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Investigating The Modulatory Effect Of Expectations On Memory Retrieval During Sentence Comprehension, Luca Campanelli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Memory retrieval and probabilistic expectations are recognized factors in sentence comprehension that capture two different critical aspects of processing difficulty: the cost of retrieving and integrating previously processed elements with the new input words and the cost of incorrect predictions about upcoming words or structures in a sentence. Although these two factors have independently received substantial support from the extant literature, how they interact remains poorly understood. This study investigated memory retrieval, more specifically retrieval interference, and lexical-semantic expectations in three reading experiments, pitting these factors against each other to observe how they interact. Overall, results showed that retrieving and …

Beyond Exposure: Markers Of English Proficiency In School-Aged French–English Bilinguals, Erin Quirk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bilingual children show more variation in their language development than monolingual children, a fact that has been linked to their experience with their languages. Bilingual language experience also varies more than monolingual children's, both in terms of how much they hear the language spoken around them (exposure) and how much they speak the language themselves (production). This dissertation investigates the following aspects of the relationship between bilinguals’ language experience and development which are not well-understood: how children’s language production relates to their proficiency in that language, how children’s language exposure relates to receptive versus expressive and lexical versus grammatical skill, …

An Affective Events Theory Analysis Of Conflict Perception Emergence, Michael J. Covell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Popular conceptualizations of conflict conflate conflict perception with other discrete constructs such as disagreement and emotions. This makes research using those conceptualizations difficult to interpret. I invoke affective events theory to describe how constructs conflated with conflict perception, as well as negative prescriptive expectancy violations (EVs), may collectively serve as antecedents to conflict perception. By reconceptualizing conflict perception as an evaluative judgment and distinguishing between episodic (short-term) and global (long-term) conflict perceptions, my model describes how episodic conflict perceptions cumulatively influence global conflict perceptions over time. Two types of events (disagreements and negative prescriptive EVs) were proposed to predict episodic …

Exploring School Counselors’ Preparation To Address Disproportionality Of African American Students In Special Education, E Mackenzie Shell

Teaching and Supervision in Counseling

While school counselors work with students in special education, little research describes their work with African American students in or at risk of special education or the phenomenon of disproportionality of African American students in special education. This phenomenological study explored the experiences and perceptions of eight high school counselors with African American students in special education and disproportionality. The researcher identified three themes: (a) Dis-Regard, (b) separate worlds and (c) professional knowledge. Intentional strategies to introduce counselors to the concept of disproportionality and its antecedents may mitigate processes that potentially lead to overrepresentation of African Americans in special education.

Love, Language, And Linear Algebra: Linguistic Modeling Of Personality And Mate Preference, Caleb Z. Marshall, Erin M. Buchanan, Melissa Duncan Fallone

Modern Psychological Studies

This study utilized Latent Semantic Analysis to determine whether similarities in personality predicted similarities in responses to a romantic writing prompt (Landauer & Dumais, 1997). From participants’ writing samples, we calculated thematic cosines (a measure of relatedness) between each male and female participant. Participants also completed the Big Five Personality Questionnaire Short Form (Morizet, 2014). Extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were related to cosines, which suggested small-medium relationships from personality traits to written responses. This relationship was consistent with previous studies; therefore, Latent Semantic Analysis may be useful in quantifying mate preference, especially when alongside traditional survey methods. We conclude with …

How To Be Unfaithful To Eurocentrism: A Spanglish Decolonial Critique To Knowledge Gentrification, Captivity And Storycide In Qualitative Research, Marcela Polanco, Nathan D. Hanson, Camila Hernandez, Tirzah Le Feber, Sonia Medina, Stephanie Old Bucher, Eva I. Rivera, Ione Rodriguez, Elizabeth Vela, Brandi Velasco, Jackolyn Le Feber

The Qualitative Report

From a position of academic activism, we critique the longstanding dominance del production of knowledge that solely implicates fidelity to Eurocentric methodological technologies en qualitative research. Influenced by an Andean decolonial perspective, en Spanglish we problematize métodos of analysis as the dominant research practice, whereby las stories o relatos result en su appropriation, captivity and gentrification, first by researchers’ authorship and later by the publishing industry copyrights. We highlight the racializing and capitalist colonial/modern Eurocentric agenda del current market of knowledge production that displaces to la periphery all knowledge o relatos that do not subscribe to Euro-US American methodological parameters …

Interactions Among Amygdala Volume, Cortical Thickness, And Structural Connectivity In Youth: Relationship To Emotion Regulation, Peter James Castagna

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Emotion regulation includes adaptive (e.g., reappraisal) and non-adaptive behaviors (e.g., avoidance) designed to alter ones’ affective responses. The central hypothesis is that emotional consciousness – being self-aware that you are currently in a particular emotional state – and emotion regulation share the same underlying brain mechanisms/networks. In addition, it is argued that the more appropriate dichotomy, in regard to non-adaptive and adaptive emotion regulation strategies, is dependent on whether they are unconscious or conscious (respectively), positing a two-system framework of emotion regulation. Evidence for the proposed framework draws and builds off of recent theories of higher-order emotional consciousness (LeDoux & …

Musical Expertise Generalizes To Superior Temporal Scaling In A Morse Code Tapping Task, Matthew A. Slayton, Juan L. Romero-Sosa, Katrina Shore, Dean V. Buonomano, Indre Viskontas

Psychology

A key feature of the brain’s ability to tell time and generate complex temporal patterns is its capacity to produce similar temporal patterns at different speeds. For example, humans can tie a shoe, type, or play an instrument at different speeds or tempi—a phenomenon referred to as temporal scaling. While it is well established that training improves timing precision and accuracy, it is not known whether expertise improves temporal scaling, and if so, whether it generalizes across skill domains. We quantified temporal scaling and timing precision in musicians and non-musicians as they learned to tap a Morse code sequence. We …

Perennialism Through The Lens Of Otherness, Gabriel Fernandez-Borsot

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Otherness has been a subject of the utmost relevance for continental philosophy since the beginning of the 20th century, constituting what might be characterized as an otherness turn. Otherness is here understood as the awareness that one has that other beings or things have their own separate beingness that is not subsumed within oneself. Its essential role in human relations permits the creation of a critical perspective of analysis, a “lens of otherness.” Applying this lens to perennialism up through its latest iterations reveals some problematic aspects of this approach. By contrast, participatory thought may be a more “otherness compliant” …

Intimations Of A Spiritual New Age: Iv. Carl Jung's Archetypal Imagination As Futural Planetary Neo-Shamanism, Harry T. Hunt

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This series of papers on early anticipations of a spiritual New Age ends with Carl Jung’s version of a futural planetary-wide unus mundus rejoining person and cosmos, based on his psychoid linkage of quantum physics and consciousness, and especially on the neo-shamanic worldview emerging out of his spirit guided initiation in the more recently published Red Book. A cognitive-psychological re-evaluation of Jung’s archetypal imagination, the metaphoricity of his alchemical writings, and a comparison of Jung and Levi-Strauss on mythological thinking all support a contemporary view of Jung’s active imagination and mythic amplification as a spiritual intelligence based on a formal …

Social Constraints As A Mediator Of The Relations Of Discrimination To Anger Expression In A Community Sample, Sahira Hamid

Theses and Dissertations

Research has consistently demonstrated that anger is the dominant emotional response following experiences of racial discrimination. Studying anger itself may not be sufficient because anger can be expressed in a variety of ways, therefore it is necessary to examine different forms of anger expression. I hypothesized that social constraint would mediate the relations between discrimination and anger expression. Social constraint in the context of discrimination refers to an individual’s perception that communication about episodes of discrimination will be invalidated or minimized by others (either the same race or other race individuals). Social constraint, in turn, may influence the expression of …

Moving Up The Pipeline: Factors Associated With Interest In School Psychology Programs, Amrita Singh

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the growing number of minority students in U.S. public schools, only a small percentage of school psychology graduate students, trainers and practicing school psychologists identify themselves as racial minorities. Analyses were conducted on 512 responses to a national survey that investigated demographic and other qualitative factors that are associated with interest in school psychology master’s and doctoral programs. Additionally, analyses were also conducted to examine demographic differences that exist between undergraduate students interested in PsyD versus PhD school psychology programs. The study aimed to investigate whether there was: (a) a significant relationship between doctoral interest and higher household incomes, …

Colonial Trauma And Testimony In Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein And Jamaica Kincaid’S Autobiography Of My Mother, Leana Rene

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will examine Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle to examine the colonial trauma and loss found in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Jamaica Kincaid’s Autobiography of My Mother, not just on a character level, but in a much larger colonial context. Some scholars have suggested that Shelley’s monster is a symbol of a colonized other (due to his appearance and certain features he has). Kincaid’s Xuela is for sure a colonized other because of the heritage of her mother. This thesis explores their abandonment by their creators as the abandonment of colonized nations from their colonizers. Even now, formerly colonized …

Psychometric Analyses Of A Comprehensive Neuropsychological Battery For Retired Nfl Players, Kimberly Ethridge Fitzgibbon

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined psychometric properties of the NFL Concussion Battery used to examine neuropsychological functioning in retired NFL players who were part of the NFL’s concussion settlement. This battery assesses multiple areas of cognitive functioning; executive functioning, language, processing speed, attention and memory. The study included 117 participants who were male with at least 16 years of education. The sample was 75.9% African-American and average age was 47. All participants completed the entire battery and passed the majority of effort measures. Those that did not pass the majority of effort measures or complete the entire battery were excluded.

T-test analyses …

What Remains? An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Of Therapists’ Psychological Boundaries In Crisis Work, Dana Santiago

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Little attention has been given to clinicians who work primarily with clients in crisis. The current study explored therapists’ psychological boundaries in crisis work. Qualitative data was collected from two semi-structured interviews with current mental health crisis professionals (n = 5). An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to gain access into participants’ perceptions and understandings of their experiences. Findings revealed 4 superordinate themes: Professional Self, Impacted Self, Relational Self and Evolving Self along with 11 subthemes that related to psychological boundaries. Results suggest psychological boundaries are fluid and closely tied with self-awareness and support from other professionals.

A Phenomenological Exploration Of Korean Adoptees’ Multiple Minority Identities, Jared Utley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the end of the Korean War, Korean children have been placed for international adoption due to their marginalized status in South Korea. In the United States, Korean children have predominantly been adopted to White families through transracial adoption (Bergquist, 2003; Lee, 2003). Transracial adoption describes the process of children being placed in a home where there are racial differences with one or both adoptive parents. Through international transracial adoption, Korean adoptees may undergo events that impact the salience and development of multiple minority identities, including: racial, ethnic, cultural, and as an adoptee. These experiences may be shaped by interactions …

Measuring The Connective Action Of Black Lives Matter Activists: A Psychometric Investigation Into Twitter Data, Paige Alfonzo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many protest movements from the last twenty-first century have become increasingly networked and personalized. Several scholars have tapped into this change coining terms such as participatory action, digitally mediated action, computer-mediated communication, issue-based organization, and what I focus on in this project, connective action. Building on the ideas percolating across the literary landscape at the time, Bennett and Segerberg (2012) introduced the logic of connective action based on emergent characteristics they observed in post-2010 large-scale social movements. Both the logic of connective action and related work have become deeply ingrained in today's social movement scholarship. As such, I felt it …

Identification Of Gifted Characteristics Using The Behavioral Assessment Scale For Children—Third Edition, Kristine Zytka

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Children who are gifted are at-risk for being misidentified with emotional and behavioral disorders (Daniels & Piechowski, 2009; Mullet & Rinn, 2015; Webb, 2016). Challenges exist in conclusively defining giftedness, assessing giftedness, and understanding common behavioral patterns among gifted individuals (Bracken & Brown, 2006; McClain & Pfeiffer, 2012). Because gifted children typically exhibit common behavioral patterns, it is important for school psychologists to understand gifted behavioral characteristics, how to assess these characteristics, and how to differentiate between common gifted behavior and maladaptive behavior (Daniels & Piechowski, 2009; Webb, 2016). This study examined the value of the BASC-3 in identifying gifted …

Xylo-Bot: A Therapeutic Robot-Based Music Platform For Children With Autism, Huanghao Feng

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience deficits in verbal and nonverbal communication skills, including motor control, emotional facial expressions, and eye gaze / joint attention. This Ph.D. dissertation focuses on studying the feasibility and effectiveness of using a social robot, called NAO, and a toy music instrument, xylophone, at modeling and improving the social responses and behaviors of children with ASD. In our investigation, we designed an autonomous social interactive music teaching system to fulfill this mission.

A novel modular robot-music teaching system consisting of three modules is presented. Module 1 provides an autonomous self-awareness positioning system for the …

Cultural Wealth Of First-Generation College Students And Its Effects On Well-Being, Persistence, And Major Satisfaction, Eve M. F. Sussman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although understanding of FGCS’s success in higher education has been enhanced over the last decade, less is known about their career and educational development, and how their strengths and assets promote college success. The purpose of this study was to explore the relations between first-generation college student (FGCS, [N= 130]) cultural wealth variables, work volition, and outcomes (i.e., academic major satisfaction, persistence, and well-being) using the Critical Cultural Wealth Model (CCWM; Garriott, 2020). Results of regression analyses partially supported CCWM propositions. Significant, positive correlations were observed between resilience and work volition, academic major satisfaction, and well-being. Significant, positive …

An Examination Of Relational Health, Belonging, And Self-Compassion In Chinese International Students, Elizabeth A. Harris Shaffner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Chinese international students (CISs), the largest segment of international students coming to the US to study at institutions of higher education (IIE, 2016), are reported to experience more acculturative stress than other international students because of the vast differences in social and cultural norms between the United States and China (Li & Glasser, 2005; Yeh & Inose, 2003). The present study used Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) as the framework to explore the ways undergraduate CISs struggle and thrive in the face of acculturative stress and to understand how positive and negative outcomes are associated with their relational health, sense of campus …

Explorations Of Classroom Talk And Links To Reading Achievement In Upper Elementary Classroo, Amanda P. Goodwin, Sun-Joo Cho, Daniel Reynolds, Stephanie Nunn, Rebecca Silverman

2020 Faculty Bibliography

The current study reports on a large-scale quantitative analysis of classroom talk practices and links to different measures of reading achievement within upper elementary classrooms. Data involving 745 fourth- and fifth-grade teachers and 18,844 students from the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) study were used. Talk was quantified via various talk-related indicators from 2 observation protocols and a student survey. Dimensionality analyses suggest these indicators represent 4 factors consisting of teacher explaining, questioning, encouraging of student talk, and big-picture communicating. Links to 2 different standardized reading achievement measures were also modeled with improved ratings of teacher explanations and questioning predicting …

Fostering Trauma-Informed Schools By Considering The Experiences Of Teachers In Working With Trauma-Exposed Students, Allison A. Stiles

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

High rates of trauma exposure among youth in the United States and the detrimental effects of trauma on students’ psychosocial and academic outcomes are well-established. Such findings have engendered the emergence of trauma-informed schools across the nation. While research regarding trauma-informed schools has understandably focused on the needs of students, shockingly little is known about teachers’ experiences in working with trauma-exposed students. In particular, very few studies have examined the relationship between teachers’ indirect exposure to student trauma and related symptoms of secondary traumatic stress (STS), as well as factors that may predict STS levels or explain variation in the …

Intermarried Couples: Transnationalism, And Racialized Experiences In Denmark And Canada, Rashmi Singla, Hema Ganapathy-Coleman

Papers from the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology Conferences

Despite an increase in interracial or mixed marriages (intermarriages) globally, the experiences of couples in such marriages are generally under-researched, particularly within psychology. Using a cultural psychological framework and qualitative methods, this paper studies the psychosocial experiences of couples in intermarriages. It focuses on four South Asians in ethnically intermarriages in two settings: two Indian-origin men married to native Danish women in Denmark, and two Indian-origin women married to Euro-American men in Canada. Data from in-depth interviews were subjected to a thematic analysis yielding an array of themes, of which this paper presents the two most dominant themes across the …

What We Can Learn About Multiculturalism From Latin American Psychology, Judith L. Gibbons

Papers from the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology Conferences

Latin American psychology, although greatly under-represented in international journals, can provide important lessons for international psychologists. Mexican psychologist Rogelio Díaz-Guerrero was one of the first to describe would now be labeled an indigenous psychology. Latin American theorists such as Paolo Freire and Ignacio Martín-Baró have provided frameworks for understanding diversity and multiculturalism among groups with unequal power. Only by critical thinking and critical analysis can we understand and challenge disparate conditions. Relatedly, Latin American psychology often focuses on achieving social justice and solving practical real-world problems. Thus, community and political psychology are strengths of Latin American psychology and have made …

The Casc Framework: An Assessment Model For Students With Intellectual And Developmental Disabilities, Laurel A. Snider

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

School psychologists pay a critical role in providing assessment and intervention services within the realm of special education. Within this role, they are highly likely to interact with students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Students with IDD are characterized by significantly lower than average cognitive and daily living skills that may be comorbid with difficulties with communication, social skills, or other domains. With these differences in mind, dominant assessment practices have been criticized as lacking social and empirical validity when applied to this population. Although students with IDD frequently undergo evaluations, they continue to face significantly poorer post-school outcomes …

Speech Spoken By Familiar People Is More Resistant To Interference By Linguistically Similar Speech, Emma Holmes, Ingrid S. Johnsrude

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2020 American Psychological Association. Understanding speech in adverse conditions is affected by experience-a familiar voice is substantially more intelligible than an unfamiliar voice when competing speech is present, even if the content of the speech (the words) are controlled. This familiar-voice benefit is observed consistently, but its underpinnings are unclear: Do familiar voices simply attract more attention, are they inherently more intelligible because they have predictable acoustic characteristics, or are they more intelligible in a mixture because they are more resistant to interference from other sounds? We recruited pairs of native English-speaking participants who were friends or romantic couples. …

Pupil Dilation Is Sensitive To Semantic Ambiguity And Acoustic Degradation, Mason Kadem, Björn Herrmann, Jennifer M. Rodd, Ingrid S. Johnsrude

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© The Author(s) 2020. Speech comprehension is challenged by background noise, acoustic interference, and linguistic factors, such as the presence of words with more than one meaning (homonyms and homophones). Previous work suggests that homophony in spoken language increases cognitive demand. Here, we measured pupil dilation—a physiological index of cognitive demand—while listeners heard high-ambiguity sentences, containing words with more than one meaning, or well-matched low-ambiguity sentences without ambiguous words. This semantic-ambiguity manipulation was crossed with an acoustic manipulation in two experiments. In Experiment 1, sentences were masked with 30-talker babble at 0 and +6 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and in …

Psychosocial Outcomes Among College Students With Learning Disorders, Bobbi Isaac

Wayne State University Dissertations

Specific learning disorders, also known as learning disabilities, are defined as neurodevelopmental disorders in which long-term difficulties with learning and using academic skills occur within the context of one or multiple academic areas (i.e., reading, mathematics, writing). As our understanding of learning disorders (LD) has evolved beyond a focus on childhood diagnosis, a limited body of research has emerged examining adult outcomes for individuals with learning disorders in regards to higher education, employment, psychosocial, and health outcomes. Much of the results of this research seems to indicate that individuals with LDs may have poorer outcomes in adulthood across these domains. …

Normative Multiculturalism In Socio-Political Context, Colleen Ward, Sara M. Watters, Jaimee Stuart, Johannes A. Karl

Papers from the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology Conferences

Normative multiculturalism refers to individuals’ perceptions about the extent to which interactions between culturally diverse groups, multicultural policies and practices, and diversity-valuing ideologies are common or normative in one’s society. In this paper, we explore these dimensions of normative multiculturalism as predictors of social connectedness (trust) and psychological well-being (flourishing) in two socio-political contexts: The United States and the United Kingdom. Two hundred and eighty-four residents (143 Hispanics and 141 non-Hispanic Whites) in the United States and 375 (125 British Indians and 250 British Whites) participated in the research. The results revealed that normative Multicultural Ideology predicted greater trust and …