UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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    Social Emotional Memory and Negative Symptoms in Individuals with Schizophrenia
    (2015) Bradshaw, Kristen Renee; Blanchard, Jack J; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The current study investigated social and nonsocial emotional memory in schizophrenia, the relation of impairments in the recall of positive stimuli to increased negative symptoms, and the mediating role of defeatist performance beliefs. Twenty-three individuals with schizophrenia and twenty-four healthy controls completed clinical symptom interviews, social and nonsocial laboratory emotional memory tasks, and a measure of dysfunctional attitudes. Results indicated that on a social affective learning task, in comparison to controls, the schizophrenia participants were impaired in their ability to exhibit minimal affective learning of positive pairings. Defeatist performance beliefs did not mediate the relation between recall of positive stimuli and experiential negative symptoms. These findings suggest that it is primarily in the social domain that we see deficits in emotional memory in schizophrenia, and that this impairment in the ability to learn positive social associations may be linked to decreased motivation to engage in social, vocational, and recreational activities.
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    An Initial Assessment of the Convergent Validity of the Negative Symptom Rating Scale: The Relationship Between Behavioral Codings of Expressed Facial Affect and Clinical Ratings of Blunted Affect
    (2009) Baker, Bryann Renee; Blanchard, Jack J.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness that represents a significant public health burden. No treatments are FDA approved for negative symptoms of schizophrenia, primarily because there is no valid, reliable measure for negative symptoms. A new negative symptom measure, the Negative Symptom Rating Scale (NSRS), is in the initial phases of validation. The current study assesses the convergent validity of the scale by examining the relationship between the NSRS and expressed facial affect. The study also sought to clarify the relationship between expressed facial affect and functioning. The results revealed a significant relationship between expressed facial affect and the NSRS subscale of blunted affect, as predicted. However, there was not a significant relationship between expressed facial affect and functioning. These results provide initial evidence for the convergent validity of the scale. Currently, there is an ongoing research study to further assess the reliability and validity of the NSRS.