Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Developmental Importance Of Napping In Preschool Children, Adam T. Newton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Most children cease napping between 2- and 5-years-old. Little is known about the predictors or outcomes related to this cessation, or the interrelation of different components of nap behavior. Four empirical studies were conducted to investigate the developmental importance of napping among preschool children.

Studies 1 and 2 used a large, longitudinal sample of Canadian children to investigate the predictors (Study 1) and outcomes (Study 2) related to early nap cessation. Early nap cessation was defined as stopping daytime sleep before three years old. In Study 1, parents reported on their own, child, and family functioning at two timepoints (0-1 …

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 …

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

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 …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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, …