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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

2023-1 The Macroeconomic Consequences Of Subsistence Self-Employment, Juan Herreno, Sergio Ocampo Jan 2023

2023-1 The Macroeconomic Consequences Of Subsistence Self-Employment, Juan Herreno, Sergio Ocampo

Department of Economics Research Reports

We evaluate the aggregate effects of expansions of credit supply in environments where subsistence self-employment is prevalent. We extend a standard macro development model to include unemployment risk, which becomes a key driver of selection into self-employment. The model is consistent with the joint distribution of earnings and occupations, the reaction of wages to labor demand shocks, and the small effects of expansions in the supply of microloans on the earnings of the self-employed. We find that the elasticity of aggregate output to expansions in credit supply is proportional to the elasticity of individual earnings. This proportionality arises due to …


Examining The Relationships Between Socio-Cognitive Factors And Neural Synchrony During Movie Watching Across Development, Kathleen M. Lyons Aug 2022

Examining The Relationships Between Socio-Cognitive Factors And Neural Synchrony During Movie Watching Across Development, Kathleen M. Lyons

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

While different cognitive abilities mature, the conscious experiences of children likely become richer and more elaborate. A challenge in investigating relationships between cognitive development and real-world experiences is having measures that assess naturalistic processing. Movie watching offers a solution, since following the plot of a film requires cognitive processes that are similar to real-world experiences. When different adults watch the same film, their brain activity begins to align (known as neural synchrony). The strength of this alignment has been shown to reflect the degree to which different individuals are having a similar experience of the movie. While this phenomenon has …


Sustainable Development Goals Within Canadian Universities, Kavanagh S.A Lambert Aug 2022

Sustainable Development Goals Within Canadian Universities, Kavanagh S.A Lambert

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were created for all countries by the United Nations in 2015 with the aim of transforming the world for the better. Each country is responsible for working towards achieving these SDGs. Within Canada, fifteen research universities known as the U-15 make up the majority of private-sector research and innovation. About 65% of these U-15 institutions have developed their own SDG report/plan, illustrating a high level of initiative and involvement when it comes to the SDGs. Research indicates that as countries continue to improve their efforts towards the SDGs, there will be a need for …


Developmental Differences In The Learning And Consolidation Of Linguistic Regularities, Sarah Berger Jul 2022

Developmental Differences In The Learning And Consolidation Of Linguistic Regularities, Sarah Berger

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Relative to adults, children have a well-known advantage for learning linguistic regularities, which could be partially driven by their deeper sleep. To examine the relationship between consolidation and language learning across development, children and adults learned a novel article system with an implicit grammatical rule. Participants performed a judgment task on phrases containing the novel articles before and after a night of EEG-monitored sleep. We found that rule sensitivity emerged rapidly in children, whereas it did not emerge until the second session in adults. Children demonstrated better generalization of the rule than adults. Consolidation effects showed a developmental double dissociation, …


Validating An Observational Coding System For The Dominance Behavioural System (Dbs) In Childhood, Jennifer Mullen Jul 2021

Validating An Observational Coding System For The Dominance Behavioural System (Dbs) In Childhood, Jennifer Mullen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The dominance behavioural system (DBS) is a biologically based system that underpins individual differences in motivation for dominance and power. However, little is known about the DBS in childhood. In a pilot study aimed at developing a behavioural coding system for dominance, a key facet of the DBS, we collected and coded observational data from 58 children, assessed at ages 3 and 5-6. Between these ages, dominance was moderately stable, to a degree comparable to other early child temperament traits. Consistent with study hypotheses, boys were more dominant than girls, and dominance was negatively associated with children’s behavioural inhibition, effortful …


The Conundrum Of Vanishing 'Gold' In The African Savannah, Eunice Annan-Aggrey Jan 2020

The Conundrum Of Vanishing 'Gold' In The African Savannah, Eunice Annan-Aggrey

Africa Western Collaborations Day 2020 Abstracts

No abstract provided.


How Does The Brain Represent Digits? Investigating The Neural Correlates Of Symbolic Number Representation Using Fmri-Adaptation, Celia Goffin Oct 2019

How Does The Brain Represent Digits? Investigating The Neural Correlates Of Symbolic Number Representation Using Fmri-Adaptation, Celia Goffin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

How does the brain represent numerical symbols (e.g., Arabic digits)? Activity in left parietal regions correlates with symbolic number processing. Research with functional resonance imaging adaptation (fMRI-A) indicates that the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) exhibits a rebound (increase in activation) effect when a repeatedly presented number is followed by a new number. Importantly, this rebound effect is modulated by numerical ratio as well as the difference between presented numbers (distance). This ratio-dependent rebound effect could reflect a link between symbolic numerical representation and an approximate number system (ANS). In this doctoral dissertation, fMRI-A is used to investigate mechanisms underlying symbolic number …


The Origins And Development Of Visual Categorization, Laura Cabral Jun 2019

The Origins And Development Of Visual Categorization, Laura Cabral

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Forming categories is a core part of human cognition, allowing us to make quickly make inferences about our environment. This thesis investigated some of the major theoretical interpretations surrounding the neural basis of visual category development. In adults, there are category-selective regions (e.g. in ventral temporal cortex) and networks (which include regions outside traditional visual regions—e.g. the amygdala) that support visual categorization. While there has been extensive behavioural work investigating visual categorization in infants, the neural sequence of development remains poorly understood. Based on behavioral experiments, one view holds that infants are initially using subcortical structures to recognize faces. Indeed, …


The Differentiation Of Smallholder Farming And Household Food Responsibilities In Northern Ghana, Siera Vercillo Nov 2018

The Differentiation Of Smallholder Farming And Household Food Responsibilities In Northern Ghana, Siera Vercillo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

One of the most urgent problems facing sub-Saharan Africa is that many people lack access to safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food, particularly in semi-arid regions such as northern Ghana. An important indication of this problem within Ghana is that stunting rates due to prolonged undernourishment are significantly higher in the northern regions than in other parts of the country, despite claims of an overall increase in the availability of food. Broadly, this dissertation employs qualitative case study research in the Northern Region (interviews N=109 and 12 focus groups) to describe the changes in access to resources, roles and …


Settlement Experiences Of Syrian Refugees, Jennifer Perkins Mar 2018

Settlement Experiences Of Syrian Refugees, Jennifer Perkins

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Statistics Canada (2017) reports that over 40,000 Syrian refugees have arrived in Canada since November of 2015. This large influx of refugees, some with psychological trauma, poses a great responsibility to service providers to ensure services meet the needs of their new clientele. One service provider in Midsized City, Ontario, which will be referred to as The Resource Center, has taken a new and culturally informed approach to providing service. This center has held multiple “Welcome Neighbour” events across the city to invite newcomers to form a closer community and give them the platform to express their needs as refugees. …


Symbolic And Material Justice: The Case Of Displaced Persons In Chocó, Colombia, Allison Cordoba Mar 2018

Symbolic And Material Justice: The Case Of Displaced Persons In Chocó, Colombia, Allison Cordoba

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research examines the causes and impacts of victimization as experienced by rural populations displaced by conflict living in Quibdó, Colombia. It draws upon Bourdieu’s social theory to understand how the distribution of various forms of capital structure the lives of the displaced. A brief history of the conflict in Colombia is presented, which is broken into five periods, from 1946 to 2014 when the fieldwork was conducted. A description of the context of Quibdó and the department it is in, Chocó, is also provided. Particular attention is paid to the role of symbolic, economic, and cultural capital in the …


Eyetracking Of Coarticulatory Cue Responses In Children And Adults, Alexandra M. Cross Jul 2015

Eyetracking Of Coarticulatory Cue Responses In Children And Adults, Alexandra M. Cross

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Studies examining sensitivity to coarticulatory cues during spoken word recognition have typically examined children and adults separately. The present thesis compared sensitivity to coarticulatory cues in school-aged children and adults using eyetracking. Children and adults listened to words containing congruent and incongruent coarticulatory cues while looking at a two-picture display. Contrary to theories positing weakened attention to phonetic detail in children, we observed equal or greater sensitivity to coarticulatory cues in children compared to adults. This effect was related to predictors of reading and language proficiency, and was also modulated by phoneme contrasts such that children were overly sensitive to …


Multi-Method Exploration Of The Economic Sustainability Of Probiotic Yoghurt Kitchens In Mwanza, Tanzania, Emily Eyles Feb 2015

Multi-Method Exploration Of The Economic Sustainability Of Probiotic Yoghurt Kitchens In Mwanza, Tanzania, Emily Eyles

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research aimed to examine the economic and locational aspects of a probiotic yoghurt kitchen development project facilitated by Western Heads East in Mwanza, Tanzania. This study is based upon 41 semi-structured interviews with 57 participants in three groups: kitchen group members, customers, and staff of the African Probiotic Yoghurt Network. This research contributes to the literature on development geography, specifically on the ins and outs of the everyday of the kitchens, as well as proposing a new approach to multicriteria evaluation using qualitative data, and the ‘researcher as instrument’ approach. The results demonstrate that while there are problems in …


Tu Envidia Es Mi Progreso: An Ethnographic Account Of The Development Of Squatter Settlements In San Juan De Miraflores, Lima, Peru., Brandon E. Rouleau Jan 2013

Tu Envidia Es Mi Progreso: An Ethnographic Account Of The Development Of Squatter Settlements In San Juan De Miraflores, Lima, Peru., Brandon E. Rouleau

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The following dissertation explores the past 60 years of self-help housing in Lima. Specifically, it looks at the uneven development that has occurred in parts of a municipality called San Juan de Miraflores. I argue that self-help housing is part of a larger modernization project that aims to encourage the emergence of a self-regulating individual. Pro-development literature creates a selective history of marginal neighbourhoods, effectively silencing the histories of working class Miraflorinos. The aim of this ethnographic study is to destabilize official histories and representations about development in marginal communities. The bulk of the dissertation looks at the history of …


Rule-Based Category Learning In Children: The Role Of Inhibitory Control, Rahel R. Rabi Jul 2012

Rule-Based Category Learning In Children: The Role Of Inhibitory Control, Rahel R. Rabi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The present study examined category learning in relation to inhibitory control and working memory in children and adults. Results revealed that categorization performance improved with age. Young children struggled with rule learning, many older children were successful at rule learning, and most adults had no difficulty with the task. Model-based analyses suggested that performance differences were due to young children’s inability to inhibit the salient, but irrelevant rule. Interestingly, when the analyses focused only on older children and adults who used the task appropriate strategy, the age-related rule-based deficit disappeared. Also, results revealed that successful performance on the categorization task …


The Effects Of Neonatal Immune System Activation With Lipopolysaccharide On Adolescent And Adult Anxiety Behaviours In Male And Female Rats, Alina Zaltzman Jul 2012

The Effects Of Neonatal Immune System Activation With Lipopolysaccharide On Adolescent And Adult Anxiety Behaviours In Male And Female Rats, Alina Zaltzman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The present study examined the effects of neonatal (postnatal days 3 and 5) acute immune system activation with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) on adolescent and adult anxiety behaviours. The major findings suggest that neonatal LPS does not have general long-lasting effects on adolescent anxiety and locomotor behaviours. Rather, early endotoxin treatment has highly specific effects on certain anxiety behaviours that vary depending on the development period. Moreover, neonatal LPS does not seem to influence adult voluntary and non-voluntary locomotor activity or anhedonia, independent of, or in response to, an adult immune challenge. Finally, sex differences were observed in various responses in adulthood, …


Neural Reuse: A Fundamental Organizational Principle Of The Brain, Michael Anderson Aug 2010

Neural Reuse: A Fundamental Organizational Principle Of The Brain, Michael Anderson

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

An emerging class of theories concerning the functional structure of the brain takes the reuse of neural circuitry for various cognitive purposes to be a central organizational principle. According to these theories, it is quite common for neural circuits established for one purpose to be exapted (exploited, recycled, redeployed) during evolution or normal development, and be put to different uses, often without losing their original functions. Neural reuse theories thus differ from the usual understanding of the role of neural plasticity (which is, after all, a kind of reuse) in brain organization along the following lines: According to neural reuse, …


Persistence And Change In Social Media, Bernie Hogan, Anabel Quan-Haase Jan 2010

Persistence And Change In Social Media, Bernie Hogan, Anabel Quan-Haase

FIMS Publications

In ―Star Trek‖, Scotty suggests that Transwarp beaming is ―like trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet, whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse‖ (Abrams, 2009). The study of social media faces similar challenges because new tools are developed at a rapid pace and existing tools are constantly being updated with new features, policies, and applications. Users tend to migrate, in often unpredictable ways, to new tools as well as to adopt multiple tools simultaneously, without showing consistent media preferences and habits (Quan-Haase, 2008). As a result, for scholars it sometimes feels as if the social media landscape …


Planning For Aboriginal Communities In Western Austalia, Ashley Randell Jan 2007

Planning For Aboriginal Communities In Western Austalia, Ashley Randell

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

No abstract provided.


Aboriginal Participation In Health Planning: Representation, Reconciliation, And Relationship Building With An Aboriginal Advisory Committee, Geeta Cheema Jan 2007

Aboriginal Participation In Health Planning: Representation, Reconciliation, And Relationship Building With An Aboriginal Advisory Committee, Geeta Cheema

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

No abstract provided.


Towards A Maori Statistics Framework, Whetu Wereta, Darin Bishop Jan 2006

Towards A Maori Statistics Framework, Whetu Wereta, Darin Bishop

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

No abstract provided.