Digital Commons Network^™

Thomas Reid On Language And Mind, Alastair L.V. Crosby

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The dissertation concerns Thomas Reid’s philosophy of language. In the first three chapters, I discuss his philosophy of language in relation to his developmental psychology. More specifically, I discuss his answers to two questions: (i) what does the ability to understand artificial linguistic signs make possible? and (ii) what makes the ability to understand artificial linguistic signs possible? The focus is on Reid’s claim that the mind’s ability to understand artificial linguistic signs makes it possible for it to acquire a number of distinct mental abilities, such as to conceive universals, to judge, and to reason. I argue this claim …

On The Cusp Film, Rommel H. Ojeda, Rommel H. Ojeda

Capstones

On the Cusp film follows the story of Dreamer Erika Apupalo, who immigrated to the United States at the age of 9. Her story is one that represents the determination that Dreamers or DACA-recipients have to achieve the American Dream (freedom), while dealing with the physical limitations of being out of status, and having to deal with the uncertainty of what could happen if she went back to her country. Taking place in 2006 in Tigualo, Ecuador, Erika takes us through her journey of migrating to the United State. “I remember the immigration officer asking me questions”, says Erika, who …

Journo: Organize And Share The Memory Of Travel Experience, Ziyi Tao

Theses

With the improvement of living standards and the construction of public transportation, many people travel more frequently. They want to record those experiences and get more enlightenment when they look back upon the memory. Additionally, many people have eagerly requested to share their travel experiences due to the development of social media and the information explosion era. Less than a decade ago, people would travel without a smart device. They tended to take photos along the way with a film camera, and stick them on a physical photo album to share with friends and family. The other traditional method of …

Profile-Guided Data Management For Heterogeneous Memory Systems, Matthew B. Olson

Doctoral Dissertations

Market forces and technological constraints have led to a gap between CPU and memory performance that has widened for decades. While processor scaling has plateaued in recent years, this gap persists and is not expected to diminish for the foreseeable future. This discrepancy presents a host of challenges for scaling application performance, which have only been exacerbated in recent years, as increasing demands for fast and effective data analytics are driving memory energy, bandwidth, and capacity requirements to new heights.

To address these trends, hardware architects have introduced a plethora of memory technologies. For example, most modern memory systems include …

Light Level Intensity Alters Anxiety, But Not Memory, During Open-Field And Novel Object Location Tasks In Male Rats, Angelina Tassone

Biological Sciences

Appropriate design and control of testing conditions during assessment of animal behavior is critical to maximize generalizability, replicability, and translational relevance. Some sensory stimuli are often controlled: for instance, during rodent behavioral testing, efforts are commonly made to reduce or eliminate olfactory and auditory distractions. However, less attention is paid to the ambient light level intensity (lux), which may vary even between rooms in the same facility. We sought to explore whether behavior is influenced by the standard illumination intensity in one of our behavioral testing rooms. To this end, we measured anxiety-like behaviors, exploration, and spatial memory performance in …

Memory Of Wernher Von Braun In Rocket City: The Historians’ Vergangenheitsbewältigung Challenge In Huntsville, Alabama, 1998-2010, Susan Lloyd Mcclamroch

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the conflict that often develops between historians who aim to reveal difficult history or correct a biased view of history and influential stakeholders who possess the agency to maintain historic silences or a skewed version of history. It examines the case in Huntsville, Alabama, when historians at the University of Alabama Huntsville mounted a campaign to inform the community of World War II events in Europe that preceded the immigration and relocation of a team of German rocketeers to establish a missile development program at the US Army’s Redstone Arsenal facility in 1950. Cold War successes made …

Does Whispering Improve Children’S Memory? Comparing Auditory Vigilance And Salience Hypotheses, Christina M. Barnes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Oral communication is one of the primary tools children use to learn new information and speech registers can deliver additional meaning to the words someone uses. Cirillo’s (2004) vigilance hypothesis states “Whispering can affect the psychobiological state of recipients, and in particular raise their auditory vigilance” (Cirillo, 2004, p. 76). Building on this theory, the current study investigates the role of whispering and children’s memory by examining a whispering vigilance, whispering salience which focused on the changes between normal and whisper registers, and combined vigilance and salience hypotheses to determine if whispering contributes to the recall of information. Using video …

An Erp Study Of The Effects Of Iconic And Nonsense Gestures On Memory Formation, Brianna E. Cairney

LSU Master's Theses

Co-speech gesture is an important part of human communication and aids in comprehension, learning, and memory. The addition of iconic gestures to speech has been shown in prior work to enhance memory for the speech. However, it remains unclear as to whether this benefit requires gestures to be meaningful, or, conversely, if any attentionally-engaging gesture will enhance memory. In the current study, we tested two theories to explain the mnemonic benefits of co-speech gesture: Dual Coding Theory, which attributes these benefits to multimodal encoding and enhanced imageability, and Attentional Highlighting Theory, which posits that gestures draw more attention to concurrent …

Control, Alter, And Delete: Investigating The Manipulation Of Memory And Memorial Beliefs By Suspected Psychopaths In Interpersonal Relationships, Kendra Nespoli

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Psychopaths are known to wreak havoc in the lives, careers, and relationships of people with whom they come into contact, triggering impacts that can extend for many years. To date, few studies have investigated the psychological tactics used by psychopaths to manipulate and control others in relationships. Previous research in the area of autobiographical memory has demonstrated that the decisions people make regarding belief in their memory for life events are influenced by feedback received from others. Social feedback has been shown to be a powerful influence in persuading others to revise beliefs about past events, particularly in the context …

Impact Of Acetylcholine On Internal Pathways To Basal Amygdala Pyramidal Neurons, Tyler Daniel Anderson-Sieg

Theses and Dissertations

The basolateral nuclear complex of the amygdala (BNC) – consisting of the lateral (LA), basolateral (BL), and basomedial nuclei (BM) – detects salient environmental stimuli (cue-detection) and motivates appropriate behavioral responses to their implied meaning (cue-guided behavior) via a precise pattern of internal circuitry. Glutamatergic signals representing environmental stimuli enter the LA and split into parallel streams that activate pyramidal neurons (PNs) in the anterior and posterior BL (BLa and BLp), which putatively mediate negative and positive emotions, respectively. The BL is the most densely innervated target of the cholinergic basal forebrain (CBF) and ACh transients (phasic ACh) in cortex …

The Embroidered Tablecloth: How Locale Influences Eastern European Jewish Textile Production, Elena Solomon

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Recent scholarship frames craft as distinct from art and as an encapsulation of cultural expression at a given moment. Building on that framework, this thesis analyzes the shifting attitudes towards the production of handmade textiles among Eastern European Jews in the US in the twentieth century, as influenced by their migration. To demonstrate the textile environment at that time, this thesis examines pre- and post-migration primary sources and autobiographical writing, including Mary Antin’s The Promised Land, supplemented with interviews of first- and second-generation immigrants to Chicago. In contrast with stereotypes about craft as historically stable, defining craft as regional …

Study Of Primary Cilia In Early Development, Pharmacology, And Brainwave Activity., Matthew Roderick Strobel

Doctoral Dissertations

The primary cilium is a unique cellular organelle that emanates from the mother centriole and extends out of the plasma membrane of nearly every mammalian cell. While originally believed to be a vestigial appendage, the cilium is now known to be a signaling hub where various intercellular communication pathways intersect to regulate morphogenesis, proliferation, polarity, differentiation, and homeostasis. Due to their importance in regulating cellular functions the cilium has become a growing focus of biomedical research as it has been linked to at least 35 human developmental disorders which have been termed ciliopathies. In the nervous system, primary cilia regulate …

"Never Forget": Embodied Absence And Extended Relations Of Care After 9/11, Sophie L. Riemenschneider

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a reflection on how loss was articulated in the wake of 9/11. The terror attacks engendered a memorial style that sought to give shape to grief, acknowledging it without filling it in or erasing it. This new style, which I term embodied absence, exists across a range of mediums, from literature to architecture. It is such a potent memorial form because it also captures the traumatic process, which is prolonged, layered, and potentially open-ended. However, despite their ability to mirror the nature of trauma, instances of embodied absence never verbalize the attacks’ root trauma—the disconnect between our …

Examining Own-Race Bias: A Cooperation And Memory Study Using Diverse Emojis, Jillian Franks

Theses

Other-race-effect or own-race bias is a well-documented phenomenon in memory. Findings suggest that humans are better at recognizing and remembering faces of their own race than other races. Previous research suggests that these results are due to a lack of interracial contact or exposure to other racial groups. Evidence from previous studies has demonstrated that individuals process own-race faces differently than other-race faces, paying more attention to more salient features that become better encoded. While there is empirical support for both hypotheses, it has yet to be studied if the other-race effect for memory extends to representational human faces, for …

Long-Term Neural Activity Recorders Using Energy-Based Sensing, Compressive Computation And Data Logging, Darshit Mehta

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Insects are ideal candidates for developing bio-robotic systems owing to their ability to thrive in almost any environment. For example, neurons in their exquisite olfactory sensory systems can be tapped to create a sensing platform for standoff chemical monitoring. However, for enabling such cyborg systems, it is vital that the neural activity of a freely behaving organism can be measured for long periods of time. The current state-of-the-art neural recording techniques are power-intensive and they either need batteries, which make them too bulky for insects, or they have to maintain a continuous telemetry link to an external power source which …

Personality Pathology And Cognitive Aging: The Role Of Interpersonal Stress, Patrick Joseph Cruitt

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research on the relationship between normal-range personality and cognitive aging has demonstrated consistent, but modest, effects. The current investigation seeks to increase our understanding of unhealthy cognitive aging by examining the maladaptive extremes of personality. Borderline and avoidant personality disorder (PD), but not obsessive-compulsive PD, were hypothesized to show prospective associations with cognitive aging. Interpersonal stress was expected to mediate these relationships. The current investigation tested these hypotheses in two longitudinal studies of older adulthood: the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center cohort (ADRC, N = 434, Mage = 69.95, 56% women) and the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network study (SPAN, …

“Where—Am I?”: H.D.’S Search For Identity, Dianne D. Berger

English Dissertations

Hilda Doolittle is best known as the imagist poet H.D. In a career lasting a half-century, H.D. also penned essays, memoirs, fiction, and translations of classical Greek works. Regardless of the genre, H.D. reveals much of her self in her work. Immediately following World War 1, she confronted her traumatic experiences during the war years. During World War II, she concentrated on the relationships—primarily with males—that had formed her identity. In the last work published in her lifetime, she conveyed what she had learned in her lifelong quest for identity. I explore selections from H.D.’s work in these three categories. …

Universe Diving: Phenomenologically Feeling The “Universeness” Of Dc And Marvel Comics, Jayson W. Quearry

Film, Media & Theatre Dissertations

This dissertation takes advantage of comics studies as a relatively young field of research to conduct a needed phenomenology of the industry’s universe-oriented practices and how they require and elicit cognitive activity from the reader. Where world-building scholars have studied the narratological construction and serialization of superhero universes in relation to similar fictional constructs, this dissertation’s intervention is to foreground the cognitive phenomenology of the reader as they engage with these industrially motivated techniques.

My argument begins from the assertion that our own universe’s history and geography are directly imperceptible to our bodies, meaning any attempt to conceive of its …

The Construction Of Identity Through Tattoos: A Semiotic And Performative Exploration Of Trauma, Erin Lionberger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this current historical moment, tattoos and tattooing have become a glorified cultural phenomenon that has been thousands of years in the making. The idea that tattoos can be used to express one’s identity is not a new concept — various fields, such as anthropology, cultural studies, and sociology, have studied the relationship between tattoos and identity. In this dissertation, I explore the signification and performative aspects of Auschwitz concentration camp tattoos and 9/11 memorial tattoos, while also considering the changes in meaning and interpretation that occur within and throughout space and time. Chapter one introduces the topic and provides …

Interdependence With Our Most Forgetful Elders: Alzheimer's In The Anthropocene, Christine Heller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation uses autoethnography and critical psychological and philosophical theories to explore what people with Alzheimer’s disease teach us about being, forgetting, and dying in the Anthropocene. The author collected personal memory data from her lived experience of being with her mother while she had Alzheimer’s disease, and organized these memories into a series of vignettes. Each vignette was analyzed with critical psychological and philosophical theories to illuminate intersubjective themes of denial, things, ancestors, place, dying, and time. These themes connected the personal to the epochal and articulated the wisdom that our most forgetful elders can share in the Anthropocene, …

Facilitating Multiple Cue Use Eliminates Age Differences In Episodic Metamemory For Emotional Words, Ethan Flurry

Theses and Dissertations

Older adults' ability to make accurate metamemory judgments indicates that aging spares metamemory (Eakin & Hertzog, 2006; 2012a; but see Souchay et al., 2006). However, age differences in metamemory accuracy for emotional information, particularly lists of positive and neutral words, indicate potential age-related impairment of metamemory (Tauber & Dunlosky, 2012; Flurry & Eakin, manuscript in preparation). These age differences may be explained by potential cue overshadowing effects (Price & Yates, 1993) in which older adults primarily used the salient cue, emotional valence, and overlooked additional cues that were diagnostic of memory. We hypothesized that age differences in metamemory for emotional …

Odor In The Global Environmental Context: The Effect Of Odor Context Reinstatement On Memory, Dustin D. Finch

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has demonstrated that memory is dependent on the environmental context; memory is better when the same environmental context cues present at study are reinstated at test as compared to when they are not. This finding is called context reinstatement effects (Godden & Baddeley, 1975; Smith, Glenberg, and Bjork, 1978; Smith & Vela, 2001). What is unclear is whether study items are associated with the global context or with unique features within the study environment. We tested whether reinstating a singular feature of a global environment, the odor present during study, was sufficient to produce context reinstatement effects. These …

Telling Her People's Story: Mae Timbimboo Parry, Matriarch Of The Northwestern Band Of The Shoshone Nation, 1919-2007, Dean Mcguire

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Mae Timbimboo Parry played a significant role in changing the public’s narrative about the Bear River Massacre and shaping the current knowledge about Northwestern Shoshone history. According to Mae Parry, Northwestern Shoshones were not desperate victims of violence but rather Native Americans who adapted from a great tragedy and survived on their own terms. This thesis explores the meaning of her work for Northwestern Shoshones today.

Belonging And Bias : How Diatonicity And Response Bias Affect Pitch Memory In A Probe Tone Task, Jeff Bostwick

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Prior research (e.g., Krumhansl, 1979) using a delayed recognition task has found a memory advantage for standard (to-be-remembered) tones that belong to the key of a tonal context (diatonic tones) over those that do not belong to the key of a tonal context (nondiatonic tones). The advantage is purportedly due to the tonal context differentially supporting diatonic over nondiatonic tones. However, this research confounded a change in pitch with a change in diatonicity, raising the possibility that participants were responding to the diatonicity change rather than relying on memory for the standard tone’s pitch specifically. More recent studies (e.g., Frankland …

Relationship Between Cognitive Performance, Physical Activity, And Socio-Demographic/ Individual Characteristics Among Aging Americans, Imtiaz Masfique Dowllah

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the attenuation of association following adjustments for covariates, participants who engaged in 3–6 hr/wk of vigorous- and > 1 hr/wk of moderate-intensity PA scored significantly higher in tests that assessed executive function and processing speed domains of cognition compared to inactive peers (η2 = 0.005 & 0.007 respectively, p < 0.05). Also, after adjustment, the effects of 1–3 hr/wk of vigorous-intensity PA became trivial for the delayed recall memory domain test scores (β = 0.33; 95% CI: –0.01, 0.67; η2 = 0.002; p = 0.56). There was no clear dose-response relationship between the cognitive test scores and weekly moderate-intensity PA. Interestingly, higher handgrip strength and higher late-life body-mass-index were associated with a higher performance across all cognitive domains. Observed associations provide evidence linking habitual PA with superior cognition health among older adults. Furthermore, increased muscle strength and higher late-life adiposity may …

"Memories Of A Family" (2021): A Reflection On My Process As An Interviewer And Filmmaker, Kyle Day

University Honors Theses

"Memories of a Family" is a short essay film that communicates the complicated dynamic between personal and familial memory. With an experimental approach in editing, Kyle Day uses his family's home videos as a materialized form of familial memory that he deconstructs and reconstructs based on his and his family members' personal memories and subjective views of the family.

Beirut/The Other Side Of The City: The Impact Of Visual Texture Production Of The Lebanese Postmemory Generation, 1989 - Present, Mohamed Moustafa Gameel Ebada

Theses and Dissertations

In 1989, after the Ta'if agreement, the war in Lebanon started to fade, which ended years of one of the most destructive civil conflicts in the region with no decisive winner or loser. The year also marked the birth of a new Lebanese generation who did not experience the war in person. It is a generation of postmemory, a term Maria Hirsch coined to describe the reminisces of those who did not have a personal encounter with past traumatic events. However, it was not before February 2005, when Rafic Al-Hariri's violent assassination occurred, when the postmemory generation started to question …

Balancing The Tangible And Intangible, Shiqi Wu

Masters Theses

I love reading stories, but until now, I had never written my own. Balancing the Tangible & Intangible is organized around my experiences and stories, which are inseparable from my work. Together they constellate a narrative of remembrance. Memories surface, and so do connections, allowing for assurance and conviction during a time of personal flux and global unsettledness. As a choreographer and composer of relationships between the tangible and intangible, I rebuild networks of connections linking memories of my relationship to China, my home country, to my experience of living in the West.

In today's global society, population migration is …

Phefumula Nami, Ndivhuho Rasengani

Masters Theses

Cosmos: Building a cosmology (mid 17th century: from French cosmologie or modern Latin cosmologia, from Greek kosmos ‘order or world’ + -logia ‘discourse’,) which mirrors and exhumes hidden narratives from our current reality. It is in this tracing that I teeter between visual codes in the form of memories impressed upon my mind from generations of old and Aesthetic symphonies from the present.

Coming Home Again And Again: Caregiver. Memory, Personal Narrative, Documentary Photography, And The Importance Of The Image In Storytelling., Nicholas Costopoulos

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

Coming Home Again and Again is an ongoing documentary project researching cultural, religious, societal and familial identity. Caregiver, the initial volume, examines my becoming caregiver to my mother after her diagnosis with vascular dementia. The photographs look into our reversal of roles along with changing family dynamics. This undertaking is the beginning my inquiry into my own identity by means of observing my personal relationships, life and death, what is private and public, and a spiritual reawakening. This inspired the creation of a visual narrative of how our memory of people and past events, personal identity, and our own preconceptions …