Date of Award
5-1-2020
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Behavior Analysis and Therapy
First Advisor
Dixon, Mark
Abstract
The present study sought to evaluate whether a brief ACT session which utilized values and committed action activities was effective in changing how student veterans responded on two different discounting surveys. Participants in experimental and control groups completed a monetary temporal discounting survey and a death probability discounting survey before and after completing either a brief ACT session or completing a control activity. Twenty-three student veterans participated in the present study and a pre-, post-group control group design was utilized to evaluate the effects of the intervention. Independent t-tests were conducted, and the results of those analyses showed that ACT was effective in decreasing discounting on the monetary temporal discounting survey (t(10) = 1.997, p = 0.0368) when compared to the control group (t(11) = 0.2088, p = 0.4192). However, there were no statistically significant changes on the death probability survey in the ACT group (t(10) = 0.2459 p = .4504) or control group (t(11) = 0.8784, p = 0.1992). Implications of these findings and future research are discussed.
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