Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2009, Psychology

The experience of cancer during childhood is marked by significant challenges. In addition to the broader danger of a life threatening illness, children undergo demanding treatment protocols that disrupt daily routines and create a range of side effects that may cause both physical and emotional discomfort. While managing the demands and physical side effects of treatment, children must try to continue normal development. It is commonly suggested that children return to school while still undergoing active treatment in order to maintain academic progress and peer relationships. Nevertheless, a prolonged initial absence after diagnosis is common, and there is often concern that children will experience social difficulties when returning to school due to peer reactions to the physical side effects of treatment. This has led to suggestions that services to facilitate school reintegration should include training in social skills to help children manage illness-related social stressors. Unfortunately, there is little empirical data to guide the content or even support the need for social skills interventions at this time. In fact, there is growing evidence that many children with cancer experience quite positive social outcomes after returning to school. Specific areas of social functioning typically targeted by social skills interventions, such as social goals, knowledge of social strategies, self-efficacy for assertive social interaction, have not been examined in this population. The current study examined areas of social information processing often targeted by social skills programs in order to understand the degree to which these proposed programs may be necessary for children with cancer. Children ages 8 to 15 were recruited upon returning to school while on treatment for cancer. Data were collected in the child's classroom and home. School data collection included peer ratings of the child's social behavior and acceptance, while home data collection included chil (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kathryn Vannatta Ph.D. (Advisor); Cynthia Gerhardt Ph.D. (Committee Member); Steven Beck Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jennifer Cheavens Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2006, Psychology/Clinical

Social information-processing models provide theoretical support for an association between social cognitive processes and aggressive behavior (Crick and Dodge, 1994; Huesmann, 1998). However, little empirical research has investigated how two social cognitive factors, social goals and beliefs about the acceptability of aggressive behavior, are related to one another and how they combine to influence child behavior. The present study examined the relationship among children's social goals, retaliation beliefs, and behavior within and across best friend, sibling, and peer relationship contexts. Elementary and middle school children's desire to pursue aggressive and prosocial goals and their approval of verbal, physical, and relational acts of retaliatory aggression were assessed across relationship context, type of aggression, age, and gender. In addition, path models were constructed to determine whether the relationship between children's social goals and aggressive behavior is direct or mediated by children's retaliation beliefs within multiple relationship contexts. The findings indicated that the relationship between social goals and aggressive behavior in relationships with best friends and peers operates differently than in relationships with siblings. Further, children's social goal endorsements and beliefs regarding the appropriateness of aggressive behavior varied by age, type of aggression, and relationship context.

Committee: Dara Musher-Eizenman (Advisor) Subjects: Psychology, Developmental

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2023, Psychology

As people share stories about their life experiences, they may picture events in their minds when describing them to others. Those mental images could be from either their own, first-person perspective, or from an observer's, third-person perspective (Libby & Eibach, 2011). We ask what factors of the audience, specifically social power and interpersonal goals (self-image and compassionate goals), impact the perspective of spontaneous mental imagery. We hypothesized that people indeed experience imagery spontaneously in a communication context, and that people who have: greater compassionate goals, greater self-image goals, lower power, will all experience more third-person imagery. We conducted two studies in parallel and combined them using integrative data analysis (Curran & Hussong, 2009). Participants identified a difficult event and wrote about that event as if they were describing it to a specified audience. 90% of participants spontaneously pictured the event as they were describing it for the audience. Overall, people with less power used marginally more third-person imagery, and those with purer goals (i.e., high in one goal and low in the other) used more third-person imagery, as predicted. However, power also moderated the effect of goals, which was driven by those with high power. This work shows factors of the audience predict the imagery perspective people spontaneously use and may impact how people understand their own life experiences and communicate those to others.

Committee: Lisa Libby PhD (Advisor); Kentaro Fujita PhD (Committee Member); Steven Spencer PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Social Psychology

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2016, Psychology

Compassionate goals are associated with a series of intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits. However, few studies have examined how people can develop high compassionate goals. In three studies, I found that compassionate goals can be increased through the behavior of giving social support. In Study 1, people had more compassionate goals in relationships where they gave more social support. In Study 2, giving social support predicted increases in compassionate goals within weeks, across weeks, and across the first semester of college. Study 3 provided experimental evidence that giving support to a stranger engaged in a stressful task increases compassionate goals compared to control conditions. These results indicated that social support given had both short-term and long-term effects on compassionate goals. I ruled out social support received and responsiveness as alternative explanations. In addition, I found that both trust and positive emotions, such as feeling connected and cooperative, both explained the association between social support given and compassionate goals.

Committee: Jennifer Crocker (Advisor); Lisa Libby (Committee Member); Baldwin Way (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology; Social Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2015, Clinical Psychology (Arts and Sciences)

Youth with ADHD often exhibit social impairment, which leads to peer rejection and is associated with negative outcomes. Interventions targeting these social problems using social skills training methods have been unsuccessful. However, one emerging treatment for social impairment, Interpersonal Skills Group (ISG), has preliminary support for decreasing social impairment in adolescents with ADHD. The theory of change for ISG is based on a model of social impairment that integrates social goals, individualization and generalization, social cognitive components, and developmental tasks of adolescence in order to increase social functioning. Despite preliminary support for ISG, there are several questions central to the theory of change for the intervention regarding the social impairment of youth with ADHD that have not been empirically tested. The purpose of this study was to investigate the two central questions of the theory of change for ISG: 1) Do adolescents with ADHD choose social goals that are similar to their non-disordered peers, and 2) If an adolescent is closer to “ideal self” on social goals, do they experience less social impairment? Results of this study indicate that there are minimal differences between the social goals adolescents with ADHD choose as most important and the social goals typically-developing adolescents choose as most important, with the majority of differences in social goals existing for social interactions with teachers. Further, the performance of adolescents with ADHD on their top three social goals does not predict measures of social impairment. However, the performance of adolescents with ADHD on the top three social goals as identified by typically-developing adolescents as most important does predict social functioning, with better performance on social goals predicting better social skills and less parent-child conflict. The findings of this study suggest that modifications to future iterations of ISG may be important in ord (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Steven Evans (Advisor) Subjects: Psychology

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2011, Psychology

Three studies demonstrate the effect of imagining successes or failures towards a goal on subsequent motivation to pursue that goal depends on the imagery perspective (first- vs. third-person) used to imagine the event. Further, this effect is moderated by the presence or absence of existing relevant self-schemas. Visual imagery perspective creates different levels of meaning-making. Events imagined from the first-person perspective are interpreted bottom-up so that the focus is on the concrete features of the event. Events imagined from the third-person perspective are interpreted top-down so that the focus is on more abstract processing. Three studies manipulated the visual perspective used to imagine a goal-relevant success or failure performance and measured subsequent motivation. Imagining the performance event (success vs. failure) from the first-person perspective led to changes in motivation only when existing relevant self-schemas were certain. Imagining success vs. failure from the third-person perspective led to changes in motivation only when relevant self-schemas were absent. We propose a potential mechanism whereby self-schemas guide the abstraction that occurs from third-person imagery, such that self-schemas lead to interpreting the event so that it is coherent with this self-schema. In contrast, a lack of relevant self-schemas lead people to look for information that will disambiguate this self-schema such that they abstractly interpret the event as indicative of their motivation. Results help shed light on the function of imagery perspective and its effects on motivation and achievement.

Committee: Lisa Libby PhD (Advisor); Jenny Crocker PhD (Committee Member); Wil Cunningham PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Social Psychology

MA, Kent State University, 2008, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Psychological Sciences

Previous research has found a negative relationship between happiness and the importance an individual places on striving towards extrinsic goals. In contrast, happiness has been shown to be positively related to the importance an individual places on intrinsic goals. This study seeks to explore ways these two types of motivation differ in functioning by taking an in depth look at social comparisons within both types of goal striving and how those comparisons influence judgments of happiness. The importance of extrinsic and intrinsic goals were measured using an adapted version of the Aspiration Index (Kasser & Ryan, 1993), and social comparison orientation was measured using the Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999). Using a 2 (Goal Outcome: success vs. failure) x 2 (Social Comparison Direction: downward vs. lateral) x 2 (Goal Type: extrinsic vs. intrinsic) factorial design, a series of vignettes were written describing goal striving in everyday life, which participants were instructed to read and imagine themselves in each situation. After reading each vignette participants reported how happy they thought they would be in that scenario. Contrary to hypotheses, intrinsic and extrinsic importance scores were related equally to social comparison orientation. However, a hypothesized 2-way interaction was found between comparison direction and goal type, suggesting that the manipulation of social comparisons had greater effects on happiness in extrinsic contexts compared to intrinsic contexts. However, other findings painted a more complex picture of how motivations and social comparisons may interact, and urge that further research attempting to link specific motivations with happiness should consider the effects of social comparisons.

Committee: John Updegraff Ph.D. (Committee Chair) Subjects: Psychology

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2013, Cross-Cultural, International Education

This research examines the impact of parental deportation on children's higher education aspirations. The study takes an inductive approach to analyzing interview data in order to answer the following question: in a mixed legal immigration status home, how does the removal of one or both parents impact a U.S. citizen child's aspirations to pursue a post-secondary education? Additionally, the following sub-questions are addressed: 1) How does forced separation affect the socio-emotional development of the adolescent with regard to their post-secondary aspirations? 2) How is the social capital available to the adolescent influenced, if at all, by parental removal? In addressing these questions I employ two frameworks; Coleman's (1988) framework of social capital, and Bronfenbrenner's (1979; 2005) Ecological Systems Theory framework, as a way to interpret the reciprocal relationship between the adolescents and their environments, and to discuss how this relationship could affect their aspirations to pursue a post-secondary education. Open-ended, semi-structured interviews were conducted with U.S. born adolescents of Latino immigrant parents (primarily Mexicans), their parents/guardians who remain in the U.S. with them, people who had close knowledge of each family's situation, and local experts with experience in issues affecting families separated by deportation. In addition to the interviews, site observations in each of the participants' homes and/or school environments were conducted. The results of the study showed that parental deportation caused the families to suffer financial hardships, and emotional and psychological trauma. The forced separation negatively affected the adolescents' perception of stability, safety, and trustworthiness in their various microsystems, which directly hindered their ability to acquire forms of social capital conducive to their educational aspirations. In addition to the physical changes of their immediate surroundings, the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Bruce Collet PhD (Committee Chair); Margaret Booth PhD (Committee Member); Ruben Viramontez PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Education Policy; Educational Psychology; Ethnic Studies; Families and Family Life; Higher Education; Latin American Studies; Mental Health; Public Policy; Teaching