Examination of the structure of autism symptoms is critical to understanding of the phenotype and is particularly timely given changes proposed for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5; http://www.dsm5.org). Factor structure has been rarely studied in toddlers, although this developmental period represents the earliest manifestations of autism symptoms. The present study examined factor structure in a sample of toddlers between 12 and 30 months (M=20.37, SD=3.32) diagnosed with ASD and drawn from a community-based screening study and children referred for evaluation (N=237). Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were conducted comparing the relative fit of four previously proposed models: DSM-5, DSM-IV, one-factor, and alterative three-factor model proposed by van Lang. Results indicated that the DSM-5 provided the best fit to the data with all measures indicating good fit. Indictors for the CFAs, drawn from the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule - Toddler Module, loaded strongly onto the latent factors, supporting the re-organization of symptoms proposed for DSM-5. Together, results indicate that autism symptoms are fractionable and best reduced into the two-factor structure proposed for DSM-5. Consistency of the present results in toddlers with previous studies in older children and adults suggests that the structure of autism symptoms may be similar throughout development. Implications for early screening and diagnosis, and developmental trajectories are discussed. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Summer Semester, 2012. / July 2, 2012. / autism spectrum disorder, confirmatory factor analysis, DSM-5, phenotype, toddlers / Includes bibliographical references. / Amy Wetherby, Professor Directing Thesis; Chris Schatschneider, Committee Member; Janet Kistner, Committee Member.

The Lexical Restructuring Model (LRM; Metsala & Walley, 1998) attempts to explain the development of phonological awareness. According to the LRM, as children's vocabularies increase, children develop a more refined lexical representation of the sounds of which those words are comprised, and, in turn children become more sensitive to the detection of specific phonemes. The LRM identifies several lexical characteristics of words that influence children's phonological awareness skills: age of acquisition (AoA), word frequency, neighborhood density, and phonotactic probability. In this study, the effects of these lexical characteristics on children's performance on phonological awareness tasks were evaluated. Additionally, moderation of these effects by children's oral language skills and ages was tested. This study involved two independent samples of preschool children (Ns = 392 and 814) who completed measures of phonological awareness (blending and elision) and oral language. For both samples, AoA and word frequency were negatively related to phonological awareness skills, and phonotactic probability was positively related to phonological awareness skills. Children's ages and oral language skills were positive predictors of phonological awareness skills, and children's ages moderated the relations between AoA and phonological awareness skills for children in Sample 2. Children's oral language skills moderated the relations between AoA and phonological awareness skills for children in Sample 1. Results for AoA and phonotactic probability were consistent with the LRM; however, results for word frequency and neighborhood density were not. Implications and potential necessary re-conceptualizations of the LRM are discussed. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Spring Semester, 2012. / March 20, 2012. / Age of Acquisition, Lexical Restructuring Model, Neighborhood Density, Phonological Awareness, Phonotactic Probability, Word Frequency / Includes bibliographical references. / Christopher J. Lonigan, Professor Directing Thesis; Christopher Schatschneider, Committee Member; Jon Maner, Committee Member.

Therapeutic jurisprudence is the hypothesis that the law itself can have therapeutic and/or anti-therapeutic consequences. Therapeutic jurisprudence is an important element in mental health courts because these specialty courts operate on the assumption that the principles of therapeutic jurisprudence reduce recidivism rates. Previous research has shown that mental health courts have been successful in reducing the rates of recidivism among mentally ill offenders. However, none of these studies, to date, have examined exactly what aspect of the court reduces these rates of recidivism and what makes them successful. The current study utilized a sample of 291 mentally ill criminal offenders participating in a mental health court to examine whether those participants who had the targeted therapeutic jurisprudence variable of communication with the judge had a reduction in recidivism rates, technical violations, and severity of new charges in comparison to those who did not. Analyses did not provide support for any of the hypotheses. However, females were shown to be have more communications with the judge, take longer in days to reoffend, and were more likely to be present in the courtroom than males. Implications and suggestions for future research examining therapeutic jurisprudence are discussed. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Spring Semester, 2012. / December 6, 2011. / Mental Health Court, Mentally criminal defendants, Recidivism, Therapeutic Jurisprudence / Includes bibliographical references. / Joyce L. Carbonell, Professor Directing Thesis; E. Ashby Plant, Committee Member; Edward Bernat, Committee Member.

Emotions are automatically expressed, automatically detected, and provide a glimpse into an individual's personality and motivations. Based on this, we hypothesized that providing individuals with information about a target's emotional state would increase the extent to which those individuals felt they had learned something about the target's personality. We tested this hypothesis in 2 studies. Study 1 showed that adding emotional information to an account of a target's action increased perceived learning about that target's personality. Study 2 showed that this effect was due to the emotional nature of the added information and not merely to increased sentence length. These results suggest that emotions serve to convey information about inner states to others, and that individuals use this information when forming dispositional judgments. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Summer Semester, 2011. / June 27, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references. / Roy F. Baumeister, Professor Directing Thesis; Jon Maner, Committee Member; Walter Boot, Committee Member; Michael Bishop, Committee Member.

Recent studies (Gray & Fu, 2004; Fu & Gray, 2006) suggest that when information needed to complete a task from a computer display takes longer than the time to retrieve it from memory, then people will automatically use their error-prone memory instead of the accurate information on the display. This is called the soft constraints hypothesis. Soft constraints, like time delays, dictate strategy selection at the local level affecting the body's eye and hand movements and choice of cognitive functions. It was hypothesized that adding time pressure to a task and inhibiting feedback would emphasize local performance and adding time delays that make the computer appear slow would encourage people to adopt a strategy of speed over accuracy. The major results indicate that time delays, inhibited feedback, and time pressure did not affect strategy. Evidence was found suggesting that participants adopted a stable strategy using heuristics (Simon, 1990) that emphasized the use of memory, with few trials ending in error, and also produced relatively fast trial times. Explanations for the results based on metacognition and task differences, and ideas for future studies, are discussed. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Fall Semester, 2011. / September 12, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references. / Michael Kaschak, Professor Directing Thesis; Colleen Kelley, Committee Member; Jon Maner, Committee Member.

Eating disorders are serious psychiatric illnesses associated with high rates of suicidal behavior. One potential explanation for the increased rate of suicidality in individuals with eating disorders is the high rate of comorbidity between eating disorders and other psychopathology (e.g. mood, anxiety, and substance use disorders) that have also been found to be associated with suicidal behavior. Few studies have examined whether eating disorders are uniquely associated with suicidality, thus, the current study examined the independent association between eating disorders and suicidality in women using a university-based epidemiological study (N=364). Results indicated that eating disorders were significantly associated with suicidality even in individuals absent any lifetime mood, anxiety, and substance use disorders. Additionally, anorexia nervosa was uniquely associated with both lifetime suicidality and suicidality severity. Findings from the current study highlight the need to monitor risk of suicidality and the need for added care in the standardized assessment of suicidality in all individuals with eating disorders regardless of comorbidity status. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Fall Semester, 2011. / October 11, 2011. / Anorexia Nervosa, Eating Disorders, Suicidality, Suicide / Includes bibliographical references. / Pamela K. Keel, Professor Co-Directing Thesis; Thomas E. Joiner, Professor Co-Directing Thesis; Carol Connor, Committee Member.

It is generally accepted that atypical afferent input to sensory systems during development can lead to a number of abnormalities in target neurons and can even end in cell death. The brainstem auditory system of the chick proves to be a useful model for examining deafferentation-induced changes. Within the auditory brainstem of the chick, the VIIIth cranial nerve bifurcates, transmitting information from the cochlea to two nuclei, Nucleus Angularis (NA) and Nucleus Magnocellularis (NM), providing these neuronal populations with their sole excitatory input. The elimination of afferent drive through cochlear ablation results in the death of approximately 30% of neurons in NM and some assays can segregate cells into living and dying populations by ~6 hrs following deafferentation. A disruption in cellular metabolism, including the rise in intracellular calcium and reduction in protein synthesis, can be visualized as early as 1 hr following cochlea removal. The early changes that occur following deafening can be investigated through the use of an in vitro slice preparation and suggest that loss of mGluR activation is responsible for the rapid changes that occur as a result of afferent deprivation. Two major limitations exist with the current data: first, mGluR effects have only been established through in vitro studies for early changes that are observed in all deafferented neurons, from which most of the cells (70%) recover. Consequently, it is not known if mGluR activation is truly necessary to prevent the ultimate death of the subpopulation of NM neurons in an intact animal. Second, it is not known if mGluR activation is sufficient to maintain the metabolic machinery of NM neurons in a healthy state or if other activity-dependent factors are also necessary. Novel in vivo and in vitro methods were utilized to assess both mGluR receptor blockade and activation, respectively. The role of mGluRs in the intact system was investigated by pharmacologically blocking mGluR receptors in NM over various times following cochlea removal. The second set of experiments in this work investigated the sufficiency of mGluR activation in maintaining postsynaptic metabolic machinery of NM through the focal, periodic application of agonists via pressure ejection to neurons on one side of an in vitro slice preparation leaving the opposite side of the same slice unaffected. Both experiments demonstrated that NM neurons rely on mGluR activation for survival and normal neuronal maintenance. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2012. / March 29, 2012. / Auditory System, Cell Death, Deafferentation, mGluRs, Nucleus Magnocellularis, Y10B / Includes bibliographical references. / Richard L. Hyson, Professor Directing Dissertation; Joanne Lasker, University Representative; Barbara Licht, Committee Member; Frank Johnson, Committee Member; Michael Meredith, Committee Member.

Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death among 15-24 year olds in the United States (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2007). It is believed to be the second leading cause of death in college populations (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2007). There has been debate about whether screening for suicide, especially in the adolescent population, may be iatrogenic. The current study sought to examine whether suicide risk assessment is iatrogenic in an adult population. Additionally, the presence of iatrogenic effects were examined at the implicit level using the suicide implicit association task (S-IAT; Nock et al., 2010). Results found no evidence of iatrogenic effect after being assessed for suicidality. Additionally, at risk individuals (i.e., history of suicide attempts) showed lower implicit associations than did similar control participants. Implications and limitations are discussed. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2012. / May 31, 2012. / risk assessment, Suicide / Includes bibliographical references. / Thomas Joiner, Professor Directing Dissertation; Julianna Baggott, University Representative; Frank Johnson, Committee Member; Janet Kistner, Committee Member; Jesse Cougle, Committee Member.

Recent research on alcohol-placebo manipulations has challenged the traditional notion that consumption of placebo beverages reliably results in decreased performance on a variety of tasks due to assumption of an intoxicated role. Instead, it appears that under certain circumstances participants may engage in compensatory behaviors in an adaptation to overcome the anticipated deleterious effects of alcohol intoxication and that this compensation can sometimes improve performance of those who receive placebos relative to simple no-alcohol control drinks. The current study sought to determine what effect motivation might have on the compensatory behavior of alcohol-placebo participants on a variety of cognitive tasks that have been shown to be negatively affected by alcohol intoxication. Seventy-two undergraduates (36 female) were administered an alcohol-placebo beverage or a non-alcoholic beverage whose content was accurately portrayed. Participants were randomly assigned to a no-motivation condition in which they were told that the cognitive tasks were exploratory in nature or a high-motivation condition in which they were given financial incentives for good performance, as well as informed that the tasks measure "intelligence" and "cognitive flexibility". After drinking, participants completed a variety of cognitive tasks including measures of processing speed, ability to inhibit prepotent responses, working memory, and divided attention. Results indicated that whereas increasing motivation only resulted in improved performance on one out of the five tasks included in this study, providing participants with placebo beverages led to increases in cognitive task performance on the three most cognitively demanding tasks. This pattern of results indicated that compensatory effects in placebo conditions are widespread and robust. One explanation for these compensatory effects is that they are driven by well-learned adaptations acquired through repeated experiences attempting to overcome deleterious effects of intoxication in critical cognitive domains. Further, it appears that the compensatory effects are to some extent automatic because if they were attributable to volitional effort moderated by obvious incentives, one would have expected improved performance in the High Motivation condition, but this was evident on only one task. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2012. / June 12, 2012. / alcohol, cognitive, compensatory, motivation, performance, placebo / Includes bibliographical references. / Alan R. Lang, Professor Directing Dissertation; Karen Randolph, University Representative; Ashby Plant, Committee Member; Colleen Kelley, Committee Member; Edward Bernat, Committee Member.

Little is known about emotional processing in individuals with Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD). Research shows that HPD is correlated with psychopathy and both disorders are associated with a deficit in emotional experience. If this relationship is due to shared underlying etiology, individuals with HPD might exhibit an emotional processing abnormality similar to what has been found in individuals with psychopathy. This study examined emotional processing in a sample of college students exhibiting a range of symptoms of HPD by using a startle eye blink paradigm and a lexical decision task. It was hypothesized that a higher number of histrionic symptoms would predict a decreased potentiation of startle eye blink response to negatively valenced pictures, as well as a decrease in emotional facilitation (an increase in reaction time) in the processing of emotional words, after controlling for psychopathic traits. These hypotheses were not supported by the data, suggesting that symptoms of HPD may not be related to abnormal emotional processing. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Fall Semester, 2011. / August 24, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references. / Jeanette Taylor, Professor Directing Thesis; Joyce Carbonell, Committee Member; Michael Kaschak, Committee Member.