Factors Influencing Continuity Of Attachment Quality In Early Childhood, Ya F. Xue

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Although the study of attachment continuity has flourished over the last several decades, gaps remain in the literature. These include a dearth of studies that have examined: 1) how children differ in their patterns of continuity in attachment quality; 2) factors that underlie these patterns; and 3) the roles that infant characteristics, such as children’s levels of susceptibility to parenting influences, have in shaping attachment stability. Correspondingly, this dissertation aimed to identify children’s patterns of continuity in attachment quality across early childhood, and to elucidate the processes that influence the development of these different patterns. Using Latent Class Analysis (LCA), …

The Sixties Scoop Among Aboriginal Veterans: A Critical Narrative Study, Munira Abdulwasi

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This study explored the experience of Aboriginal Veterans adopted and/or fostered during the Sixties Scoop using critical narrative inquiry. The objectives were to: 1) understand the lived experience of Aboriginal veterans adopted and/or fostered during the Sixties Scoop, 2) explore any health needs expressed by Aboriginal veterans adopted and/or fostered during the Sixties Scoop, and 3) provide recommendations for the implementation of health services and programs to assist this group of Aboriginal veterans with their health needs. Eight individual interviews were conducted with participants in Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. All interviews were audio-taped, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using …

Neural And Behavioural Responses To Rewards And Losses In Early Development: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study, Niki Hosseini-Kamkar

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Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the neural and behavioural correlates of learning from rewards and losses in children. Greater blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) responses in the ventral striatum (VS) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) were found when participants received rewards compared to when they missed out on an opportunity to receive rewards. In contrast, greater BOLD responses in the anterior insula (AI) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were found when participants received losses compared to when they avoided losing. The BOLD response to rewards in the VS and VMPFC correlated positively with the tendency to …

The Impact Of The Operational Environment On The Commitment Profiles Of Canadian Armed Forces Soldiers, Christina L. Eastwood

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The aim of this study was to use latent profile analysis to determine whether commitment profiles found in previous studies could be replicated in a deployed Canadian military sample. This study examined antecedents contributing to the development of the profiles, outcomes associated with profile membership and stability of profiles solutions. A total of 4254 (pre-deployment) and 2365 (post-deployment) military personnel completed surveys related to affective (AC), normative (NC) and continuance (CC) organizational commitment, unit climate, operational preparedness, psychological distress, and intention to stay. Four commitment profiles (e.g., high AC- dominant, low CC/NC-dominant, Moderately and Weakly committed) emerged across both samples. …

Prosody: An Important Cue To Word Learning, Monica Dasilva

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Infants rely on cues from their environment during language acquisition. Prosodic features of words are one such cue and involve changes in stress and rhythmic patterns within speech. Studies have examined prosody’s influence on word segmentation and have found it to be a useful cue for detecting word boundaries (Johnson & Seidl, 2009). What is less understood is how prosody helps infants form associations between novel labels and their referents during word learning. The present thesis investigated the influence of prosodic cues on word learning. The looking times were recorded of 13 infants (19-25 months) exposed to object-label pairings that …

The Role Of Androgens In Life History Theories Of Attachment, Janani S. Sankar

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Life history theories (LHTs) of attachment address how attachments to caregivers in infancy/childhood and to romantic partners in adulthood are used to negotiate mating and reproductive choices. Greater insecure-avoidant attachment has been suggested to be associated with the adoption of a low-investment, short-term reproductive strategy. The role of sex hormones, including the androgen testosterone (T), in the development of attachment-related reproductive strategies has been speculated in some LHTs. This research tested an integrated-LHT model of early environment, attachment, and reproductive strategies in men, using structural equation modeling. Androgen-related effects were hypothesized to occur prenatally and/or in adulthood, consistent with various …

"She Will Drive The ____": Verb-Based Prediction In Individuals With Parkinson Disease, Kelsey G. Santerre

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Cognitive changes in Parkinson disease (PD) affect language processing, including sentence comprehension impairments, difficulties with processing verbs, and discourse impairments. In many theories of language comprehension, efficient language processing depends on successful implicit prediction of upcoming concepts and grammatical structures. Such prediction processes, in part, may be regulated by the neural dopaminergic system, which is markedly impaired in PD. In non-language tasks, persons with PD (PwPD) are impaired in prediction, sequencing, and probabilistic learning. However, the contributions of these dopaminergic-mediated prediction and probabilistic learning processes to language processing impairments in PD remain unexplored. We tested whether PwPD are impaired in …

The Coffee Shop Effect: Investigating The Relationship Between Ambient Noise And Cognitive Flexibility, Emily G. Nielsen

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Cognitive flexibility is the ability to think diversely in order to solve problems and learn concepts. It has also been suggested that cognitive flexibility supports creativity. Research has demonstrated that creativity is enhanced by moderate volumes of ambient noise. This thesis sought to replicate and extend this line of research by investigating how noise affects cognitive flexibility. Study 1 assessed the effects of noise on three creativity tasks. Performance was found to be enhanced by ambient noise, particularly among those who listen to music while they study/work. Study 2 examined how noise affects performance on a category learning task designed …

The Cultural Connectedness Scale And Its Relation To Positive Mental Health Among First Nations Youth, Angela Snowshoe

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The mental health and wellbeing of youth is one of the most urgent concerns affecting many First Nations communities across Canada. Despite a growing recognition that cultural connectedness (i.e., the extent to which an individual is integrated within his or her First Nations culture) is an important factor for promoting the mental health of First Nations youth, there remains a clear need for a conceptual model that organizes, explains, and leads to an understanding of the resiliency mechanisms underlying this construct. Study 1 involved the development of the Cultural Connectedness Scale (CCS) with a sample of 319 First Nations, Métis, …

Congruent Familiar Size Relationships Decrease Size Contrast Illusion, Margarita Maltseva

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We examined the effect of familiar size of objects on size perception. Participants matched the size of a target image to the perceived size of a central image in the Ebbinghaus illusion. The central image was identical throughout all trials (a 25-mm-wide dog), but the annuli varied in physical size (12 mm vs. 37 mm), semantic category (animate vs. inanimate), and familiar real-world size (cat vs. horse for the animate category; shoe vs. car for the inanimate category). Importantly, the familiar size relationship between the center and the annuli was either congruent (e.g., dog surrounded by small shoes or large …

National Identity And Attitudes Toward Immigrants: The Role Of Social Comparison And Perceptions Of Competition, Kelly L. Barnes

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Research has long demonstrated that negative types of national attachment, like nationalism, are related to relatively more negative intergroup attitudes while more positive forms of national identity, like patriotism, are either related to relatively more positive attitudes or unrelated. Most of this research has been conducted using individual difference measures of national identity. This series of studies seeks to test the difference between nationalism and patriotism empirically, by examining the idea that the presence of social comparison is what separates nationalism from patriotism. Further, the literature suggests that perceptions of competition between groups are an important factor in determining intergroup …

Naturalistic Paradigms For Neuroimaging And Bedside Measures Of Conscious Awareness, Leah J. Sinai

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Complex, naturalistic stimuli can test for covert awareness in behaviourally non-responsive patients. For patients with poor visual function, this thesis aimed to identify an auditory-only stimulus that could evaluate executive function. Also, it assessed if Galvanic Skin Response could be a suitable bedside testing method. Healthy individuals listened to 4 auditory stimuli in the fMRI scanner. During Galvanic Skin Response recording, an independent group of controls listened to an audio narrative and watched a movie. Behaviourally non-responsive patients were also tested during movie viewing. Using fMRI, an audio narrative was identified that produced widespread brain synchronization between healthy participants, critically …

Reactions To Negative Feedback: The Role Of Resilience And Implications For Counterproductivity, Kabir N. Daljeet

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The model of Organizational Frustration (Spector, 1978) suggests that individuals are more likely to engage in counterproductive work behaviour (CWB) after having had a negative experience at work due to the negative emotions brought on by such an experience. The King and Rothstein (2010) model of resilience suggests that the degree to which an individual self-regulates after an adverse workplace experience influences how they subsequently behave. Using vignettes, participants were told they received either positive or negative feedback regarding their job performance and were asked to fill out measures of resilience and intentions to engage in CWB. In a sample …

Biological And Contextual Predictors Of The Stability Of Behavioural Inhibition In Early Childhood, Victoria C. Johnson

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Persistently elevated behavioural inhibition (BI) in children confers increased risk for anxiety disorders. However, little research has jointly examined exogenous and endogenous factors that may moderate BI stability in early childhood. To explore whether parent (i.e., parental overinvolvement, parent anxiety) and child (i.e., 5-HTTLPR and BDNF val66met genotype, positive emotionality) factors influenced the stability of early BI, a community sample of 371 preschoolers and their caregivers completed observational measures of child temperament, observational and questionnaire measures of parenting, and parent interviews for anxiety disorder history. Child BI at age 3 interacted with children’s 5-HTTLPR variants to predict age 5 BI; …

Hair Cortisol Concentrations In High- And Low-Stress Mother-Daughter Dyads, Sarah J. Ouellette

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Hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) are receiving increased attention as a novel biomarker of psychophysiological responses to chronic stress. I examined the validity of HCC as a marker of psychosocial stress in mother-daughter dyads characterized by high (n = 30) or low (n = 30) maternal chronic stress. Additionally, I examined whether early care and daughters’ symptoms moderated similarity of HCC levels within dyads. Finally, I examined chronic stress and early caregiving as potential mediators of children’s cortisol stability. High-stress mothers had significantly lower HCC compared to low-stress mothers. Further, HCC in daughters were significantly associated with previously assessed …

Relationships Between The Dark Triad And Delayed Gratification: An Evolutionary Perspective, Holly M. Baughman

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The Dark Triad (i.e., psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism) is a cluster of socially aversive personality traits that account for the “darker” side of human behavior. While traditional views have focused on the maladaptive nature of these traits, recent work in the field of evolutionary psychology suggests these traits may be adaptive in terms of pursuing a life strategy; one that is characterized by immediate gratification and risk-taking. The present study examined links between the Dark Triad traits and ability to delay gratification in a sample of 364 undergraduate students (136 males). Psychopathy was the most strongly linked to an inability …

Motivation And Well-Being: A Test Of Self-Determination Theory Using A Person-Centered Approach, Chelsea A. Vaters

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Self-determination theory postulates that individuals can experience motivation in different ways and that these different types of motivation fall along a continuum from controlled to autonomous regulation. Recently, there have been challenges to the notion that an individual’s motivation can be categorized as falling at a particular point along the autonomy continuum. Researchers have begun to investigate the possibility that individuals can experience different types of motivation simultaneously. The current study used a person-centered approach to study motivation and also examined how the profiles detected related to well-being outcomes and adaptive student behaviours. Latent profile analyses of data from two …

Interactions Between The Basolateral Amygdala And Ventral Striatum During Probabilistic Learning In Children And Associations With Individual Differences In Free Cortisol, Haley J. Fallowfield

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Stress can drastically alter the behavioural and functional correlates of feedback learning; however, the functional correlates of these effects are poorly understood, particularly in children. In the present study, typically developing children between the ages of 9- and 11-years-old completed a probabilistic learning task with both appetitive and aversive outcomes in a magnetic resonance imaging scanner. Anticipatory stress to the experimental environment was measured via salivary cortisol at baseline and prior to completion of the task. Although baseline and pre-MRI cortisol values were not reliably different at the group level, subsequent analyses revealed that the basolateral amygdala was less responsive …

A Latent Profile Analysis Of Romantic Relationship Quality And Its Associations With Personality, Partner Support, And Psychological Well-Being, Samantha Chen

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The current study investigated the number of relationship quality profiles that emerge from a latent profile analysis and subsequently examined the nature of each subgroup using predictors of partner social support and personality, as well as outcomes of psychological well-being. The application of latent profile analysis resulted in three profiles of low, moderate, and high relationship quality among a sample of university students. Additionally, predictors and outcomes of profile membership were incorporated to provide a greater descriptive understanding of the latent profiles. Results showed that the relationship between intimacy and passion and the relationship between relationship satisfaction and received esteem …

Parent-To-Parent Support For Parents Of Children Who Are Deaf Or Hard Of Hearing: A Conceptual Framework, Rebecca Henderson

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Background: Parent-to-parent support for parents with children who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH) is identified as an important component of early hearing detection and intervention (EHDI) programs for children with hearing loss.

Purpose: The specific aim of this review was to identify the constructs and components of parent-to-parent support for parents of children who are D/HH.

Research Design: An extensive scoping literature review identified 39 peer-reviewed articles published from 2000-2014. Studies were selected and reviewed based on standardized procedures.

Results: Data was identified, extracted and organized into libraries of thematic and descriptive content. A conceptual framework of …

Eyetracking Of Coarticulatory Cue Responses In Children And Adults, Alexandra M. Cross

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Studies examining sensitivity to coarticulatory cues during spoken word recognition have typically examined children and adults separately. The present thesis compared sensitivity to coarticulatory cues in school-aged children and adults using eyetracking. Children and adults listened to words containing congruent and incongruent coarticulatory cues while looking at a two-picture display. Contrary to theories positing weakened attention to phonetic detail in children, we observed equal or greater sensitivity to coarticulatory cues in children compared to adults. This effect was related to predictors of reading and language proficiency, and was also modulated by phoneme contrasts such that children were overly sensitive to …

Discrimination Is In The Eye Of The Beholder: Perception Of Discrimination And Microaggressions, Sarah E. Moroz

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The present work sought to examine the perception of discrimination toward sexual and romantic minorities. In particular, microaggressions (subtle messages of hostility based on group membership) were examined as a potential factor in varying reports of discrimination frequency. Findings showed that both minority and majority group members agreed that the minority group experienced more discrimination in their day-to-day lives than did the majority group; the minority and majority groups also showed agreement regarding the frequency of this day-to-day discrimination. An indirect model of influence was found, in which frequency ratings of discrimination toward the minority group were impacted by frequency …

Event-Related Potential Markers Of Perceptual And Conceptual Speech Processes In Patients With Disorders Of Consciousness., Stephen T. Beukema

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Vegetative state (VS) and minimally conscious state (MCS) patients behaviorally demonstrate absent or fluctuating levels of awareness. Functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence of covert perceptual and semantic speech processing provides prognostic value for these patients. In this thesis, I examined the utility of high-density electroencephalography (EEG) in this regard. A contrast between event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by primed and unprimed word pairs was used to isolate conceptual (semantic) processes, while ERPs elicited by signal-correlated noise were contrasted with those elicited by speech to isolate pre-semantic, perceptual aspects of speech processing. These ERP effects were found to be both temporally and …

The Impact Of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy On Aggression, Anger, And Hostility In A Forensic Psychiatric Population, Monica F. Tomlinson

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Forensic psychiatric patients engage in more aggression than any other inpatient psychiatric population. Aggressive behaviour impedes rehabilitation, as aggressive individuals are often excluded from evidence-based therapies due to safety concerns. Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) is a group-based cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy designed to target maladaptive behaviours, such as aggression, in individuals who are behaviourally and emotionally dysregulated. The present study assessed whether six months of DBT is effective in reducing aggression, anger, and hostility in a representative, medium-security, forensic psychiatric population compared to treatment as usual. Participants (N = 17) suffered from a range of psychotic, personality, substance use, and mood …

Common And Distinct Brain Regions Support Numerical And Non-Numerical Magnitude Processing: A Functional Neuroimaging Meta-Analysis, Helen Moriah Sokolowski

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A current debate is whether number is processed using a number-specific system or a general magnitude processing system used for non-numerical magnitudes such as space. Activation likelihood estimation (ALE) was used to conduct the first quantitative meta-analysis of 20 empirical neuroimaging papers examining neural activation during numerical and non-numerical magnitude processing. Foci were compiled to generate probabilistic maps of activation for symbolic numerical magnitudes, nonsymbolic numerical magnitudes and non-numerical magnitudes. Conjunction analyses revealed overlapping activation for symbolic, nonsymbolic and non-numerical magnitudes in frontal and parietal lobes. Contrast analyses revealed specific activation in the left superior parietal lobule (SPL) and right …

Canadians’ Attitudes Toward Immigrants Who Claim Employment Discrimination, Natalia Lapshina

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This dissertation examined how prejudice may operate in the treatment of immigrants when they claim workplace discrimination. In line with the Justification-Suppression Model of the Expression of Prejudice (JSM; Crandall & Eshleman, 2003), I expected more negative attitudes toward an immigrant claimant from a dissimilar culture (Iran) compared to an immigrant claimant from a similar culture (Britain) and a second generation Iranian Canadian. All three studies utilized experimental design. The results of Study 1 demonstrated that the Iranian claimant was especially likely to be seen as not having experienced discrimination, more deserving of and responsible for the dismissal, and was …

Beyond Magnitude: Judging Ordinality Of Symbolic Number Is Unrelated To Magnitude Comparison And Independently Relates To Individual Differences In Arithmetic, Celia Goffin

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In the field of numerical cognition, ordinality, the sequence of numerals, has received less attention than cardinality, the number of items in a set. Therefore it is unclear whether numerical effects generated from ordinality and cardinality tasks are associated, and whether they relate to math achievement and more domain-general variables in similar ways. To address these questions, sixty adults completed ordinality, cardinality, visual-spatial working memory, inhibitory control and math achievement tasks. The numerical distance effect from the cardinality task and reverse distance effect from the ordinality task were reliable but not associated with one another. Additionally, both distance effects predicted …

No Safe Base: An Attachment Theory Perspective On The Mediational Effects Of Reappraisal And Resilience On The Well-Being Of Homeless Women In The Skid Row District Of Los Angeles, Stephanie L. Montgomery-Graham

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This study aims to test the relationship between attachment style and well-being by examining the possible mediating roles of emotion regulation (conceptualized as reappraisal and suppression) and resilience (Karreman & Vingerhoets, 2012). One hundred homeless women living in homeless shelters in the Skid Row district of Los Angeles were sampled to test Karreman and Vingerhoets’ model of attachment and well-being (2012). Dismissive attachment style comprised the largest group among the four measured attachment styles (n=39). Both dismissive and secure attachment positively correlated with well-being in this sample. Fearful attachment was the only attachment style negatively related to well-being. Preoccupied attachment …

Cyber-Psychopathy: Examining The Relationship Between Dark E-Personality And Online Misconduct, Andrew D. Nevin

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Currently, there is a lack of research investigating how the unique structural conditions of cyberspace may influence the expression of ‘dark’ personality and the role of such e-personality in explaining instances of online misconduct. Using a theoretical framework of context-dependent personality, this study seeks to fill a gap in the literature by using self-report survey data to explore whether the internet may decrease, increase, or intensify the expression of psychopathy. Quantitative data analysis in this study shows that when controlling for social context, internet users exhibit higher levels of psychopathy online than offline, which is especially pronounced in male subsamples. …

An Fmri Study Of Command Following And Communication Using Overt And Covert Motor Responses: Implications For Disorders Of Consciousness, Natalie R. Osborne

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We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore neural mechanisms of command following or communicating using executed or imagined movements, in order to understand why most covertly aware patients cannot communicate. 15 healthy participants executed or imagined arm movements that were either selected by them or pre-determined. We also explored non-volitional motor activity by passively moving participants. Response selection involved greater activity in high-level associative areas in frontal and parietal regions than following commands. Furthermore, there was no interaction between response and modality. Neural activity during passive movement exceeded that of active (volitional) movement in sensorimotor regions. Our results …