Browsing by Author "Dr. Katherine Klein, Committee Member"

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    Beneficial Effects of Expressive Writing in the Elderly
    (2007-01-22) Weatherbee, Sarah Rose; Dr. Jason C. Allaire, Committee Chair; Dr. Thomas Hess, Committee Member; Dr. Katherine Klein, Committee Member
    The current investigation examined whether expressive writing produced gains in elders' cognitive functioning. Given previous research, it was expected that expressive writing would reduce intrusive thoughts, which would lead to gains in cognitive performance. In the current study community dwelling elders (n = 61) with a mean age of 75 years (range = 61 — 94; SD = 7.70) were given a 2-hour pretest battery, which consisted of measures of basic cognitive ability, everyday cognition, and intrusive thinking. Following pretesting participants were randomly assigned to either the emotional expressive writing group or the non-emotional writing group where they were instructed to write for 20 minutes on five occasions over 10-days. Following the intervention all participants returned for post-testing, which occurred seven days after the writing period. Contrary to expectations, there was no evidence of a time by condition interaction for intrusive thinking. When cognitive change was examined a pretest to posttest gain was found for processing speed performance when collapsing across the two experimental groups. A similar pattern was also found for the measure of everyday cognitive functioning within the domain of memory. Discussion will focus on the fact that changes in cognitive performance may not necessarily be attributed entirely to the intervention; rather it could be mental exercise or mere practice effects.
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    Evaluation of a Child Maltreatment Prevention Self-help Program: The Role of Social Support and Parental Empowerment in Producing Positive Outcomes
    (2010-05-04) Hart, Kendrea C.; Dr. Katherine Klein, Committee Member; Dr. Pamela Martin, Committee Member; Dr. Roger Mitchell, Committee Member; Dr. Mary Haskett, Committee Chair
    The purpose of this dissertation study was to evaluate a child abuse prevention program for families considered at-risk for abuse. Specifically, this study sought to gain a better understanding of how program participation was associated with parenting behavior and child maltreatment risk, and if this relation was partially mediated by social support and parental empowerment. The sample consisted of 187 parents and grandparents who attended Circle of Parents groups throughout a southeastern state. It was hypothesized that (a) higher program participation would predict improvements in parenting behavior, lower levels of maltreatment risk, higher levels of social support within and outside the group, and higher feelings of parental empowerment; (b) higher levels of social support within and outside the group, as well as higher levels of parental empowerment, would predict improvements in parenting behavior and lower child maltreatment risk; (c) the relation between program participation and parenting behavior, as well as child maltreatment risk would be mediated by social support and parental empowerment. Results revealed that program participation significantly predicted improvements in parent behavior and social support within the group. In addition, social support within the group significantly predicted improvements in parent behavior. Social support outside the group also significantly predicted levels of lower child maltreatment risk. There was no support for mediation effects. Considerations for interpreting results, limitations, directions for future research, and implications for practice are discussed.
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    The Impact of Event Familiarity on the Complexity and Coherence of Children's Narratives of Positive Events
    (2004-11-05) Banks, Jonathan Britten; Dr. Thomas Hess, Committee Member; Dr. Katherine Klein, Committee Member; Dr. Lynne Baker-Ward, Committee Chair
    The coherence of individuals' narratives of negative events has been shown to have significant positive effects on a variety of indicators of adaptive functioning (Klein & Boals, 2001; Pennebaker, Mayne, & Francis, 1997). Relatively little is known, however, about the processes through which individuals form coherent narratives of important personal experiences. This research examined the role of familiarity with the event on changes over time in the measures of narrative complexity, coherence and intrusive thoughts. In addition, the relationships among three previously used measures of coherence (a count of words in relevant categories, an overall rating, and a measure of causal connections between clauses) were examined, and the association between each measure and a criterion measure, Story Grammar, was explored. Two groups of 16 children participated in either a familiar event, a soccer tournament, or an unfamiliar event, soccer tryouts for a more competitive leaguer. All participants were interviewed within one week of the event and six weeks after the first interview. In contrast to expectations, familiarity with the event did not result in higher initial levels of coherence, and the coherence of the account of the less familiar event did not increase over time. The alternative measures of coherence were related to Story Grammar as expected, but were not correlated with each other.
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    The Influence of Reference-Mark Density and Saliency on Time-To-Passage
    (2009-04-02) Ornan, Rachelle Nitzanne; Dr. Chris Mayhorn, Committee Member; Dr. Katherine Klein, Committee Member; Dr. Denis Gray, Committee Member; Dr. Donald Mershon, Committee Chair
    Gogel & McNulty (1983) demonstrated that the greater the density of vertical reference or hatch marks in a display, the greater the perceived velocity of a laterally moving object. Their study corroborates the findings of other researchers that the addition of reference-marks or a reference frame lowers the motion threshold (Liebowitz, 1955; Brown, 1931a, 1931b). The current study’s first experiment successfully replicated the results of Gogel & McNulty’s study using a flat panel LCD screen and a predicted-motion task. Subsequent experiments examined the effect of object and reference-mark characteristics on accuracy. In general, accuracy increased as the extrapolation distance (ED) and reference-mark density increased. There was a consistent interactive effect between ED and reference-mark density such that medium and long EDs coupled with high density of reference-marks produced the greatest increase in accuracy. There was an interactive sex effect with ED which was present in the results, but was not consistent. Though accuracy was not affected by object size, horizontal extent, shape, familiarity, color or offset, the effect of high reference-mark density on improving accuracy disappeared when marks were less salient. The results of these experiments have application to the design of displays used for military, air traffic control and cockpit applications, laparoscopic surgery, assembly-line manufacturing, highway-construction tasks, and on-orbit space manufacturing and construction.
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    Situational Judgment: An Investigation of Its Process and Relationship to Scholar Performance
    (2005-04-09) Krokos, Kelley J.; Dr. Samuel B. Pond, Committee Member; Dr. Katherine Klein, Committee Member; Dr. Mark Wilson, Committee Chair; Dr. Donald Drewes, Committee Member
    Considerable disagreement exists regarding the nature of situational judgment and its relationship to performance. The purpose of this research is to address this disagreement. First, this research addresses lack of agreement regarding the nature of situational judgment by proposing that research to date has focused inappropriately on the final test score. More specifically, this research proposes that situational judgment can be shown to be a function of various cognitive processing tasks. A situational judgment inventory with embedded cognitive processing questions was developed to address these issues. The data do not support the models as proposed. After significant modification, situation awareness was the only cognitive processing variable to show promise as a predictor of situational judgment scores. Likely reasons include inappropriate operationalization of the factors. This research also examines the relationship of situational judgment to performance in a group of university scholarship recipients. Situational judgment was proposed to be a partial mediator between accepted performance predictors and three performance criteria. The data do not support the model as hypothesized. After significant modification, the situational judgment scores were still not predictive of performance. Likely reasons for the lack of predictive validity include the nature of situational judgment, the nature of the sample, and methodological weaknesses. Implications for future research are discussed.