• Dating and Mating in Adolescence: How Hormones and Puberty Influence Adolescent Mating Motivation 

  Donaldson, Sarah (University of Oregon, 2022-10-26)

  Puberty marks the physical transition towards sexual maturity, culminating in the ability to reproduce. It follows that maturing cognitive, affective, and social skills develop concurrently to support reproductive competence, ...
• Individual Differences in Memory Functions and Their Relation to Hippocampal Connectivity 

  Frank, Lea (University of Oregon, 2022-10-26)

  The hippocampus plays an important role in many aspects of learning and memory. It is most known for its role in episodic memory and spatial navigation, though it has also been shown to contribute to other processes like ...
• Collective Ongoing Betrayal Trauma: Gendered and Racialized Police Violence toward the Black Community 

  Barnes, Melissa (University of Oregon, 2022-10-26)

  Racialized and gendered police violence is a pernicious problem for Black communities. For my dissertation, I empirically tested a novel theoretical concept, Collective Ongoing Betrayal Trauma (COBT). COBT integrates the ...
• Associations between Maternal Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms, Parenting, and Mother-Child Cortisol Levels 

  O'Brien, Jacqueline (University of Oregon, 2022-10-26)

  Children of mothers with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are at heightened risk for developing mental health difficulties but the pathway through which this risk is conferred is unclear. Developmental psychopathology ...
• Counter-Projection in a Polarized Political Climate: Examining the Role of Threat and Ways to Reduce It. 

  Denning, Kathryn (University of Oregon, 2022-10-04)

  The term “polarization” is often associated with “opposition.” Yet, how do people come to see others as their opposites? There is likely a social cognitive process at play. One such process is counter-projection, where ...
• The Transition to Parenthood and the Family System: Links from Grandparents, Parents, and Infants to Perinatal Medical Risk and Early Parent Affect 

  Loi, Elizabeth (University of Oregon, 2022-10-04)

  Biopsychosocial factors in early childhood set the foundation for later neurocognitive and language competence. This dissertation aimed to identify and characterize the early psychosocial correlates of perinatal medical ...
• Individual Differences in Learning and Memory Abilities: The Influence of Self-Efficacy 

  Miller, Ashley (University of Oregon, 2022-10-04)

  The present study examined whether individual differences in memory self-efficacy (MSE)—one’s perception and evaluation of their memory abilities—predicts learning and memory ability in a sample of healthy young adults. ...
• The Development of Moral Evaluations in Children and Adults 

  Ochoa, Karlena (University of Oregon, 2021-11-23)

  Although the influence of intent understanding on children’s moral development has been long studied, limited research has examined the influence of belief understanding on that development. The purpose of this dissertation ...
• Memory Consolidation. 

  Shofner, Steven (University of Oregon, 2021-11-23)

  This proposal synthesizes the work of other researchers (Hawkins et al. 2019) (Kim, Gulati, and Ganguly 2019) (Wei et al. 2018) (Tononi and Cirelli 2006) (Grossberg 2013) (Li et al. 2017) into a framework of memory ...
• Sensitive Periods for Social Development in Adolescence: Exploring Mechanisms Relating Experience and Timing to Neural Change 

  Cheng, Theresa (University of Oregon, 2021-11-23)

  Social relationships during adolescence have outsized effects on long-term physical and mental health. The theory that adolescence is a sensitive period suggests that adolescent experiences might profoundly shape development. ...
• The Psychology of Socioeconomic Inequality in the United States 

  Ludwig, Rita (University of Oregon, 2021-11-23)

  Effective, evidence-based public policy is of critical importance to address issues of socioeconomic inequality, poverty, and class mobility. Psychological science has a valuable opportunity to inform the development of ...
• The Personal Relevance of Psychotherapy for Asian Americans 

  Huang, Ellen (University of Oregon, 2021-11-23)

  Purpose: For at least 50 years, significant mental health disparities between people of color and White Americans have existed. There has been minimal movement in decreasing mental health disparities, particularly among ...
• Coping with Complexity: Characterizing High and Low Learning During On-Line Acquisition of a Seminatural Micro Language 

  Konyn, Amy (University of Oregon, 2021-09-13)

  Natural language is highly complex and can be challenging for some learners, yet the contribution of complexity to individual differences in language learning remains poorly understood. This poor understanding appears due ...
• Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms of Spontaneous Generalization 

  Ashby, Stefania (University of Oregon, 2021-09-13)

  Memory generalization is the process by which we extract commonalities across our individual experiences to form new knowledge that can guide future decisions. Studies examining generalization have traditionally employed ...
• Maternal Borderline Personality Disorder and Child Development: An Examination of Risk Transmission and Statistical Approaches to Inference 

  Binion, Grace (University of Oregon, 2021-09-13)

  Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness and children whose mothers have BPD are at elevated risk for poor psychosocial outcomes across their lifespans. A growing body of research endeavors to ...
• Framing Effects in Persuasive Messaging 

  Garinther, Alexander (University of Oregon, 2021-04-29)

  Cooley, Payne, Cipolli, Cameron, Berger, and Gray (2017) found that subtle shifts in linguistic framing (saying “people in a group” instead of “a group of people”) can enhance the amount of “mind” perceived in a target, ...
• Normalization of the Democidal Mindset: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Endorsement and Perceived Acceptability 

  Landau, Ashleigh (University of Oregon, 2021-04-29)

  Both scholars and practitioners frequently stress the significant role played by high-level perpetrators in cases of mass killing. Often overlooked however is that the thinking and behavior of these leaders are often ...
• Learning and Acting with Predictive Cognitive Maps 

  Juliani, Arthur (University of Oregon, 2021-04-27)

  Humans and other mammals possess two remarkable abilities: the capacity to store and retrieve a seemingly boundless series of episodic memories, and the capacity to quickly make sense of and navigate their changing ...
• Individual Differences and Adolescent Psychosocial Development 

  Ellis, Lesa K. (University of Oregon, 2002-08)

  Individual differences in temperament, executive functioning, and pubertal maturation play an important role in adolescent psychosocial outcomes, as do parenting and risk variables. These studies examined relations between ...
• The Freshman Project: Adolescent Well-Being During the Transition to College 

  Mobasser, Arian (University of Oregon, 2020-12-08)

  Adolescence is a critical period of development during which myriad biological and ecological changes converge with youths’ burgeoning sense of self-awareness. Despite enduring views of this convergence as one of only ...

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