In the animal laboratory, stressors can produce the relapse of drug-seeking behaviors after the behavior has been inhibited by extinction. This type of relapse has been called stress-induced reinstatement, and it models the relapse that is commonly reported in human populations. Interestingly, in the laboratory, stress does not typically reinstate extinguished behaviors that have been reinforced by food. One account of the discrepancy is that drugs of abuse may induce stress; therefore, when organisms learn to respond for drugs, they might learn to make the response in the “context” of stress. If so, then stress-induced reinstatement may be better described as renewal in a stress context. Renewal is the type of relapse that occurs when a behavior is returned to the original training context (or is shifted to a new context) after it has been inhibited or suppressed by extinction. Although renewal has usually been studied with contexts that differ in their exteroceptive cues, interoceptive cues (e.g., mood, food deprivation, and drug states) may also provide contexts. Accordingly, if an interoceptive stress state is present when food-seeking behavior is learned, then extinguished food seeking, like drug seeking, should also renew when the organism is stressed after extinction. In this dissertation, I discuss six experiments that investigated this hypothesis. Experiment 1 found that stressors renew extinguished food-seeking if they are also present during instrumental training. Experiments 2 and 3 then provided preliminary evidence that this effect is not exclusively due to incentive learning. Experiment 4 then suggested that interoceptive stress, and not the particular stressor that produces it, may indeed serve as a general interoceptive context that controls the effect. Experiment 5 found that stressors present for acquisition but not extinction training render behavior susceptible to stress induced relapse. The final experiment found that food-reinforced behavior learned in a context created by a cocaine injection renews after cocaine administration but not after footshock stress. Overall, the results indicate that the presence of interoceptive stress stimuli may play the role of context in a renewal paradigm and promote behavioral relapse when re-encountered after extinction. The implications for relapse that often occur following successful suppression of drug use and overeating behaviors are both discussed.

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Some investigators have suggested that when material becomes more complex, an individual is forced to use an intuitive process, while others suggest that increasing complexity forces analysis. This study was an attempt to resolve this question by manipulating rate of presentation and instructions. No effect was found due to these manipulations or due to complexity. The reason is not clear, but may be due to a combination of factors which inclined the experiment in the direction of the intuitive process.

Four types of schedule interactions have been defined: positive contrast, negative contrast, positive induction, and negative induction. Most work has centered on the necessary conditions for positive contrast. One position states that a reduction in reinforcement frequency is necessary; the other view states that a reduction in response rate is necessary. Neither view can account for the occurrence of induction. The present experiment tests the hypothesis that stimulus control effects the occurrence of either contrast or induction. Three pigeons were trained to respond for primary reinforcement (strong stimulus control condition), and three pigeons were trained to respond for conditioned reinforcement (weak stimulus control condition). A response rate decrease was caused by changing the schedule of reinforcement from MULT EXT, VI 1-min, EXT, VI 1-min to MULT VI 1-min, VI 1-min, VI 1-min, VI 1-min for primary reinforcement birds, and to MULT (Chain VI 1-min, VI 1-min), (CHAIN VI 1-min, VI 1-min for conditioned reinforcement birds. Negative contract was observed for all birds receiving primary reinforcement, but positive induction occurred for two of three birds receiving conditioned reinforcement. In the next phase a response rate decrease was caused by changing the schedule to MULT VI 1-min, VI 1-min, DRO 20-sec, VI 1-min for primary reinforcement birds , and to MULT (CHAIN VI 1-min), VI 1-min, CHAIN DRO 20-sec , VI 1-min) for conditioned reinforcement birds. Two of the primary reinforcement birds showed positive contrast, while the third showed negative induction. Two of the conditioned reinforcement birds showed negative induction, while the third showed no effect. Gradients of stimulus control showed no difference between the groups due to the prolonged training before testing for stimulus control. It was concluded that differential amounts of stimulus control can account for the differences in the schedule interactions in this experiment and those observed in previous research.

A treatment program was designed to enable subjects to lose weight through the use of self-confrontation as described in Saslow (1969), and the use of the General Relationship Improvement of the Human Development Institute (HDI), Berlin and Wyckoff (1964). Self-confrontation is a programmed rehearsal of a specific problem by one person alone, for a five-minute period. The rehearsal, or self-confrontation is to be as vivid as possible, intellectually, emotionally, visually and physically. The General Relationship Improvement Program is a 10-week text, worked in pairs, which is aimed at better intrapsychic and interpersonal communication and understanding. Four matched groups were used in the study. Group I, N=10, used nutritional information. Group II: N=8, used the HDI program. Group III: N=9, used the self-confrontation technique. Group IV: N=12, used a combination of the self-confrontation technique and the HDI program. The mean weight losses were as follows: Group I: 1.25 lb. Group II: 2.75 lb. Group III: 10.89 lb. Group IV: 5.91 lb. Approximately 6 hours of experimenter time were spent in actual contact with the subjects. Only 2 weights were recorded by her, the first and the final. The others weights were self-recorded. The study was designed to continue for 12 weeks.

Coping flexibility, the ability to match coping strategy choice to the demands of a situation, has been found to diminish the effects of daily stress. Despite the importance of high levels of coping flexibility, little research has explored factors that can predict one’s ability to demonstrate coping flexibility. One promising avenue for such research is the role of sleep. This research aims to explore the importance of sleep as a predictor of daily coping flexibility across two studies. Study one consists of one hundred and fifty college student participants who were recruited in the Spring 2021 semester at the College of William & Mary and asked to complete 14 days of diaries. For each entry, participants were asked about the most stressful event they experienced that day and were asked to complete a sleep quality indicator and the Coping Flexibility Questionnaire. Study two consists of eighty-seven participants who were recruited in the Fall 2021 semester at the College of William & Mary. Participants were asked to wear a Phillips Respironics Actiwatch band that uses an accelerometer to measure sleep for one week. Participants were asked to wear their band continuously and complete self-report daily diaries assessing their sleep and coping flexibility. In study one, we did not find a significant relationship between self-report sleep quality and coping flexibility. In study two, we again did not find a significant relationship between self-report sleep quality and coping flexibility. Additionally, in study two, we did not find significant relationships between actigraphy measures (i.e., onset latency or awake periods) and coping flexibility. In exploratory analyses examining whether sleep quality predicted delayed coping flexibility, we found that awake periods predicted coping flexibility a day later than initially hypothesized, such that as awake periods increased, coping flexibility decreased. Overall, our studies fail to demonstrate self-reported sleep quality, onset latency, or awake periods as a predictor of next-day strategy-situation fit coping flexibility, but does explore potential delayed effects.

Executive functioning is an umbrella term used to describe abilities that include self-monitoring, goal-setting, planning, organization, attention, and working memory. Broadband behavior rating scales are commonly used by school psychologists and the instruments often now include an executive functioning scale. It is unknown, however, how these scales, based on a few items, compare to more extensive rating scales that solely measure executive functioning. The current study examined the overall consistency between the executive functioning scale on one broadband instrument to another instrument that assesses multiple areas of executive functioning by having teachers complete both instruments at the same point in time. The comparisons revealed statistically significant correlations, but significantly different mean scores between the executive functioning CAB-T score and the overall BRIEF score. Furthermore, classification consistency (i.e., scores from the two scales are both in the average range or clinically significant range) only occurred approximately two-thirds of the time. Thus, concerns were raised about the use of the scale from the broadband instrument as a general measure of executive functioning.

Educational research has a long history of investigating factors that are linked to improved academic performance. Here I examined research on three factors that impact academic performance—working memory (WM), cognitive load, and motivation. Although each of these factors were known to impact academic performance, there were no studies that examined the combined effect of these three factors on performance. The current study attempted to examine the potential connections between these factors, and their collective impact on strategies for learning in the context of math performance. Experiment 1 tested the impact of WM, cognitive load, and motivation for a math task in an online population, and Experiment 2 tested these impacts for an in-lab sample. In both samples, manipulations of cognitive load and motivation were ineffective, but significant relationships were discovered for individual differences on these constructs. Motivation and cognitive load were related, and so were cognitive load and WM. In addition, all of these variables were related to performance. Further research on the connections among these variables is needed to understand their relative impacts on math performance.

The present study examined differences in attentional control, attentional control self-efficacy, and coping as self-regulatory mechanisms among students with varying grade point averages (GPA) who experience posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Subjects included 58 college students from one large comprehensive university in the Mid-South who met the criteria for diagnosis of PTSS based on the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R). Three groups were created based on college GPA and graduation requirements at the university (at-risk for graduation, on-track for graduation, and ontrack for graduating with honors). Participants completed a survey that included demographics and measures of PTSS, attentional control, attentional control self-efficacy, and coping. A one-way between groups ANOVA revealed statistically significant differences in attentional control self-efficacy and avoidant coping between the Honors and At-Risk groups. The current study provides additional information and support that success for students with PTSS may be explained by their confidence in their abilities to control their attention and using less avoidant coping strategies. However, as a group, students with PTSS need strategies for increasing their attentional control, self-efficacy beliefs, and adaptive coping.