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Increasing Resources and Meaningful Participation for a Successful Community Reentry
Get PDFDismas House is an approved Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC), 501(c)(3) non-profit residential re-entry program serving men who are returning to the community from Tennessee prisons and county jails. The purpose of this capstone experience is to work with the residents of Dismas House by supporting them as they face barriers reentering society after incarceration. Dismas House offers services under their Four Pillars of Programming , which includes basic needs, health & well-being, life skills, and legal support. These four pillars were taken under consideration when creating resources and implementing new programming for the residents. Outcomes of this project included creating resource folders for the residents to take with them when they graduate the program and leave on good terms. Special programming and recovery groups were also created around resident interest, including groups such as importance of leisure and recreation, communication styles, healthy relationships, empathy, emotional intelligence, comfort zones, intrinsic motivation, accountability, self-sabotage, and game nights
Improving Accessibility and Inclusion at Belmont University
Get PDFThis capstone project utilized the collaboration with various departments and schools at Belmont University to improve the accessibility and inclusion in physical, social and academic contexts. The focus of this project was to pinpoint areas of campus that are inaccessible through student-reported survey data and measure these areas with use of the ADA checklist for existing facilities and hands on observation. This project also sought to develop educational resources and inclusive aids for various departments across campus to improve their inclusion and accessibility efforts. The findings of this project were summarized into a narrative needs assessment to distribute to all campus partners for continued effort towards improved accessibility and inclusion. This project aimed to equip various professionals with the tools to successfully pursue universal accessibility and inclusion at Belmont University
Program Development & Implementation of Mindfulness Practices for Adults with Down Syndrome at GiGi’s Playhouse
Get PDFThis doctoral capstone project was completed through partnership with GiGi’s Playhouse Nashville, a non-profit that offers free educational and therapeutic programming to individuals of all ages with Down syndrome. The focus of this project was to create and implement an entire semester worth of curriculum for two adult education classes, GiGi Prep and U. The goal of GiGi Prep was to enhance various career readiness skills, while GiGi U builds upon these skills to prepare an individual for real-world settings like independent living, college, and/or working a job. Topics such as communication skills, emotional regulation, money management, coping strategies, self-advocacy, public speaking, and interviewing were all taught through an OT-lens. To enhance programing even more, mindfulness was introduced to students and practiced throughout the semester through mindfulness journaling. A resource for parents was also created to inform families of the mental health benefits and different types of mindfulness practices, as well as encourage carryover in home settings
Opposites Attract: The Melding of Jazz Harmony and Pop Songwriting Sensibilities in the Music of Norah Jones and Jamie Cullum
Get PDFModern commercial songs have become increasingly difficult to categorize within a singular genre. This trend, as well as my own mixed musical background, inspired me to investigate the ways in which the seemingly disparate styles of pop and jazz can be synthesized. My research focuses primarily on how this synthesis is achieved in the musical works of Norah Jones and Jamie Cullum, two of the most successful crossover artists of the early 21st century. Drawing on musical elements from each of Jones\u27s and Cullum\u27s catalogs, I wrote and recorded five original songs. My analysis of these songs will help to demystify jazz-inspired compositional techniques for aspiring songwriters without a formal background in jazz
Melodies of Change: Climate Effects on the Phenology of Migrant Songbirds
No full textUnderstanding the phenology of migratory species is key to tracking the effects of climate change on these populations. The population of migratory songbirds has seen a sharp decline in recent years in part due to factors driven by climate change. As these populations fall, ecosystems across the globe lose species essential for the maintenance of prey, predator, and plant populations. Long-term monitoring of these migratory populations is essential for understanding how climate change affects the timing and success of migration. Using data collected from a long-term bird banding station at Percy Warner Nature Center in Nashville, Tennessee, we focused on monitoring the success and arrival times of the five most common migratory species recorded at the station: Indigo Bunting (INBU), Myrtle Warbler (MYWA), Magnolia Warbler (MAWA), Swainson’s Thrush (SWTH), and Tennessee Warbler (TEWA) from fall of 1983 to fall of 2022. We analyzed the captures of these species against temperature and year to establish whether there was a significant correlation between arrival times and climate conditions. There was a significant correlation between annual temperature and year, with a trend towards increasing temperature every year. We also found a significant negative trend between the average date of arrival for all species surveyed and the year. When pooled, we found a small but significant negative trend for year, temperature, and average yearly arrival of fall migrants. However, this trend was not seen when species were assessed individually. Future studies should include additional climate factors, as well as expanding the study to include a larger number of species and banding stations
The Relationship Between Trait Empathy and the Involuntary Mimicry of Emotion: An Electromyographical Study of Facial Suppression
No full textAbstract
Facial expressions are one of the main communication styles that signify emotion and meaning across cultures and individuals. Despite it being one of our main forms of communication, in many social situations, people are required to suppress or control their emotional expressions to act in a socially acceptable manner. However, research has shown that a person’s facial muscles continue to exhibit subtle muscle and move in expressivity even when attempting to suppress emotions from others. To support this, Dimberg et al. (2002) found that electromyography (EMG) technology can detect these subtle facial movements even if they may be invisible to the naked eye. Furthermore, research has demonstrated that humans naturally mimic the facial expressions of others expressing emotions (Dimberg & Thunberg, 1998). Further research has shown a relationship between more pronounced facial mimicry when viewing emotional faces and higher levels of empathy (Dimberg &Thunberg, 1998; Rymarczyk et al., 2016). However, no previous research has directly examined whether individuals with higher levels of empathy have greater difficulty suppressing their automatic facial muscle mimicry responses. Therefore, this study plans to address this gap by investigating whether higher scores on an empathy quotient (EQ-40) has a positive correlation with increased involuntary facial activity measured by EMG when participants are asked to suppress emotional responses to emotion-inducing film clips. EMG technology was chosen for a physiological measure because of its unique ability to identify subtle muscle activity that other forms of measurement could not measure accurately. This study is applicable in real-world situations because it can help people understand the emotional responses of those who are classified as empathetic or not empathetic, which benefits the communication between society members as a whole. For our procedure, baseline facial muscle activity was measured, and activity was measured while participants watched two sad clips and two happy clips presented randomly in blocks with a neutral clip presented before each (ex: neutral clip, two sad clips, neutral clip, two happy clips). We predict to find greater “emotional leakage” from participants’ suppressed reactivity in those with higher levels of empathy compared to those with lower levels.
References
Dimberg, U., & Thunberg, M. (1998). Rapid facial reactions to emotional facial expressions.
Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 39(1), 39-45.
Dimberg, U., Thunberg, M., & Grunedal, S. (2002). Facial reactions to emotional stimuli:
Automatically controlled emotional responses. Cognition & Emotion, 16(4), 449-471.
Rymarczyk, K., Biele, C., Grabowska, A., & Majczynski, H. (2016). Emotional empathy and
facial mimicry for static and dynamic facial expressions of fear and disgust. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 185
Utilizing Acarbose as a Model for Pompe Disease
No full textPompe Disease is a rare autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutations in the alpha-glucosidase (GAA) gene. These mutations leads to a pathological accumulation of glycogen in the lysosome, thereby impairing lysosomal function. At present, most studies involve patient cell lines and genetic manipulation. Both these methods are time consuming and low throughput. Therefore, we sought to identify another method to model Pompe Disease in cell culture. We identified acarbose, which is a competitive inihibitor of alpha-glucosidase, as a potential pharmacological model. To investigate its effectiveness as a model, we treated COS-7 and N27A cells with acarbose and observed changes to lysosomal morphology and function through immunofluorescent and live cell microscopy. Acarbose treatment mimicked what is seen in Pompe patient cell lines, thereby supporting our hypothesis that acarbose can be used for future investigations of Pompe disease
