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Articles 1 - 30 of 34
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Essays On Environmental Policy And Markets, Linus M. Nyiwul
Essays On Environmental Policy And Markets, Linus M. Nyiwul
Open Access Dissertations
This dissertation consists of two theoretical papers on market-based environmental policy. The first paper exploits the correlation between the environmental performance of firms and their economic performance to show that financial markets can be used to help enforce environmental policy and to design more efficient regulations. The results indicate that when markets punish firms for not complying with environmental standards, environmental regulators can exploit this by setting stricter standards. In fact, it is possible for the regulator to use market-driven enforcement to reduce a firm’s emissions and monitoring of the firm simultaneously. The second paper provides a theoretical analysis of …
Formulating Older Driver Licensing Policy: An Evaluation Of Older Driver Crash History And Performance, Heather A. Rothenberg
Formulating Older Driver Licensing Policy: An Evaluation Of Older Driver Crash History And Performance, Heather A. Rothenberg
Open Access Dissertations
This research sought to understand the relationship between licensing policy and the opportunity for the development of a scientifically-based approach to identifying high risk older drivers based on prior driving history. This research focused on five tasks: 1) review of the literature, 2) compilation of information on licensing policy for use by decision-makers, 3) assessment of charges and payer source for older driver crashes using linked crash and hospital data , and 4) the development and 5) validation of an older driver crash prediction model. There is relatively little available in the way of information for policymakers regarding licensing, and …
Natural Selection And The Syntax Of Clausal Complementation, Keir Moulton
Natural Selection And The Syntax Of Clausal Complementation, Keir Moulton
Open Access Dissertations
This dissertation examines the syntax and semantics of clausal complements. It identifies semantic underpinnings for some syntactic properties of the arguments of propositional attitude verbs. The way clausal arguments compose with their embedding predicates is not uniform and semantic differences emerge from the syntactic context clausal arguments appear in. Three case studies are taken up: clausal arguments of nouns, dislocated clausal arguments (sentential subjects and topics), and infinitival complements with overt subjects (AcI constructions). Chapter Two assembles evidence to support Stowell’s (1981) claim that the clausal complements of nouns are modifiers. It is shown that the clausal complements of nouns …
Essays On Financial Behavior And Its Macroeconomic Causes And Implications, Soon Ryoo
Essays On Financial Behavior And Its Macroeconomic Causes And Implications, Soon Ryoo
Open Access Dissertations
This dissertation consists of three independent essays. The first essay, “Long Waves and Short Cycles in a Model of Endogenous Financial Fragility,” presents a stock flow consistent macroeconomic model in which financial fragility in firm and household sectors evolves endogenously through the interaction between real and financial sectors. Changes in firms’ and households’ financial practices produce long waves. The Hopf bifurcation theorem is applied to clarify the conditions for the existence of limit cycles, and simulations illustrate stable limit cycles. The long waves are characterized by periodic economic crises following long expansions. Short cycles, generated by the interaction between effective …
The Emergence Of Dp In The Partitive Structure, Helen Stickney
The Emergence Of Dp In The Partitive Structure, Helen Stickney
Open Access Dissertations
This dissertation is a first look at English-speaking children’s acquisition of the syntax of the partitive. It presents four experiments that contrast three types of structures and examines how they interact with adjectival modification: the partitive, the pseudopartitive and complex nouns with prepositional adjuncts. The experimentation investigates whether children recognize that the Determiner Phrase (DP) in the partitive is a barrier to adjectival modification. The partitive is contrasted with the pseudopartitive –a minimal pair structure that lacks an internal DP. The data shows that children under the age of six do not distinguish between the partitive and the pseudopartitive. They …
A Blog-Mediated Curriculum For Teaching Academic Genres In An Urban Classroom: Second Grade Ell Students’ Emergent Pathways To Literacy Development, Dong-Shin Shin
Open Access Dissertations
This dissertation examines the academic and social goals that three second-grade English language learners in a U.S. urban school bring to their blog-mediated academic writing practices, and the interrelated nature of those goals. This study aims to bridge the dichotomy between approaches to studying computer-mediated language and literacy development that are oriented toward academic goals inside school, and those that are oriented toward social goals outside school. The study also aims to investigate connections between language use and language development by highlighting linguistic features of semiotic choices that the students made for their texts. This builds upon recent research studies …
Skill Mismatch And Wage Inequality In The U.S., Fabian Slonimczyk
Skill Mismatch And Wage Inequality In The U.S., Fabian Slonimczyk
Open Access Dissertations
This dissertation is an empirical investigation into the distributive effects of overand under-education, defined as market outcomes such that some workers possess skills over or below those required at their jobs respectively. This type of market failure can arise in assignment and search equilibrium settings, as well as in the presence of asymmetric information regarding workers' performance on the job. The existence of permanent and sizable mismatch rates means that returns to education are depressed for over-educated workers and in ated for under-qualified workers. Thus, irreversible decisions to invest in human capital are made in a context of uncertainty regarding …
Two Types Of Definites In Natural Language, Florian Schwarz
Two Types Of Definites In Natural Language, Florian Schwarz
Open Access Dissertations
This thesis is concerned with the description and analysis of two semantically different types of definite articles in German. While the existence of distinct article paradigms in various Germanic dialects and other languages has been acknowledged in the descriptive literature for quite some time, the theoretical implications of their existence have not been explored extensively. I argue that each of the articles corresponds to one of the two predominant theoretical approaches to analyzing definite descriptions: the `weak' article encodes uniqueness. The `strong' article is anaphoric in nature. In the course of spelling out detailed analyses for the two articles, various …
Cross-Age Peer Tutoring In Dialogic Reading: Effects On The Language Development Of Young Children, Itsuko Jamie Udaka
Cross-Age Peer Tutoring In Dialogic Reading: Effects On The Language Development Of Young Children, Itsuko Jamie Udaka
Open Access Dissertations
There are certain ways of reading to young children that are more effective than others in increasing language, vocabulary, and building early literacy skills. Dialogic reading is a method to enhance shared book reading by providing a context for dialogue and interaction between the adult and the child. Dialogic reading has been shown to have positive effects on young childrens’ early literacy and language skills. Thus far, parents and teachers have used these techniques in the home and school in one-on-one or small group settings. However, results have been variable due to inconsistent implementation. The purpose of this study was …
Seeing Lesbian Queerly: Visibility, Community, And Audience In 1980s Northampton, Massachusetts, Susan E. Mckenna
Seeing Lesbian Queerly: Visibility, Community, And Audience In 1980s Northampton, Massachusetts, Susan E. Mckenna
Open Access Dissertations
This study investigates the transitioning terms of lesbian visibility and identity in the distinctive spatio-temporal context of Northampton, Massachusetts in the 1980s. Drawing on interviews with a diversified sampling of lesbian-, bisexual-, and queeridentified participants, I consider the coalescing of two lesbian communal formations – a social community and a social audience – as mediating sites for the interrelations between subculture and dominant culture. Informed by the literatures and methods of queer theory, cultural studies, and feminist film criticism, I examine the 1980s queer crossover from lesbian subcultural separatism to mitigated assimilation by the end of the decade. The 1980s …
Metacognition: Developing Self-Knowledge Through Guided Reflection, Kathryn Wiezbicki-Stevens
Metacognition: Developing Self-Knowledge Through Guided Reflection, Kathryn Wiezbicki-Stevens
Open Access Dissertations
Metacognitive self-knowledge has been identified as a crucial component of effective learning. It entails students recognizing their learning strengths and weaknesses, styles and preferences, and motivational beliefs. The present study explored a method for the development of metacognitive self-knowledge and in doing so, was also a means for discovering what academic experiences students perceive as influential in their development as learners. Twenty-seven college students, all senior psychology majors, produced written narratives in response to a guided reflection activity. A qualitative research approach employing analytic induction was used. Themes of academic experiences as described by participants provided support for neuroscientific findings …
Labor Turnover In The Child-Care Industry: Voice And Exit, Lynn A. Hatch
Labor Turnover In The Child-Care Industry: Voice And Exit, Lynn A. Hatch
Open Access Dissertations
What relationship exists between working conditions and teacher turnover in child-care (early care and education) programs? Research has shown high staff turnover is a major factor affecting the quality of care. Using a new survey and data set I designed of union and randomly selected non-union programs in Massachusetts, I examine factors other than compensation that might be related to lower teacher turnover. Focusing on different institutional settings, including unionization and regional unemployment, I use economist Albert Hirschman’s theory of exit, voice and loyalty to see if “voice” alternatives to quitting are an effective method of reducing exits. “Voice” alternatives …
The Role Of Motivation To Change In The Treatment Of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Christopher M. Spofford
The Role Of Motivation To Change In The Treatment Of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Christopher M. Spofford
Open Access Dissertations
The primary purpose of this study was to examine the role of motivation in the treatment of individuals hospitalized for severe OCD, specifically, the extent to which an individual’s motivation for treatment and motivational orientation (intrinsic or extrinsic motivation) predict OCD treatment response. The sample consisted of 142 individuals diagnosed with severe treatment-refractory OCD participating in an intensive treatment program. Patients completed a measure assessing overall motivation and motivational orientation at admission (TSRQ), and measures assessing depressive severity (BDI) and OCD symptom severity (Y-BOCS) at admission and discharge. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed in which admission levels of overall …
Optionality And Variability: Syntactic Licensing Meets Morphological Spell-Out, Cherlon Ussery
Optionality And Variability: Syntactic Licensing Meets Morphological Spell-Out, Cherlon Ussery
Open Access Dissertations
This dissertation explores case and verbal agreement in Icelandic. Case and agreement generally pattern together, but there are exceptional instances in which case and agreement come apart. In Icelandic, verbs agree with Nominative DPs. However, in some constructions, agreement with a Nominative is optional. In the standard account of case and agreement (Chomsky 2000), both types of features are determined simultaneously via the same syntactic operation. The standard theory, therefore, predicts that case and agreement should pattern the same way, and that neither should be optional. Moreover, based on fieldwork conducted at the University of Iceland, I present data that …
City Marketing And Gated Communities: A Case Study Of Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, Carlos A. Suarez-Carrasquillo
City Marketing And Gated Communities: A Case Study Of Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, Carlos A. Suarez-Carrasquillo
Open Access Dissertations
This dissertation focuses on the dynamics of gated communities with attention to the municipality of Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. Despite the growing numbers of gated communities worldwide, research on this matter remains scarce. I argue that a “gated community consensus” has emerged in Puerto Rico. The hypothesis is that in Guaynabo, the municipality facilitates the emergence of gated communities in order to change the face of the city and reap an economic windfall. Interviews demonstrate the municipality’s commitment to facilitating the construction of new communities and lending support to older communities. Most of these gated communities respond to high end income …
Three Essays On Conflict And Cooperation, Sungha Hwang
Three Essays On Conflict And Cooperation, Sungha Hwang
Open Access Dissertations
Conflict theory has in recent years found important applications and made contributions in fields such as economics, political sciences and evolutionary biology. Economists have examined various aspects and implications of appropriation, a typical example of conflicting economic interests, in rent-seeking models. Political scientists, focusing on political turmoil such as war, civil war and demonstration, have scrutinized the effects of conflictual outcomes on political transitions and political systems. More importantly, early human lethal conflict is being recognized as a key factor in explaining human cooperation in evolutionary biology. The first essay concerns the technical aspects of conflict theories. Two well-known forms …
Coping In Court-Involved Adolescents And The Relationship With Stressors, Delinquency, And Psychopathology, Yariv Hofstein
Coping In Court-Involved Adolescents And The Relationship With Stressors, Delinquency, And Psychopathology, Yariv Hofstein
Open Access Dissertations
The current study explored coping and the relationship between coping, stressors, seriousness of delinquency, and internalizing and externalizing psychopathology in a sample of 93 (69 male, 24 female, M age=14.3 SD=1.4) court-involved adolescents. Participation took place in the Juvenile Court Clinics of Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin Counties in Massachusetts. Participants completed the Brief COPE (Carver, 1997) with added items to measure aggressive coping, the Behavior Assessment System for Children Parent Report, Second Edition (BASC-2, PRS), and the Self-Report Delinquency Scale (SRD; Elliot, Huizinga, & Ageton, 1985). The documented history of delinquencies and stressors was collected from court records. An exploratory …
Economic Reforms In East African Countries: The Impact On Government Revenue And Public Investment, Adam Beni Swebe Mwakalobo
Economic Reforms In East African Countries: The Impact On Government Revenue And Public Investment, Adam Beni Swebe Mwakalobo
Open Access Dissertations
In the empirical literature on the revenue consequences of trade liberalization, most studies have focused on cross-country analysis. Because these studies are static in nature, they have not addressed the short-run and long-run dynamic public revenue and public investment consequences of economic reforms in developing countries. This dissertation contributes to the literature employing a dynamic time series analysis of the three East African countries-Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. The dissertation uses a co-integration and error-correction framework to distinguish between short-run and long-run relationships. The results indicate that trade reforms in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda had varying impacts on government revenue, tax …
An Assessment Of Natural Resources Management Conflicts In The Working Landscapes Of Mediterranean Turkey (Turkiye): Koprulu Kanyon National Park, Nedim Kemer
Open Access Dissertations
Environmental conservation and natural resources management are critical global issues of the 21st century. The management of protected public lands emerges as a challenge particularly in developing countries because of the biophysical and socio-cultural importance of these lands. These lands are often referred to as 'working landscapes' where the natural systems and the collective actions of local residents have shaped one another in well-balanced interactions for generations. The working landscapes of the Köprülü Kanyon National Park (KKNP) in Turkey have provided the case study for this dissertation. Eleven villages exist within the park with a total of approximately 7,100 residents. …
An Investigation Of Temporal Resolution Abilities In School-Aged Children With And Without Dyslexia, Elena Zaidan
An Investigation Of Temporal Resolution Abilities In School-Aged Children With And Without Dyslexia, Elena Zaidan
Open Access Dissertations
Dyslexia is a clinical diagnosis often associated with phonological processing deficits. There are, however, other areas of concern, such as the presence of auditory temporal processing (ATP) disorders. One method of investigating ATP is the gap detection (GD) paradigm. This study investigated GD performance using the Gaps-in-Noise © (GIN) test in three groups of 30 children, aged 8 to 9 years. GD thresholds and gap identification scores (%) were determined for each participant. The three groups of participants included (Group I) children with dyslexia and phonological deficits, (Group II) children with dyslexia and no significant phonological deficits, and (Group III) …
Visuospatial Reasoning In Toddlers: A Correlational Study Of Door Task Performance, Iris Louella Price
Visuospatial Reasoning In Toddlers: A Correlational Study Of Door Task Performance, Iris Louella Price
Open Access Dissertations
Previous research using violation-of-expectation paradigms suggests that very young infants have a good understanding of unobserved physical events. Yet toddlers appear to lack this knowledge when confronted with the door task, a visuospatial reasoning task which parallels ones used in the habituation/looking time studies. Many studies have been conducted in an effort to determine why toddlers perform poorly on the door task yet the answer remains unclear. The current study used a correlational approach to investigate door task performance from both psychological (executive function), and neuroscience (prefrontal cortex) perspectives. Children between the ages of 2 ½ - 3 years were …
The People And Me: Michael Moore And The Politics Of Political Documentary, Jon Scott Oberacker
The People And Me: Michael Moore And The Politics Of Political Documentary, Jon Scott Oberacker
Open Access Dissertations
Perhaps no one has had more influence on the role of political documentary in the contemporary public sphere than filmmaker Michael Moore. His unique melding of committed political arguments with an ironic reflexive style have changed the very look and feel of documentary film, contributing significantly to the form's newfound popularity. Furthermore, his steadfast commitment to progressive politics has given the issue of socioeconomic "class" the kind of attention it rarely receives within the mainstream media. However, Moore's films have also been the recipient of viscous attacks from his political opponents, and subject to some of the most contentious public …
The Adoption Of Shamanic Healing Into The Biomedical Health Care System In The United States, Lori L. Thayer
The Adoption Of Shamanic Healing Into The Biomedical Health Care System In The United States, Lori L. Thayer
Open Access Dissertations
Following cultural anthropological inquiry, this dissertation examines the adoption of shamanic healing techniques into Western medicine and the resultant hybrid modality of health care fostered by two disparate healing traditions. As the U.S. populace increasingly turns to alternative forms of healing in conjunction with, or in lieu of, conventional Western medicine, shamanic healing has been added to the list of recognized non-conventional therapies. Shamanism, once prevalent throughout most of the world in various cultural forms, is purported to be the oldest healing modality, dating back to the Upper Paleolithic in Siberia. Historical excoriation and extermination from religious and political dogma …
Reaching The Poorest Through Microfinance: Learning From Saving For Change Program In Mali, Mukul Acharya
Reaching The Poorest Through Microfinance: Learning From Saving For Change Program In Mali, Mukul Acharya
Open Access Dissertations
This study used secondary data to analyze the Saving for Change (SfC) program of Oxfam America in Mali. SfC uses a model of microfinance that is based on education and savings-led approach and self-help methodology. The program teaches the poorest women how to form and manage a group to handle savings and credit related needs. The group learns to systematically collect savings from its members; lend the money to its members with interest and keep a record of all transactions. SfC has created an oral recordkeeping system which is helpful for groups that have mostly or all illiterate women. The …
Phonological Trends In The Lexicon: The Role Of Constraints, Michael Becker
Phonological Trends In The Lexicon: The Role Of Constraints, Michael Becker
Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014
This dissertation shows that the generalizations that speakers project from the lexical exceptions of their language are biased to be natural and output-oriented, and it offers a model of the grammar that derives these biases by encoding lexical exceptions in terms of lexically-specific rankings of universal constraints in Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993/2004). In this model, lexical trends, i.e. the trends created by the phonological patterning of lexical exceptions, are incorporated into a grammar that applies deterministically to known items, and the same grammar applies stochastically to novel items. The model is based on the Recursive Constraint Demotion algorithm …
It’S ‘A Good Thing’: The Commodification Of Femininity, Affluence, And Whiteness In The Martha Stewart Phenomenon, Melissa A Click
It’S ‘A Good Thing’: The Commodification Of Femininity, Affluence, And Whiteness In The Martha Stewart Phenomenon, Melissa A Click
Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014
This study examines the ideologies of gender, race, and class present in Martha Stewart's unprecedented popularity, beginning with the publication of Stewart's first magazine in 1990 and ending in September 2004, after Stewart's conviction for her involvement in the ImClone scandal. My approach is built on the intersection of American mass communication research, British cultural studies, and feminist theory, and utilizes Hall's Encoding/Decoding model to examine how social, cultural and political discourses circulate in and through a mediated text and how those meanings are interpreted by those who receive them. Drawing from textual and ideological analysis of over thirteen years …
Landscape Ecology Of Large Fires In Southwestern Forests, Usa, Sandra L Haire
Landscape Ecology Of Large Fires In Southwestern Forests, Usa, Sandra L Haire
Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014
The recent increase in large fires in southwestern forests has prompted concern regarding their ecological consequences. Recognizing the importance of spatial patterns in influencing successional processes, I asked: (1) How do large fires change plant communities?; (2) What are the implications of these changes for ponderosa pine forests?; and (3) What is the relationship of fire severity to gradients of climate, fuels, and topography? To address the first two questions, I studied succession in the woody plant community at two sites that burned in high-severity fire: La Mesa fire in northern New Mexico (1977) and Saddle Mountain in northern Arizona …
High Stakes: A Poly-Communal Archaeology Of The Pocumtuck Fort, Deerfield, Massachusetts, Siobhan M Hart
High Stakes: A Poly-Communal Archaeology Of The Pocumtuck Fort, Deerfield, Massachusetts, Siobhan M Hart
Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014
The process of defining heritage is fraught with the inequalities of social and political power concomitant with colonialism. As a result, disenfranchised and marginalized groups worldwide have been given little say in heritage matters until recently. Though often perceived as "experts" on the past, archaeologists are just one of many stakeholders with interests in how the past is used in the present. As such, archaeologists today face the challenge of decolonizing heritage work through engagement with diverse stakeholder communities. In this dissertation, I explore the ways that archaeologists have been working at this over the last two decades through a …
Do Actions Speak Louder Than Knowledge? Action Manipulation, Parent-Child Discourse And Children’S Mental State Understanding In Pretense, Dawn K Melzer
Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014
In the current study children 3-5 years of age (N = 75) participated in a mental state task to investigate the effect of action saliency on young children's appreciation of mental states during pretend play activities. They also engaged in a parent-child interaction period, including storybook reading and pretend play activities, in order to examine the relation between mental state term utterances and performance on the mental state task. Two actors appeared side-by-side on a television screen, either in motion or as static images; one actor had knowledge of the animal he was pretending to be; the other actor did …
Post-Marxism After Althusser: A Critique Of The Alternatives, Ceren Ozselcuk
Post-Marxism After Althusser: A Critique Of The Alternatives, Ceren Ozselcuk
Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014
This dissertation provides a particular Marxian class analytical political economy critique of post-Marxism. The dissertation demonstrates the ways in which different positions within post-Marxism continue to essentialize the conceptualizations of class and capitalist economy. What distinguishes this dissertation from other dominant critiques of post-Marxism is the anti-essentialist epistemological and ontological position it adopts. By adopting an anti-essentialist epistemological position the dissertation is able to demonstrate the discontinuities and continuities between post-Marxism and the Marxian tradition. The dissertation does this by reading the heterogeneous and disparate post-Marxian approaches as so many different ways to "resolve" the central tension of the Althusserian …