Flooded with Information from Social Media: Effects of Disaster Information Source and Visuals on Viewers' Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Responses

While a variety of crisis types loom as real risks for organizations and communities, and the media landscape continues to evolve, research is needed to help explain and predict how people respond to various kinds of crisis and disaster information. For example, despite the rising prevalence of digital and mobile media centered on still and moving visuals, and stark increases in Americans’ use of visual-based platforms for seeking and sharing disaster information, relatively little is known about how the presence or absence of disaster visuals online might prompt or deter resilience-related feelings, thoughts, and/or behaviors. Yet, with such insights, governmental and other organizational entities as well as communities themselves may best help individuals and communities prepare for, cope with, and recover from adverse events. Thus, this work uses the theoretical lens of the social-mediated crisis communication model (SMCC) coupled with the limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing (LC4MP) to explore effects of disaster information source and visuals on viewers’ resilience-related responses to an extreme flooding scenario. Results from two experiments are reported. First a preliminary 2 (disaster information source: organization/US National Weather Service vs. news media/USA Today) x 2 (disaster visuals: no visual podcast vs. moving visual video) factorial between-subjects online experiment with a convenience sample of university students probes effects of crisis source and visuals on a variety of cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes. A second between-subjects online experiment manipulating still and moving visual pace in online videos (no visual vs. still, slow-pace visual vs. still, medium-pace visual vs. still, fast-pace visual vs. moving, slow-pace visual vs. moving, medium-pace visual vs. moving, fast-pace visual) with a convenience sample recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mTurk) similarly probes a variety of potentially resilience-related cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes. The role of biological sex as a quasi-experimental variable is also investigated in both studies. Various implications for community resilience and recommendations for risk and disaster communicators are explored. Implications for theory building and future research are also examined. Resulting modifications of the SMCC model (i.e., removing “message strategy” and adding the new category of “message content elements” under organizational considerations) are proposed.

Commentary on: Are we overpathologizing everyday life? A tenable blueprint for behavioral addiction research: On functional and compulsive aspects of reinforcement pathologies

Background: This paper is a commentary to a debate article entitled: "Are we overpathologizing everyday life? A tenable blueprint for behavioral addiction research", by Billieux et al. (2015). Methods and aim: This brief response focused on the necessity to better characterize psychological and related neurocognitive determinants of persistent deleterious actions associated or not with substance utilization. Results: A majority of addicted people could be driven by psychological functional reasons to keep using drugs, gambling or buying despite the growing number of related negative consequences. In addition, a non-negligible proportion of them would need assistance to restore profound disturbances in basic learning processes involved in compulsive actions. Conclusions: The distinction between psychological functionality and compulsive aspects of addictive behaviors should represent a big step towards more efficient treatments.

Gender, Behavioral Assessment of Negative Reinforcement Driven Risk Taking Propensity, and Cigarette Smoking

Cigarette smoking remains the leading preventable cause of death and disability in the United States and most often is initiated during adolescence. An emerging body of research suggests that a negative reinforcement model may explain factors that contribute to tobacco use during adolescence and that negative reinforcement processes may contribute to tobacco use to a greater extent among female adolescents than among male adolescents. However, the extant literature both on the relationship between negative reinforcement processes and adolescent tobacco use as well as on the relationship between gender, negative reinforcement processes, and adolescent tobacco use is limited by the sole reliance on self-report measures of negative reinforcement processes that may contribute to cigarette smoking. The current study aimed to further disentangle the relationships between negative reinforcement based risk taking, gender and tobacco use during older adolescence by utilizing a behavioral analogue measure of negative reinforcement based risk taking, the Maryland Resource for the Behavioral Utilization of the Reinforcement of Negative Stimuli (MRBURNS). Specifically, we examined the relationship between pumps on the MRBURNS, an indicator of risk taking, and smoking status as well as the interaction between MRBURNS pumps and gender for predicting smoking status. Participants included 103 older adolescents (n=51 smokers, 50.5% female, Age (M(SD) = 19.41(1.06)) who all attended one experimental session during which they completed the MRBURNS as well as self-report measures of tobacco use, nicotine dependence, alcohol use, depression, and anxiety. We utilized binary logistic regressions to examine the relationship between MRBURNS pumps and smoking status as well as the interactive effect of MRBURNS pumps and gender for predicting smoking status. Controlling for relevant covariates, pumps on the MRBURNS did not significantly predict smoking status and the interaction between pumps on the MRBURNS and gender also did not significantly predict smoking status. These findings highlight the importance of future research examining various task modifications to the MRBURNS as well as the need for replications of this study with larger, more diverse samples.

Behavioral Response to Environmental Taxation: Evidence from the Transportation Sector

This dissertation analyzes how individuals respond to the introduction of taxation aimed to reduce vehicle pollution, greenhouse gases and traffic. The first chapter analyzes a vehicle registration tax based on emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), a major greenhouse gas, adopted in the UK in 2001 and subject to major changes in the following years. I identify the impact of the policy on new vehicle registrations and carbon emissions, compared to alternative measures. Results show that consumers respond to the tax by purchasing cleaner cars, but a carbon tax generating the same revenue would further reduce carbon emissions. The second chapter looks at a pollution charge (polluting vehicles pay to enter the city) and a congestion charge (all vehicles pay) adopted in 2008 and 2011 in Milan, Italy, and how they affected the concentration of nitrogen dioxides (NOx). I use data from pollution monitoring stations to measure the change between areas adopting the tax and other areas. Results show that in the first quarter of their introduction, both policies decreased NOx concentration in a range of -8% and -5%, but the effect declines over time, especially in the case of the pollution charge. The third chapter examines a trial conducted in 2005 in the Seattle, WA, area, in which vehicle trips by 276 volunteer households were recorded with a GPS device installed in their vehicles. Households received a monetary endowment which they used to pay a toll for each mile traveled: the toll varied with the time of the day, the day of the week and the type of road used. Using information on driving behavior, I show that in the first week a $0.10 toll per mile reduces the number of miles driven by around 7%, but the effect lasts only few weeks at most. The effect is mainly driven by a reduction in highway miles during trips from work to home, and it is strongly influenced by past driving behavior, income, the size of the initial endowment and the number of children in the household.

Behavioral Norms in Virtual Organizations

Part 2: Behaviour and Coordination

Behavioral and neuroimaging research of reading: A case of Japanese

Behavioral studies showed that AS, an English-Japanese bilingual was a skilled reader in Japanese but was a phonological dyslexic in English. This behavioral dissociation was accounted for by the Hypothesis of Transparency and Granularity postulated by Wydell & Butterworth. However, a neuroimaging study using MEG (magnetoencephalography) revealed that AS has the same functional deficit in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG). This paper therefore offers an answer to this intriguing discrepancy between the behavioral dissociation and the neural unity in AS by reviewing existing behavioral and neuroimaging studies in alphabetic languages such as English, Finnish, French, and Italian, and nonalphabetic languages such as Japanese and Chinese.

Behavioral traits predicting cocaine-conditioned place reference in mice: role of anxiety adn the basolateral amygdala

Aims. The individual susceptibility to cocaine addiction, a factor of interest in the understanding and prevention of this disorder, may be predicted by certain behavioral traits. However, these are not usually taken into account in research, making it difficult to identify whether they are a cause or a consequence of drug use. Methods. Male C57BL/6J mice underwent a battery of behavioral tests (elevated plus maze, hole-board, novelty preference in the Y maze, episodic-like object recognition memory and forced swimming test), followed by a cocaine-conditioned place preference (CPP) training to assess the reinforcing effect of the drug. In a second study, we aimed to determine the existence of neurobiological differences between the mice expressing high or low CPP by studying the number of neurons in certain addiction-related structures: the medial prefrontal cortex, the basolateral amygdala and the ventral tegmental area. Results. Anxiety-like behaviors in the elevated plus maze successfully predicted the cocaine-CPP behavior, so that the most anxious mice were also more likely to search for cocaine in a CPP paradigm. In addition, these mice exhibited an increased number of neurons in the basolateral amygdala, a key structure in emotional response including anxiety expression, without differences in the others regions analyzed. Conclusions. Our results suggest a relevant role of anxiety as a psychological risk factor for cocaine vulnerability, with the basolateral amygdala as potential common neural center for both anxiety and addiction.

Cuminum cyminum Linn (Apiaceae) extract attenuates MPTP-induced oxidative stress and behavioral impairments in mouse model of Parkinson’s disease

Purpose: To evaluate the protective effects of Cuminum cyminum Linn (Apiaceae, CCY) against 1- methyl-4 phenyl-1, 2, 3, 6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP)-induced oxidative stress and behavioral impairments in mouse model of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Methods: MPTP-intoxicated mice model of PD was used for evaluating the effect of CCY extract on behavioral deficits through rota rod, passive avoidance and open field tasks. The effect of CCY extract on oxidative stress levels were assessed by estimating enzyme status, including superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and lipid peroxidation(LPO) in brain tissues of MPTP-induced mice. Results: MPTP (25 mg/kg, i.p.)-treated mice resulted in a significant (p < 0.001) behavioral deficit in locomotor behavior (from 56.24 ± 1.21 to 27.64 ± 0.94) and cognitive functions (from 298 ± 3.68 s to 207.28 ± 4.12 s) compared with their respective control groups. Administration of CCY extract (100, 200 and 300 mg/kg, p.o.) for three weeks significantly and dose-dependently improved (p < 0.001 at 300 mg/kg) locomotor and cognitive deficits in MPTP-treated mice. CCY treatment also significantly (p < 0.001 at 300 mg/kg) inhibited MPTP-induced decrease in antioxidant enzyme levels (superoxide dismutase and catalase) and lipid peroxides in mice brain tissues. Conclusion: CCY extract exhibits strong protection against MPTP-induced behavioral deficit through enhancement of antioxidant defense mechanisms. Therefore, CCY may be developed as a therapeutic strategy in the treatment of neurodegeneration seen in PD.

Indigofera tinctoria Linn (Fabaceae) attenuates cognitive and behavioral deficits in scopolamine-induced amnesic mice

Purpose: To investigate the cognition-enhancing effects of aqueous extract of Indigofera tinctoria Linn (ITE, Fabaceae) in experimental amnesic mice. Methods: Scopolamine (2 mg/kg, i.p.) was used to induce amnesia in mice. The cognitive-enhancing activity of the ITE (5, 10 and 20 μg/mL) was studied by passive avoidance response, elevated plus maze and Y-maze behavioral paradigm in normal and scopolamine-induced amnesic mice. Antioxidant activities were also determined based on the ability of ITE to inhibit lipid peroxide, superoxide and hydroxyl radicals. Results: Scopolamine-induced cognitive deficits were significantly reversed by ITE (p < 0.001 at 20 mg/kg) in a dose-dependent fashion in all the behavioral paradigms tested. Furthermore, ITE dosedependently scavenged lipid peroxide, superoxide and hydroxyl free radicals with 50 % inhibition concentration (IC50) of 7.28 ± 0.37, 5.25 ± 0.28 and 7.62 ± 0.43 μg/mL, respectively. Conclusion: ITE possesses cognitive-enhancing properties in amnesic mice due to its potent antioxidant action.

The Impact of Friends on Newly Immigrant Children’s Emotional and Behavioral Adjustment

Immigration disrupts an individual’s support network; however, the stresses of the immigration process increase the need for social support. The presence of social support becomes essential for immigrant children and adolescents to cope with these important transitional circumstances. Friends are both sources of social support and models for behavior. Furthermore, friendship networks are known to have a significant influence on youths’ functioning. Literature suggests that peer relations become more important in adolescence and friend support is related to child and adolescent well-being. Thus, friend relationships may be particularly important for immigrant youths who experience disruption in their friendship networks during the process of migration to another country. In addition to friendship networks and support, friend characteristics also need to be taken into consideration as important factors for immigrant youth adjustment. My study involved analyses of the effects of friend support and friend problem behaviors on emotional and behavioral functioning for elementary, middle, and high school age newly immigrant children and adolescents. Immigrant children and adolescents (N = 503) were interviewed at schools by interviewers fluent in participants’ languages. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analyses revealed that friend support and friend problem behaviors were related to children’s self-esteem and externalizing behaviors. In addition, friend problem behavior alone predicted children’s psychological symptoms and depression scores. Furthermore, age/grade was found to be a moderator for the relation between friend problem behavior and immigrant youth behavioral adjustment such that compared to elementary and high school cohorts, middle school youths showed more externalizing behaviors when they had friends performing problem behaviors. Results supported the idea that both friend support and friend behavior are related to newly immigrant youths’ emotional and behavioral adjustment. This study informs further research and interventions concerning the development of programs to facilitate immigrant youths’ adjustment by revealing friendship factors related to their adaptation.

Population estimates and behavioral analyses of managed cat (Felis Catus) colonies located in Miami-Dade County, Florida, parks

The purpose of my study was to collect data on managed cat (Felis catus) colonies located in two Miami-Dade County, Florida, parks, in order to test the following assertions put forward by proponents of the colonies: 1) Managed cat colonies will decline in size over time and 2) The territorial behavior of cats living in established cat colonies will prevent additional cats from joining. I collected observational and photographic capture-recapture data in order to track colony population dynamics. Behavioral data were also collected in order to understand the role that cat behavior plays in influencing colony population dynamics. My results do not support the assertion that colonies will decline over time. Instead, my findings demonstrate that the establishment of colonies on public lands encourages dumping of cats and creates an attractive nuisance. Furthermore, my behavioral analysis suggests that territorial behavior does not play a role in excluding new cats.

Individual Child Cognitive Behavioral Treatment versus Child-Parent Cognitive Behavioral Treatments for Anxiety Disorders in Children and Adolescents: Comparative Outcomes

Anxiety disorders; such as separation anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia and specific phobia, are widespread in children and adolescents. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to be effective in reducing excessive fears and anxieties in children and adolescents. Research has produced equivocal findings that involving parents in treatment of child anxiety enhances effects over individual CBT (ICBT). The present dissertation study examined whether parental involvement can enhance individual treatment effect if the parent conditions are streamlined by targeting specific parental variables. The first parent condition, Parent Reinforcement Skills Training (RFST), involved increasing mothers’ use of positive reinforcement and decreasing use of negative reinforcement. The second parent condition, Parent Relationship Skill Training (RLST), involved increasing maternal child acceptance and decreasing maternal control (or increasing autonomy granting). Results of the present dissertation findings support the use of all three treatment conditions (ICBT, RLST, RFST) for child anxiety; that is, significant reductions in anxiety were found in each of the three treatment conditions. No significant differences were found between treatment conditions with respect to diagnostic recovery rate, clinician rating, and parent rating of child anxiety. Significant differences between conditions were found on child self rating of anxiety, with some evidence to support the superiority of RLST and RFST to ICBT. These findings support the efficacy of individual, as well as parent involved CBT, and provide mixed evidence with respect to the superiority of parent involved CBT over ICBT. The conceptual, empirical, and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

Behavioral and molecular genetics of reading-related AM and FM detection thresholds

Auditory detection thresholds for certain frequencies of both amplitude modulated (AM) and frequency modulated (FM) dynamic auditory stimuli are associated with reading in typically developing and dyslexic readers. We present the first behavioral and molecular genetic characterization of these two auditory traits. Two extant extended family datasets were given reading tasks and psychoacoustic tasks to determine FM 2 Hz and AM 20 Hz sensitivity thresholds. Univariate heritabilities were significant for both AM (h2 = 0.20) and FM (h2 = 0.29). Bayesian posterior probability of linkage (PPL) analysis found loci for AM (12q, PPL = 81 %) and FM (10p, PPL = 32 %; 20q, PPL = 65 %). Bivariate heritability analyses revealed that FM is genetically correlated with reading, while AM was not. Bivariate PPL analysis indicates that FM loci (10p, 20q) are not also associated with reading.

Determinants and impact of the perceived value of an ad on the consumers’ perceptions and behavioral responses

Actualmente o tópico da atitude dos consumidores para com a publicidade e as suas intenções comportamentais tem vindo a suscitar bastante atenção na academia e na gestão. A presente investigação analisa os antecedentes do valor percebido de um anúncio, a sua influência no modo como os consumidores veem a imagem da marca e os seus efeitos nas respostas comportamentais para com a publicidade. A cultura exerce um impacto vasto e profundo nas atitudes e comportamentos das pessoas. Para examinar esta questão, o questionário foi implementado a inquiridos na Bielorrússia e em Portugal. A análise estatística dos dados do questionário foi realizada através de modelos de equações estruturais. Os resultados do estudo indicam que a informação transmitida pelo anúncio, a atitude favorável dos consumidores para com a publicidade e a credibilidade do anúncio são determinantes importantes do valor percebido de um anúncio. Os resultados fornecem evidência para a influência do valor percebido de um anúncio nas percepções e respostas comportamentais dos consumidores. Com base nestes resultados propomos pistas de investigação futura na área e apresentamos as implicações para a gestão.