Digital Commons Network^™

Prediction In Bilingual Sentence Processing: Is It Linked To Production?, Meir Natalia, Olga Parshina, Irina A. Sekerina

Publications and Research

The Unified Competition Model (MacWhinney, 2012) accounts for cross-linguistic differences in thematic role mapping. We investigated production and predictive use of accusative case morphology in Russian-Hebrew bilingual children. We also investigated the role of production in predictive processing testing the Prediction-by-Production Account (Pickering & Garrod, 2018) vs. the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prévost & White, 2000). Three groups of children aged 4–8 participated: Russian-Hebrew-speaking bilinguals, Russian-speaking and Hebrew-speaking monolingual controls. All children participated in the accusative case production and Visual-World eye-tracking comprehension experiments. Bilinguals were tested in both of their languages. The results of the study confirmed the predictions of …

Re-Thinking L1-L2 Similarities And Differences In English Proficiency: Insights From The English Reading Online (Enro) Project., Noam Siegelman, Irina A. Sekerina, Victor Kuperman

Publications and Research

This article presents the ENglish Reading Online (ENRO) project that offers data on English reading and listening comprehension from 7,338 university-level advanced learners and native speakers of English representing 19 countries. The database also includes estimates of reading rate and seven component skills of English, including vocabulary, spelling, and grammar, as well as rich demographic and language background data. We first demonstrate high reliability for ENRO tests and their convergent validity with existing meta-analyses. We then provide a bird's-eye view of first (L1) and second (L2) language comparisons and examine the relative role of various predictors of reading and listening …

Veggie Meat Alternatives: A Virtue-Ethical View, Carlo Alvaro

Publications and Research

This chapter discusses practical and ethical aspects concerning veggie meat alternatives. Upon consideration, it is argued that while the production, sale, and consumption of veggie meat alternatives seemingly contribute to a solution to environmental problems, we ought to consider veggie meat alternatives from a virtue-ethical perspective concerning human excellence and flourishing. Doing so reveals previously unexplored ethical reasons for not promoting the production, sale, and consumption of veggie meat alternatives. One reason in particular is that veggie meat alternatives stem from the lack of the virtue of temperance.

We Didn't Know It Was That Bad: Unearthing Parent Perspectives On Universal Pre-K Policy, Maria S. Mavrides Calderon

Publications and Research

Families are the ultimate recipients of the effects of policy, but seldom get a seat at the policymaking table. This study investigated how parents perceive the impacts of unequal teacher compensation policies on New York City’s (NYC) Universal Pre-K (UPK) expansion. Utilizing Bronfenbrenner's (1979) ecological systems theory and Schneider and Ingram’s (1993) theory of social construction and policy design to create a rich conceptual framework, this qualitative study analyzed parents' voices through document and social media discourse analysis expanding from 2014 to 2021, and semi-structured interviews (n=15). Participants reflected the demographic diversity found in NYC, the largest school system in …

Logistics Service Quality And Product Satisfaction In E-Commerce, Aamir Rashid, Rizwana Rasheed

Publications and Research

Consumer satisfaction in e-commerce directly depends on logistical services. There is a constant dilemma in which logistical service dimensions affect consumers’ product satisfaction. The aim is to determine how specific dimensions of logistics services affect product satisfaction in the e-commerce industry of Pakistan. For this research, a survey questionnaire with a deductive approach was utilized by collecting data from 197 respondents through a convenient sampling technique. Further, hypotheses were tested through a quantitative method with the help of SmartPLS. A measuring instrument was used with six dimensions, that is, availability, delivery time, shipping costs, product quality and condition, information quality, …

A Validation Study Of The Occupational Depression Inventory In Poland And Ukraine, Krystyna Golonka, Karine O. Malysheva, Dominika Fortuna, Bożena Gulla, Leon T. De Beer, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Renzo Bianchi

Publications and Research

This study examined the psychometric and structural properties of the Polish and Ukrainian versions of the Occupational Depression Inventory (ODI). We relied on two samples of Polish employees (NSample1 = 526, 47% female; NSample2 = 164, 64% female) and one sample of Ukrainian employees (NSample3 = 372, 73% female). In all samples, the ODI exhibited essential unidimensionality and high total-score reliability (e.g., McDonald’s omegas > 0.90). The homogeneity of the scale was strong (e.g., 0.59 ≤ scale-level Hs ≤ 0.68). The ODI’s total scores thus accurately ranked individuals on a latent occupational depression continuum. We found evidence of complete measurement invariance …

Cinema And Ritual: Decolonial Feminist Approaches To Image-Making In The Americas And The Caribbean, Natalie M. Erazo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis project is composed of an open-access syllabus hosted on a CUNY commons site, as well as a paper that examines various films and texts responding to the theme of cinema and ritual. Referenced films will focus on ritual as a decolonial feminist methodological framework, rooted primarily in Afro-descended and Indigenous cosmovisions within Latin America and the Caribbean. From a dance ritual spell warding off U.S. imperialism in present-day Puerto Rico, to a poetic visual eulogy for murdered women in rural Mexico, to a community prayer to Yemaya bringing relief for water scarcity in Cuba to a cautionary tale …

Representaciones Ideológicas De La Lengua, La Conversación Y La Comunicación En Manuales De Urbanidad Del Siglo Xix En México: Guías Para La Civilización, El Orden Y El Progreso Nacional, Luis B. Quesada Nieto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explores the main ideological representations of language, language use, conversation and communication found in a set of five etiquette manuals that were published and used in Mexico during the 19^th century. Following a glottopolitical perspective for the study of normativity, language policies, and sociolinguistic practices, the main hypothesis developed establishes that the ideas about language contained in these texts are strongly connected with the social, political, and economic period in which they are elaborated and enunciated, that is, the moment in which the nation is still defining itself, struggling to consolidate its viability and its value facing …

Power And The Press: Reimagining The World By Producing Information Together, Jen Hoyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study of three collectively-organized activist printing projects examines how information production is a strategy for communities to reimagine and reconfigure oppressive power structures. I consider the High School Student Union and their newspaper, the High School Free Press; the women’s collective that took over RAT Subterranean News; and WIMP, a radical printing collective that broke away from the New York City Students for a Democratic Society chapter and supported a variety of progressive movements in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This research examines how dissatisfaction with oppressive power structures leads individuals to build collective …

Using Leaf Spectra To Elucidate The Taxonomy And Ecology Of Living And Dried Plants, Natalia L. Quinteros Casaverde

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Identifying plants and understanding of changes in plant communities are crucial to the conservation and management of nature. The shortwave spectral reflectance of leaves is a promising tool for rapidly identifying species at different taxonomic ranks and predicting important plant functional traits. However, the spectral reflectance of leaves changes in response to biotic and abiotic conditions.

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the potential of shortwave spectral reflectance to investigate (Chapter 1) how its variation affects the accuracy of methods used to predict plant taxonomies and what environmental factors most influence biophysically predicted traits, (Chapter 2) what are …

Mechanistic And Engineering Studies Of Lov Photoreceptors In Yeast, Matthew M. Cleere

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A variety of cellular biosensors have evolved which can translate electromagnetic radiation from the environment into biological functions. Light-Oxygen-Voltage (LOV) domains in particular, are a group of photoreceptors that respond to blue wavelengths of light and can become a cellular photoswitch by converting this stimulus through their attached effector domains. For instance, the Helix-Turn-Helix (HTH) DNA-binding activity of the bacterial transcription factor EL222 and the Regulator of G-protein Signaling (RGS) in the fungal membrane associating protein BcLOV4 are both induced by blue-light sensing LOV domains. While previous work has provided the field with a structural characterization of LOV proteins in …

From The Outside Looking In: Transmasculine Narrative Identity, Experiences, And Larger Narratives On Social Media, Micah Roldan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Narrative identity development is an essential process in how individuals perceive themselves and the world around them. Often, narrative identity is studied in cisgender heterosexual individuals and applied to others without the acknowledgment of individuals that fall outside of these categories. Drawing upon existing literature and autoethnography, this thesis aims to meaningfully bridge this gap by studying the narrative identity development of transmasculine individuals through the lens of social media. This thesis proposes that the use of social media to share gender transition journeys has created a new digital trans and queer narrative for users and viewers. This narrative is …

Knowing The Patient As A Person: Social Media Listening And Gadamerian Analysis Of Nurses’ Expressions Shared During The Covid-19 Global Health Pandemic, Janusz A. Kaleta

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: COVID-19 has dramatically changed human-to-human interactions from in-person to the nonhuman domain of virtual space. In January 2021, every 28 seconds one person died of COVID-19 in the United States. An average of 3,100 Americans died each day during the deadliest month of the pandemic. As of January 2023, the number of COVID-19 deaths in the USA surpassed 1.000.000 people. In hospitals, human-to-human interactions were often limited to seeing one’s eyes behind the face shields, and respirator masks, and hearing a muffled voice, or sounds of the ventilators. In New York State 452 nurses died during the pandemic.

Research …

Staying Power: The Struggle For Space And Place In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Erin E. Lilli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation looks at how gentrification touches down, at the neighborhood and individual scale, in Crown Heights and reproduces experiences of racial inequality in home and place. Taking an historical materialist approach and drawing on residential oral histories, this study frames these reproductions of racial inequality as always-in-tension with ongoing acts of resistance from Black homeowners, renters, and long-term residents. Specifically, the research explores the conditions under which Black residents of a predominantly Afro-Caribbean neighborhood acquire and maintain—and in some cases lose—their housing and sense of place and belonging. These residents resist the varied tactics of anti-Blackness such as landlord …

Effects Of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation On Metamemory Vary By Task Difficulty, Tiffanie T. Li

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Metamemory is broadly defined as the awareness of one’s memory and consists, in part, of a process referred to as monitoring, where one is assessing the contents of their memory. Feeling of knowing (FOK) is one metamemory monitoring judgment where one rates how strongly they believe they will remember a currently unrecalled item. Prior work has shown that HighDefinition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (HD-tDCS) over the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) led to greater metamemory accuracy and that HD-tDCS over the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) led to better recall for medium difficulty questions. Other work has also shown that effects …

The Role Of The Infralimbic-Basal Forebrain Pathway In Fear Extinction, Carolina Maria Fernandes Henriques

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is a key region for emotion regulation, and its failure to regulate extinction of aversive memories is associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Study of how the Infralimbic cortex (IL), a subregion of the mPFC, directly communicates with the Basolateral Amygdala (IL-BLA), has thus far failed to uncover the circuit mechanisms that lead to mPFC-mediated amygdala suppression of firing and diminished fear responses during extinction retrieval. One problem of this model is that it doesn’t incorporate indirect IL communication with the BLA. A key region to help understand how IL modulates extinction is the basal …

Exploring Cross-Linguistic Speech Perception In Hindi, English, And Romance-Language Through Temporal Dynamics Of Neural Activity, Yuga Kothari

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the effect of linguistic experience on the neural processing of Voice Onset Time (VOT) in Hindi and Romance language (Spanish and Portuguese) individuals who are bilingual in English and monolingual English speakers using the event-related potential (ERP) Mismatch Negativity (MMN) response. VOT is a linguistic property that measures the time elapsed between the release of a stop consonant and the beginning of voicing, that is, vocal fold vibration of a following vowel. In a double-oddball paradigm, participants’ (n = 41) ERP were recorded while listening to speech sounds differing in VOT. The bilabial short lag stop [p] …

Of Method: A Propaedeutic To Coleridge's Prose Works, Michael A. Granger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Coleridge’s prose works, published and unpublished, demonstrate a thorough and critical testing and understanding of British and German philosophical responses to skepticism and the ability of philosophy to progress by maintaining a double-minded and conflicted suture of both the practical or imaginative eclipse of knowledge and theorizing the hypothetical epistemological absolute that explains the relativity of facticity. Any inadequate method of inquiry stagnates within attempting a purely figurative or purely demonstrative solution to skepticism. Thus, the appropriate way to approach Coleridge’s understanding of philosophy is the struggle to make inquiry adequate though progression. Coleridge’s methodological impulse originates explicitly in a …

An Examination Of Factors Associated With Ipv Victimization, Ipv Disclosure, And Help-Seeking Among Partnered Sexual Minority Men: An Integrated Theoretical Approach, Stephen Bosco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The emerging body of research illustrates that sexual minority cis men (SMM) in a relationship experience intimate partner violence (IPV) at rates comparable to those reported by cis women in a heterosexual relationship. Although research on IPV in male relationships has increased, it is a phenomenon that remains considerably understudied compared to research examining IPV in a heterosexual relationship. Despite comparable rates of IPV victimization, SMM are less likely to disclose and use informal and formal support services compared to heterosexual women. To conceptualize and understand challenges to disclosure and help-seeking as well as identify facets to develop relevant and …

The True And Only Technic: Technological Ubiquity And Its Critics, Heretics, And Zealots, Hampton A. Dodd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Against technological ubiquity, the philosopher, the ecologist, the theologian, the psychologist, the radical, the reactionary, and the poet have each responded. This analysis seeks to explicate the nature of such responses, as well as to explore their contemporary form and elucidate what those presently publishing might offer as programs toward the future. In order to do this, what follows is broken up into a series of sections, each focused on what I have perceived to be the foremost themes present throughout technological critique: becoming, freedom, identity, faith, space, time, and progress. Prior to such thematic excavations, this analysis offers a …

‘The Power Of Three Will Set Us Free': Witchy Womanist Readings Of Toni Morrison’S Sula, Opal Palmer Adisa’S It Begins With Tears, And Migdalia Cruz’S The Have-Little And Miriam’S Flowers, Anamaría Flores

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Witchy womanism is a critical methodology for reading, teaching, and writing about literature in order to generate emancipatory knowledge, activate Queer, Black, and Indigenous consciousnesses, contribute to 21^st century women’s, Black, and Indigenous liberation movements, and foster (re)connections to ancestral rituals and knowledge. Born at the intersections of Black Studies, BIPOC Queer and Gender Studies, Caribbean Studies, English, Hip-Hop Studies and Latinx Studies, “‘The Power of Three Will Set Us Free’: Witchy Womanist Readings of Toni Morrison's Sula, Opal Palmer Adisa's It Begins With Tears, and Migdalia Cruz's The Have-Little and Miriam's Flowers" is a multidisciplinary …

Teaching In The “Home Language” Is Not Enough: Navigating Spanish Raciolinguistic Ideologies In A Dual Language Bilingual Program, Gladys Yacely Aponte

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This ethnographic case study examines how fourth graders in a New York City Spanish/English dual language bilingual public school navigate hegemonic language ideologies about Spanish. Drawing on the scholarship of raciolinguistic ideologies—those that position the language practices of people of color as inherently deficient (Flores & Rosa, 2015), I analyze the discourse of seven Kiskeyanx students to examine how they navigate the widespread raciolinguistic marginalization of Kiskeyanxs— a demographic that is racialized as more Black than other Spanish-speaking groups.

As a first-generation Kiskeyana-New Yorker, a bilingual teacher educator and researcher, and a former dual language bilingual public-school teacher, it …

Socially Safe On Smartphones: How Smartphone Use Reduces Social Risk Taking, Diogo Koch Alves

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Consumers are often faced with decisions that carry a degree of social risk, with uncertain outcomes that could impact their social standing. Examples include choosing the ideal outfit to wear to an upcoming party or selecting a gift to give to a friend. Given the prevalence of smartphones in consumer decision making, I investigate the effect of smartphone use on social risk taking. Across seven studies, I find that smartphone use, relative to the use of other devices, results in a lower propensity to make socially risky decisions. I propose that smartphone use, by increasing the salience of one’s social …

A Municipal Modernity: Women, Architecture, And Public Health In Working-Class New York, 1913–1950, Jessica Fletcher

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“A Municipal Modernity” is the first study to analyze the architectural history of the district health centers in New York City that women reformers and their allies founded to address poor health in working-class communities. It reveals that women’s philanthropic adaptive re-use was foundational to the architecture of the public health care in New York and led to a program of municipal district health centers. Philanthropic reformers adapted buildings in the 1910s and 1920s to provide affordable health care for low-income women and children in European immigrant and Black neighborhoods. During the New Deal, municipal officials followed the example set …

Equality, Solidarity, And Exploitation: An Essay On The Philosophical Foundations Of Socialism, Callum Zavos Macrae

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In popular consciousness and culture, equality is often considered to be the preeminent socialist value. Equality, on this view, sits at the heart of the socialist ideal, and those who ascribe great value to equality will, other things being equal, find themselves more predisposed towards socialism than those who do not. However, in recent years egalitarian accounts of the socialist ideal have increasingly come under criticism from defenders of an alternative, freedom-based approach to understanding the values that underpin socialist commitment. This dissertation proposes to defend the egalitarian account of the socialist ideal. By reconceptualizing equality, we can reconstruct a …

Values In Evidence-Based Policy: Bridging Socio-Political, Moral, And Epistemic Domains, Karyna Pryiomka

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Values constitute an inescapable constant of any policymaking or evidence-production process. In this dissertation I explore ways in which socio-political, moral, and epistemic values inform evidence production and use in public higher education policy. In “Chapter One: Introduction and Literature Review”, I provide a brief overview of evidence-based policy as a practice. I then discuss three major categories of values, focusing on higher education examples whenever possible. Finally, I present the central study of this dissertation. The central question of my dissertation is In what ways do epistemic, socio-political, and moral values frame the production and deployment of evidence in …

The Divided Self: Internal Conflict In Literature, Philosophy, Psychology, And Neuroscience, Yulia Greyman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thematic project examines the notion of self-division, particularly in terms of the conflict between cognition and metacognition, across the fields of philosophy, psychology, and, most recently, the cognitive and neurosciences. The project offers a historic overview of models of self-division, as well as analyses of the various problems presented in theoretical models to date. This work explores how self-division has been depicted in the literary works of Edgar Allan Poe, Don DeLillo, and Mary Shelley. It examines the ways in which artistic renderings alternately assimilate, resist, and/or critique dominant philosophical, psychological, and scientific discourses about the self and its …

A Candidate Needs Approach To Job Advertisements, Yuliya M. Cheban-Gore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Organizations currently lack research-based best practice guidance on what information is most helpful for job seekers when deciding which jobs and organizations to apply to. This lack of guidance is a detriment because, typically, recruitment strategies are designed from the perspective of the organization’s needs –which is effective when the job market is organization, rather than candidate-driven. When the market is candidate-driven, it would benefit organizations to view the recruitment process through the lens of job seekers. The current studies focus on understanding one of the beginning stages of recruitment through the lens of job seekers: job advertisements. Through a …

The Role Of Glutamate In The Medial Prefrontal Cortex In The Acquistion And Expression Of Conditioned Approach, Rudolf Nisanov

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A series of experiments were conducted to assess the role of glutamatergic stimulation in the dorsal and ventral regions of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in both the acquisition and expression of reward-related learning using a Pavlovian conditioning paradigm, the conditioned-approach paradigm. Rats with surgically implanted cannulas were exposed to Pavlovian conditioning sessions that occurred on three alternative days (acquisition) or seven consecutive days (expression). These 60-min conditioning sessions consisted of 30 pairings of light (CS) and food pellets (US) presented under a random time schedule. After a two-day break, rats underwent a session with no CS or US and …

Interracial Instagram: Depictions Of Interracial Couples On Instagram, Christie Sillo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines depictions of interracial romantic relationships on Instagram, a popular photo- and video-sharing social networking site. Social networking sites like Instagram, whereby users connect with each other by creating, sharing, and consuming content, are prime sites for sociological study because ideas are constantly being (re)made on them. On Instagram, meaning-making is mainly done through the construction of a profile and the posting of images and/or videos. Using a mixed-methods research design of hashtag analysis, digital ethnography, discourse and image analysis, I critically analyze Instagram profiles that depict interracial romantic relationships. In doing so, I develop a contemporary, social …