition, self-regulation, executive functions, and heart rate variability (HRV) are all controlled by the same general inhibitory system. To test this hypothesis, participants came into the laboratory for three sessions. At the first session, individual differences in pain thresholds, self-regulatory strength, executive functioning, and HRV were measured. At the second and third sessions, self-regulatory persistence and within-session changes in pain thresholds were measured under conditions of high and low self-regulatory fatigue. Results revealed that those low in inhibitory strength, operationalized as the aggregate of pain inhibition, self-regulation, executive functioning, and HRV, became more sensitive to pain under conditions of self-regulatory fatigue, whereas no significant changes in pain threshold were found for those high in inhibitory strength. Additional analyses revealed that high baseline pain threshold marginally protected against the effects of self-regulatory fatigue. The findings provide some support for a general inhibitory system and suggest that physiological inhibition of pain and autonomic activity may be influenced by phasic self-regulatory fatigue.

In this experiment I investigated the relationship between set-switching and transfer learning, both of which presumably invoke executive functioning (EF), which may in turn be correlated with intelligence. Set-switching was measured by a computerized version of the Wisconsin Card Sort Task. Another computer task was written to measure learning-transfer ability. The data indicate little correlation between the ability to transfer learning and the capacity for set-switching. That is, these abilities may draw from independent cognitive mechanisms. The major difference may be requirement to utilize previous learning in a new way in the learning-transfer task.

Objective: Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is a permanent developmental disorder that can occur if women drink alcohol while pregnant. Despite substantial variability in FASD as a population, anecdotal evidence and clinical reports suggest that affected individuals have difficulty learning from experience and generalizing information from one situation to another, and tend to make the same mistakes over and over. Consistent with research in cognitive and educational psychology, these difficulties were conceptualized as impairments in “transfer of learning.” This dissertation sought to measure transfer of learning using three experimental transfer measures and an exploratory parental transfer questionnaire. In addition, performance on the experimental transfer measures was investigated in relation to aspects of executive functioning, because abilities thought to underlie successful transfer bear much resemblance to aspects of executive functioning. Participants and Methods: The sample included 16 children diagnosed with FASD and 16 age- and gender-matched control children. Children were screened for intelligence and excluded if their performance on both Vocabulary and Matrix Reasoning from the WISC-IV fell below the 9th percentile. Children completed three transfer tasks: (1) a novel, experimental modification of the Tower of Hanoi involving nested plastic cups and Tupperware containers; (2) a variation of Chen’s (1996) Bead Retrieval Problem; and (3) the Purdue Pegboard. Participants also completed three executive functioning tasks that were selected to measure concept formation and flexibility: (1) Picture Concepts from the WISC-IV; (2) the D-KEFS Color-Word Interference Test; and (3) the Visual-Verbal Test. In addition, parents or caregivers completed an exploratory questionnaire designed to assess children’s transfer of learning abilities in everyday life, along with the ABAS-II, a standardized measure of adaptive functioning. Results: Children with FASD displayed significantly weaker performance on the Transfer Condition of the Tower of Hanoi, even after controlling for intelligence. Group differences were not observed on the Bead Retrieval Problem or on the Purdue Pegboard. On the measures of executive functioning, control children outperformed those with FASD on all measures before controlling for intelligence. In addition, there was a significant relationship between the Tower of Hanoi and the Visual-Verbal Test; the latter was the only executive functioning task related to transfer of learning. This finding, however, did not persist when intelligence was accounted for. After controlling for intelligence, significant group differences also were found on parental ratings of everyday transfer ability and on more complex aspects of adaptive functioning. Conclusions: Two out of four newly created measures in this exploratory dissertation provided partial support for weak transfer of learning in FASD. This was observed on the modified Tower of Hanoi, which shared an identical structure between conditions but differed in surface appearance. Parental ratings also indicated weak transfer of learning, although in children with FASD, these reports did not correlate with transfer abilities on the Tower of Hanoi. Children with FASD also demonstrated weak executive functioning, but this weakness was moderated significantly by intelligence. The relationship between transfer of learning and executive functioning appeared to be driven primarily by cognitive flexibility, although this relationship also was moderated by intelligence.

The consequence of many psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinson's disease and schizophrenia, is an impairment in ‘executive functioning'; an umbrella term for several cognitive processes, including the focussing and shifting of attention and the inhibition of responding. The ability to form an ‘attentional set' involves learning to discriminate qualities of a multidimensional cue, and to subsequently learn which quality is relevant, and therefore predictive of reward. According to recent research, the subthalamic nucleus (STN) and possibly the adjacent zona incerta (ZI) may mediate the formation of attentional set. Dysregulation of the STN as a result of Parkinson's disease contributes to characteristic motor symptoms, and whilst deep-brain stimulation of this region may treat gross motor impairments, it may also impair cognition. The work in this thesis aimed to expand our understanding of the mechanisms of attentional set-formation, and the role of the STN in this process. This thesis evaluates new methods for examining set-formation in the attentional set-shifting task; rather than inferring this behaviour solely from the cost of shifting set, modifications to the task design in Chapters 3 & 4 explored several hypotheses designed to exploit a deficit in this behaviour. Chapter 6 revealed that inhibition of this region with designer receptors leads to a disruption in attentional selectivity, which compromises the ability to form an attentional set. This manifested as an inability to parse relevant information from irrelevant, and instead, animals learned the stimuli holistically. The findings in this thesis also suggested that reversal and attentional shifting processes do not operate independently, but rather in a hierarchy, and that consequently, the STN is a region that may be crucial in selecting appropriate responses during associative learning that leads to the formation of an attentional set.

Este trabalho teve como objetivo principal investigar o desempenho das funções executivas (FEs), a relação com a velocidade de processamento da informação e com medidas subjetivas e fisiológica do estresse em indivíduos diagnosticados com Esclerose Múltipla (EM) com incapacidade leve e moderada, avaliada pela Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS). O primeiro estudo corresponde a uma revisão sistemática da literatura sobre o estresse e as FEs na EM. No segundo estudo, foram apresentados os dados da comparação entre grupos no desempenho FEs e as correlações entre a cognição e a velocidade de processamento da informação. Os grupos estudados foram: controles saudáveis (n = 35); EM com EDDS 3 (n = 37); EM com EDSS entre 4-6 (n = 32). O grupo de EM com EDSS entre 4-6 apresentou pior desempenho em controle inibitório e planejamento em comparação aos demais grupos, sendo que as correlações significativas entre a velocidade de processamento da informação e o desempenho das FEs estiveram mais presentes no grupo controle e de EM com EDDS 3. No terceiro estudo, foram apresentados dados das correlações entre as FEs e medidas de estresse através da percepção e do cortisol no grupo de controles saudáveis (n = 35) e de EM (n = 69). Os dados mostraram mínimas associações entre o cortisol, especialmente, no controle inibitório e a influência de baixos níveis de cortisol na resolução de problemas⁄flexibilidade cognitiva no grupo de EM em comparação ao grupo de controles saudáveis. Concluiu-se que o desempenho das FEs pode estar associado ao nível de incapacidade medido pela EDSS de indivíduos diagnosticados com EM, sendo que a velocidade de processamento da informação parece não estar associada, de forma significativa, às FEs de indivíduos com maior incapacidade. Na presente amostra, o estresse percebido não esteve associado às FEs, porém, níveis baixos de cortisol parecem prejudicar determinados subcomponentes executivos no grupo de EM. Dados da revisão sistemática mostraram uma associação indireta entre a percepção do estresse a o desempenho das FEs após diferentes intervenções. / The main objective of this study was to investigate the performance of executive functions (EF), the relationship with information processing speed and subjective and physiological measures of stress in individuals diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS); mild and moderate disability, evaluated by Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS). Initially, the literature on stress and EF in MS is systematically reviewed. In the second study, we present the data of the comparison between groups in the EF performance and the correlations between the cognition and the speed of information processing. The groups studied were: healthy controls (n = 35); MS with EDDS 3 (n = 37); MS with EDSS between 4-6 (n = 32). The MS group with EDSS between 4-6 had worse performance in inhibitory control and planning in comparison to the other groups, and the significant correlations between the information processing speed and the performance of the EF were more evident in the control and MS groups with EDDS 3. In the third study, data are presented on correlations between EF and stress measures through perception and cortisol in healthy controls (n = 35) and MS (n = 69). The data showed minimal associations between cortisol, especially the influence of low cortisol levels on inhibitory control and problem-solving-cognitive flexibility in the MS group compared to the healthy controls group. We concluded that the performance of EF may be associated with the level of disability measured by the EDSS of individuals diagnosed with MS, and the speed of information processing seems not to be significantly associated to the EF of individuals with greater disability. In the present sample, perceived stress was not associated with EF, but low levels of cortisol appear to impair certain executive subcomponents in the MS group. However, data from the systematic review showed an indirect association between the perception of stress and the performance of EF after different interventions.

Objective: The purpose of this dissertation was to reproduce Thayer and Lane’s (2000) neurovisceral model by examining both tonic and phasic heart rate variability (HRV) and emotion regulation (ER), and explore the effects of brief evidence-based intervention techniques in a sample of adults with clinically elevated levels of anxiety. Methods: This was a comprehensive multi-methodological study of 34 adults (ages 19 to 63 years) with clinically elevated levels of anxiety. Study 1 examined subjective and physiological effects of implementing ER strategies in response to a well-validated emotion elicitation paradigm consisting of viewing emotion-eliciting aversive images and sentences. Study 2 employed a within-subject RCT design and compared the impact of cognitive restructuring (CR), a top-down ER technique, with open monitoring mindfulness (OM), a bottom-up ER technique. Effects of intervention on self-regulation were assessed at a physiological (i.e. HRV), behavioral (i.e. ER and executive function (EF) computerized task) and subjective (i.e. self-report questionnaires) level. Results: Study 1 revealed that tonic HRV significantly predicted perceived ER success for both top-down and bottom-up generated emotions, whereas phasic HRV only predicted perceived ER success under conditions of bottom-up emotion generation. Variability emerged in our findings depending on the unique ER strategy used. Study 2 indicated a significant time by intervention effect on phasic HRV on the ER task, where HRV decreased with CR and increased with OM. There was a main effect of age independent of intervention on the EF task, such that increased age was related to increased phasic reactivity. On the ER task, CR led to greater perceived success in cognitive reappraisal. On the EF task, CR became faster, whereas OM became slower but more accurate. Significant intervention effects were also found on self-reported anxiety and aspects of mindfulness, with greatest reductions in anxiety found in OM compared to CR. Conclusions: In keeping with the neurovisceral integration model, HRV was reduced in individuals’ with clinically elevated levels of anxiety. Moreover, our findings illustrate that the method of emotion generation and regulation matters and has a significant impact on the degree to which persons with clinical levels of anxiety are able to successfully self-regulate. Finally, our results demonstrate the utility of multi-modal assessment of cognitive and emotional dysregulation in anxiety disorders, as well as the different pathways through which different interventions can impact HRV and ameliorate symptoms of anxiety. / Graduate