Psychology Commons^™

Assessing English Language Learners' Motivation To Participate In Classroom Discussion, Holly Griskell

Master's Theses

This study assesses sixth-grade Spanish-speaking English Language Learners' (ELLs'; m age = 12.15 years old) participation and motivation to participate in classroom discussion through developing a 20-item measure, the Motivation for Classroom Discussion Questionnaire (MCD-Q) (Study 1 n = 258). We examined the relation between ELLs' bi-literacy and MCD-Q scores as well as amount of talk during discussion, measured by audio-recordings of their English Language Arts class (Study 2 n = 149). Study 1 findings indicated that the MCD-Q items cohered into five motivational constructs (value, language-efficacy, extrinsic motivation, social motivation, and interest). Study 2 findings showed the MCD-Q's predictive …

The Loyola Experience: Increasing Belonging And Retention Among Underrepresented Students, Michelle Seli Aku Adzido

Master's Theses

Retaining underrepresented (e.g. first-generation and ethnic minority) students remains a challenge within higher education. Fostering a sense of belonging on campus is key to successfully retaining and increasing academic performance among underrepresented students. Peer-to-peer and faculty mentoring provides opportunities to form social bonds and potentially increase belonging. Mentoring may also connect students from underrepresented backgrounds with campus resources, thus contributing to their knowledge and utilization of campus resources, or self-advocacy. I recruited 95 racial minority and first-generation participants. They reported self-advocacy, belonging, grade point average (GPA), and retention intentions. I test whether participation in a mentoring program (versus control) operated …

What's Wrong With Being Single: Lowered Relational Value Bias Toward Single People, Darian Farrell

Master's Theses

This study examined the perceived relational value of single individuals (compared to that of coupled individuals). I hypothesized that, participants would be more likely to make the conjunction fallacy in the single condition vs. the coupled condition, when asked whether or not it was more likely that the target person from the condition was a single teacher vs. teacher. The data supported my hypothesis: participants in the single condition were significantly more likely to make the conjunction fallacy than participants in the coupled condition. My study also tested whether or not the need to belong acted as a moderator for …

A Sociofunctional Approach To Understanding Transphobia, Linas Mitchell

Master's Theses

Despite widespread evidence of anti-transgender prejudice and discrimination, research has yet to determine the nature of prejudice against transgender people. This study used the sociofunctional threat approach (Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005) to examine threat perceptions (contamination threats, obstacle threats, physical safety threats, and threats to reciprocity relations) and emotional reactions (disgust, anger, fear, pity) to transgender (transgender women, transgender men, and nonbinary people) and cisgender (cisgender women, cisgender men, and bisexual people) targets. Results from an online survey suggest that transgender targets evoke higher threat perceptions and negative emotions than cisgender targets; additionally, this tended to be the case for …

Political Essentialism And Affective Polarization, Chase Wilson

Dissertations

Affective polarization, the phenomenon of liberals and conservatives treating each other as disliked outgroups, is increasingly intense (Iyengar & Westwood, 2015; Pew, 2016). In the present research, I used the construct of psychological essentialism (Medin & Ortony, 1989) to help understand this intergroup phenomenon. Specifically, I measured political essentialism, or the belief that political ideologies are strongly determined, informative, discrete and/or immutable, and tested the relationship between these beliefs and affective polarization. I approached this question with both correlational and experimental methods. In a correlational study, political essentialism overall is found to covary positively with affective polarization and social avoidance …

Measuring Community Violence, Trauma, And Family Functioning Among Youth Living In Low-Income, Urban Environments, Kyle Deane

Dissertations

Exposure to community violence is a pressing public health concern that has profound effects on an adolescent’s development and psychological well-being, and is disproportionately experienced by ethnic minority youth living in economically disadvantaged urban environments. Efforts to measure violence exposure and its sequelae have centered primarily on the use of retrospective questionnaires and cross-sectional design and often fail to consider other contributory risk or resilience factors. Comprised of three related studies, the goal of this dissertation is to address the relations between of exposure to community violence, adjustment difficulties, such as posttraumatic stress, and family functioning among African American and …

Effects Of Affiliative Motivation And Confrontation Style On Anti-Black Attitudes And Social Consequences, Jamie Patrianakos

Master's Theses

Anti-Black racism occurs on a daily basis and comes with both physical and psychological costs to its targets. One effective way to reduce discrimination is through confrontation, which could come in the form of a hostile accusation of racism (hot confrontation) or a polite emphasis on egalitarian values (cold confrontation). However, confronting often has social costs that may include damaging the relationship between the confronter and the perpetrator. This research determined whether social relationships can reduce anti-Black bias while also serving as a buffer against the social consequences of confronting. Participants (n = 168) were randomly assigned to a 2(affiliative …

The Use Of A Grammaticality Judgment Task To Assess The Role Of Receptive Vocabulary, Cognitive Inhibition, And Cognitive Flexibility On Syntactic Awareness, Lanette Mae Urbin

Master's Theses

Syntactic awareness, receptive vocabulary, and executive control (i.e., cognitive inhibition and cognitive flexibility) are robust predictors of language, literacy, and academic success (Bialystok, Craik, Klein, & Viswanathan, 2004; Davidson et al., 2010; Foursha-Stevenson & Nicoladis, 2011). In general, research demonstrates that receptive vocabulary is related to syntactic awareness (Davidson, Vanegas, Hilvert & Misiunaite, 2017; Galambos & Hakuta, 1988). There is also research to suggest that facets of executive control, such as cognitive inhibition and cognitive flexibility may also be related to syntactic awareness (Bialystok, 1986; Simard, Foucambert, & Labelle, 2013). However, receptive vocabulary, cognitive inhibition, and cognitive flexibility have only …

Actor's And Partner's Self-Discrepancy As Moderators Of The Relationship Between Negative Events And Reflected Appraisals: A Daily Diary Study Examining The Actor-Partner Interdependence Model In African American Couples, Natalie J. Hallinger

Dissertations

Self-worth influences how individuals perceive the health of their romantic relationships

in response to adverse experiences, especially interpersonal threats. Though explicit

self-esteem is often used as an indicator of self-worth in investigations of relationship

functioning after interpersonal threats, particularly those focusing on perceptions of felt

love and acceptance, actual:ideal self-discrepancy is an evaluative aspect of the self

that may have more direct impacts on romantic relationship functioning after negative

events that are unrelated to the relationship. Using the Actor-Partner Interdependence

Model to analyze dyadic data from 150 African American couples using multilevel

regression models, the current study’s results were contrary …