Digital Commons Network^™

Semantic Integration In Adults With Nonverbal Learning Disabilities And Autism Spectrum Disorder: Influence Of Word Knowledge And Gestalt Perception, Margot E. Stothers

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Language in individuals with nonverbal learning disabilities (NLD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been described as semantically empty and impoverished, despite apparently average word knowledge. Here, inter-related studies explored semantic representations in adults with these disorders of social perception. Studies highlighted semantic integration, a form of gestalt perception in which new concepts are developed by connecting familiar terms in novel ways. Semantic integration was compared to vocabulary breadth, and to nonverbal gestalt perception, comparing clinical groups to each other and to adults without a diagnosis. Because weaknesses in gestalt perception have been seen in NLD and ASD, it was …

Lacan's Cybernetics, Svitlana Matviyenko

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This project explores the synchronicity of psychoanalytic and cybernetic practices from the mid-to-late nineteenth century by recovery and analysis of a shared material media culture. This project takes as a starting point the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who observed the affinity between cybernetics and psychoanalysis, “two roughly contemporaneous techniques,” related to the emergence of the two distinct types of sciences: exact and “conjectural.” I investigate their shared patterns of figuration in the two fields, before they developed significant, and even irreconcilable, differences. This project demonstrates that what Lacan discussed explicitly in the 1950s, particularly, in his “cybernetic” Seminar …

Avery Brundage, Pan-American Games, And Entrenchment Of The Olympic Movement In Latin America, Doiara Silva Dos Santos

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

To become firmly established, the Pan-American Games depended on the efforts of particular individuals. With Avery Brundage's attention to the Pan-American Games as the center of this analysis, this study documented the main events leading up to the inauguration of the Pan-American Games as well as their development and significance to Latin American countries in the mid-twentieth century. The research material was mainly drawn from primary sources, most importantly, those found in the Avery Brundage Collection at Western University. The study demonstrated that Brundage saw in the Pan-American Games not only a challenge, but an opportunity to promote the Modern …

"Last On The Warpath": The Spirit And Intent Of Action Anthropology, Joshua J. Smith

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Led by anthropologist Sol Tax, action anthropologists endeavoured, between the 1940s and 1970s, to challenge the liberal imperialist and settler colonial paradigm of Post-WWII applied anthropology, the termination policy of the 1950s, and the neo-evolutionary theories, such as Julian Steward’s multilinear evolution, that bolstered racist-colonial myths of assimilation. Several projects of emphasis include The Fort Berthold Removal Project, The American Indian Chicago Centre, A mapping project called The North American Indians: 1950 Distribution of Descendants of the Aboriginal Population of Alaska, Canada and the United States, and the American Indian Chicago Conference . In addition to Sol Tax, …

An Examination Of Daily Humour Styles And Relationship Satisfaction In Dating Couples, Sara Caird

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Humour can be both beneficial and harmful to romantic relationships. Research indicates that affiliative humour is associated with higher levels of relationship satisfaction, whereas aggressive humour is associated with lower levels of relationship satisfaction. However, past research is limited by its reliance on cross-sectional designs and general measures of humour use. Furthermore, little research has examined potential mediators that may account for the observed relationships between humour styles and relationship satisfaction. The current daily diary studies were the among the first to examine daily within-person associations between humour styles (specifically in the context of romantic relationship), relationship satisfaction, and positive …

Phenomenal Intentionality And The Problem Of Cognitive Contact, Christopher A. Young

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract

Part 1 of the thesis questions the traditional relation model of intentionality. After fixing reference on the target phenomenon, intentionality, and explaining my interest in it, I ask what sorts of things intentionality might be a relation to. I consider ordinary objects, properties, propositions and hybrid views, and conclude all make the intentional relation appear rather mysterious. From there, I move on to examine the relation view’s most prominent proponents, the tracking theorists—pointing out some challenges such views face, and concluding that it might be worthwhile looking into alternatives to the relation view.

Part 2 asks whether the newly …

Applicative Structure In Wolof, Christen Harris

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation investigates applicative structures in Wolof, based on new data collected from native speakers in Saint Louis, Senegal. The dual purpose of this dissertation is to describe the applicative constructions available in Wolof and to identify their syntactic structure. Following previous work on applicatives, the description of these applicatives focuses on their object properties and the c-command configuration of the VP. The analysis falls within the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1993, 1995, 2000). I propose multiple function heads involved in applicative formation which account for the properties in Wolof.

Four types of applicatives, benefactive, dative, instrumental, and locative in Wolof. …

The Aesthetics Of Romantic Hellenism, Derek Shank

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study examines the aesthetics of Romantic Hellenism in theory and practice. I trace various forms of Hellenism’s ambivalence, which manifests in certain paradoxes. Such paradoxes include the aesthetic of desire, which longs for a union with ancient Greek culture even as it is aware of the impossibility of such fulfillment, and the Romantic notion of mythology, which exhibits a tension between order and system. Such tensions work to energize Hellenism with aesthetic potentiality by preserving the mysteriousness of ancient Greek culture, and thus frequently turn upon the interdependence of the reading of Greece with the writing of literature or …

Defending Liberal Education: Implications For Educational Policy, Christopher W. Lyons

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis advocates for the inclusion of liberal education in discussions of the college and university missions and mandates in North America. It is conceived with the purpose of influencing policy thinking and generating the theory and ideas required for sound education policy decision making. Research into liberal education is a special and atypical kind of inquiry and requires innovative theoretical approaches. Liberal education is foremost a philosophical problem and requires philosophical approaches. The method used is, therefore, conceptual in nature and drawn from analytical philosophy.

My research approaches liberal education conceptually in three ways: historically, philosophically, and politically. Historically, …

Municipal Associations, Membership Composition, And Interest Representation In Local-Provincial Relations, Alison Katherine Shott

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Municipal associations carry out two core functions – advocacy and providing member services. How associations prioritize and perform these functions is largely unclear. This dissertation explores how membership composition affects their activities. Canada’s 18 provincial level municipal associations all provide advocacy and services for their members, but there are considerable differences within their memberships. Some associations represent all municipalities within a province while others are divided along linguistic, regional, or rural/urban lines. In addition, the municipalities they represent can vary by size, legal type, region, ethnicity/language, and rural/urban character. Two measures of membership composition are employed: rural/urban dominance and population …

Formal Models Of The Extension Activity Of Dna Polymerase Enzymes, Srujan Kumar Enaganti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The study of formal language operations inspired by enzymatic actions on DNA is part of ongoing efforts to provide a formal framework and rigorous treatment of DNA-based information and DNA-based computation. Other studies along these lines include theoretical explorations of splicing systems, insertion-deletion systems, substitution, hairpin extension, hairpin reduction, superposition, overlapping concatenation, conditional concatenation, contextual intra- and intermolecular recombinations, as well as template-guided recombination.

First, a formal language operation is proposed and investigated, inspired by the naturally occurring phenomenon of DNA primer extension by a DNA-template-directed DNA polymerase enzyme. Given two DNA strings u and v, where the shorter …

Training The Dragon: Facilitating English Language Learner (Ell) Students' Persuasive Writing Through Dictation, Nina Arcon

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Writing is working memory intensive for all students, including English language learners (ELLs). Cognitive processes in writing such as transcription compete for limited resources in working memory (Bourdin & Fayol, 1994; Hayes, 2012). Previous research has shown that, when compared to handwriting, students who dictated produced better quality compositions (De La Paz & Graham, 1997; Higgins & Raskind, 1995; MacArthur & Cavalier, 2004). The goal of the present study was to investigate whether dictation would also facilitate better compositions in elementary ELL students. Using a within-subjects design, the effects of handwriting, dictation to a scribe, and dictation to a speech-to-text …

An Investigation Into Writing For Scholarly Publication By Novice Scholars: Practices Of Canadian Anglophone Doctoral Students, Pejman Habibie

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Given global competitiveness for quality research articulated through scholarly publication, minimal research addresses the practices of Anglophone doctoral students in writing for scholarly publication. This study examines (1) the challenges faced by Canadian Anglophone doctoral students in writing for scholarly publication in international English-medium academic journals; and (2) the ways in which these novice scholars are supported by faculty supervisors and expert members of their academic community in communicating their work through scholarly publication.

The theoretical framework for this study draws on the social constructivist notions of Discourse Community (Swales, 1990) and Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991). A …

Watching Storytelling: Visual Information In Oral Narratives, James Ripley

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Oral narratives, though prolific, are increasingly being shared via some form of electronic mediation, and yet they are often glossed over in regard to the study of narrative. This study was designed to address the unique nature of oral narratives focusing on the information channels utilized by participants in their co-creation of stories.

A comparative case study was undertaken of three groups who employed a variety of synchronous and asynchronous electronic mediation in their storytelling. Viewed through the lenses of Narratology and Social Presence Theory a combination of participant observation and qualitative semi-structured exploratory narrative interviews were undertaken with participants …

Sexual Violence At Nyarubuye: History, Justice, Memory. A Case Study Of The 1994 Rwandan Genocide, Nicole M. Ephgrave

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation raises complex questions about historical truth, the pursuit of justice, and processes of memorialization vis-à-vis one case study of the Rwandan genocide: the Nyarubuye Church massacre, where members of the Interahamwe militia and their accomplices murdered tens of thousands of (mainly) Tutsi men, women and children, April 15^th-17^th, 1994. As a microcosm of larger patterns of the genocide and its aftermath, I analyze official discourses to uncover how this specific event is framed and understood, with a focus on the widespread perpetration of sexual violence. Specifically, I provide a chronological reconstruction of the massacre, …

Jouissance And Being In Lacanian Discourse, Mazen Saleh

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis discusses the theoretical implications Lacanian psychoanalysis may have on any articulation of historical experience. It takes as its starting point the Lacanian dictum that “the big Other does not exist”, and then attempts to find a way that allows us to go beyond historicist discursive regimes diagnosing these regimes as a refusal to accept the nonexistence of the big Other. The research focuses as well on the discourse of being Heidegger articulated in Being and Time, and how its “failure” may be read from a Lacanian perspective. It is here that the discourse of being is opposed …

Who's The Fairest Of Them All? Defining And Subverting The Female Beauty Ideal In Fairy Tale Narratives And Films Through Grotesque Aesthetics, Leah Persaud

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis seeks to explore the ways in which women and beauty are depicted in the fairy tales of Giambattista Basile, the Grimm Brothers, and 21^st century fairy tale films. A dominant beauty ideal in the genre has established a splitting of female characters into strict dichotomies that reinforce beauty and good moral behaviour while also propagating antagonistic female relationships. The use of spectacle to highlight the physical rewards of beauty and the violent punishments of ugly women have created a stable pattern in the genre that is maintained regardless of time period or context. It is the aim …

Addiction: The Colonization Of Rituals, Matthew Prokopiw

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What is addiction? Since its transformation as a word in the late 19th century, not only has it taken on the form of a scientific concept, but it also contains a complex social-historical component that tells a story of how and why addiction is now conceived of as a harmful and deviant behaviour. The objective of this text is to highlight how addiction fundamentally eclipses scientific discourses and instead functions as a social concept in the interests of colonization – comprised of forces of State and capitalism. Based on a critical reading of Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane …

"More Or Less" Refugee?: Bengal Partition In Literature And Cinema, Sarbani Banerjee

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, I problematize the dominance of East Bengali bhadralok immigrant’s memory in the context of literary-cultural discourses on the Partition of Bengal (1947). By studying post-Partition Bengali literature and cinema produced by upper-caste upper/middle-class East Bengali immigrant artists, such as Jyotirmoyee Devi’s novel The River Churning (Epar Ganga Opar Ganga 1967, Bengali) and Ritwik Ghatak’s film The Cloud-Capped Star (Meghe Dhaka Tara 1960, Bengali), I show how canonical artworks have propounded elitist truisms to the detriment of the non-bhadra refugees’ representations. To challenge these works, I compare them with perspectives available in Other refugee writers’ …

Contesting Gender Concepts, Language And Norms: Three Critical Articles On Ethical And Political Aspects Of Gender Non-Conformity, Stephanie Julia Kapusta

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In chapter one I firstly critique some contemporary family-resemblance approaches to the category woman, and claim that they do not take sufficient account of dis-semblance, that is, resemblances that people have in common with members of the contrast category man. Second, I analyze how the concept of woman is semantically contestable: resemblance/dissemblance structures give rise to vagueness and to borderline cases. Borderline cases can either be included in the category or excluded from it. The factors which incline parties in a dispute about membership to include or exclude depend on metaphysical, ethical, or political background assumptions.

In chapter two, I …

About Telling: Ghosts And Hauntings In Contemporary Drama And Poetry, Leif Erik Schenstead-Harris

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

It is difficult to think of something as formally resistant to definition as a ghost. What is more ambiguous than something described as “haunting”? Few currents in literature have been as prominent – and as comparatively unremarked – as the current critical and literary dependence on the language of spectrality. While ghost stories in prose have gained substantial attention, in drama and poetry ghosts and hauntings have found less critical purchase.

In response, this dissertation takes up a selection of drama and poetry from Ireland, South Africa, and the Caribbean to illustrate the theoretical and critical potential of ghosts and …

Prosody: An Important Cue To Word Learning, Monica Dasilva

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

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 …

Imaginaire Musical Et Roman. Rêveries Sonores Dans Les Œuvres De Tournier, Le Clézio Et Quignard, Elena D. Grigorescu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Cette thèse a comme objet la mise en discours de l’imaginaire musical défini comme un ensemble de figures et schémas à travers lesquels se fait jour la signifiance associée à la parole venant rendre compte de l’harmonie sonore. Ainsi envisagé, l’imaginaire musical entre en jeu au moment où le sujet donne libre cours à ses rêveries afin de représenter son saisissement au contact avec les sons. Il se présente, autrement, dit, comme un lieu de négociation entre l’« indicibilité » de la musique et la tentation d’exprimer les sensations et les émotions qu’elle suscite.

Quant à l’approche, elle est …

Transnational Monsters: Navigating Identity And Intertextuality In The Films Of Guillermo Del Toro, Sean M. Volk

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines representations of monstrosity in the films of Guillermo del Toro. Throughout his oeuvre, he has consistently explored the complex relationship between humans and monsters. Using the concepts of transnational cinema and intertextuality to frame the analysis, the monster will be read in relation to its engagement with references to other texts and the narrative and industrial implications of nations and borders. The eight films directed by del Toro will be analyzed to trace the evolving depiction of the monster while also considering the shifting national contexts of production. From the intimate narratives of his early films to …

In Time But Not Of Time: Jessica Eaton And Erin Shirreff's Counterpoints Of View, Ruth Skinner

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study is situated within an ongoing investigation of photography's ontology, objecthood, and materiality. Jessica Eaton, Erin Shirreff and their cohort continue a conceptual tradition of experimentation with photography's singularity, plasticity and referential nature. The contemporary photographic is both the culmination of and contributor to our conceptions of time, space, and subjectivity. In the post-digital era it is the access point for new durational and phenomenological encounters, even as it extends backwards to reinvigorate past aesthetic approaches. Shirreff's Signatures and Monograph series shift the familiar sensory qualities of the sculptural object onto the photographic, opening up its two-dimensional confines. In …

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

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

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 …

To Walk About As They Pleaseth: An Exploratory Study Of Limb Treatment And Positioning In Ancient Egyptian Mummies, Hallie Tennant

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study examines evidence of limb manipulation and positioning in a sample of eighty one (n=81) Egyptian human mummies archived in the IMPACT radiological database housed at The University of Western Ontario. The purpose of this research is to expand upon the existing research on the positioning of the arms and hands in Egyptian mummies (cf. Gray, 1972) to include the lower body in order to shed light on how the embalming process altered the legs and feet. The results of this study demonstrate that some aspects of lower body positioning vary across time periods in conjunction with other stylistic …

Conduits Of Communion: Monstrous Affections In Algonquin Traditional Territory, Ian S.G. Puppe

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This project investigates the legacies of shifting land tenure and stewardship practices on what is now known as the Ottawa Valley watershed (referred to as the Kitchissippi by the Omamawinini or Algonquin people), and the effects that this central colonization project has had on issues of identity and Nationalism on Canadians, diversely identified as settler-colonists of European or at least “Old World” descent and First Nations, Métis and Inuit (Lawrence 2012).

Focusing on historical and contemporary political and social issues related to Algonquin Provincial Park and its establishment, this project explores; 1) Competing claims levied by First Nations Peoples, local …

Literatura Hispano-Canadiense De Migración Del Siglo Xxi, Ana Chiarelli

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines a sample of 21st century Hispano-Canadian literature that focuses on the theme of migration. The first chapter presents a brief historical survey of the migration of Spanish speaking individuals to Canada, as well as the description of the current state of the Hispano-Canadian literature and its challenges. The second chapter explores the representations of the past and the land of origin as well as the representation of Canada that is presented in thirteen short stories. The third chapter analyzes Gabriela Etcheverry’s autobiographical novel Latitudes, both as as a testimony and practice of the poetics of exile, as …

Exploring The Conceptual Foundations Of Social Communication In Preschool And School-Aged Children, Kristen H. R. Izaryk

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Introduction: Social communication is a complex and dynamic construct that is an important component of human functioning. However, an agreed upon conceptual understanding of social communication within the field of Speech-Language Pathology has been a persistent challenge. Among main issues that obscure our current understanding are those pertaining to terminology, classification, and the boundaries of social communication within social skill. All three impede the advancement of knowledge and sound clinical application. Therefore, the objective of the current study was to investigate the conceptual foundations of social communication.

Method: Two approaches were taken to begin to address these issues. The Delphi …