Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Young Children's Source Monitoring: Exploring The Contexts Of Task Difficulty And Repeated Events, Becky Earhart

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation had two over-arching goals. The first was to study the cognitive mechanisms underlying effective source monitoring by clarifying the role that developing executive function skills play in children’s increasing ability to monitor sources. The second goal was to examine whether a particular interview technique called “source-monitoring training” could help children to recall the sources of their memories more accurately. These two separate lines of research were furthered by the same methodology, and thus, these separate research questions were examined simultaneously within both of the experiments conducted for this dissertation.

In the first study, the difficulty of the source-monitoring …

Infants, Toddlers And Mobile Technology: Examining Parental Choices And The Impact Of Early Technology Introduction On Cognitive And Motor Development, Karin Archer

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Despite recommendations of no screen time for children under the age of 2, parents are introducing mobile technology to their children at very young ages (Rideout, 2013). While research on television use has found negative impacts in all areas of development (Barr, Lauricella, Zack & Clavert, 2010), research has yet to investigate the impact of mobile technology use with very young children. The current set of 3 studies included interviews, a survey, and direct observations of parents using mobile technology with children 1 to 2 years of age. The main finding across all studies was that parents introduce mobile technology …

Desiring To Appear Moral Versus Being Moral: Development Of Moral Hypocrisy And Moral Integrity, Kathleen Tamming

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Moral hypocrisy has been defined as “the motivation to appear moral while acting in one’s self interest, and therefore avoiding the cost of actually being moral” (Batson, Kobrynowicz, Dinnerstein, Kampf, & Wilson, 1997). This is in contrast with moral integrity, or the motivation to actually be moral. Experimental research with adults has indicated that people are more highly motivated by moral hypocrisy than by moral integrity (Batson, Thompson, & Chen, 2002). However, this research has yet to be conducted with a variety of age groups. The present study investigated whether there are age differences in individuals’ tendency to engage in …

Reading In Arabic Script: A Cross-Linguistic And Cross-National Study, Asma Amin

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The current study examined within- and cross-language predictors of word reading and reading comprehension among groups of Arabic-English bilingual children in different language learning environments. A total of 80 children were tested, forty Arabic-English bilingual children recruited from Saudi Arabia and forty Arabic-English bilingual children were recruited from Canada. Both groups completed parallel measures of word-level reading, reading comprehension and vocabulary in Arabic and English. Results indicated that the underlying components related to within- and cross-language word reading and reading comprehension varied across groups. Within-language results demonstrate that English morphological awareness was significantly related to English word reading in both …

Investigating The Effects Of Mindfulness On Children’S Executive Function, Emotional Regulation, Stress, And Academic Performance Compared To A Control Condition, Lerna Hanceroglu

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Mindfulness is a growing field in the study of psychological well-being, with reports of individuals experiencing increases in resilience and reduced stress. The current research on mindfulness lacks information on a comprehensive analysis on the relationship between mindfulness and executive function, emotional regulation, stress, and subsequent academic performance for children. Additionally, studies contain methodological issues, such as the absence of active control groups. Hence, the current study assessed the effects of mindfulness training on children’s executive function, emotional regulation, stress, and academic outcomes compared to an active control group. There were 51 younger children from grades 2 to 4 (Mean …

Children's Letter Learning: The Effect Of Manipulating Visual Complexity On Children's Letter Learning, Bahar Amani

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

As a growing presence in homes and schools, technology plays an important role in the way that children learn in their environment. The early integration of technology within education reflects the promise of computer-based educational tools to facilitate early learning in children (Grant, Wood, Gottardo, Evans, Phillips, & Savage, 2012). Young learners are reported to be challenged with high levels of distractibility that can hinder their ability to learn in particular conditions and contexts (Fisher, Godwin, & Seltman, 2014). This can be a problem when considering that educational materials are often designed to be elaborate to keep young learners interested. …