Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Essays On Women And Work In India And On Other-Regarding Preferences, Sai Madhurika Mamunuru

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a collection of three essays. In Essay I, I explore declining female workforce participation in India and propose the following explanation: Traditionally, Brahmin (upper caste) women were more secluded and did not work outside the house, while non-Brahmin, often poorer, women did. With increased income, non-Brahmin families withdraw women from the workforce in order to signal their enhanced social status. This is a part of a larger process of cultural emulation referred to as the Sanskritization of non-Brahmin families. Using a nationally representative panel dataset, I show, in favor of this hypothesis, that while Brahmin women’s participation …

The Emptiness Of The Present: Fronting Constructions As A Window To The Semantics Of Tense, Petr Kusliy

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is devoted to the temporal interpretation of fronting constructions in English and the phenomenon of the Sequence of Tense. It provides and analyzes previously unobserved data from verb phrase fronting constructions in which the simultaneous interpretation of a present tense embedded under a matrix past tense is available. These data are theoretically unexpected and challenging because most theories of English tense disallow this interpretation for Present-under-Past configurations. An account that captures the new data is proposed. It establishes a connection between the simultaneous interpretation of Present-under-Past and the mode of semantic composition between a verb and its complement. …

Three Essays On Political Economy Of Uneven Development: Space, Class And State In Pakistan, Danish Khan

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation delineates the underlying dynamics of the political economy of uneven development by focusing on the dynamic interaction between socially produced space, class and the state in the context of postcolonial capitalism in Pakistan. The first essay (chapter two) focuses on the political economy of urban slums in the context of a postcolonial city of Islamabad, Pakistan. It presents a new conceptual framework of ‘expulsionary development’ to illustrate that the growth of slums and high-end gated housing enclaves are two sides of the same coin at the urban scale. Dispossession and urban sprawl are the underlying factors which mediate …

Talking About Her(Self): Ambiguity Avoidance And Principle B. A Theoretical And Psycholinguistic Investigation Of Romanian Pronouns, Rudmila-Rodica Ivan

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation answers a deceivingly simple question: why can her in Hermione talked about her refer to the sentence subject in Romanian, but not in English? The Romanian facts, which are surprising for both classic and competition-based accounts of the Binding Theory over the last 40 odd years, bring us to the following overarching question: what are the constraints on pronominal reference? To address these main questions, I carry out a psycholinguistic investigation of Romanian pronouns and argue that the distribution and interpretation of pronominal forms is jointly determined by pragmatic and morphosyntactic constraints. I discuss evidence from four experiments, …

Older Women’S Experiences Of Intimate Partner Violence: A Phenomenological Study, Lourdes Irene

Doctoral Dissertations

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global public health problem, linked to long-term health, social, and economic consequences. Despite the growing number of women over age 60 in Puerto Rico, knowledge is lacking about culturally specific IPV in women of this age group. This lack of knowledge is problematic because women experiencing abuse often do not report it, health professionals are not educated to identify cases of abuse in older women, and researchers often includes IPV with other types of abuse, such as negligence by families. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore and describe the experiences and …

Emergent Typological Effects Of Agent-Based Learning Models In Maximum Entropy Grammar, Coral Hughto

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation shows how a theory of grammatical representations and a theory of learning can be combined to generate gradient typological predictions in phonology, predicting not only which patterns are expected to exist, but also their relative frequencies: patterns which are learned more easily are predicted to be more typologically frequent than those which are more difficult. In Chapter 1 I motivate and describe the specific implementation of this methodology in this dissertation. Maximum Entropy grammar (Goldwater & Johnson 2003) is combined with two agent-based learning models, the iterated and the interactive learning model, each of which mimics a type …

Three Essays On The Economics Of Corporate Governance, Kuochih Huang

Doctoral Dissertations

The Great Recession and the revival attention on inequality have cast doubts on various aspects of the governance of Corporate America. Not only the specific design of corporate governance institutions, but also the very purpose of the firm have became hotly debated issues. The first essay investigates the effect of the CEO's equity-based pay on workers' wages and whether the effect is amplified by product market competition. Since the 1980s, Chief Executive Officers' (CEO) pay has exploded, largely in the form of equity-based incentive compensation such as stock awards and options. Using a two-tiered principal-agent model, we show that aligning …

Person-Based Prominence In Ojibwe, Christopher Hammerly

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation develops a formal and psycholinguistic theory of person-based prominence effects, the finding that certain categories of person such as "first" and "second" (the "local" persons) are privileged by the grammar. The thesis takes on three questions: (i) What are the possible categories related to person? (ii) What are the possible prominence relationships between these categories? And (iii) how is prominence information used to parse and interpret linguistic input in real time? The empirical through-line is understanding obviation — a “spotlighting” system, found most prominently in the Algonquian family of languages, that splits the (ani- mate) third persons into …

It’S All The Rage: An Animated Approach To Screening For Postpartum Depression, Amanda Gorham

Doctoral Dissertations

Postpartum depression presents a complication for mothers which can, in some cases, be severe and even life-threatening. Instruments commonly used to screen for this psychological condition have been challenged by an extensive body of literature, with many mothers being unidentified and even untreated for their symptoms. The presented research introduces a newly developed screening instrument for detecting probable postpartum depression using text-free scenario-based animations, based on the lived experience of the condition as qualified by empirical research and the existing body of literature. Developed items were controlled for quality via Think Aloud Protocol and alignment studies with subject matter experts …

Representing Context: Presupposition Triggers And Focus-Sensitivity, Alexander Goebel

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the role of Focus-sensitivity for a typology of presupposition triggers. The central hypothesis is that Focus-sensitive triggers require a linguistic antecedent in the discourse model, whereas presuppositions of triggers lacking Focus-sensitivity are satisfied as entailments of the Common Ground. This hypothesis is supported by experimental evidence from two borne out predictions. First, Focus-sensitive triggers are sensitive to the salience of the antecedent satisfying their presupposition, as operationalized via the Question Under Discussion, and lead to interference-type effects, while triggers lacking Focus-sensitivity are indifferent to the QUD-structure. Second, Focus-sensitive triggers are harder to globally accommodate than triggers lacking …

Precarious Pipes: Governance, Informality, And The Politics Of Access In Karachi, Usmaan M. Farooqui

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation looks beyond narratives of the chaotic urban south to examine the politics of city planning and everyday service access in Pakistan. I draw on a case study of Karachi, what is perceived to be one of the world’s most unruly cities, to demonstrate how planning enables the representation of political order. Drawing on field research, I also explore the materialities, subjectivities, and histories of service access that shape urban politics in Karachi. I begin by tracing how planners in postcolonial Karachi have, for decades, described the rapidly expanding city as an object of correction. While early master plans …

Place Vibrancy And Its Measurement: Construct Development, Scale Development, And Field Study Of Its Relationship To Planning Interventions For Three Villages In The Town Of Montague, Massachusetts, John D. Delconte

Doctoral Dissertations

The process of using arts and culture to change the physical and social character of places has been defined as ‘creative placemaking’. Creative placemaking granting agencies originally considered constructing ‘livability’ and ‘vibrancy’ indicators to characterize the outcomes of their programs. However, the research community critiqued these indicators, which were considered too nebulous, and efforts to develop them were halted. Other researchers have sought to measure place vibrancy in other contexts. This study revives the initial line of inquiry for using ‘vibrancy’ as a measure of creative placemaking effectiveness and of revitalization efforts more generally. Here, place vibrancy is proposed as …

Military-Themed Video Games And The Cultivation Of Related Beliefs And Attitudes In Young Adult Males, Greg Blackburn

Doctoral Dissertations

Military themed games have been broadly critiqued as ideological vehicles that support western military institutions and militaristic attitudes. At the heart of these critiques is a concern for the potential influence these games may have on their audience, yet little empirical evidence exists to either support or refute that concern. Using cultivation theory as a general framework, this study investigates whether associations between playing military themed video games and military-related thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes can be found in an online, national survey of 410 young adult men. Consistent with cultivation theory’s predictions, significant associations between the use of military themed …

Three Essays On The Past And Future Of Socialism, Mihnea Tudoreanu

Doctoral Dissertations

The idea of economic planning and state ownership of the means of production, which had been central to socialist economic thought for a century and a half, suddenly fell out of favor even among socialists after the fall of the Soviet Union. The three essays of this dissertation are in essence critiques of this 21st century orthodoxy. The first essay addresses the idea of market socialism, as proposed by several academic works in the decades before and after the fall of the USSR. The essay questions whether market socialism would be substantially different from capitalism in practice. It aims to …

Uncovering The Neural And Behavioral Factors That Underlie Changes In Processing Visual Orientation, Patrick Sadil

Doctoral Dissertations

From moment to moment, the visual environment appears stable; despite prolonged scrutiny, the edge of a desk is not perceived to change. But this apparent stability emerges from perceptual and decisional systems that undergo continuous modulation. In two chapters, I focus on two different kinds of modulation to the processing of visual orientation (i.e., the tilt of an edge). In both chapters, the form of modulation is latent, obscured by standard analyses. To detect those latent changes in perceptual decisions, I develop in this dissertation new statistical tools, at both behavioral and neural levels. In the first chapter, I consider …

Three Essays On The Economics And Political Economy Of The “School-To-Prison Pipeline”, Anastasia C. Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the political economy and economics of the school-to- prison pipeline (STPP). In my first essay, I interrogate approaches to the economics of the STPP. I then situate my analysis within the theoretical lens of Robinson (2000)’s racial capitalism, to show a political economy approach for understanding the nexus of public schooling and the carceral state. Building on the concept of enclosure as presented by Sojoyner (2013, 2016), I describe the emergence and impacts of the STPP to show how this dynamic functions as a racialized economic enclosure, through punitive discipline, exclusion, and criminalization. Next, I examine the …

The Lived Experiences Of Graduate Student Veterans Enrolled In Cacrep-Accredited Counseling Programs: A Transcendental Phenomenological Study, Gerald Spangler

Doctoral Dissertations

Student veterans (SVs)are a population of students studied extensively at the undergraduate level. These students possess military traits and characteristics that influence their academic experiences. Existing research focuses on these experiences to better understand and assist in fostering academic persistence. However, there is gap in literature that explores the lived experiences of graduate SVs. This literature is even more pronounced when narrowed to graduate SVs enrolled in Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP). Therefore, this study sought to address this gap and gain a better understanding of graduate SVs and their academic experiences that lead to …

An Exploratory Study Of Varying Phenotypes Of Posttraumatic Stress Among A Comorbid Substance Misuse Population, Dennis Allen Donahue

Doctoral Dissertations

Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore differences in presentation of posttraumatic distress (PTD) that may represent different phenotypes, such as a possible cognitively-driven variant, in addition to those rooted in the prevailing conditioned-fear model. In conjunction, links to substance misuse and a purposeful selection bias for specific drugs-of-choice (DoC) based on phenotype variation were examined. Method: A convenience sample of inpatients in residential treatment for substance misuse who also endorsed posttraumatic distress following at least one previous traumatic experience (N = 177) completed self-report assessments and an in-person direct inquiry. Results: Hierarchical cluster analysis and ANOVA …

Interparental Conflict Exposure And Self-Reported Depressive Symptoms And Religious Service Attendance In College Students, Geoffrey R. Mabe

Doctoral Dissertations

Conflict between parents is a common domestic experience, often witnessed by children in the home. Young adult children who were exposed to this conflict while in the home may be impacted negatively by these experiences to the point of experiencing depressive symptoms or reduced religious service attendance. Religious service attendance may be a helpful resource for those suffering from depressive symptoms related to parental conflict exposure. In two studies, the present research investigates relationships between three dimensions of interparental conflict – frequency, intensity, and resolution – depressive symptoms, and religious service attendance among college students. Study 1 (N = …

Did Public Organizations In Saudi Arabia Increase Openness When They Implemented New Public Management (Npm)?, Bader Alabdulkarim

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the impact of new public management (NPM) on Saudi ministries’ openness. The study sample is three Saudi ministries: the Housing Ministry, the Health Ministry, and the Ministry of Commerce. Moreover, this study creates the NPM Index to measure the ministries’ NPM implementations. Furthermore, this research uses the Public Participation Spectrum (SSP) to measure openness. This dissertation collects data from the sample's annual reports for 2017, and the main finding is that implementing NPM did not increase ministries’ openness. The ministries showed different NPM implementations levels with the same level of openness.

Arc Flash In Single-Phase Electrical Systems, John Francis Wade

Doctoral Dissertations

Arc flash and blast are hazards unique to electrical installations. Such events can start fires, destroy equipment, and severely injure or kill workers. NFPA 70E and IEEE 1584 are defining standards for arc flash hazard analysis used during system design, construction, and maintenance. Both focus on three-phase faults for calculations since three-phase power distribution is predominant in utility and industrial applications. However, discussion of arc flash in single-phase systems prevalent in residential and commercial facilities is excluded. Single-phase faults can also occur in a variety of industrial and utility circumstances.

This dissertation explores historic background and treatment of arc flash …

Politeness Theory: Compliance And Paralinguistic Cooperation, Jamie Jacqueline Osborn

Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract

This manuscript is comprised of three research studies focused on politeness, shame, and cooperation. Study one is a pretest to develop stimuli for the subsequent experiment. The stimuli are comprised of messages that vary by both the type and degree of politeness. There are two types of politeness: regard for another’s identity and regard another’s independence (autonomy). There are also two degrees of politeness: presence and absence of regard. Presence of regard is considered politeness and absence of regard is considered impoliteness. This creates four conditions: identity politeness, autonomy politeness, identity impoliteness, and autonomy impoliteness. This study included exemplars …

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 …

Essays On Financial Frictions, Shipping Frequency And Exchange Rate Pass-Through, Md Deluair Hossen

Doctoral Dissertations

In three chapters of this dissertation, I examine financing frictions, shipping frequency, and exchange rate pass-through.

In the first chapter, I develop a model of importer-exporter procurement where the importer is procuring international inputs from the exporting firms located in developing countries. The exporters are credit constrained for working capital, incur the per-shipment fixed costs, and get paid after goods delivered to the importer. The model shows that for high financing costs in origin and destination, the shipping frequency increases. Furthermore, longer delivery times increase shipping frequency as well as procurement costs. The model also shows that the higher per-shipment …

The Rise Of The Democratic Socialists Of America: A Qualitative Analysis Of The Contributing Factors To Insurgent Mobilization, Grady Lowery

Doctoral Dissertations

Although there are other more conventional means through which aggrieved populations can voice their concerns, social movements have long served as important vehicles for articulating and advancing a group's interests and claims. Indeed, some of the most significant developments in the history of the modern era are bound up with social movements. As a result, social movement analysts are interested in understanding the protests, conflicts, and other forms of resistance that have challenged the prevailing social order. Scholarly interest in collective action has engendered a proliferation of empirical studies, igniting a series of theoretical debates. These debates are animated around …

Shared Neural Substrates Of Perception And Memory: Testing The Assumptions And Predictions Of The Representational-Hierarchical Account, D. Merika W. Sanders

Doctoral Dissertations

Proponents of the representational-hierarchical (R-H) account claim that memory and perception rely on shared neural representations. In the ventral visual stream, posterior brain areas are assumed to represent simple information (e.g. low-level image properties), but the complexity of representations increases toward more anterior areas, such as inferior temporal cortex (e.g., object-parts, objects), extending into the medial temporal lobe (MTL; e.g. scenes). This view predicts that brain structures along this continuum serve both memory and perception; a structure’s engagement is determined by the representational demands of a task, rather than the cognitive process putatively involved. In a neuroimaging study, I searched …

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 …

"Made Of Queer Magic": Understanding The Experiences Of Pregnancy For Queer Women, Lindsey Rogers

Doctoral Dissertations

Queer families are deciding to use donor insemination or medically assisted reproductive treatments to become pregnant and start their families. Previous research indicates that the process of using medically assisted reproductive treatments may be a stressful experience for queer families due to cisheteronormativity within the system. In addition, research has also revealed that stress during the process of conceiving can impact mental health experiences during pregnancy. However, there is a lack of research on the specific mental health experiences of pregnancy for queer women. The present study used a qualitative research design guided by constructivist grounded theory to examine the …

Experiences Of Latinx's Adult Transition To The U.S. And The Clinical Implications That Arise In Acclimating Into The Dominant Culture: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, Gabriela Olavarrieta

Doctoral Dissertations

There has been a significant gap in the literature regarding the lived experience of the Latinx adult transition to the United States and the clinical implications that arise in acclimating to the dominant culture, particularly under the Trump Administration. The approach for the current research examined Latinxs’ adulthood transitions to the United States, experiences of acculturative stress, including instances of discrimination as well as their experiences acclimating or assimilating into the dominant culture. This study also examined what seeking, or being unable to seek, mental health services looked like in the current sociopolitical climate. Interpretive phenomenological analysis was utilized to …

A Qualitative Evaluation Of The Phoenix Project: A Strengths-Based, Trauma-Informed Care Intervention For African American, Transitional Age, Young Adults Living In San Francisco’S Public Housing Community, Lena Miller

Doctoral Dissertations

A QUALITATIVE EVALUATION OF THE PHOENIX PROJECT: A STRENGTHS-BASED, TRAUMA-INFORMED CARE INTERVENTION FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN, TRANSITIONAL AGE, YOUNG ADULTS LIVING IN SAN FRANCISCO’S PUBLIC HOUSING COMMUNITY

Abstract

Persistent community violence has had a profound and destructive impact on many urban communities throughout the country. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) resulting from community violence is becoming an increasingly frequent diagnosis of African American youth and young adults residing in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point (BVHP) community (San Francisco Department of Public Health, 2012). The Phoenix Project was designed to specifically address and heal symptoms of trauma and facilitate resilience among youth and young …