No description available.

There is evidence that children with asthma exhibit more externalizing behaviour problems than other children. Impulsive behaviours can mark the onset and severity of externalizing behaviour problems. The present paper reports an exploratory examination of relationships between functional asthma severity and impulsivity in 6 and 7 year old children with asthma (N = 16). Participants with varying functional asthma severity were recruited at age 5 from a larger community study (the Children’s Learning Study). Parents completed items from three subscales of the Connors’ Parent Rating Scale-Revised (CPRS-R), the Hyperactive-Impulsive, Conners’ Global Index: Restless-Impulsive and the DSM-IV Hyperactive-Impulsive subscales. Children completed the Two Choice Paradigm (TCP), a computer program measuring delay aversion type impulsive behaviours. Mean (SD) CPRS-R Hyperactive-Impulsive, Conners’ Global Index: Restless-Impulsive and DSM-IV Hyperactive-Impulsive subscale scores were 59 (11), 56 (10) and 59 (10) respectively. There was no correlation between functional asthma severity and delay aversion or CPRS-R subscale scores and there was no evidence of a trend for such a relationship. Preliminary investigations conducted with a small sample of 6-7 year-old children with asthma thus suggest that functional asthma severity is not related to impulsivity.

Delay discounting involves a hypothetical choice between a smaller-sooner value and a larger-later value. Past research has demonstrated the hypothetical choices made in delay discounting correlate with actual money choices and predict impulsivity with drug use, gambling, and food choices. Though delayed discounting has been studied widely, it is unknown whether impulsivity is a characteristic trait or is influenced by contextual cues. Mindfulness has been demonstrated to improve psychological well-being in various contexts. The present study explored the effect of brief mindfulness exercises on impulsivity through a multiple baseline design across 5 participants. Results were mixed, with some participant’s AUCs increasing post-treatment and others remaining the same or decreasing. The current study raised some questions for future research regarding the contextual control of mindfulness and impulsivity.

No description available.

Decision making is heavily influenced by the environment around us. Berry et al. (2014, 2015, 2019) showed that viewing images of natural environments during the delay discounting task resulted in lower impulsive choice, as compared to viewing images of built environments or geometric figures. Berry et al. proposed that attentional factors could explain this effect, however, recent attempts to reproduce Berry et al.’s findings in a different laboratory have been unsuccessful (Johnson 2017, 2018, 2019). The present study tested if manipulating the participants’ observing responses towards different types of images (natural, built, and no images) modulates the effect reported by Berry et al. Eighty-seven college students were exposed to a matching-to-sample task aimed at increasing observation responses to the images (attentional manipulation) throughout the same delay discounting task implemented by Berry et al. (2014). It was expected that increasing the participants interaction with the images via the matching task would increase the magnitude of the effect reported by Berry et al. (2015); namely, further reduction of impulsive responses after being exposed to images of natural environments and increase of impulsive choice when exposed to built environments. Results indicated that participants who engaged in matching images of built environments had a higher rate of discounting than the group that replicated Berry et al. (2014). Matching images of natural environments did not seem to reduce impulsive choice, as predicted based on Berry et al.’s findings. Furthermore, none of the groups of the present study reproduced the rates of delay discounting originally reported by Berry et al. Participants in Berry et al., (2014) overall discounted less steeply when compared to participants in the present study. This finding resembles the results reported by Johnson et al. (2017, 2018, 2019) in their replica attempts. Lastly, participants’ self-reports regarding time spent in natural and built environments did not correlate with rate of discounting. Future research should use the number of correct responses as a measure of procedural integrity. Also, it is possible that perhaps participants failed to match more often in the built condition, and such aversive condition could have increased the impulsive choice for that group (Flora et al. 1992, 2003).

The relationship of swearing in respect to personality, religiosity, and social influences was analyzed in this study. Many assumptions are made about the effects of swear words and the act of swearing can have on an individual. The present study hypothesizes that the use of swears words is dependent on an individual's personality characteristics and that exposure first happens from an external source (mass media outlets) rather than a familiar source (family member). More specifically, extroverted personality types will be more likely to engage in the use of profanity, due to their more impulsive nature. Online surveys such as the Big Five Inventory (BFI) and The Urgency, Premeditation, Perseverance, & Sensation Impulsive Behavior Scale (UPPS-P) were used to collect data from 763 participants. The results indicated impulsivity was positively correlated with personality characteristics of neuroticism and swearing acceptance. Swearing acceptance was negatively correlated with how often participants' families took part in religious activities growing up and was positively correlated with how important religion is the participant, their family, and religious affiliation. In conclusion, familial exposure (i.e., mother) was dominant over any media source for exposure to swearing, which goes against the previous assumptions about swearing.

Convergent validity has been used to evaluate the correlation between measurement tools. Delayed discounting has been used in order to determine the impulsivity in a variety of populations. Delayed discounting tasks have historically consisted of long, time consuming surveys. These tasks present participants with questions that relate to smaller sooner, or larger later rewards following various temporal delays. The purpose of the present study was to determine the convergent validity between a brief delayed discounting survey and a long, traditional version of the survey. The traditional survey consisted of 189 questions that contained 7 temporal delays and hypothetical money amounts. The brief survey was created based on the long survey but consisted of only 7 questions. Results from this study indicate that convergent validity did not exist between the two surveys. Keywords: delayed discounting, convergent validity, impulsivity

Impulsivity and stress are two of the most important determinants of drug addiction in that both factors predict the initiation and maintenance of drug use, as well as relapse to drug taking following abstinence. Despite this combined influence, the interaction between stress and impulsivity has never been examined systematically in animal models of addiction. The objective of the current study is to examine the role of acute stress on two different measures of impulsivity in rats: the Go/No-go test measures motor impulsivity, and the Delayed Reinforcement Paradigm measures cognitive impulsivity. To determine whether a 1 hr restraint stress is physiologically stressful, blood samples from rats in Experiment 1 were taken at 5 different sampling points: baseline (0 min), reactivity (15 and 60 min) and recovery (100 and 180 min). In Experiments 2 and 3, rats were tested in either the Go/No-go test or the Delayed Reinforcement test immediately following 1 hr of restraint stress. Results from Experiment 1 show that 1 hr of restraint stress increased plasma corticosterone concentrations at 15 min and 60 min; corticosterone concentrations returned to baseline levels by 100 min. Following stress, the percentage of Go interval responding was not altered during Go/No-go testing (Experiment 2), nor were there changes in the indifference point values during Delayed Reinforcement testing (Experiment 3). These results suggest that 1 hr of acute stress does not increase either motor or cognitive impulsivity, and stress may influence addiction via mechanisms that are independent of impulsivity. / Thesis (Master, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2009-08-24 15:17:00.597

The present study extends previous research on self-control procedures and the transformation of stimulus functions. Using a multiple baseline design, participants were exposed to a relational responding task in which attempted to manipulate the functions of stimuli. They were exposed to a preference assessment, a naturalistic baseline, and a choice baseline before the relational training and testing were implemented. This procedure established contextual cues of more-than and less-than when paired with multiple exemplars of the stimuli during training. Re-exposure to the choice baseline was introduced in order to support the transformation of functions. Results are discussed regarding the alteration of preferences from the small, immediate reinforcer initially, to the larger, more delayed reinforcer following the intervention. Implications of the study and future research are also discussed.

Research on exotic dancers as a population indicates that exotic dancers may be a high risk population due to correlations of substance abuse and risky sexual behavior with the profession, (CDC, 2015; Sherman et. al, 2011; Reuben et. al, 2011; Forsyth & Deshotels, 1997). In delay discounting research, it has been demonstrated that populations of individuals who engage in risky sexual behavior and abuse substances have steeper rates of discounting on a delay discounting task compared to their peers (Moreira et. al, 2015; Jones et. al, 2015: Celio et al., 2016). Steeper rates of discounting indicate an increased degree of preference for smaller-sooner reward versus larger-later reward as measured by a discounting survey task with hypothetical monetary rewards and may indicate higher rates of impulsivity (Moller et al., 2001). This study sought to determine if exotic dancers delayed more steeply than restaurant worker peers. Results indicate that at longer delays, exotic dancers discount more steeply than their restaurant worker peers, which may indicate a higher degree of impulsivity among exotic dancers as a population..