Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Sex Differences In Differential Fear Conditioning During The Acquisition And Consolidation Of Learned Safety, David Sylvan Reis

Theses and Dissertations

The ability to distinguish between threatening and non-threatening situations requires careful regulation of behavioral and physiological responses to stress and fear. Deficits in fear regulation are maladaptive and can lead to the development of anxiety disorders such as PTSD. Women are nearly twice as likely to develop PTSD as are men and laboratory animal studies have shown facilitated fear acquisition, resistance to fear extinction, deficits in extinction retention and impaired discrimination between danger and safety cues in females. Taken together this suggests a propensity for reduced inhibitory control over fear responding in females. Here we investigate the mechanisms underlying fear …

Development And Validation Of A Self-Care Scale For Clinical And Counseling Doctoral Students, Mercedes Santana

Theses and Dissertations

Self-care is a critical component and considered a core foundational competency for doctoral students in the field of psychology. It is an ethical imperative to maintain adequate self-care in order to prevent burnout and negative outcomes to those receiving our healthcare services. Self-care is also related to the professional values of psychology, specifically beneficence and nonmaleficence which relates to our duty of exercising good judgment to avoid harm to clients. Despite being identified as such little research has explored the topic. One reason that may contribute to the lack of research is the need for a measure self-care behaviors. In …

Cultural Correlates Of Ptsd In Latinos Residing In The U.S., Gabriela A. Nagy

Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined the associations between cultural variables (i.e., acculturative stress, discrimination, social support, migration planning, and reasons for migrating) and exposure to trauma and PTSD in a sample of Latinos (N=2,554) residing in the United States, who participated in the National Latino and Asian America Study (NLAAS). Results showed that there were significant positive associations between trauma exposure and migrating because of political reasons, migrating in search of medical attention, migrating due to

marital or family problems, and forced migration, suggesting they may be risk factors for being exposed to trauma. There was a negative association between trauma …

Social Network Analysis On Wisconsin Archival Facebook Community, Jennifer Stevenson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand how Wisconsin archives are using Facebook (Wisconson archives Facebook community, WAFC). Few archive studies use quantitative measurements to draw conclusions from social media application use. Quantitative data is needed in order to identify the various ways that social media is being used in an archive. Without the data behind the assumptions, it is impossible to improve service and outreach to the archive users. This study proposed a mixed methods approach to aid in the process, using social network analysis, inferential statistics and thematic analysis. This study measured the effects of implementation of …

Understanding Children’S Help-Seeking Behaviors: Effects Of Domain Knowledge, Hyejung Han

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores children’s help-seeking behaviors and use of help features when they formulate search queries and evaluate search results in IR systems. This study was conducted with 30 children who were 8 to 10 years old. The study was designed to answer three research questions with two parts in each: 1(a) What are the types of help-seeking situations experienced by children (8-10 years old) when they formulate search queries in a search engine and a kid-friendly web portal?, 1(b) What are the types of help-seeking situations experienced by children (8-10 years old) when they evaluate search results in a …

Autism Spectrum Disorder Symptomatology In Children With Neurofibromatosis Type 1, Christina Casnar

Theses and Dissertations

Social problems are a common concern of parents of children with Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1). There has been a recent surge of research examining the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and ASD symptomatology in children with NF1. Findings from this relatively new body of research are mixed. The primary aim of this study was to examine ASD symptomatology in children with NF1 using a comprehensive assessment of ASD symptoms. A second aim was to examine possible variables that may contribute to socio-communicative difficulties. Participants included 25 children with NF1 between the ages of 9 and 13, along with their …

How Individuals Disclose Health Information: A Study Examining The Choices Made When Sharing Health Information, Jessica Marie Samens

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the decision making process and the reasoning an individual uses when deciding how, what, and when to disclose. Results should offer a better understanding of the process an individual goes through in the when sharing information, including the motivations and reasons of what is hoped to be gained from each interaction. Results found people incorporate a variety of reasons for deciding on disclosure. Close relationships and duty to inform were the two most common reasons. Health literacy impacted disclosure as people were unable to disclose information before they had the necessary knowledge about the illness.

Methodology of …

Barriers To Disclosure Of Sexual Victimization Experiences Among Men, Timothy J. Geier

Theses and Dissertations

Efforts to better understand sexual victimization experiences among male populations have been chiefly absent (Spataro, Moss, & Wells, 2001; Stermac, Sheridan, Davidson, & Dunn, 1996). ). Research indicates that approximately 1 in 71 men in the United States (i.e., 1.6 million men) have been raped in their lifetime, and nearly 1 in 5 men (i.e., 25 million men) have experienced sexual victimization other than rape in their lifetime (Black, Basile, Breiding, Smith, Walters, Merrick, Chen, & Stevens, 2011). It is suggested these estimates do not fully portray the actual prevalence given hesitancy of male victims to report the crime (Bullock …

Examining A Novel Response Modality: Teaching Sighted Individuals To Read Braille Visually, Madelynn Audrey Lillie

Theses and Dissertations

In order to prepare teachers to instruct children with visual impairments in braille, previous research has taught sighted adults to match braille sample stimuli to print comparisons in a matching-to-sample (MTS) format and has assessed the emergence of other braille repertoires such as transcribing and reading following this training. Although participants have learned to match-to-sample with braille, they displayed limited emergence of other braille repertoires. This lack of generative responding may have resulted from participants’ over-selective attending to components of compound braille characters during instruction. The current study taught three undergraduate learners to construct braille characters given a print sample—which …

Enacting The Semantic Web: Ontological Orderings, Negotiated Standards, And Human-Machine Translations, Matthew Mccarthy

Theses and Dissertations

Artificial intelligence (AI) that is based upon semantic search has become one of the dominant means for accessing information in recent years. This is particularly the case in mobile contexts, as search based AI are embedded in each of the major mobile operating systems. The implications are such that information is becoming less a matter of choosing between different sets of results, and more of a presentation of a single answer, limiting both the availability of, and exposure to, alternate sources of information. Thus, it is essential to understand how that information comes to be structured and how deterministic systems …

Elementary Cognitive Tasks Of Executive Functioning: A Concurrent Validity Study, Octavio A. Santos

Theses and Dissertations

In this study, we examined the concurrent validity of four computerized elementary cognitive tasks (ECTs) by comparing them with Delis–Kaplan Executive Function System’s (D-KEFS) scores shown to load on the three-factor model of executive functions (EFs). A sample of 175 college students were administered two ECTs purportedly measuring perceptual-motor skills (simple and choice reaction time [RT] tasks) and two ECTs purportedly measuring executive control (1- & 2-bit internal-rule [IR] tasks), as well as the D-KEFS Sorting Test, Color-Word Test, and Verbal Fluency Test to assess Shifting, Inhibition, and Updating, respectively. Specific D-KEFS scores underwent principal component analysis, yielding a three-factor …

"Don't Be Such A Girl, I'M Only Joking!" Post-Alternative Comedy, British Panel Shows, And Masculine Spaces, Lindsay Anne Weber

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the gender disparity in British panel shows. In February 2014 the BBC’s Director of Television enforced a quota stating panel shows needed to include one woman per episode. This quota did not fully address the ways in which the gender imbalance was created. This thesis argues that the gender imbalance stems from post-feminist sensibilities and masculine-centric trends in British comedy and culture. This work demonstrates this through a discourse analysis of the opinions expressed about panel shows by the British popular press and media personalities from 2002 to 2017. The discourse analysis exposes patterns where British producers …

Synthesizing Population For Travel Activity Analysis, Hong Zhuo

Theses and Dissertations

Population synthesis is a fundamental procedure for individual-based modeling in transportation research. The population synthesis generates anonymized individuals with selected social-demographic variables that have similar statistical distributions as that of the samples from the real population. Previous studies on population synthesis focused on generating general-purpose population by fitting the joint distributions of multiple variables to their sampled distributions. In addition to fitting the joint distributions, this study focuses on generating population for travel activity analysis by considering individuals’ travel activity patterns and associated social, economic, and demographic characteristics.

A person’s daily movement is a time-sequence of activities connected by travel …

The Feasibility Of Assessing Parent And Child Letter Knowledge In At-Rrisk Families Within A Museum Enrichment Setting, Jeny Sara Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

THE FEASIBILITY OF ASSESSING PARENT AND CHILD LETTER KNOWLEDGE IN AT-RISK FAMILIES WITHIN A MUSEUM ENRICHMENT SETTING

by

Jeny Sara Thomas

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2017

Under the Supervision of Professor John Heilmann

Purpose. This study addressed alphabet knowledge with children/parents who may be at-risk using a museum environment. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the parent- and child-level assessments developed were appropriate to measure letter knowledge and children’s home literacy environment (HLE) from at-risk families and implement a museum enrichment program for the children/parents within a museum experience.

Methods. Fourteen parent-child dyads from the Family …

How Working In Local Tv News Affects Journalists' Personal Lives, Danielle Stobb

Theses and Dissertations

This study uses participant observation and interviews to determine how working in local television news affects journalists’ personal lives. Twenty-eight journalists from a top 50 Midwestern station were interviewed. The inductive research data is organized into three themes: 1) Schedules 2) Family, friends and relationships 3) Moving. A personal narrative of the researcher’s experience working part-time ties each theme together.

Three Essays On The Economics Of The Family, Mehrnoush Motamedi

Theses and Dissertations

August 2017

ABSTRACT

THREE ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMICS OF THE FAMILY

by

Mehrnoush Motamedi

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2017

Under the Supervision of Professor Scott Adams

The goal of this dissertation is to apply empirical methodologies to analyze various topics in economics of education and health economics, which have clear policy implications.

Chapter 1 presents evidence of heterogeneous labor market returns for children depending on the time intervals between sibling births. My empirical strategy exploits exogenous variation in child spacing stemming from whether there are twins in the family and an age difference between the mother and the father. Results …

Three Essays On Human Capital And Wages Of Refugees And Other Immigrants In The U.S., Abdihafit Shaeye

Theses and Dissertations

Human capital is an important mechanism that influences both the migration decisions of immigrants and the rate at which immigrants assimilate in the host country. Returns to human capital could be correlated with difficult-to-observe factors such as self-selection, and legal status, and these unobservables can affect the economic assimilation of immigrants into the host country differently. The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the returns to human capital for refugees and other immigrants during the first two decades after they come to the U.S. Refugees are a subset of immigrants who have different characteristics and face different constraints than …

Intrinsic Frontolimbic Connectivity And Associated Patterns On Reported Mood Symptoms In Young Adult Cannabis Users, Skyler Gabriel Shollenbarger

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: Recent legislation changes regarding cannabis in the United States highlights the importance of investigating the impact of regular cannabis use on populations, such as emerging adults, that will likely drive the market given their greater daily use (see Johnston et al., 2014). The endocannbinoid system plays a role in neurodevelopment (see Bossong & Niesink, 2010) and has been implicated in behavioral and emotional processing (see Moreira & Lutz, 2008; see Solinas et al., 2008; see Covey et al., 2014). The current study utilized a multisite functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) dataset of intrinsic (a.k.a. no task/resting state) frontolimbic connectivity …

Perceptions Of Belongingness In Stem Subjects And Career Development For Middle School African American Girls, Anya Woronzoff Verriden

Theses and Dissertations

This study addresses the hypothesis that African American girls’ early perceptions of support in middle school influences their narrowing or broadening of interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) subjects and careers. As previously researched the belief that boys excel at math and science while girls do well in the humanities is not supported by findings. Therefore the purpose of this study is to investigate the interaction of contextual factors such as teacher, parent, and peer support for African American middle school girls and their interest in STEM subjects utilizing a qualitative research method. Students are making decisions about their …

Power, Responsibility, And Sexually Violent War Tactics: A Theoretical And Empirical Analysis Of Rape During Civil War, Jennifer L. Clemens

Theses and Dissertations

Broadly, this dissertation asks, why rape? In address, this research posits a leadership preference-based strategic theory of rape during war; marking the first large-N, quantitative exploration of leadership preferences on the use of rape in civil war. Using an original dataset, preferences of armed group leaders are evaluated against the level of rape across all civil conflicts between 1980 - 2009. The results highlight three critical findings. First, evidence suggests that rape is distinctive from other human rights violations and is permitted or controlled differently than are more common forms of extra-combat violence (i.e., torture, extra-judicial killings, disappearances). This work …

Non-Native Foreign Language Instructors’ Teaching Expectations Concerning Intercultural Communication Competence: Communicative Practices In The Classroom., Richard A. Draeger Jr

Theses and Dissertations

Universities within China recruit thousands of foreign experts to teach Chinese college Students. Generally, institutions require foreigners to be native speakers of languages taught and possess a bachelor’s degree. In the 1980s and 1990s, international teachers were hired so students could master native like pronunciation in foreign languages such as English. Institutions within China are now discussing the current status and future of foreign language teaching in university classrooms. Essentially, department heads are debating if students should learn foreign languages for the purposes of communication with foreigners. In the case of Chinese college students, communicative language teaching may need to …

Nobi Ni-Tse’Tse’Ede (House On The Cold One): Northern Great Basin Archaic Hunter-Gatherer Household Archaeology, Harney County, Oregon, Emily Jane Epstein

Theses and Dissertations

Excavation results from four sites on Tse’tse’ede (The Cold One), which is also commonly known as Steens Mountain, produced archaeological evidence for a prehistoric subsistence and settlement system on the western flank of Tse’tse’ede. Material culture recovered in association with one house, domestic surfaces, and from a high elevation hunting locale provides evidence for human use of the mountain spanning the Archaic. Analysis suggests human occupation of the range intensified post Cal 3000 BP.

The archaeological results were compared against an ethnographically derived model for household and community food security, the basis of settlement and subsistence systems. The model failed …

Effects Of Online Response Inhibition Training In Children With Williams Syndrome: A Pilot Study, Natalie Brei

Theses and Dissertations

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic neurodevelopmental disorder which is often accompanied by challenges such as attention difficulties, anxiety, and overfriendliness. While research is mixed, a substantial body of literature suggests that deficits in response inhibition may underlie these difficulties in WS, making response inhibition a possible focus of intervention. However, research to date has not explored interventions that may affect response inhibition in individuals with WS. A recently developed computerized response inhibition training program has shown promise at improving response inhibition in other populations, but research on computerized training for people with WS has not been conducted. The aim …

Effects Of Self-Affirmation On Emotion And Cardiovascular Responses, Wei-Ju Chen

Theses and Dissertations

Self-affirmation is the act of focusing on important aspects of the self, such as personal values and characteristic. Benefits of self-affirmation have been documented in past research. However, the immediate impacts of self-affirmation on cardiovascular responses have not been fully explored. Therefore, the present study examined such effects both during and consequent to the practice of self-affirmation. One hundred and twenty-five participants completed the study. A within-subject design was used, in which each participant went through both the control and self-affirmation conditions (the order of presentation was counterbalanced). In the self-affirmation condition, participants were asked to write about their top-ranked …

Three Essays On International Credit Market And Monetary Policy, Anni Huang

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation studies the behavior of international credit flow and the associated monetary policy spillover effect. In the first chapter, I am interested in decomposing the long-run variations and the short-run variations of US dollar denominated credit in emerging market economies. This paper uses a multivariate correlated unobserved component model to study the dynamic relationship among dollar credit in emerging market economies, US interest rates and the dollar index. The results from this model suggest that the transitory shocks to dollar credit in emerging market economies are highly negatively correlated with the transitory shocks to the US interest rate and …

The Development Of Preference For Or Against Choice-Making Opportunities, Melissa Drifke

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PREFERENCE FOR OR AGAINST CHOICE-MAKING OPPORTUNITIES

by

Melissa A. Drifke

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2017

Under the Supervision of Professor Jeffrey Tiger

Many individuals prefer contexts in which choice-making opportunities are available relative to contexts in which the same experiences are arranged without the opportunity to choose. Further, providing contingent access to choice-making opportunities often results in increased engagement and decreased problem behavior for individuals in reinforcement-based programs. Little is known about why preferences for choice-making contexts develop. The current study examines pairing choice-making contexts with increased or decreased reinforcer magnitude, quality, and immediacy to develop …

The Impact Of Priming Power On Sexual Harassment Proclivity In Male Correctional Officers, Alexander Gomory

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has shown that holding a position of power has a significant impact on the likelihood of an individual engaging in sexual harassment. Additionally, cultural scripts among men encourage seeking power, and exerting their power upon others through acts such as sexual harassment. Correctional officers exist in an environment that necessitates the adherence and utilization of power to control dangerous environments. The combination of traditional male norms and the need to access power and authority for male correctional officers could lead to an increase in sexual harassment proclivity. This study will explore whether a short term priming of power …

Examining The Intersections Of Gay Identity, Ethnic Identity, And Spirituality And Their Relationship With Psychological Distress And Internalized Heterosexism, Ernesto Noam Lira De La Rosa

Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have tested Meyer’s (1995, 2003) minority stress theory and have documented the negative impact that minority stress can have on the psychological well-being for minorities. However, few studies have examined the role of multiple minority identities or the protective factors that may buffer against psychological distress. The present study utilized quantitative methodology to examine minority stress theory in a sample of gay men of color. A paper and pencil self-report survey was provided to 302 voluntary adult Gay men of color in Southeastern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois. The measures gathered information about participant’s gay and ethnic identity salience, spirituality, …

Physical Environment And Crime In Milwaukee Neighborhoods, Jenna Nitkowski

Theses and Dissertations

Neighborhood physical condition and crime is a topic that has been heavily debated since Wilson and Kelling’s (1982) famous broken windows theory article. While previous research has identified a positive link between disorder, certain land uses, and crime, the direction and magnitude of the effect may vary depending on neighborhood characteristics such as socioeconomic status (Teh, 2008; Greenberg et al., 1982) or ability of residents to exert informal social control (Gault & Silver, 2008; Sampson & Raudenbush, 1999). The following study uses data from Milwaukee census tracts (N=210) and maximum likelihood estimation to test the effect of neighborhood physical condition …

“Superman’S Editor Mortimer Weisinger”: The Success And Extension Of The Superman Brand In The Silver Age Of Comics, Justin Engelbart

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis examines the career of Detective Comics’ editor Mortimer Weisinger from 1957-1970, during which time Superman transitioned from a simple character to a complex brand. It details the creation of the character and subsequent growth into multiple mediums. Weisinger’s greatest contribution to the hero was an extended mythology and spin-off comic series. I analyze these series, as well as his other editorial tendencies, to understand the business strategies and management of the Superman brand. Another interest in this thesis is comic book fandom, as feedback from fans allowed National’s management to identify trends. Weisinger’s involvement with early science fiction …