The modern United States military is an all-volunteer force and the men and women who enlist or commission are subjected to multiple combat deployments. Many veterans have spent more than five years in a hostile fire zone. This means that the current generation is spending more time on the battlefield than any American generation before it. Methods of Traumatic Event Management (TEM) are employed by the Armed Forces to increase protective factors for servicemembers against the traumas of war. Despite these efforts, the veteran population continues to exhibit a high prevalence of military trauma disorders to include post-traumatic stress, post-traumatic epilepsy, post-war depression, and military sexual trauma. Furthermore, TEM indoctrinates servicemembers with new social regularities, traditions, and norms; combat deepens the meaning of all of these and results in a profound cultural shift. Combat culture stands in stark contrast to civilian and academic culture and includes stigmas which impede returning veterans’ ability to adapt to a peacetime environment. Through phenomenological interviewing, participant observation, and archival research, this qualitative study focuses on the lived experiences of returning veterans in the academic setting and seeks to understand how the presence of combat culture, military trauma disorders, academic culture, classroom pedagogies, and university policy all interact to affect veterans’ ability to adapt to the social environment of the college classroom. Specifically, this research develops a case study on the dynamics of the reintegration process of combat veterans who are returning to college at the University of Washington Bothell. Furthermore, this project demonstrates the integration of community, state, and federal services to meet the needs of readjusting veterans and their families. The transferability of this work is evident through recent interest and attention from leaders of the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense.

The level of peer substance use is one of the best predictors of an adolescent's own substance use. In addition, impulsivity, the tendency to engage in risky behavior, is associated with higher levels of substance use in adolescents. The goal of this study is to investigate the relationship between peer substance use, individual and peer impulsivity, and individual substance use. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a nationally representative sample of adolescents will be analyzed. Two sets of analyses will be performed. The first set of analyses uses a 3-level multiple membership model to assess the associations between individual and peer substance use, impulsivity and measures of social status. The second set of analyses employ relational analysis to assess the probability of an individual with a given level of substance use and impulsivity to be a friend of another individual with a certain level of substance use and impulsivity. We predict that for the first set of analyses, that the association of peer substance use on individual substance use will be significant, and moderated by the individual's impulsivity. Additionally, we predict that peer substance use's effect will be attenuated by individual substance use over time. For the second set of analyses we predict that adolescents similar in substance use and impulsivity are more likely to be friends than those adolescents who are dissimilar in substance use and impulsivity. The predicted results would suggest that the mechanisms of both peer influence and peer selection are playing a role in the trajectory of substance use. That is, substance using adolescents select peers that have similar levels of substance use, who then influence them to continue or escalate substance use. The results of this study will suggest social mechanisms that influence substance use, and suggest effective peer based interventions.

Conversation analysis has shown that certain linguistic factors (avoidance of pronouns, increased negative words, e.g.) are affected by the act of deception. Studies have proven that the act of deception increases cognitive load and results in behavioral and linguistic indicators. Little research has been done on the potential cognitive strain that could result from speaking in a second language and none has been done to explore the effect that deception and second language production would have when done simultaneously. Second language discourse has also been proven to increase cognitive load. Therefore we expect that the added cognitive strain resulting from the use of a second language while participating in an act of deception will further exaggerate the well known linguistic indicators of deception. We believe our findings will show that the increased cognitive effort caused by a speaker using a second language while participating in deception will exaggerate the linguistic factors affected by deception, making it easier to identify in discourse analysis.

Bilinguals outperform monolinguals in a number of tasks involving executive functions or higher-order thinking processes. For bilinguals, the everyday use of more than one language creates increased demands for language selection, inhibition, and switching. Little is known, however, about which facet of the bilingual experience shapes the brain in a way that gives rise to these improvements in executive functions. Previous research on this topic has primarily focused on increased inhibitory control, but the evidence has not been consistent. To explore the possibility that the switching component of executive functions is improved in bilinguals, an fMRI task-switching paradigm, with four experimental conditions (non-switch, language-switch, semantic task-switch, and double-switch), was created. This task allows for the comparison of the neural circuits involved in language switching and task switching in bilinguals. Specifically, this research tests the hypothesis that increased practice with coordinating and executing rules in two languages shapes the general task shifting sub-component of executive functions in bilinguals. Preliminary analysis of the data suggests that behaviorally, for bilinguals, the language-switch condition was significantly easier than the task-switch condition, although the double-switch condition was not significantly more difficult than the task-switch-alone condition. Neurally, the task-switching condition recruited more parietal and inferior frontal regions, whereas, language switching involved more medial frontal regions. All switching conditions recruited the basal ganglia though. Lastly, a comparison between the double-switch condition and the combination of the two single-switch conditions showed that classic working memory regions are recruited when executing a double-switch. By understanding which of the many unique facets of the bilinguals experience shapes the brain to give rise to improved executive functions, we can simultaneously better understand the bilingual brain and gain insight into how executive function might be improved in other populations.

Temperament has been studied extensively in humans, but a growing and controversial body of work is emerging on the subject of temperament in animals. This is critical research in understanding both the fundamental aspects, and the evolution, of temperament. When studying either humans or animals, research is complicated by the difficulty in quantifying and analyzing aspects of temperament. The goal of my research is to investigate the practicality and efficacy of using a Q-sort technique in the assessment of temperament in infant pigtail macaque monkeys. A Q-sort is an ethogram, a complete and exhaustive vocabulary with which to describe a construct such as temperament. The person performing the Q-sort obtains data by ranking concrete behavioral descriptors in terms of their contribution to temperament, with the behaviors most uncharacteristic of an animal being ranked, as well as those most characteristic. The Q-sorts are performed by individuals of diverse backgrounds, levels of experience, and types of interaction with the infants, e.g. researchers vs. veterinary staff. I expect results to be correlated between tester groups, but more strongly correlated within the tester groups. The results will illustrate, one way or the other, the influence that interaction with the subject, and the level and type of training has on a temperament assessment process. Furthermore, the consistency and speed with which the data are acquired will determine whether broad implementation of the Q-sort technique is practical in non-human primate temperament research. Ultimately, the flexibility and scope of the process will help to isolate and characterize key aspects of temperament in pigtail macaques, and will be applicable to other species of animals.

The amygdala is a central structure studied in investigations of fear and anxiety because of its crucial role in acquisition, retention and expression of conditioned fear responses.  Lesions of the amygdala before and after training have abolished conditioned defensive fear responses such as freezing, potentiated startle, and 22-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations.  However, pre-training and post-training lesions of the amygdala have not abolished inhibitory (passive) avoidance learning.  The learning of this particular defensive strategy without the amygdala has caused debate amongst investigators.  Our study uses a 2-food lever closed economy (continuous, long-term, semi-naturalistic environment) behavioral paradigm.  Rats have free choice of levers dispensing rat chow closer or farther from the nesting area.  After a baseline of lever-preferences stabilized, 2 footshocks on average were introduced randomly each hour in the foraging area.  Animals could avoid the shock by remaining in the nesting area. Lesions were performed on the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and central amygdala (CeA).  Whereas the introduction of shock in control animals destabilized initial lever preferences, lesioned animals showed an absence of the destabilizing effect and maintenance of initial lever preferences.  Additionally, both amygdalar-lesioned and control rats decreased their time spent in the foraging area , exhibiting learning of passive avoidance behavior . However, only amygdala lesionsed animals showed deficits in a standard Pavlovian fear conditioning task.  Our results demonstrate that in an environment of long-term, unpredictable danger, the amydala is able to modulate defensive behaviors such as optimal foraging behaviors but not inhibitory, passive avoidance response to danger.  Investigation of the amygdala’s role with regard to behavior under unpredictable threats over a long period of time can help us understand various human pathologies involving chronic exposure to unpredictable environmental stress.