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Browsing by Author "DiCecco, Samuel M., author"

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    Assessment of sensation seeking personality type using behavioral and functional neuroimaging measures
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) DiCecco, Samuel M., author; Seger, Carol, advisor; Conner, Brad, advisor; Davies, Patricia, committee member
    Sensation seeking personality type, in which an individual has the propensity to engage in risky behaviors while searching for an optimal level of stimulation, is associated with a variety of negative health outcomes, such as higher rates of substance misuse, gambling, and self-harm. It is important to develop methods to identify those at higher risk of engaging in such health risk behaviors. Historically, sensation seeking has been primarily measured using self-report surveys. Providing additional measures of sensation seeking, such as through behavioral assessment or biomarkers, would aid our measurement of the sensation seeking personality type. The present work sought to create a new behavioral measure of sensation seeking personality type, the Sensation Seeking Dot Probe Task (SSDP), that measures an individual's attentional bias towards sensation seeking imagery. Further, the SSDP task was combined with functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy, which utilizes the spectral differences of hemoglobin in the brain to measure neural activity, to identify neural correlates of attention to sensation seeking imagery and relate them to the Sensation Seeking Personality Type scale. I hypothesized that the SSDP would be as effective in identifying sensation seeking as the self-report scale, and that attention to sensation seeking images would correlate with changes in neural activity in the prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex (regions associated with executive control and decision making) that would be greater in high sensation seeking individuals. While the SSDP did not find significant differences in accuracy or reaction time, the typical measures used in attentional bias dot-probe tasks, there was a significant difference in selection of sensation seeking imagery when paired with neutral control imagery. There were also significantly different changes in activity during sensation seeking congruent tasks in areas of the lateral prefrontal cortex for high sensation seeking individuals. These results suggest functional and behavioral differences measurable in high sensation seekers, and future tasks can use these findings to lead to a greater understanding of the personality type.
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    Development of a behavioral measurement of sensation seeking personality trait and its association with negative health outcomes
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) DiCecco, Samuel M., author; Seger, Carol, advisor; Conner, Brad, advisor; Davies, Patti, committee member; Karoly, Hollis, committee member
    Sensation seeking, a personality trait in which an individual has the tendency to pursue novel and highly stimulating experiences and often engages in risky behaviors to do so, is associated with several negative health outcomes when paired with low cognitive control. These outcomes include higher rates of substance misuse, self-harm, problem gambling, risky sexual behavior, engaging in dangerous sports, and criminal activities. It would be beneficial to have valid ways of measuring the trait to address or prevent these negative health outcomes from occurring. The sensation seeking personality trait is typically only measured using self-report surveys, even though it manifests itself behaviorally. Creation of behavioral measurements of sensation seeking may aid in the understanding of the trait and its behavioral effects, as well as aid in prevention of negative health outcomes. Previous attempts to measure sensation seeking behaviorally have not been successful, potentially due to the inherent nature of the trait being difficult to elicit in standard laboratory tasks and environments, and use of extrinsic rather than intrinsic motivators. I developed two novel emergent behavioral tasks to measure observed changes in participant-driven behavior and related these task variables to each individual's measured sensation seeking personality trait. I also assessed whether these new task measures correlated with reported negative health behaviors that have been associated with sensation seeking. This dissertation consists of three studies utilizing these novel emergent behavioral tasks. The first compared task measures to self-report measures of sensation seeking and personality traits, the second served as a replication and looked at relations between task measures and risky behaviors, and the third developed a virtual reality variant of the tasks. Several of the behavioral measurements within the emergent behavior tasks showed significant relations with sensation seeking personality trait, in particular measures of risky or "dangerous" decisions made in Studies 1 and 2 that correlated with the risk seeking subtype of sensation seeking personality trait. Study 3 found that implementing the behavioral tasks in virtual reality resulted in weaker, rather than stronger, relationships between the behavioral measures and self-report measures. Together, these studies found that the emergent tasks implemented using standard computer interfaces, but not virtual reality, show promise as valid behavioral measurements of sensation seeking personality trait.