Department of Psychology Graduate Theses
Recent Submissions
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Effects of Reticular Activation on Long-Term Depression in Primary Visual Cortex of the Long-Evans Rat
Long-term depression (LTD) is a widely studied form of activity-dependent synaptic plasticity, typically induced by prolonged low-frequency stimulation (LFS). LFS is highly effective in eliciting LTD in vitro, but several ... -
Self-Perception in Autism Spectrum Disorder
Recent research suggests that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are unaware of their competencies in a variety of domains and overestimate their competencies above what is normative in the general population. ... -
Catcalls or Compliments: Men's Attitudes on Street and Sexual Harassment in Relation to Their Personality
Street harassment, also known as public harassment, sexual harassment in the public, and stranger harassment, is defined as physical and verbal unwanted behaviours done by a stranger in the public sphere. Sexual harassment ... -
The Wandering Mind: An Examination of the Predictors and Consequences of Mind Wandering
It has been reported that when listening to a lecture, the average student spends approximately one third of lecture time thinking about things unrelated to the lecture material (Szpunar et al., 2013). With that said, ... -
Age-Related Differences in Preschoolers’ ability to Change a Belief as Evidenced by Load-Force Adaptation
Over the preschool years, children’s core beliefs about the world go through significant changes in a number of content domains. Although the characteristics and timetables of these changes are well mapped out, little is ... -
Socioemotional Flexibility in Mother-Daughter Dyads Across Multiple Time Scales: A Longitudinal Follow-Up
Socioemotional flexibility involves shifting in and out of emotion states, and the range of emotional states expressed during interpersonal interactions (Hollenstein et al., 2013). Previous research has shown that ... -
Perceptual Effects of Inconsistency in Human Animations
Animation retargeting is a method of producing human-like animations for use in research, video games, and movies. The procedure consists of capturing the motion of a performer and applying it to a computerized avatar. In ... -
Music Engagement in Alzheimer Disease
Alzheimer disease (AD) is characterized by progressive memory loss and deterioration of functional abilities, but anecdotal and clinical observations suggest that many individuals with AD continue to respond in meaningful ... -
Motivation to expend physical and cognitive effort as predictors of functioning in major depression
Background: Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is associated with severe functional disability; however, the mechanisms of impaired functioning are understudied. Cognitive deficits is one known mechanism of functional impairment ... -
Childhood Maltreatment and Mechanisms of Vulnerability Within Anhedonia and Depression
Anhedonia is one of the defining features of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and may be characteristic of an especially severe depression. Because MDD is highly heterogeneous, anhedonia may represent an easier target for ... -
Developing an Implicit Measure of Habit Strength: The Habit IAT
Habits are defined as a form of automatic, spontaneous behaviours that are initiated following exposure to contextual cues. Although habits have been a focus of research for health, social, and consumer psychologists for ... -
The Role of Emotion Regulation in the Relationship Between Pain, Catastrophizing, Depression, and Disability in Women with Interstitial Cystitis/Bladder Pain Syndrome
Interstitial Cystitis/Bladder Pain Syndrome (IC/BPS) is a chronic pelvic pain condition with an unknown etiology and biomedical treatment outcomes for IC/BPS are poor. Catastrophizing and depression have been implicated ... -
Investigating the Dopaminergic and Glucocorticoid Systems as Underlying Mechanisms of Anhedonia
Anhedonia, a severe deficit in reward processing, is an endophenotype of several neuropsychiatric disorders (APA, 2000) and increases susceptibility to depression (Atherton et al., 2015), substance abuse (Hatzigiakoumis ... -
The Impact of Noisy Vestibular Stimulation on Self-motion Phenomena
Low immersion and sickness experienced in virtual reality (VR) are two important barriers that inhibit the widespread adoption of VR technology. Both are thought to relate to visual-vestibular mismatch. Recoupling multisensory ... -
The Role of Self-Concealment and Perfectionistic Self-Presentation in Concealment of Psychache and Suicide Ideation
Suicide is a severe societal problem with nearly 1 million people dying by suicide each year worldwide (National Institute of Mental Health, 2009). The goal of the current research was to explore potential risk factors in ... -
STRESS DURING EARLY-ADOLESCENCE REDUCES RATS’ AGGRESSION AND INCREASES THEIR SEROTONIN FIBRE DENSITY IN ADULTHOOD
Stressful experiences during youth can lead to a maladaptive behaviour profile in adulthood, including an increase in anxiety and aggression-related behaviours in humans. Rats exposed to the intermittent physical stress ... -
ADULT ATTACHMENT AND SPOUSAL REACTIONS TO MILITARY DEPLOYMENT SEPARATIONS AND REUNIONS
The purpose of my dissertation was to assess the relevance of adult attachment in explaining spousal adjustment and relationship functioning in military deployment experiences. Specifically, I was interested in identifying ... -
Back and Forth: Prediction and Interactive Alignment in Conversation
On a daily basis, we engage in multiple conversations with others that seem to occur effortlessly. Despite this apparent ease, the cognitive processes involved in conversation are complex. The challenges associated with ... -
Scaffolding Multidimensional Understanding and Rule Use in Preschoolers' DCCS Performance
The goal of this dissertation was to examine how specific scaffolding strategies could affect executive functioning (EF) performance in preschool aged children, specifically shifting performance as measured by the Dimension ... -
What's so funny? An evaluation of the relations among humour use, mirth, and depressive symptomatology
Humour production and showing mirth (i.e., smiling and laughing) confer prosocial advantages. However, there is a paucity of literature evaluating how humour manifests in psychopathology. Humour and mirth may be especially ...
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