Digital Commons Network^™

Memorias De Mi Familia, Melissa Z. Montero

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Memorias de Mi Familia is an hour-long personal documentary through which I explore the meaning of “home.” I was born and raised in New York to a Puerto Rican mother and Ecuadorian father and lived between two worlds—sometimes more. While on a visit to Puerto Rico with my mother, Sylvia, I search for belonging and explore my family’s story of migration between the island and the United States.

Through interviews, family films, home videos and photographs spanning over 60 years, I examine the revolving migration pattern common to many Puerto Ricans on the island and in the diaspora, a …

Saturated Skies, Childhood Trophies, And Colorful Plants, Nicholas Norris

Theses and Dissertations

My work presents interiors through the guise of memory while focusing on the sentimental objects within them. Through metaphors and signs I give form to certain events, sensations and out-of-perspective observations. Saturated skies, childhood trophies, and colorful plants find their place alongside decorated walls, floors, chairs, tables, rugs and beds.

Strengthening Phonological Processing And Working Memory To Support Early Reading Acquisition, Antoinette Halliday

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between participating in an online software application focused on phonological processing and working memory and outcomes on foundational reading assessment measures. The online software application utilized was the Sound Reading Program. Students began the intervention working in Sound Reading’s Hop, Skip, and Jump program, with a few progressing to the Boost program over the course of the nine-week intervention. A control group at each grade level read or listened to online leveled texts. There were 175 kindergarten and first-grade students included in the study. These students were enrolled in a …

The Motivational Role Of Feedback On Working Memory, Danielle Wilson

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has shown that motivation plays a vital role in what we remember. Motivation can be either extrinsic (e.g., a reward for doing well) or intrinsic (e.g., wanting to do well). Here we test if intrinsic motivation improves Working Memory (WM) performance. In an online study, undergraduate students (N=358, 334 after excluding participants that did not complete at least 25% of the survey) completed reverse letter span tasks, recalling 42 sets of 4-9 letters that were shown for one second in reverse order. We manipulate intrinsic motivation via feedback. Participants were randomly assigned to feedback (FB) and no-feedback (NFB) …

An Examination Of The Relationship Between Validity And Memory Measures In Retired Nfl Players, Huda Abu-Suwa

Theses and Dissertations

Neuropsychologists have increasingly become involved in assessing sports-related concussions; however, an important concern is the validity of the evaluations. This study examined the relationship between Performance Validity Tests (PVTs) and memory measures in a comprehensive standardized battery administered to retired NFL players, with the purpose of exploring how predictive PVTs are for memory performance in this population. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to evaluate the relationship between four PVTs (TOMM, MSVT, RDS, and Word Choice) and six memory tasks (WMS-IV LM I and LM II, VPA I and VPA II, VR I and VR II). A regression analysis was …

The Silent Rage Of Being Loved, Michelle R. Albertson

Theses and Dissertations

The Silent Rage of Being Loved is a multimedia installation working primarily with photography, video, and sculpture. It explores the nuanced ways in which memory, grief, and veneration manifest physically in my life through objects and my body. My proposed thesis installation is intended as a place of refuge for my audience amongst a shrine-like space and for us, collectively, to reexamine and widen the ways in which we experience mourning and grief.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Memories As Old As Outer Space, Nicholas Benfey

Theses and Dissertations

My paintings draw from personal memory, as well as the nostalgic longing and nightmarish foreboding of the irrational psyche. Cosmic ruptures, cliffs, cemeteries, and parking lots appear alongside snowglobes and canopy beds. I aim to suggest things to be wary of, while giving space for optimistic fantasy and reflective wonder.

Behavioral, Physiological, And Molecular Characterization Of Long-Term Administration Of A Novel Estrogen Receptor Beta Agonist In A Mouse Model Of Menopause, Aaron William Fleischer

Theses and Dissertations

The menopausal loss of circulating hormones, including estrogens, is associated with negative symptoms, such as hot flashes, anxiety and depression, cognitive decline, and weight gain. Although estrogenic hormone therapies (HT) prevent many of the negative symptoms related to the menopausal transition, these same therapies are associated with increased health risks, such as the development of breast and ovarian cancers, which is mediated by the activation of the a (ERa), but not b (ERb), estrogen receptor isoform. Furthermore, ERb agonism has previously been shown to reduce preclinical indices of hot flashes, memory decline, anxiety, and depression. As most ERb agonists are …

Fatal Softness, Mariah B. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

my work is about my teeth falling out, the fatal softness in the earth, a monster tattoo on leathered skin, the bliss of not-knowing, revelation, reveling, the ship and the shipwreck, a fire that knows the naming of you, its dark flame acquiring every part of you, smelling a bad candle at tj maxx, handing it to your mom to smell too, a darkness of that which is golden, a god-shaped hole, the petals of a monstrous flower,1 and frog spawn and at the middle of each jelly pearl is a little secret i don’t have to tell you.

"Savage And Bloody Footsteps Through The Valley" : The Wyoming Massacre In The American Imagination, William R. Tharp

Theses and Dissertations

Along the banks of the Susquehanna River in early July 1778, a force of about 600 Loyalist and Native American raiders won a lopsided victory against 400 overwhelmed Patriot militiamen and regulars in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania. While not well-known today, this battle—the Battle of Wyoming—had profound effects on the Revolutionary War and American culture and politics. Quite familiar to early Americans, this battle’s remembrance influenced the formation of national identity and informed Americans’ perceptions of their past and present over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

From the beginning, however, Americans’ understanding of what occurred in …

Drowning In Our Tears, Kelley-Ann A. Lindo

Theses and Dissertations

Drowning in our Tears is a series of works – installation, print media, and sculpture that explores themes of precarity, ephemerality, collective memory, and vulnerability. The need to create and preserve an archive has been the of the driving forces behind the works. I am interested in this notion of creating new language and perspectives from past trauma and hardships. The archive presents us with a site where excavation of meaning can occur, identities preserved, and new identities formed. In my work, I try to bridge the gaps, using the fragments of memory, the past and present experiences to create …

The Mirrored Road, Mary E. Hanlon

Theses and Dissertations

The Mirrored Road is a feature film that explores the relationship between trauma and memory, and questions the function of home movies as a vehicle for truth. The film weaves together family footage shot over the past 70 years, films from Hollywood’s silent era, and new footage shot between 2017–2020.

Molecular And Physiological Plasticity In The Ventral Hippocampus Following Associative Fear Learning, Vanessa Ehlers

Theses and Dissertations

Pavlovian fear conditioning is useful for understanding how various brain regions support associative fear memory. The hippocampus plays an especially important role in fear learning. Evidence suggests disrupted dorsal and/or ventral hippocampal activity leads to pronounced fear memory deficits, and the dorsal hippocampus displays distinct plasticity changes following fear learning, including altered intrinsic excitability and immediate early gene expression. These mechanisms support fear memory consolidation. However, the molecular and physiological plasticity of the ventral hippocampus following various forms of fear learning remains poorly understood. The current experiments examine the nature of associative fear learning-related plastic changes in the ventral hippocampus …

Blood On The Floor: Public Memory, Myth, And Material Culture In American Historic House Museums, Alyssa B. Caltabiano

Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the historic narratives of the Hancock House Historic Site, The Jennie Wade House Museum, and the Shriver House Museum, analyzing the historical accuracy of each. Each site has used historic human bloodstains and other elements of material culture, authentic and fabricated, to facilitate and support their historic narratives. The traditional Hancock House narrative, as well as the current Jennie Wade House narrative, are each sensationalized and riddled with myth and legend. The Shriver House represents a well-researched and interpreted narrative, that tastefully uses historic human bloodstains as an element of their interpretation. The evolution of each site …

Crossing The "Great Gulf": Narration, Nostalgia, And "Contraband Memory" In Edith Nesbit's The Story Of The Treasure Seekers, Lauren Poet Brown

Theses and Dissertations

During the nineteenth-century “Golden Age” of children’s literature, many British writers conceptualized childhood through the lens of restorative nostalgia, writing books that attempted to re-create an idealized version of childhood that never actually existed. This has led critics of children’s literature from this era to characterize many Victorian authors’ depictions of childhood as a fictionalized adult product that serves to colonize child readers, interpellating them into adult narratives and ideologies. Edith Nesbit was well aware of this tendency, and in The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), she attempts to subvert it with her child narrator, Oswald Bastable. With Oswald, …

The Object Memory Palace, Amra Causevic

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in orchestrating instances of potentiality or concrete possibilities that proposes the futurity of play through means of touch, activation, assembly, and interaction within art spaces. The installation mentioned is composed of found objects and repurposed materials that address themes of place, memory, object-ness, and the archive, through gestural means of poetics and map making. It is an invitation to create new logics and find moments of empathy, connectivity, and hopes for a collective.

Attention Capture By Episodic Long-Term Memories: Evidence From Eye Movement Data, Allison Eleanor Nickel

Theses and Dissertations

Successfully navigating the world on a moment-to-moment basis requires the interaction of multiple cognitive processes. Therefore, studies that examine when and how these fundamental processes interact can provide important insights into how we behave. Many studies indicate that long-term memory can facilitate search for a target object (e.g., contextual cueing), however, the ways in which long-term memory might capture attention and disrupt goal-directed behavior have not been well studied. In five experiments, questions about whether encoded objects might capture attention, even when they are task-irrelevant, were addressed. Each experiment began with an encoding phase, where participants were instructed to commit …

The Rwandan Genocide In Writing And Visuality: Memory, Violence Representations And The Anthropocene., Theophilus Okunlola

Theses and Dissertations

Three main challenges often confront societies that have experienced mass atrocities and genocide: understanding genocide, narrating and representing genocide, and reconciling after genocide. While these challenges seem different, they are intertwined and often inseparable. This thesis takes on these questions in various degrees by focusing on the subjects of memory, representations of violence and the Anthropocene. By reading two novels and one graphic novel, I argue that a multi-representational and multi-perspectival analysis of the Rwandan genocide gives a perspective through one can think through the questions of narrative silence and erasures, gender and sexual violence, animality and the boundaries between …

A New Traversal Method For Virtual Reality: Overcoming The Drawbacks Of Common Methods, Karl A. Smink

Theses and Dissertations

One of the biggest issues facing VR as a platform is the limitation of the user’s physical space. Not everyone has a lab, empty warehouse, or open space in their home or office, and even if they do, the hardware also limits the physical space the user can take advantage of. Fitting the entirety of the environment within few square meters is a strict limitation for many applications. A method of moving the user within a larger space is needed, but current methods come with drawbacks. Developing a new movement method that avoids these drawbacks will help ensure a better …

Reconsidering Essence, Christopher T. Althoff

Theses and Dissertations

The rhetorical core of adaptation studies is a comparison between two texts, and the type of comparison that has sparked the most reactions, whether in its use or in speaking out against it, is fidelity criticism. As David Johnson and Simone Murray point out, fidelity criticism has long been rejected as an unscholarly mode of interpretative analysis because it is caught up in subjective value judgments and imprecise conjectures of a text’s “essence.” I contend, however, that the understanding of essences is critical to understanding both fidelity and the adaptation experience because something like essence is fixed in the human …

Cognitive Demands Of Mothers Of Young Children In The Presence Of Emotional Distraction, Michelle Duersch

Theses and Dissertations

Stress and parenting often go hand in hand, with high physical and emotional demands from children often coupled with pressures and responsibilities adults bear from work, school, and other involvements outside the home. Parents often prioritize their children's needs above their own physical, emotional, and social needs. While current literature addresses stress in mothers, it has yet to understand under what circumstances her children may modify her stress levels and whether her stress response, in turn, affects cognition. This study seeks to investigate the impact of such a taxing environment on mothers' stress and cognition using a challenging mnemonic discrimination …

The Youngest, Trezlen Drake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a collection of poems that considers life in a southern Black family, memory, nostalgia, dysfunction, race and gender, and generational trauma. These poems are influenced by poetry, fiction, music, popular culture, and scholarship, each providing a different perspective on life and language to talk about that which can sometimes be unspeakable.

A recurring character in this collection is the girlchild, reminiscent of Marge Piercy’s character in “Barbie Doll.” The girlchild here is the figure of the woman or girl who experiences trauma, and what some consider to be unspeakable.

These poems are also an exploration and disruption …

Alone Together, Fernanda R. Faya

Theses and Dissertations

Alone Together is a 40-minute documentary about immigrants living at the B’nai B’rith House for low-income seniors in Queens, New York. Focusing on three subjects, the film portrays aging as a diverse, bittersweet, and distinct experience. Juana, an 83-year-old Dominican, is dealing with a degenerative eye disease. Noemi, 87, left her five children in Ecuador to move to New York. Irina, a 67-year-old Russian, is the sole caregiver of her 91-year-old mother, who has terminal cancer. With a combined life span of more than 250 years, Juana, Irina, and Noemi’s accounts express how eclectic the experience of aging can be. …

Kavana: Photography, Jewish Storytelling, And Memory, Hannah Altman

Theses and Dissertations

Jewish thought suggests that the memory of an action is as primary as the action itself. This is to say that when my hand is wounded, I remember other hands. I trace ache back to other aches - when my mother grabbed my wrist pulling me across the intersection, when my great-grandmother’s fingers went numb on the ship headed towards Cuba fleeing the Nazis, when Miriam’s palms enduringly poured water for the Hebrews throughout their desert journey - this is how the Jew is able to fathom an ache. Because no physical space is a given for the Jewish diaspora, …

Tomb Of The Unknown Marxist, Anna Ozbek

Theses and Dissertations

Tomb of the Unknown Marxist tracks a journey of uncovering an individual’s past as a leftist revolutionary in late 1970s Turkey. In doing so, the project explores the political movements of that turbulent period and asks what remains of the revolution in the revolutionary once these moments are well in the past.