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Stereotype Threat In Older Adults’ Episodic Memory Tests: Susceptibility And Protection, Talia Barrett

Honors Theses

The objective of the present study was to investigate whether prior task success would protect older adults against stereotype threat in an episodic memory test. Previous experiments have established that, whereas stereotype threat negatively impacts older participants’ episodic memory performance, prior task success benefits it. However, up until this point, researchers had yet to combine the two manipulations to test their joint effect on episodic memory. Participants were randomly assigned to read a stereotype threat or neutral passage, after which they were placed in the success or no success group. Participants next received a stereotype condition reminder, and they then …

Abraham Lincoln, The United States, And Mexico: The Implications Of Memory In A Continental History, Emilie E. Ginn

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the malleability of memory through an analysis of both domestic and international memories of Abraham Lincoln. With a particular focus on the American Civil War Era in a North American continental context, key individuals are identified and their contributions are illuminated. While Abraham Lincoln is remembered for all that he accomplished during this time, others such as Matías Romero, Ulysses S. Grant, and Plácido Vega, also greatly contributed to the development of the relationship between the United States and Mexico.

Additionally, institutional and collective memories of Abraham Lincoln invoke present-day examples of intentional manipulation of these memories …

Prenatal Choline Supplementation And Mk-801 Toxicity: Protecting Memory And Preventing Neurodegeneration, Chelsea Nickerson

Honors Theses

Choline is essential to the development and function of the central nervous system. Supplemental choline is neuroprotective against a variety of insults, including neurotoxins like dizocilpine (MK-801). MK-801 is an NMDA receptor antagonist that is frequently used in rodent models of psychological disorders. At low doses, it causes cognitive impairments, and at higher doses it induces motor deficits, anhedonia, and neuronal degeneration. The primary goals of the present study were to investigate whether prenatal choline supplementation protects against the cognitive impairments, motor deficits, and neuropathologies that are precipitated by MK-801 administration in adulthood. Adult male Sprague Dawley rats were fed …

Stranger In A Strange Land: The Struggle For Cultural And Personal Identity In Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World, Laura E. Smith

Honors Theses

In order to explicate Murakami's version of the official culture, I have analyzed the novel with the works of several different theorists. Primarily, I drew my own understanding of the official culture from Raymond Williams's examination of culture in Marxism and Literature. His terminology became helpful in writing about the operation of the System and the Town, though it did not define that operation precisely. Williams's work also introduced me to the theory behind the official culture's manipulation and exclusion of historical aspects in order to create their "official" version of history, from which the official culture draws its identity. …

Gendered Struggle For The Freedom From Violence Using Frantz Fanon’S Theory In Three Postcolonial Novels: Albert Wendt’S Pouliuli, Tsitsi Dangarembga’S Nervous Conditions, And Edwidge Danticat’S Breath, Eyes, Memory, Robin M. Respaut

Honors Theses

While studying abroad in New Zealand last year, I became intrigued by Albert Wendt’s novel Pouliuli, because it was my first literary view into Pacific Island culture. My interest in the novel was part of my awakening to the particular damage done by the west in Oceania. By attending classes on the anthropology and sociology of postcolonial Pacific societies, I discovered how the west had acted in the region to encourage progressive technology in ways that handled native traditional culture with unconscious disrespect. I was stunned to learn that Oceania is the most aided region in the world today, surpassing …

Collective Memory Of Vichy : Moulin, Pétain, And The Vél' D'Hiv', Kathryn W. Bondy

Honors Theses

Following World War II, European countries that had been devastated by the war slowly began the task of rebuilding. This reconstruction did not only involve the restoration of buildings and governments, but also of national psyches, as most European nations had recently experienced a traumatic period in their history. France was no exception. Since the liberation of Paris in August of 1944, France had been attempting to regain a sense of normality that it had not had under the World War II government of Vichy. As a result of signing an armistice with Germany on June 22, 1940, France was …