Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

"My People Is A People On Its Knees": Mexican Labor Migration From The Montana Region And The Formation Of A Working Class In New York City, Rodolfo Hernandez-Corchado

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the contemporary proletarianization via migration of the indigenous and mestizo people from the Montaña region, in the Mexican southern state of Guerrero, to New York City. The dissertation demonstrates how the region was transformed since the 1980s into a migrant labor supplier and how its inhabitants became proletarians, and a major pool of labor supplying the North American transnational migrant labor market.

Far from being homogenous, the people of the Montaña region are ethnically and class diverse. Based on the oral narratives of an indigenous Mixteco, and a mestizo teenager dweller of the city of Tlapa, the …

The Influence Of Advanced Cognitive Ability On The Development Of Psychological Defenses And In Understanding And Managing Affect: A Study Of Latency-Aged Gifted Students, Kahlila Ife Robinson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study examines the influence of advanced cognitive ability on the development of psychological defenses and in understanding and managing affect, using the lens of Emotional Intelligence (EI). Theories of psychological defense maturity state that defense mechanisms are influenced both by the cognitive level of the individual and by the cognitive complexity of the defense itself (Cramer, 1999; Cramer, 2009). Individuals with exceptional cognitive ability may therefore show a corresponding "match" with complex defense use. In addition to defense use, how well one is able to identify, understand, manage and use emotion to facilitate thought, abilities often labelled Emotional …

Consonantal Voicing Effects On Vowel Duration In Italian-English Bilinguals, Ylana Beller-Marino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project reported in this dissertation analyzes phonetic details of the speech patterns in one of New York's bilingual communities, asking whether a bilingual speaker can attain native-like proficiency in both languages and the extent to which authenticity — maintenance of language-specific settings — is sustainable. Researchers have established that Italian and English differ strikingly in their characteristic time settings for vowel durations: durations are greater for vowels preceding voiced consonants, e.g., cab, rather than voiceless, e.g., cap. This duration difference, termed the consonantal voicing effect (CVE), is notably greater for English than for Italian. The greater magnitude …

The Historic Inability Of The Haitian Education System To Create Human Development And Its Consequences, Patrick Michael Rea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study aims to evaluate the role that a lack of literacy and education has played in Haiti's historic and presently low level of human development. The pedagogical philosophies of two educationists, Paolo Friere and Maurice Dartigue, are used throughout the study as lenses from which to read and interpret the history of Haitian education -its many failed attempts, and recurrent challenges- in creating a literate and educated population. The author concludes that mass literacy is prerequisite if the Haitian people are to achieve self-realization and actualization, which essentially equates to what the United Nations Development Program calls "Human Development". …

Occupy Wall Street's Challenge To An American Public Transcript, Christopher Neville Leary

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the rhetoric and discourses of the anti-corporate movement Occupy Wall Street, using frameworks from political ethnography and critical discourse analysis to offer a thick, triangulated description of a single event, Occupy Wall Street's occupation of Zuccotti Park. The study shows how Occupy achieved a disturbing positionality relative to the forces which routinely dominate public discourse and proposes that Occupy's encampment was politically intolerable to the status quo because the movement held the potential to consolidate critical thought and action. Because the "soft" means of re-capturing public consent were weak in 2011 because of the 2008 economic collapse, …

Telework And Organizational Citizenship Behaviors: The Underexplored Roles Of Social Identity And Professional Isolation, Lauren Mondo Kane

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although telework--a flexible work arrangement in which employees work from a remote location at least some of the time--has been increasing in practice, little research has investigated its implications for employee behaviors and performance. The main focus of this study was to identify the mediating processes that explain the relationship between telework frequency and OCB performance, and to determine whether personality moderates the psychological consequences of teleworking. Survey data were collected from 286 teleworkers and 62 of their coworkers across organizations from a range of industries, jobs, and locations. Coworkers were recruited in order to assess teleworkers' OCBs, but OCBs …

Systematic Comparison Of Cross-Lingual Projection Techniques For Low-Density Nlp Under Strict Resource Constraints, Joshua Waxman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The field of low-density NLP is often approached from an engineering perspective, and evaluations are typically haphazard - considering different architectures, given different languages, and different available resources - without a systematic comparison. The resulting architectures are then tested on the unique corpus and language for which this approach has been designed. This makes it difficult to truly evaluate which approach is truly the "best," or which approaches are best for a given language.

In this dissertation, several state-of-the-art architectures and approaches to low-density language Part-Of-Speech Tagging are reimplemented; all of these techniques exploit a relationship between a high-density (HD) …

The Perceived Religiousness Of The Repertoire Of The Muslim Minority In France, Brian Mawyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

France is a secular society with a deeply rooted Catholic tradition. This environment affects the acceptability of demonstrations of Muslim religious identity. Muslim immigrants to France are often ghettoized into rent controlled housing in suburbs around the cities. Rejected from French society, these immigrants cling to what links them together, which is their religion. By the third generation, fluency in heritage languages declines greatly, yet the youth of the banlieues re-appropriate Arabic words into their French speech, leading to the emergence of a Muslim repertoire that is not always accepted by speakers of standard French. This thesis surveys French people …

Assessing Young Males' Perspectives On The Cultural Competency Of Juvenile Justice Staff And Predicting Psychosocial Functioning, Crystal Catherine Rodriguez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The theory of symbolic interactionism explains how social interactions influence behavior. In this study, it is reasoned that culturally sensitive interactions may be associated with adjudicated youth behavior. The purpose of this project is to (1) examine the differences in adjudicated male youths' perceptions of the level of cultural competency in juvenile justice staff members and (2) to identify whether staff members' cultural competency is related to self-restraint, distress, and delinquent behavior in adjudicated male youth. Utilizing a cross-sectional design, adjudicated youths enrolled in a variety of re-entry and transitional programs were surveyed. Youths retrospectively assessed the cultural competency of …

Facial Affect Recognition And Social Functioning In Individuals At Risk For Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders, Marta Ewa Statucka

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Facial affect recognition (FAR) is impaired in schizophrenia patients and to a lesser extent in individuals at familial/genetic, clinical, and psychometric risk for psychosis. Reduced FAR reaction time and negative bias are present in patients; however, their role is less clear in at-risk samples. Impaired social functioning, a hallmark of schizophrenia, is also impaired in at-risk individuals and is associated with FAR impairment. Given FAR deficits in schizophrenia, the current study aimed to elucidate the nature of FAR and social functioning impairments among individuals at high psychometric risk for psychosis and to examine whether FAR acts as a mediator in …

The Shadow Banking System In The United States, Bhakti Joshi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 2008 the United States suffered a devastating economic collapse. Millions of Americans were unemployed; families lost their homes; and long time businesses were forced to shut down. These events put the United States into an economic depression so deep that the country has yet to fully recover. The crisis was not a natural disaster but varieties of private sector agents such as banks and hedge funds were responsible for its efficient cause. Even though the housing and stock bubbles were generated largely by market forces rather than by government policies, the US government policies and institutions also played a …

Essays On Savings Behavior Of Low-Income Households In Colombia, Luz M. Salas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I designed and implemented a Randomized Controlled Trial to study whether relatively simple modifications to how a commitment savings product was framed and labeled could affect savings accumulations and other outcomes of low-income individuals in newly formed Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) in Colombia. Motivated by hypotheses from behavioral economics, the experiment tests hypotheses that behavioral responses should vary depending on whether subjects are led to label and create `mental savings accounts' in private or public ways. Individuals in the private-labeling treatment groups were led to label their savings as earmarked for a particular purpose and to state savings …

Exploring The Illusion Of Transparency When Lying And Truth-Telling: The Impact Of Age, Self-Consciousness, And Framing, Jason Mandelbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Individuals often overestimate the ability of others to accurately determine their internal states. This illusion of transparency has been shown to manifest itself in everyday scenarios, including when people are asked to estimate if others can tell when they are lying. Yet it has not been observed when truth-telling, nor investigated developmentally. The current experiments tested for an illusion of transparency when individuals were truth-telling and lying and investigated how a participant's age, dispositional self-consciousness, situational self-awareness and how questions were framed impacted the strength and prevalence of the illusion of transparency.

In Experiments 1 and 2, children and adolescents …

Factlessness & Faultlessness: Individual Differences & Dimensions Of Philosophical Dispute, Geoffrey Scott Holtzman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project addresses the question of why philosophical disputes persist, and tackles the problem of how we might better approach them. I demonstrate empirically several ways in which personality, gender, and other factors are associated with specific philosophical beliefs. Typically, one might assume that these individual difference factors are irrelevant to philosophy, and can only serve to bias philosophical disputants. Against this view, I present four case studies, which collectively highlight the different ways in which individual differences in lived experience may be inseparable from philosophical concepts themselves.

Policy Partners In The Neoliberal Age: Corresponding School And Prison Reforms Since 1970, Jeremy Paul Benson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a comparative policy study of changes in education and incarceration of the past 40 years. Following national and global trends, New York City saw public school and carceral policies converge as the city experienced massive deindustrialization and governmental cutbacks while its political economy shifted to one driven by finance, investment, real estate, and the growth of a low-wage service sector. These changes dramatically increased economic inequality across racial lines, and spurred the intimate linkage of public education and state incarceration as institutional tools for the mass management of low-income communities of color. Following from a growing policy …

A Derivation Of The Tonal Hierarchy From Basic Perceptual Processes, David Smey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent decades music psychologists have explained the functioning of tonal music in terms of the tonal hierarchy, a stable schema of relative structural importance that helps us interpret the events in a passage of tonal music. This idea has been most influentially disseminated by Carol Krumhansl in her 1990 monograph Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch. Krumhansl hypothesized that this sense of the importance or centrality of certain tones of a key is learned through exposure to tonal music, in particular by learning the relative frequency of appearance of the various pitch classes in tonal passages. The correlation of pitch-class …

The Development And Function Of The Nasopharynx And Its Role In The Evolution Of Primate Respiratory Abilities, Anthony Santino Pagano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The nasopharynx is a centrally located region of the upper respiratory tract (URT) integral to several physiological functions. However, few have focused on this area within the context of human evolution. This study investigated osseous morphology, soft tissue histology, development, and evolutionary change of the nasopharynx. Multimodal analyses were performed:

Analysis 1: This study tested hypotheses on the morphological relationships of the osseous nasopharyngeal boundaries with the splanchnocranium and basicranium among dry crania representing humans and non-human primates using 3D geometric morphometrics (3D-GM). Results showed that humans, the most orthognathic group, exhibited the widest nasopharynges. Over human development, the nasopharynx …

Attention Shapes Our Expectations And Perceptions: The Neural Mechanisms Of Top-Down Attention During Adulthood And Development, Snigdha Banerjee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Top-down attention is the focusing of attention at one's will through knowledge regarding a current task. There is evidence that top-down attention involves the modulation of sensory cortices by higher order regions. However, the mechanisms of top-down attention across sensory modalities, its influence on early sensory inputs, as well as interactions with motivational systems remain unclear. We performed the following set of electrophysiological experiments in typically developed adults and adolescents to examine these areas. 1) The supramodal attentional theory holds that parietally-based attentional mechanisms are shared across sensory modalities. We tested the supramodal theory by examining if lateralized parieto-occipital alpha-band …

The Status Of Languages In Post-Independent Morocco: Moroccan National Policies And Spanish Cultural Action, Khalid Chahhou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to assess the status of languages in post-independent Morocco from two different angles: the Moroccan national policies and the Spanish cultural action. In particular, it demonstrates that the national policy in post-independent Morocco was, to a great extent, a response to the pressure exercised by the nationalist movement since 1963, the great involvement of the Francophone elite, and the carelessness and emptiness left by Spain. As a result, the Moroccan authority has had to opt for a policy of double standards: On the one hand, to fulfill the identity claims raised by the nationalist movement, Arabic was …

The Interplay Of Syntactic Parsing Strategies And Prosodic Phrase Lengths In Processing Turkish Sentences, Nazik Dinctopal-Deniz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many experiments have shown that the prosody (rhythm and melody) with which a sentence is uttered can provide a listener with cues to its syntactic structure (Lehiste, 1973, and since). A few studies have observed in addition that an inappropriate prosodic contour can mislead the syntactic parsing routines, resulting in a prosody-induced garden-path. These include, among others, Speer et al. (1996) and Kjelgaard and Speer (1999) for English. The studies by Speer et al. and Kjelgaard and Speer (SKS) showed that misplaced prosodic cues caused more processing difficulty in sentences with early closure of a clause (EC syntax) than in …

Committed To The Cause? Violent And Financial Criminal Behaviors Of Domestic Far-Rightists, Ashmini G. Kerodal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study used factor analysis, logistic and multinomial logistic regression analysis to evaluate the effects of an individual's level of commitment to far-right extremism on his / her criminal offending behavior. Agnew's General Strain Theory (2001, 2005), Cloward and Ohlin's Differential Opportunity Theory (1960) and Simi and Futrell's (2010) concept of free / movement spaces were used to address the three research questions: (1) What effect did individual level stressors, significant others, and negative interactions with government officials have on membership in a far-right group, (2) What effect did individual level stressors, significant others, membership in an extremist group, and …

Representational Implications Of The Phonologization Of Contour Tones, Benjamin Kirkland Macaulay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis bridges accounts of tonogenesis to representations of contour tones in the dominant framework, autosegmental phonology. Accounts of tonogenesis reference phonetic features and structures that are unable to be represented in autosegmental phonology. As these features are required for the phonologization of contour tones, it is argued that they must also receive some representation in the synchrony. This is done under the Evolutionary Phonology framework of sound change. An attempt to reconcile the disparity between perceived phonetic features and synchronic structure is made by discussing the implications of the sequencing of targets within autosegmental contours. This innovation would better …

Immigrants Facing Immigration Policy: State Laws Regulating Eligibility For In-State Tuition And Belonging Among Immigrant Youth In The United States, Fanny Lauby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on new paths of immigrant incorporation and on the political mobilization of undocumented youths in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area. The goal of this investigation is to assess whether contrasting state laws that either open or restrict eligibility for in-state tuition are associated with different levels of belonging and different styles of organizing among immigrant youths. This research draws from theories on political incorporation and a resource mobilization model of collective action. It also builds on theories of policy design highlighting the role of policy images in immigration reform. This dissertation aims to develop a broader …

Politics As A Sphere Of Wealth Accumulation: Cases Of Gilded Age New York, 1855-1888, Jeffrey D. Broxmeyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines political wealth accumulation in American political development. Scholars have long understood the political system selects for "progressive ambition" for higher office. My research shows that officeseekers have also engaged in "progressive greed" for greater wealth. I compare the career trajectories of four prominent New York political figures during the Gilded Age: William Tweed, Fernando Wood, Roscoe Conkling, and Chester Arthur. Using correspondence, census, tax and land records, government reports, investigations, and newspaper coverage, I explain why each political figure chose to either seize or pass up opportunities for political wealth accumulation. I also examine the principal sources …

Striving For Integration: Referential Activity And Object Relational Level In A Sample Of Bisexual Women, Lauren Demille

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sexuality has been theorized as a particular human experience that is driven, unmirrored in development, and enigmatic, not reaching what Fonagy describes as "second order representation." Yet, as a social being, one is expected to declare and publically live out a sexual identity. This study is situated within this point of contact between the visceral and the sociolinguistic, with particular attention paid to the experiences of bisexual women, whose potential challenges in articulating a sexual identity are considered. The study sample was comprised of forty bisexual women participating in the Dually Attracted Women's Narratives study (Levy-Warren, 2013) returning for the …

A Study Of Twenty Two Caliber Long Rifle And Nine Millimeter Parabellum Bullet Ricochet From Common Substrates, Peter Diaczuk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Determining the angle at which a bullet will successfully ricochet is essential information when a shooting investigation involves indirect fire. In this research, determining the critical angle and its variance was measured for six substrates, two calibers and two bullet types. This information provides the forensic scientist with fundamental data required for the scientific reconstruction and assessment of a shooting scene. Depending upon the bullet's design, the substrate, and the angle of impact, a bullet may fail to ricochet upon impact, or the bullet will ricochet. Knowledge of bullet behavior with common substrates provides valuable information for scientific investigation of …

Confucius, Yamaha, Or Mozart? Cultural Capital And Upward Mobility Among Children Of Chinese Immigrants, Wei-Ting Lu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the determinants of upward mobility among children of Chinese immigrants. While most studies emphasize ethnic cultural capital as a primary determinant of Chinese upward mobility, this study proposes three new concepts to illuminate understudied processes promoting mobility. Specifically, this study argues that Chinese immigrants' interactions with classical music schools in the Chinese community help generate globalized cultural capital (resources from immigrants' participation in transnational networks), navigational capital (the ability to connect social networks together to facilitate community navigation through higher-status educational institutions) and aspirational capital (the ability of parents to acknowledge the barriers to upward mobility). These …

Age-Related Aspects Of Mirror-Use By Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus), Rachel A. Morrison

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bottlenose dolphins are neuroanatomically different and evolutionarily divergent from primates yet they exhibit mirror self-recognition (MSR), a rare cognitive ability in non-human animals. This research investigated the developmental and age-related aspects of MSR in this species. During a longitudinal study, a social group of bottlenose dolphins at the National Aquarium, Baltimore, MD were exposed to a mirror and their behavioral responses were recorded to: 1) further confirm the presence of MSR in this species, 2) determine the age of emergence of MSR and 3) draw comparisons with data documenting the emergence of this ability in humans and great ape species. …

The Second Generation's Homeland Trips: A Parental Expectation For The U.S.-Born Children Of Mexican Immigrants In The South Bronx, Alexia Raynal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

New deportation policies in the United States are making it harder for undocumented immigrants to return home periodically (Dreby 2013a). This has a direct impact on their children. Because parents can't travel, thousands of foreign-born minors have recently been forced to travel alone in hopes of reunification. Their U.S.-born counterparts face a similar challenge: immigrants' lack of mobility places a new expectation on them to visit relatives that were left behind. Unlike their parents, these children can move freely across borders and maintain family ties. This project explores the second generation's homeland trips as experienced by a small group of …

Tv Audience Fragmentation: Measurement, Causes, And Economic Consequences, Jaroslaw Marek Schellner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Modern video distribution has increased the quantity and variety of programming available to viewers. Multichannel broadcasters using high-bandwidth distribution mechanisms such as satellite and cable television are able to deliver hundreds of channels to each home. Video on demand (VOD) allows users to select and watch video content at will. Digital video recorders (DVRs) have made it possible to watch any program at any time using an electronic program guide and recording shows onto a hard disk. Yet attention remains limited, as audience members are able to watch only a limited number of programs offered by different networks. As a …