Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Associations Between Early Childhood Sleep, Memory Function, And Brain Development Across The Nap Transition, Sanna Lokhandwala

Doctoral Dissertations

Preschool-age children often distribute their sleep across a midday nap and overnight sleep. Skipping the nap is suggested to increase the duration and depth of deep sleep (i.e., slow wave activity; SWA). Moreover, missing the midday nap has been shown to impair learning processes. This may be because children’s brains at this point in development are immature, necessitating the intervening nap period to strengthen memories before they are forgotten. Nonetheless, at some point during the preschool years, many children begin transitioning naturally out of napping. It is unclear whether the memory benefits of overnight SWA after a skipped nap depend …

Early Diagnosis Methods For Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review, Megan Denise Mccarthy

Doctoral Dissertations

Objective: This systematic review aimed to comprehensively synthesize existing literature on early detection methods for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children birth to 3 years, that lead to an effective and reliable early diagnosis in children 2 to 3 years of age.

Methods: A systematic search was conducted across multiple electronic databases, including PubMed, Scopus, and PsycINFO following PRISMA guidelines. Studies reporting on early detection methods for ASD in infants and toddlers within ages 0 to 3 years that lead to early diagnosis of children ages 2 to 3 years were eligible for inclusion. Data extraction and quality assessment were …

For The Love Of Teaching: Pre-Service Teachers’ Experience Of Moral Education, Anne Marie Foley Ruiz

Doctoral Dissertations

Moral aspects of teaching arise each and every day, yet we lack information about how prepared teachers feel about this critical aspect of teaching. This multi-case study explores perceptions of five pre-service teachers in an elementary teacher education program in Western Massachusetts. A series of interviews explore their histories prior to the program and their experiences in the program as related to the pre-service teachers’ orientations to the moral work of teaching. Research questions address the awareness and self-efficacy of student teachers in implementing the moral aspects of teaching. Using Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006), this study explores beliefs …

The Role Of Multiple Object Views In Early Word Learning: A Dynamic Process, Abigail Julian Dimercurio

Doctoral Dissertations

Word learning is a complex process that involves multiple interacting components. One of these components is the motor system. During the first few years of development, the onset of motor skills predicts the development of language skills such that earlier onsets of crawling and walking relate to greater vocabulary sizes. It is thought that this relationship occurs due to a developmental cascade where gaining locomotive skills allows for greater environmental exploration, thus, more opportunities to learn new words. One area of interest in this cascade is object manipulation. Moving objects in a way that creates multiple views is related to …

Familial And Environmental Contributions To Child Theory Of Mind Development, Sarah Mccormick

Doctoral Dissertations

Theory of mind is a social cognitive domain, reflecting the understanding that internal mental states motivate outward behavior, that develops rapidly over the preschool time period. While critical for healthy social development, less is known about the how aspects of the family environment interact to influence this development or the neural mechanisms that support it. Several decades of research have demonstrated behaviorally that aspects of parent behavior and language are associated with theory of mind skill use in early childhood. Many of the earliest social interactions occur with parents within the family context and little research to date has examined …

Acculturative Parenting Cognitions: Bicultural Socialization Beliefs Among Chinese American Parents, Albert Lo

Doctoral Dissertations

Chinese American and Chinese immigrant parents within the United States possess parenting cognitions that reflect their multidimensional cultural experiences. One such parenting cognition is parents’ bicultural socialization beliefs, defined as their desire for their children to adopt both heritage Chinese values as well as destination American values in order to be successful in the United States. The aim of the current dissertation was to quantitatively examine bicultural socialization beliefs among Chinese American parents of adolescents and young adults. Four studies were conducted to model a pathway from parents’ social and cultural experiences to outcomes in their children. Study 1 examined …

Motivated Attention To Social And Nonsocial Reward Images: Examining Relations With Externalizing Risk In Children, Adaeze C. Egwuatu

Doctoral Dissertations

Children that exhibit issues with externalizing behaviors often experience maladaptive outcomes in later life. Externalizing problems during middle childhood (e.g., 6-10 years old) are linked to issues with emotion regulation, which are, in turn, caused by disrupted attention and emotion reactivity to reward. Externalizing problems during this period have also been linked diminished processing of social reward stimuli, suggesting externalizing risk in children may be reflected in contrasting patterns in processing of non-social and social rewards. However, research comparing how differences in affective processing of specific reward content (i.e. social versus non-social) patterns relate to externalizing behavior within normative development …

Audiovisual Speech Processing: Implications For Speech Perception And Language Development, Ryan Andrew Cannistraci

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation aims to empirically assess the complex, multileveled relationships between audiovisual speech perception and early language development. The majority of extant language development research has justifiably focused on infants’ ability to learn language from auditory input, and indeed, infants are precocious auditory learners (Saffran & Kirkham, 2018). Complementary to auditory speech, however, are the necessarily redundant facial movements used to articulate speech. Outside of language development research, multimodal processing has been theorized to facilitate perceptual learning and cognitive development (Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000), but only a small number of empirical studies have investigated how audiovisual speech perception in infancy …

Representation Of Reward And Risk In The Brain’S Motor System: Studies In Adolescents And Adults, Xingjie Chen

Doctoral Dissertations

In the neuroscience of economic decision making, the brain’s motor system has been ascribed a role in implementing choice actions. However, recent work has revealed canonical motor signals much in advance of choice action, possibly indicating their role in evaluation of decision options. In the current dissertation, we applied multimodal neuroimaging combining EEG and fMRI and used a novel paradigm that temporally separated the evaluation phase from the action phase of a decision-making process to investigate the mechanisms through which the motor control system contributes to decision making. Additionally, we further examined the developmental changes during the two phases of …

Neural Correlates Of Individuation And Subordinate-Level Categorization Of Other-Race Faces In Infancy, Kelly Roth

Doctoral Dissertations

Perceptual narrowing is a domain-general process in which infants move from a broad sensitivity to a wide range of stimuli to developing expertise within often experienced native stimuli (Maurer & Werker, 2014). One outcome of this is the own-race bias, characterized by an increasing difficulty in discriminating other-race faces with age and experience for those raised in a racially homogenous environment (Anzures, Quinn, Pascalis, Slater, Tanaka, & Lee, 2013). Recent theorists have proposed that this is due to a categorization-individuation process, wherein infants begin to categorize non-native stimuli, such as other-species’ faces, but individuate native stimuli, such as often-experienced human …

Stigmatization And Community Connections: Associations With Mental Health, Sexual Identity Development, And Peer Relationships In Emerging Adults With Lgbq+ Parents, Krystal K. Cashen

Doctoral Dissertations

The present mixed-method research project aimed to examine the community connections of emerging adults with LGBQ+ parents as well as how these connections may mitigate associations between stigmatization experienced throughout development because of having LGBQ+ parents and developmental outcomes in emerging adulthood. Study 1 used a qualitative approach to examine whether emerging adults with LGBQ+ parents (N = 15) formed a connection to the LGBTQ+ community and/or a community of others with LGBTQ+ parents as well as whether connections to these two communities served distinct functions. Participants were interviewed through using a semi-structured interview protocol that included sections such …

Father Knows Best: The Interactive Effects Of Fathering Quantity And Quality On Child Self-Regulation, Mamatha Chetlur Chary

Doctoral Dissertations

In the past decade, developmental research has seen a surge of work regarding fathers and their influences of various aspects of child outcomes- cognitive and socioemotional. Studies show that father involvement, or “quantity” of time the father spends with the child, as well as fathering “quality”, or the characteristics marking the father-child relationship (warmth, supportiveness, sensitivity etc.), can both contribute to variance in the development of individual differences in child outcomes such as language skills, academic success and psychological well-being. One facet of adaptive development, self-regulation (SR), is a robust and consistent predictor of high academic success, fulfilling interpersonal relationships, …

Development Of Neural And Behavioral Inhibitory Control During Adolescence: The Integrative Effects Of Family Socioeconomic Status And Parenting Behaviors, Mengjiao Li

Doctoral Dissertations

Inhibitory control (IC) has drawn great attention from researchers and practitioners and the concurrent association between family socioeconomic status and IC in adolescence is well-documented. However, little is known about whether and how family socioeconomic status influence the individual differences in the development of adolescent IC. The current investigation aimed to address this gap in knowledge by employing two multiple-wave longitudinal studies of IC. In the early adolescent sample (N = 311), color-word Stroop task performance was assessed as a measure of IC when individuals were 10 and 13 years old. In the middle adolescent sample (N = 167), multisource …

Home Learning In The New Mobile Age: Parent-Child Interactions During Joint Play With Educational Apps, Shayl Griffith

Doctoral Dissertations

The rapidly increasing popularity of touch screen mobile devices, and accompanying educational applications (“apps”) targeted towards preschool children, calls for a new look at parent-child interactions around educational media. Research has shown that parental involvement in children’s educational media exposure can improve engagement and learning outcomes. However, to date little information is available on how parents navigate their children’s use of educational mobile technology, or how similar or different these interactions are to more commonly studied parent-child interactions, such as around shared reading. This study described, using observational data, parent-child interactions around educational apps and mobile devices in a sample …

Conceptualization And Measurement Of Adolescent Prosocial Behavior: A Two-Study Mixed Methods Investigation, Shereen El Mallah

Doctoral Dissertations

Prosocial behavior is a multifaceted construct that may be expressed and received in a myriad of ways, thereby posing several challenges in measurement. Undoubtedly, significant advancements in the measurement of prosocial behavior have been made since the construct first found its way onto the research stage; however, a few fundamental problems persist with regard to: 1) the absence of a universally employed definition, 2) substantial variation in operationalization and measurement of the construct, and 3) inconsistent reports regarding the nature of prosocial development during the transition between adolescence and young adulthood. These issues are further compounded under conditions of adversity …

Entropy As A Method For Identifying Treatment Resistant Autism Spectrum Disorder, Nathan Wright

Doctoral Dissertations

Background: Individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience lifelong challenges which can impact peer relationships, adaptive functioning, and independent living. Verbal intelligence has proven to be the strongest indicator of outcomes and responsiveness to behavioral intervention, but this property only stabilizes in children between 6 and 8 years of age. Behavioral treatment is the primary intervention for individuals diagnosed with ASD, but it is most effective when delivered as an early intervention strategy for toddlers and very young children. A biomarker which could distinguish treatment resistant subgroups of ASD from would allow for the development and implementation of alternative …

The First Person Perspective: Language, Thought, And Action, Pengbo Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

What it is to have a first person perspective? How do we come to understand our own perspective in the world? How do we take into account other people's perspectives in our social and linguistic interactions? This dissertation is an exploration of these issues. But instead of approaching them in the abstract, it aims to shed light on these difficult questions through a series of case studies. First, I examine the role of the first person perspective in our agency, and explain the sense in which it is essential for action. Next, drawing on recent work in psychology, I propose …

Two Of The Same? Infants' Conceptual Representation Of Faces Based Upon Gender, Race, And Kind Information, Charisse Pickron

Doctoral Dissertations

Infants’ perceptual abilities allow them to distinguish faces of different races and genders from an early age (for a review, see Pascalis et al., 2011). However, it is still unknown when infants begin using these perceptual differences to represent faces in a conceptual, kind-based manner. The current dissertation examined this issue by testing whether 12- and 24-month-old infants represent faces of different races and genders as distinct ‘kinds’ or instead as variations of a single broader category (e.g., ‘human face’). The current dissertation included two experiments each with a different type of violation-of-expectation individuation paradigm. Experiment 1 used a passive …

Mediators And Moderators Of Childhood Family Adversity And Adult Cortisol Response: The Role Of Marital Conflict Behavior, Jeffrey P. Winer

Doctoral Dissertations

Childhood family adversity influences behavioral and physiological response processes to acute interpersonal stress. Additionally, conflict behaviors in marriage are primary determinants of stress response and related psychological problems in adulthood. As little research has examined these two important literatures simultaneously, further work is warranted to clarify the role of marital conflict behavior in the relation between childhood family adversity and adult cortisol response to conflict. The current study examined relations between childhood family adversity, observed marital conflict behaviors, and salivary cortisol in response to acute marital conflict among 228 different-sex newlywed couples. We examined intrapersonal “actor” effects as candidate mediators …

Intraracial And Intraethnic Microaggressions Experienced By Korean American Internationally And Transracially Adopted Persons, Karin J. Garber

Doctoral Dissertations

This research examined the microaggressions that Korean American internationally and transracially adopted persons (ITAPs) reported based on intraracial/intraethnic interpersonal exchanges. This research tested a conceptual model that: 1) determined the themes of intraracial/intraethnic microaggressions reported by Korean American ITAPs; 2) investigated how psychological symptoms and emotion outcomes were predicted from these microaggressions; and 3) tested specific moderators (i.e., age, engagement coping, disengagement coping, ethnic identity, stigma consciousness, parental racial, ethnic, and cultural socialization, and level of interaction with other Asians) that could change the relationship between these microaggressions and negative psychological symptoms and emotion outcomes. Two studies with different samples …

The Effect Of Maternal Borderline Personality Disorder And Child Temperament On Mother-Child Synchrony, Christina Gabriela Mena

Doctoral Dissertations

Maternal borderline personality disorder (BPD) and difficult child temperament have individually been associated with reduced quality of mother-child interactions. The current study examined synchrony (a dyadic construct measuring quality of interaction) during a coded observational task in a sample of mothers with BPD and their young children ages 4-7 (n = 36) compared to normative comparisons (n = 34). These mothers’ self-reported borderline features were also used to examine dyad synchrony across the sample as a whole. We also examined the association between child temperament and synchrony as well as the potential moderating effect child temperament has on the relationship …

The Cognitive Effects Of Light Color Temperature, Lauren Hartstein

Doctoral Dissertations

The goal of the current studies is to explore the conditions by which light color temperature impacts cognitive abilities and the development of this relationship. Experiments 1 and 1A explored whether exposure to light fluctuating around a central color temperature leads to increases in attention in adult participants. Results showed that, under the dynamic lighting condition, participants’ showed a significant decrease in reaction time on a measure of sustained attention, beyond those of a static light source at a cooler color temperature. Experiment 2 tested whether preschool-aged and 7-year-old participants would show increases in attention and cognitive flexibility after exposure …

The Influence Of Early Media Exposure On Children’S Development And Learning, Katherine Hanson

Doctoral Dissertations

A number of studies suggest that the amount of early screen media exposure is related to negative developmental outcomes, namely poorer executive functioning and language skills (Anderson & Pempek, 2005). Television’s constant presence in the home could lead to potentially serious consequences for infants and toddlers. However, hypotheses attributing long-term negative outcomes to the direct effects of television on children are limited. There are no definitive mechanisms to explain how these effects are instantiated within children over time. Furthermore, the indirect influences of television on children remain entirely unexplored. Television’s impact can have a potentially greater indirect effect on young …

Infant Locomotor Skill Development In The Context Of Mother-Infant Interactions, Sabrina Lynn Thurman

Doctoral Dissertations

The acquisition of locomotor skills and transitions within them leads to changes in infants’ exploratory abilities and interactive behaviors, which affects several aspects of parent-infant exchanges. Here, we tracked how the onset of crawling and walking affected both infants’ and mothers’ spatial exploration, interactive behaviors, and use of postures in 10-minute free play sessions held in a laboratory setting. Thirteen infants and their mothers were followed longitudinally with biweekly sessions occurring from before crawling onset until infants had two months walking experience. We focused on two 6-session transition periods centered around the onsets of hands-and-knees crawling and walking. Behavioral data …

United States Elite Youth Tennis Athletes’ Use Of Psychological Strategies In Competition, Emily Earlynn Lauer

Doctoral Dissertations

Young athletes are routinely faced with stressors and competitive structures that collegiate and adult athletes face. Psychological skills training (PST) can provide young athletes with strategies and skills to cope with these stressors and ultimately influence sport performance (Vealey, 2007). To date, the only study exploring in-competition experiences of young athletes was with participants between 16 and 18 years of age (Van Raalte, Brewer, Rivera, & Petitpas, 1994). The current study is the first investigation on the in-competition experiences of children and adolescents in sport. Twelve elite young tennis athletes (M[subscript]age = 11.83) who trained within a Player Development program …

The Effect Of Unique Labels On Face Perception In Infancy, Hillary R. Hadley

Doctoral Dissertations

Faces are universally important for a variety of reasons, ranging from identifying individuals to conveying social information. During the first year of life, infants’ experience with commonly encountered face groups shapes how infants perceive familiar and unfamiliar faces. Between 6 and 9 months of age, infants become worse at differentiating among individual faces from unfamiliar face groups (e.g., other-species faces), a process known as “perceptual narrowing”. Labeling faces from a previously unfamiliar face group has been found to promote individual-level differentiation, as well as expert neural processing for the face group. However, it is currently unclear what influences individual-level labels …

The Neural Correlates Of Emotion Reactivity And Regulation In Young Children With Adhd, Claudia I. Lugo-Candelas

Doctoral Dissertations

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most frequently occurring pediatric neurobehavioral disorder. Although emotion reactivity and regulation are frequently impaired in ADHD, few studies have examined these factors in preschool aged children with ADHD, and none have explored the neural correlates of emotion reactivity and regulation in this group though event-related potentials (ERPs). Children aged 4 to 7 with (n = 24) and without (n = 30) ADHD symptoms completed an attention task composed of four blocks: baseline, frustration, suppression, and recovery. In the frustration and suppression blocks, negative affect was induced by false negative feedback. During the …

Infants' Reasoning About Agents' Identity: The Case Of Sociomoral Kinds, Hernando Taborda

Doctoral Dissertations

Recent studies in development psychology suggest that early on infants are able to distinguish characters who display a cooperative behavior from characters who display an antisocial behavior. The current research builds on these findings and aims at determining the extent to which infants possess the sociomoral distinction of “good” and “mean” agents. In particular, we propose that infants represent sociomoral behaviors through kind-based categories. This hypothesis was tested in the current research across 5 different experiments by investigating how infants represent the identity of agents in sociomoral situations. Experiment 1 used a looking-time paradigm to demonstrate 11-month-old infants’ bias to …

Bidirectional Relationships Between Maternal Parenting Behaviors And Conduct Disorder Symptoms In Preschool Children, Benjamin Rolon Arroyo

Doctoral Dissertations

Conduct disorder (CD) symptoms emerge in preschool children, and some evidence for bidirectional effects between maternal parenting behaviors and these symptoms has been found in school-age children and adolescents. However, the strength and pattern of these effects are unknown during the preschool years. The present study examined the bidirectional relationships between several key maternal parenting behaviors (negative affect, warmth, overreactivity, and laxness) and CD symptoms across the preschool years. Participants were 197 preschool children (M = 44.24 months, SD = 3.37; Girls = 92) exhibiting significant behavior problems and their mothers who participated in a 3-year longitudinal study. Maternal …

Infants' & Toddlers' Social Evaluations Of Trustworthy And Untrustworthy Faces, Ashley Lyons

Doctoral Dissertations

Our understanding of the social world is highly influenced by the fast and automatic evaluations we make about others based on their facial appearance. The goal of the current studies is to explore the developmental origins of the particular face-trait evaluation of ‘trustworthiness.’ Experiment 1 tested whether 10-month-old infants differentiate between faces that adults rate as trustworthy and untrustworthy, and if they have a preference for one over the other in a crawling task. Experiment 2 tested whether 10-month-olds have implicit expectations about the social behavior of characters with trustworthy of untrustworthy faces in a looking-time task that presents infants …