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Self-Disclosure: Structure and Measurement (open access)

Self-Disclosure: Structure and Measurement

An attempt was made to determine empirically the structure of self-disclosure. Based on the literature, a list of statements relating to the rating of self-disclosure was assembled. This list was condensed into dimensions by two evaluators, working independently. The dimensions were then used to score transcripts of male undergraduate students' verbal self-disclosures. Factor analyses of these scores produced four factors relating to self-focus, intimacy or depth, risk taking, and amount. A tentative fifth factor, intimacy value of disclosure topic, was also found. Regression analysis of dimensions on the Doster (1971) Disclosure Rating Scale produced three tentative scales for measuring self-disclosure. The first scale utilized stepwise regression of all dimensions, the second used stepwise regression of mechanical dimensions, and the third regression used composite scales representing the factors of the orthogonal factor analysis. For each scale, only three dimensions were included in the regression equation.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Perl, Moshe B. (Moshe Benzion)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Assessment Center Ratings as a Function of Personality Factors, Sex and Rating System (open access)

Assessment Center Ratings as a Function of Personality Factors, Sex and Rating System

The purpose of this study was to examine the differences between the traditional global rating scale and a new behavioral rating scale in a university-based assessment center. It was hypothesized that personality factors, as measured by the 16PF and associated with the global ratings of performance would differ from those associated with the behavioral ratings of performance. It was further hypothesized that the associated personality factors would also differ for males and females. These hypotheses were ^confirmed. Pearson correlations were computed for ratings of males, females, and all subjects combined on both global and behavioral rating scales.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Brennan, Mary Maureen
System: The UNT Digital Library
Cognitive Strategies for the Control of Experimentally Induced Pain: The Role of Pleasantness and Relevance of Content in Imagery (open access)

Cognitive Strategies for the Control of Experimentally Induced Pain: The Role of Pleasantness and Relevance of Content in Imagery

This study compared the relative efficacy of four imagery techniques in increasing tolerance to cold pressor pain. Relevant pleasant, relevant unpleasant, irrelevant pleasant, and irrelevant unpleasant imagery strategies were compared in a two-way factorial design. Prior research suggested that pleasantness and relevance both affect imagery potency. This study attempted to assess the relative contribution of these two variables to increases in pain tolerance. Also investigated were the roles of several hypothesized mediating variables; namely, contextual valence, self-efficacy, treatment credibility, and involvement in imagery. The subjects were 60 female undergraduates who were randomly assigned to the four imagery groups. Two-way analysis of covariance were performed on all dependent variables, using pain threshold as the covariate. Pearons r.'s were used to test correlational hypotheses.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Geary, Thomas Dennis
System: The UNT Digital Library
Sex Role Stereotypes: The Effects of Instructional Salience on Clinical Judgment of Mental Health Professionals (open access)

Sex Role Stereotypes: The Effects of Instructional Salience on Clinical Judgment of Mental Health Professionals

This investigation examines how knowledge of a researcher's intent, as well as gender, influences the clinical judgments of mental health professionals in sex role research. Conscious awareness of the study's aim was manipulated by varying experimental instructions to minimize (not salient) or maximize (salient) sex role awareness. Subjects were mental health professionals who rated a protocol of a female or male pseudopatient exhibiting masculine, and lacking feminine, stereotyped behaviors. It was hypothesized that if sex biases affect judgments, more negative ratings should be assigned to a female with cross sex role behavior than to male-appropriate role behavior. Differences should be greater when subjects were unaware of the nature of the study.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Austad, Carol Shaw
System: The UNT Digital Library
Interpersonal Versus Impersonal Problem Solving Skills in a Public and Private Context: An Examination of the Parameters of the Learned Helplessness Model with Clinically Depressed Males (open access)

Interpersonal Versus Impersonal Problem Solving Skills in a Public and Private Context: An Examination of the Parameters of the Learned Helplessness Model with Clinically Depressed Males

Forty volunteer patients from a Veteran's Administration Hospital served as subjects for this study. On the basis of Beck Depression Inventory scores, the subjects were divided into depressed (11 and above) and nondepressed (7 and below) groups. Subjects were assigned randomly to either public condition (experimenter present with the subject during experimental procedures) or a private condition (subject performed the procedures alone). Subjects in each condition were asked to perform three tasks which varied in the amount of interpersonal involvement each required ranging from low through medium to high. The low interpersonal involvement task consisted of an anagram-solving procedure. Both the medium and high interpersonal involvement tasks employed modification of the Means-Ends Problem-Solving Procedure (MEPDS) (a measure of interpersonal problem solving ability).
Date: August 1982
Creator: Logsdon, Steven Alan
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Psychoanalytic Developmental Psychology Approach to the Classification of Separation-Individuation in the Adult (open access)

A Psychoanalytic Developmental Psychology Approach to the Classification of Separation-Individuation in the Adult

A diagnostic classification of Borderline subgroups was developed for the purpose of reducing the current ambiguities existing in the range of pathologies between the psychoses and neuroses. This classification is a questionnaire of forty items and is intended to be used in treatment settings as a measure of object relations, i.e., of ego development and arrest. The criteria which define the Borderline subgroups were derived from the normative developmental data of Mahler, Pine, and Bergman (1975). In Experiment I, raters used the Mahler criteria as operational definitions of the developmental stages and sorted 180 items taken from Benjamin's structural Analysis Social Behavior (SASB) into the four Mahler substages. Those items which were reliably sorted eight out of nine times into the same Mahler stage or substage were retained as critical items to be administered in Experiment II to three groups of subjects. These groups consisted of nineteen schizophrenic inpatients, eighteen outpatients, and twenty nonpsychiatric volunteers. These subjects rated each item of the SASB questionnaire on a scale of 0 to 100; means for each type of psychiatric group according to sex were submitted to a repeated measures 2 (sex) X 3 (group) X 4 (Mahler substage) Analysis of Variance.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Little, Myrna M. (Myrna Marie)
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Multifaceted Treatment for Myofascial-Pain Dysfunction: A Comparison of Treatment Components (open access)

A Multifaceted Treatment for Myofascial-Pain Dysfunction: A Comparison of Treatment Components

This study compared the clinical effectiveness of cognitively oriented stress-coping training with and without biofeedback training to biofeedback training only in the treatment of myofascial pain dysfunction (MPDS). These groups were also compared to a fourth treatment consisting of pseudo-biofeedback plus stress-coping training. Subjects were 32 adults suffering from MPDS who had failed to previously profit from other treatments. Subjects averaged 33.5 years of age and 58.7 months of myofascial pain. Treatement consisted of 10 individual sessions over a five-week period. Stress-coping training was designed to teach subjects to monitor their congitive responses to stress-eliciting situations and to learn cognitive coping skills. Biofeedback training was designed to provide relaxation skills that would enable subjects to reduce masseter muscle tension (EMG). Subjects receiving pseudo-biofeedback training did not receive veridical feedback training.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Waid, Lewis R. (Lewis Randolph)
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Comparison of Biofeedback and Cognitive Therapy in the Control of Blood Pressure Under Stress and No-Stress Conditions (open access)

A Comparison of Biofeedback and Cognitive Therapy in the Control of Blood Pressure Under Stress and No-Stress Conditions

This study evaluated the efficacy of cognitive therapy and biofeedback training in lowering Dlood pressures of normotensives under no-stress and stress conditions. A cognitive therapy group was compared to biofeedback and habituation control groups with 32 normotensives. Subjects were taught to use the electronic sphygmomanometer that served as the device to measure blood pressure during pretreatment and posttreatment phases of the study. These measurement phases each consisted of three 19 minute periods. Trie first period consisted of no-stress, and then a stress period followed. Return-to-no-stress was the final period. Subjects in the cognitive therapy and biofeedbacK groups received five sessions of self-control training of 66 minutes each between the pre- and posttreatment phases. The cold pressor was the analogue stressor used to induce bxood pressure elevations,
Date: August 1982
Creator: Dafter, Roger E. (Roger Edwin)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Sex-Role and Self-Concept Among Prisoners (open access)

Sex-Role and Self-Concept Among Prisoners

This study was undertaken to examine possible relationships among sex-role types, self-concept, and length of incarceration in residents at a federal minimum security co-correctional prison. Twelve female and 53 male subjects completed the Zung Self-rating Depression Scale, StateTrait Anxiety Scale, Bern Sex-Role Inventory, Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, Self-Concept Scale, and a Reaction to Imprisonment Q-sort. MMPI scores and demographic data for each subject were obtained from institution records. Subjects were divided into three groups (New, N = 25; Three Month, N = 20; and One Year, N = 20) on the basis of the length of time they had been incarcerated. Those in the New group were retested with all instruments except the MMPI after they had been imprisoned approximately three months. Instruments were administered only once to the other groups. On the basis of scores on the Bern Sex-Role Inventory, subjects were classified by sex—role type (masculine, feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated). Discriminant function analyses were used as an initial screen to determine which of the dependent variables might contribute to the "simple effects" factors of the main multivariate analysis of variance procedure.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Roberts, Dan H. (Dan Haynes)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Cognitive Evaluation Theory Applied to Nonhuman Subjects (open access)

Cognitive Evaluation Theory Applied to Nonhuman Subjects

The Cognitive Evaluation Theory explains the outcomes of studies employing Deci's paradigm, but only when used post hoc. A basic assumption is that extrinsic rewards always increase intrinsic motivation for nonhuman subjects. Deci's paradigm was modified for use with 22 rats to test this assumption. Running in an exercise wheel was the intrinsically motivated activity studied. ANCOVA revealed that external rewards increased intrinsic interest on the first day following the cessation of reinforcement (F = 8.32), but on two subsequent days and again a week later, no significant differences between the reward and control groups were evident (F = .29; F = .33; F = 3.70). The assumption was not supported. It was demonstrated that repeated posttest measures are necessary to avoid basing conclusions upon one point along the extinction continuum.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Hafer, Donald G.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Development of an Intelligence Scoring System for Human Figure Drawings (open access)

Development of an Intelligence Scoring System for Human Figure Drawings

This research proposed developing a multivariate intelligence scoring system for human figure drawings. The 115 subjects were drawn from clinical, medical, and noninstitutionalized populations. Initially, 72 of these drawings were analyzed for detail, proportion, perspective, and overall quality. The initial factor analysis revealed two factors corresponding roughly to the WAIS Verbal Comprehension and Perceptual Organization factors. DAP items evidencing high colinearity with FSIQ were retained. Two-stage regression of DAP items within subtests onto the WVAIS FSIQ using the data from all 115 subjects yielded the final model (R = 0.85, p < 0.0001). Cronbach's Alpha and mean item commonality were computed as estimates of internal consistency (0.95 to 0.999). A second factor analysis revealed six factors associated with intelligence in the DAP.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Hickox, Sherrie Danene
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Effects of Educational Level on the Appreciation of Sexist Humor (open access)

The Effects of Educational Level on the Appreciation of Sexist Humor

Superiority, control, and dominance theories of disparaging humor were reviewed, and sexist humor was studied as representative of the field. The effects of educational level and sex of subject on the judgment of humor in sexist material were investigated, utilizing a set of 50 cartoons and jokes devised to approximate overlapping standard curves on the dimensions sexist content and humor. Subjects were 71 males and 73 females, comprising 84 undergraduates and 60 doctoral graduate students. Each subject performed a forced Q sort of the jokes, with 104 rating for humor and 40 rating for sexism to establish content weights. Subjects' rankings, age, sex, and educational level were recorded upon completion of the task. Significant negative correlations were found between educational level and judgment of humor in sexist material, and female subjects judged sexist material to be significantly less funny than males. Some support was indicated for existing theories.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Gravley, Norma J. (Norma Jean)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Locus of Control as a Function of Seminary Training (open access)

Locus of Control as a Function of Seminary Training

This study sought to determine if the locus of control of seminarians is altered as a result of graduate theological training. Gaskins' (1978) locus of control scale was selected because it included God as one of several external controls. This scale was either mailed or administered directly to first year and graduating students from two Southern Baptist and two Disciples of Christ seminaries. The 187 responses revealed no significant difference between the locus of control scores of the two levels despite the fact that all but one school reported mean graduating scores lower than their first year average. The effects of seminary on locus of control appears to be statistically insignificant.
Date: August 1982
Creator: Nicholson, Stephen David
System: The UNT Digital Library