Department of Psychology Faculty Papers

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://digital.lib.washington.edu/handle/1773/15681

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Presence Scale Technical Report: Iterative Conceptualization, Psychometrics, and Validity Evidence
(2026) Sabine, Sarena; Gray, Carly E.; Kahn, Jr., Peter H.; Bratman, Gregory N.
This technical report details the four-year process through which we developed and completed an initial validation of the Presence Scale (see Appendix K or Table 20 for the finalized scale). The Presence Scale is a 14-item self-report measure of Presence, a hierarchical construct composed of three factors: Stillness of Mind, Present Moment Awareness, and Consciousness Beyond Self. Our goal in creating the Presence Scale was to have a self-report measure from which we can draw inferences about the degree to which a person experienced Presence during a recalled experience or, eventually, following an experimental condition or immediately after an experience in everyday life. Our formal definition of Presence and its three factors are provided below: Presence is the state of being in which conditioned thinking ceases, and the mind is open, aware, non-reactive, and still; and often a witness of itself. In this state, one can experience one’s consciousness as expanding, and one’s self as becoming part of something larger than the self. Presence is the mind attuned. Subject, not object. Life affirming. Stillness of Mind occurs when discursive thinking subsides and the mind is clear, calm, and settled. Present Moment Awareness occurs when one is open to and aware of the now, of the present moment, of being, even if one is involved in activity. Consciousness Beyond Self occurs when one’s consciousness seems to expand beyond the confines of the body and mind, and potentially the self merges—one experiences becoming One—with another entity or realm. The formal presentation of Presence and the core empirical evidence supporting the validity of the Presence Scale are reported in Kahn et al. (in press). This technical report provides the comprehensive methodological and empirical foundation underlying those findings as well as supplemental validity evidence. Here, we document the entire scale development process, including conceptual iterations, pilot studies, factor analyses, and item-level psychometric evaluation that extend beyond the scope of the journal article (see Figure 1 for an overview). Through providing transparent information about our scale development process, this report serves as a resource for researchers who wish to evaluate the Presence Scale and implement it with fidelity in their own work.
Coding Manual for Adolescent-Nature Interactions at a Youth Group Home
(2025-01) Dunker, Chrystal L.; Gray, Carly E.; Kahn, Peter H., Jr.
This technical report provides our coding manual – our systematic method to code qualitative photovoice data – from a study of nature interactions supporting coping and resilience among adolescents with histories of trauma living in a youth group home. Other authors on this study (but not on this coding manual) include Jean Kayira (SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry) and Elizabeth McCann (Department of Environmental Studies, Antioch University, New England). Using the interaction pattern method detailed in this coding manual, we coded interview data from 12 adolescents about their meaningful nature interactions. A total of 1212 (Level 1) IPs were coded in these data from the participant’s interviews and categorized into 62 Level 3 IPs such as viewing nature from a different vantage point, moving along the edges of nature, foraging or harvesting edibles to eat or drink, experiencing periodicity of nature, or experiencing nature with others. This study introduced an Interaction Pattern Approach (IPA) as a means to explore how meaningful nature engagement fosters coping and resilience in adolescents with histories of trauma. This methodology centers on Human-Nature Interaction Patterns (IPs) and applies a consensus coding process to discern the links between IPs and understandings of resilience. This study resulted in seven themes labeled, “Coping and Resilience Domains” which are supported by 37 subthemes labeled, “Strengths.” This technical report provides open access to our core intellectual qualitative work on this project, and can be used by others seeking to employ an interaction pattern approach for studies relating to coping and resilience, or more generally seeking to characterize people’s interactions with nature. While this technical report focuses on characterizing the IPs from interview data and testing for reliability, a more detailed accounting of the consensus coding process for IPs and coping and resilience can be found within the lead author’s doctoral dissertation, “Nature Interaction Assists with Coping and Resilience: An Interaction Pattern Approach with Adolescents with Histories of Trauma in a Youth Group Home.”
Coding Manual for: Modeling Child-Nature Interaction in a Forest Preschool
(University of Washington The Human Interaction with Nature and Technological Systems Laboratory Department of Psychology & University of Washington School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, 2022-05-08) Weiss, Thea; Kahn, Peter H, Jr.; Lam, Ling-Wai; Koch, Taylor; Carrington, Kayla; Ling, Honson; Kohring, Peter Kai; Ho, Cassie; Lev, Elizabeth
There is increasing evidence that interaction with nature provides substantial benefits to the mental and physical development of children. While children’s time spent outdoors has declined substantially in recent decades, nature-based education programs like Fiddleheads Forest preschool in Seattle allow children to engage with nature in a supportive learning environment. The goal of this research was to begin to develop a model of child-nature interaction in a specific outdoor nature learning environment. To accomplish this, we systematically analyzed child-nature interaction through characterizing its essential features in the form of interaction patterns: the functional units of human interaction with the relevant physical characteristics that nature affords. Using a randomized time-sampling methodology, we collected video recordings of child-nature interaction and coded this data by means of an interaction pattern analysis framework. This technical report provides the coding manual used to systematically code each participant’s behavioral interactions. By a coding manual, we mean a document that systematically explains the process used to formally code the video data. Our goal is to present this manual such that, as part of an ongoing iterative scientific process, it can be used and modified by others interested in investigating the development and significance of children’s interactions with the natural environment.
Coding Manual for a Study With the Girl Scouts of Western Washington on the Importance of (Not Just Visual) Interaction With Nature
(2022-04-09) Gray, Carly E; Kahn, Peter H. Jr.
This technical report provides our coding manual – our systematic method to code the qualitative narrative data – from a study of Girl Scouts’ meaningful nature experiences. Other authors on this study (but not on this coding manual) include Joshua J. Lawler, Pooja S. Tandon, Gregory N. Bratman, Sara P. Perrins, and Frances Boyens. Our research question was whether children’s nature interactions that are embodied (vs. only visual) would be associated with eudemonic wellbeing. Using the interaction pattern approach detailed in this coding manual, we coded written narratives from 127 Girl Scouts (8-11 years old) about a recent meaningful nature experience, and, through a novel questionnaire, assessed Presence, a eudemonic state of wellbeing. A total of 372 interactions patterns were coded from the Girl Scouts’ written narratives. Participants who enacted embodied interactions with nature (e.g., “making snowman,” “wrapping arms around tree,” “talking to chickens") experienced a greater sense of Presence than participants whose interactions relied solely on vision (e.g., “seeing snow,” “seeing moss,” “watching pileated woodpecker”). This technical report provides open access to our core intellectual qualitative work on this project, and can be used by others seeking to employ an interaction pattern approach, or more generally seeking to characterize people’s interactions with nature.
Coding Manual for “The Nature Voices of People Who Visit Discovery Park: An Interaction Pattern Approach”
(2019-06-15) Kahn, Peter H., Jr.; Lev, Elizabeth; Chen, Hanzi; Esperum, Garrett; Piatok, Hannah; Aberg, Nathan; Weiss, Thea; Grueter, Andrew; Koch, Taylor
Interaction with nature is vital for human physical health and mental well-being, yet urban development continues to put pressures on natural areas that allow for essential forms of human-nature interaction. Discovery Park, the largest park within Seattle – with over 500 acres and almost 12 miles of walking trails – is a case in point insofar as some Seattle constituents would like to develop some of its open space. The goal of this research is to give voice to how visitors of Discovery Park interact with nature at the park. To accomplish this, we applied an Interaction Pattern Approach, where “interaction patterns” are defined as fundamental ways of interacting with nature that are characterized abstractly enough such that many different instantiations of each pattern can be engendered. After their visit to Discovery Park, participants were asked to access our website (what we called “the Nature Language Website”) to write a few sentences or paragraphs that described a meaningful experience they had interacting with nature in the park. Participants were also asked a few demographic questions. This technical report provides our coding manual – our systematic method to code the qualitative data – of people who visited Discovery Park, and who wrote of how they interacted with nature in the park. This technical report thereby provides open access to our core intellectual qualitative work on this project. It can be used by others to conduct related research on how people interact with nature, and especially natural landscapes.
DBT Skills Training as a Treatment Strategy for Female Survivors of Human Trafficking
(2017-04) Gayle, Jessica J.
This paper will include suggestions for the first six group sessions using Dialectical Behavior Therapy for adults who were victims of sex trafficking in their youth. Group therapy involving DBT primarily focuses on skills training in the areas of distress tolerance, mindfulness, interpersonal skills and emotional regulation. DBT stresses the didactic of acceptance and change, purporting that for change to be lasting and meaning one must first accept things as they are without judgment and without making attempts to avoid pain or discomfort. By helping adults understand the ways in which they are in control of their emotional and intellectual functioning, and to which degree they give up control when trying to avoid pain, the hope is to build upon the strengths that they already have, enable them to tolerate the realities of their experiences and to assist them in creating new and healthier thoughts, emotions and behaviors that will bring about new understandings of past events and for events that they will struggle with in the future.
Coding Manual for the Study: “Do People Hold a Humanoid Robot Morally Accountable for the Harm It Causes?”
(University of Washington Department of Psychology, 2013-05) Kahn, Peter H. Jr; Kanda, Takayuki; Ishiguro, Hiroshi; Ruckert, Jolina H.; Gary, Heather E.; Shen, Solace; Maier, Rose
Robots will increasingly take on roles in our social lives where they can cause humans harm. When this happens, will people hold robots morally accountable for the harms they cause? Toward addressing this question, 40 undergraduate students individually engaged in a 15-minute interaction with ATR’s humanoid robot, Robovie. At the end of the interaction, Robovie incorrectly assessed the participant’s performance in a game and denied the participant a $20 prize. Following the interaction, each participant was interviewed for 50 minutes to ascertain their judgments of Robovie’s sociality, mental-emotional states, and level of moral accountability. Results indicated that all participants engaged socially with Robovie (e.g., exchanged an initial introduction), and many of the participants conceptualized Robovie as having social attributes (e.g. the ability to be a friend), as well as mental-emotional states (e.g., the ability to think or feel happy). Sixty five percent of the participants attributed some level of moral accountability to Robovie. Statistically, participants held Robovie less accountable than they would a human but more accountable than they would a vending machine. This technical report provides the coding manual used in the systematic assessment of participant’s behavioral interactions with and reasoning about Robovie. By a coding manual we mean an empirically and conceptually grounded means of coding qualitative social-cognitive data. The purpose of presenting this manual is to make it available to others interested in investigating people’s social and moral relationships with robots so that it can be utilized and modified as part of an ongoing iterative scientific process.
Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are highly conserved in rhesus (Macaca mulatta) and cynomolgus (Macaca fascicularis) macaques
(2007) Street, Summer L.; Kyes, Randall C.; Grant, Richard; Ferguson, Betsy
Background: Macaca fascicularis (cynomolgus or longtail macaques) is the most commonly used nonhuman primate in biomedical research. Little is known about the genomic variation in cynomolgus macaques or how the sequence variants compare to those of the well-studied related species, Macaca mulatta (rhesus macaque). Previously we identified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in portions of 94 rhesus macaque genes and reported that Indian and Chinese rhesus had largely different SNPs. Here we identify SNPs from some of the same genomic regions of cynomolgus macaques (from Indochina, Indonesia, Mauritius and the Philippines) and compare them to the SNPs found in rhesus. Results: We sequenced a portion of 10 genes in 20 cynomolgus macaques. We identified 69 SNPs in these regions, compared with 71 SNPs found in the same genomic regions of 20 Indian and Chinese rhesus macaques. Thirty six (52%) of the M. fascicularis SNPs were overlapping in both species. The majority (70%) of the SNPs found in both Chinese and Indian rhesus macaque populations were also present in M. fascicularis. Of the SNPs previously found in a single rhesus population, 38% (Indian) and 44% (Chinese) were also identified in cynomolgus macaques. In an alternative approach, we genotyped 100 cynomolgus DNAs using a rhesus macaque SNP array representing 53 genes and found that 51% (29/57) of the rhesus SNPs were present in M. fascicularis. Comparisons of SNP profiles from cynomolgus macaques imported from breeding centers in China (where M. fascicularis are not native) showed they were similar to those from Indochina. Conclusion: This study demonstrates a surprisingly high conservation of SNPs between M. fascicularis and M. mulatta, suggesting that the relationship of these two species is closer than that suggested by morphological and mitochondrial DNA analysis alone. These findings indicate that SNP discovery efforts in either species will generate useful resources for both macaque species. Identification of SNPs that are unique to regional populations of cynomolgus macaques indicates that location-specific SNPs could be used to distinguish monkeys of uncertain origin. As an example, cynomolgus macaques obtained from 2 different breeding centers in China were shown to have Indochinese ancestry.

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