College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/8
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Educate and Empower: An Online Intervention to Improve College Women’s Knowledge and Confidence When Communicating in a Romantic Relationship(2022-05) Trovato, Karoline J.; O’Brien, Karen M.Historically, and during the covid-19 pandemic, the vast majority of unpaid family care was provided by women with devastating outcomes including lost jobs, increased poverty, and mental health concerns (Almeida et al., 2020; Dang et al., 2020; Power, 2020). Unequal family work and unhealthy communication were associated with women’s relationship dissatisfaction and depressive symptoms (Bannon et al., 2020; Carlson et al., 2020; Woods et al., 2019). The PARTNERS video intervention was created to educate college women about family work distribution, communication in a romantic relationship, and the PARTNERS model of communication (a strategy for healthy communication based on existing literature and developed by Trovato and O’Brien for this intervention). An experiment was conducted to assess the effectiveness of the video intervention. Participants exposed to the intervention had the highest relationship communication self-efficacy. Those who participated in the intervention or read a partial script were the most knowledgeable about family work distribution, communication, and the PARTNERS model. The PARTNERS intervention has potential to educate women about family work distribution and couple communication and improve their confidence when communicating with a romantic partner. Ultimately, this intervention may increase relationship satisfaction, reduce depression, and equalize family work distribution for women.Item The effect of child gender on parental nonverbal communication(2019) Booth, Tiara; Newman, Rochelle; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Previous work has studied parental verbal communication and found differences based on child gender. The current study was designed to better understand any differences in maternal nonverbal communication based on child gender. The nonverbal parameters analyzed were eye contact/joint attention, gestures, positive and negative facial expressions, and open and closed body language. Previously recorded mother-child play sessions when the children were 7 months (n=103) and 24 months (n=73) were coded to assess three main questions: a) Does maternal nonverbal communication differ with child gender? b) Does maternal nonverbal communication change over time? c) Does maternal nonverbal communication effect vocabulary outcomes at 24 months? Mothers used more positive facial expressions with girls at 7 months and more gestures with boys at 24 months. Mothers were consistent in their use of positive facial expressions and gestures over time. Finally, there was no apparent relationship between maternal nonverbal communication and vocabulary.Item Spatial cueing by a novel agent in preschool children and adults(2015) Terrizzi, Brandon; Beier, Jonathan S; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the current study we assessed preschool children and adults' reflexive, covert spatial attentional response to a novel entity. In particular, we assessed whether covert attention was selectively engaged after construing the novel entity as an agent. Previous research has demonstrated that children and adults' covert spatial attention may be flexibly engaged by a non-directional cueing stimulus (e.g., a circle), however this attentional response is neither spontaneous nor is it reflexive (i.e., participants were told that the stimulus predicted the eventual target's location). For the first time we have shown that covert spatial attention is spontaneously and reflexively engaged by a morphologically unfamiliar cueing character when it is interpreted as an agent but not otherwise. The implication of this finding for theoretical accounts of the development of covert attention and agency attributions more generally are discussed.