M.A. - Psychology

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https://hdl.handle.net/10125/2144

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 150
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    Multisensory information processing in military and non-military contexts
    (2025) Anjum, Alian; Sinnett, Scott; Psychology
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    From Roots to Recreation: Unveiling Sakau Perceptions
    (2024) Willyander, Macmillan; Maynard, Ashley E.; Psychology
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    Targeting Trauma in Treatment for Youth with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Predictors and Outcomes
    (2023) Matro, Austen Taylor K. M.; Mueller, Charles W.; Psychology
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    Parent Perception of Teacher Quality and Teacher Cultural Sensitivity and Responsiveness as Mediators of Growth in Mathematics Understanding in Racially Minoritized and Non-Racially Minoritized Head Start Preschoolers
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Mann, Melody; Daubert, Emily N.; Xu, Yiyuan; Psychology
    The U.S. educational system fails to provide equitable educational experiences for racially minoritized students, also called racially minoritized learners (RMLs), who are from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds, including African American/Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Indigenous backgrounds. Compared to their White peers, RMLs face sociocultural disparities as early as the preschool years that can lead to early gaps in learning opportunities and achievement in fundamental academic domains, such as mathematics, which are crucial for academic and career success. In early childhood education, parent perceptions of 1) Teacher Quality and 2) Teacher Cultural Sensitivity and Responsiveness (CSR) are positively related to the mathematics understanding of RMLs. Using a large-scale data set of diverse young learners, this study evaluated the effect of parents’ perception of Head Start Teacher Quality and CSR in the early childhood Head Start centers on RMLs’ growth in mathematics understanding over the course of one preschool year. Analyses were conducted using the base year data of the 2014-2017 Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES), a nationally representative dataset of children enrolled in Head Start programs across the U.S. The goal of the current study was to evaluate whether or not RML status impacts mathematics understanding in Head Start preschoolers, and if so, to test whether Teacher Quality and Teacher Cultural Sensitivity Responsiveness mediate this relation. Children’s RML status was related to their growth in mathematics understanding in Head Start Preschool. Contrary to hypotheses, Teacher Quality and Teacher CSR were not mediators of the relation between RML Status and growth in Mathematics Understanding. Thus, the current findings do not support the hypothesis that Teacher Quality and Teacher CSR influence RMLs Mathematics Understanding over the course of the preschool year. Investigations into the current topic are timely and important as classrooms across the United States are growing to represent the cultural and linguistic diversity of the nation, but schools are failing to keep up with the changing needs of the evolving demographic of young students in the U.S.
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    The Role Of Contextual Variables In Intra- And Inter-individual Cognitive Flexibility
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Preiser, Brianna J.; Papa, Anthony; Psychology
    Background: Emotion regulation and coping theorists propose dynamic process models, which highlight the interaction of person and situation to inform adaption. The empirical research on self-regulation supports the idea that adaptive functioning is dependent on the ability to flexibly switch strategies to match the context of the situation. While flexibility has long been discussed as a hallmark of effective adaption, assessing coping response as adaptive or maladaptive by the degree of flexibility in responding is relatively new and has largely been studied by asking participants to self-report how flexible they are in approaching stressful situations. The current study examined the utility of operationalizing cognitive flexibility in terms of cognitive variability, i.e., the ability to generate multiple coping/emotion regulation strategies in response to a stressor and flexibly implement strategies based on individual assessment of situation-strategy fit. Methods: Participants were presented with hypothetical stressors across two life domains (financial, relational) and asked to generate all the possible ways they could respond. Free responses were coded into one of 11 strategy types and composite scores were calculated across the stressors to produce individual-level scores for repertoire of responses generated and situation-strategy fit. These proxies for cognitive flexibility were used in hierarchical linear regression models to determine their predictive value for subjective satisfaction with life and psychological distress outcomes. Other measures of flexibility were included to demonstrate additional predictive value of the current conceptualizations of cognitive flexibility over and above existing measures. Results: Results support predictions that individuals would respond in varied ways as situational demands placed on the participant change and point to greater demand for social support, planful problem-solving, and emotional expression in response to stress in the financial domain and greater demand for confrontation, distancing, accepting responsibility, escape-avoidance, mindfulness-acceptance, and resignation in response to stress in the relational domain. Findings support hypotheses that there is a significant predictive value of the measured ability to be flexible over existing self-report measures across outcomes. Findings indicated that increases in situation-strategy fit were predictive of increases in subjective satisfaction with life and decreases in psychological distress; increases in the repertoire of strategies generated predicted decreases in subjective satisfaction with life and increases in psychological distress. Discussion: The current study was among the first to attempt operationalization of cognitive flexibility in a contextualized and meaningful way and was successful as a proof-of-concept demonstrating individuals do select varying strategies as situational demands change. This study demonstrated fit matters and provided support for the theory and past research claiming that strategies are differentially adaptive in different contexts. More importantly, we provided a starting point to continue to build on and refine more precise ways of defining and calculating the facets of flexibility we know to be important. Future research should continue to refine measurement of cognitive flexibility, increase the number of stressors participants respond to and span measurement across other life domains, and increase measurement to multiple time points to better approximate the dynamic process of self-regulatory flexibility.