Digital Commons Network^™

Development, Validation, And Testing Of The Eating And Food Literacy Behaviors Questionnaire With Young Adult University Students, Kwadernica Rhea

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Eating and Food Literacy Behaviors Questionnaire (EFLBQ) was developed, and its validity, reliability, and ability to measure construct changes was established. Items related to the originally proposed domains of food literacy were included in the initial questionnaire, however five, new components were discovered. The second version of the EFLBQ was tested with 257 young adult university students using exploratory factor analysis, and a five-factor model (R²=57.4%) was returned. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were calculated (health and nutrition=0.89, taste=0.72, food preparation=0.77, planning /decision-making=0.64, and convenience=0.63). A confirmatory factor analysis, with 923 new responses provided evidence of an adequate fit …

The Impact Of Formal Panhellenic Recruitment On The Development Of Efficacy For Sorority Women, Amanda Jill Horvat

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Little to no research has been conducted to assess the impact of formal sorority recruitment processes on efficacy levels of sorority women. While numerous studies have been conducted concerning the development of individual women and skills gathered throughout their collegiate experience, there has been limited research on how participation in sorority recruitment may impact psychological and physiological states, and increase or decrease self and collective efficacy.

If the original intent of sororities was to provide friendship, support, and encouragement, are current formal recruitment methods, supported by the National Panhellenic Conference, meeting that goal? Addressing this question requires an in-depth understanding …

Exploring The Link Between Students’ Usage Of Aleks And Their Performance On State Benchmark Assessments In Mathematics, Verna Marie Richard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate relationships between students’ ALEKS usage, teachers’ implementation of ALEKS, and student performance on the 2017 – 2018 LEAP 2025 mathematics assessment. The quantitative portion of the study involved district-level analyses and teacher-level analyses that explored relationships between students’ ALEKS usage and LEAP performance. The qualitative portion of the study took into consideration previous research findings that have reported associations between program implementation and student achievement. This portion of the study included thematic analyses that examined the following relationships: ALEKS implementation in relation to teacher groups (i.e., RtI 8, Math 8, …

Developmental Regression In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Associated Factors And Outcomes, Jasper Abarte Estabillo

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is an increasingly common neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in socialization skills and the presence of restricted and repetitive behaviors. In addition to a number of medical and psychological comorbidities, ASD is associated with a complex phenomenon: developmental regression (i.e., loss of skills in developmental domains). Although present in other disorders (albeit rare), developmental regression is prevalent among individuals with ASD. Thus, interest in studying the phenomenon has grown. However, research on associated risk factors and outcomes is limited and findings have been inconsistent. The current study had two aims: (1) examine potential factors associated with …

Can Cooler Heads Prevail? New Media Technology And Affective Polarization, Brian Kendall Watson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Are new media technologies stirring up negative partisan feelings in the American public? Can researchers find ways of using new media tools to reduce affective polarization? Relying on a series of experiments featuring online newsfeeds and social media discussions, this dissertation seeks to answer these questions by testing the influence of partisan news and political discussions in realistic Internet environments. Two custom news “portals” (2016, 2018) expose participants to actual partisan news content. Two Facebook discussion experiments (2017, 2019) randomly assign participants to start real political discussions on their personal social media accounts, using discussion-initiation strategies designed to reduce partisan …

Increasing The Inclusion Of Women Composers In The Wind Band Repertoire: Pale As Centuries By Sarah Kirkland Snider, Clifton Gerod Croomes

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Women composers are underrepresented in the wind band medium. This study aims to determine the major factors for the disparity between men and women composers. I’ve transcribed a contemporary chamber music piece, Pale As Centuries by Sarah Kirkland Snider, for the wind band. Expanding on Snider’s existing work for chamber ensemble I will explore her compositional style and reinterpret the piece using the colors of the wind band.

A review of the literature focuses on trends within western music in the United States over the last century and establishes a documented history of institutionalized marginalization. In an interview with Snider …

The Religious Impact: Understanding The Influence Of Religiosity On Attitudes Toward Policy Issues, Angela Farizo Mccarthy

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to shed light on the influence of religion on Americans’ attitudes toward policy concerns. How do denominational affiliation, religious participation, and religious beliefs influence one’s views on social and/or economic policies? I consider the impact of religious belonging, religious behaving, and religious believing—also known as the “3B’s” – on public opinion toward contemporary issues in the United States. In this comprehensive analysis, I discover the importance of including the religious dimensions in models of public policy attitudes. The first part of this project is to outline the current state of the literature and present …

An Examination Of The Effects Of Post-Identification Feedback On Jurors, Daniella Cash

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Post-identification feedback (PIF) occurs when witnesses are given feedback following their identification choices. This feedback has been shown to alter witnesses’ retrospective judgments regarding their witnessing experience (e.g., they are more confident that they made a correct identification). PIF effects are robust; they impact witnesses’ memory of their experience, and also appear to act as confirmation to jurors who are asked to assess witness reliability. A current recommendation for eyewitness procedures is that identifications should be recorded and shown to jurors at trial, but this might be harmful if jurors are also negatively impacted by this suggestive feedback. The goal …

Empathic Responsivity And Callous-Unemotional Traits Across Development, Julia Elizabeth Clark

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are associated with deficits in empathy and emotional responses to others. Specifically, CU traits are consistently correlated with under-reactivity to others’ distress cues. However, it is unknown whether CU traits are also associated with more general deficits in emotional reactivity (e.g., to situations involving threat to the self). Further, the relationship between CU traits and the ability to accurately identify others’ emotions is not well established, and prior work often has not considered possible developmental changes in this relationship. To address these questions, the current study recruited a school-based community sample of children from kindergarten, third, and …

Aging In The Workplace: A Cross Case Analysis In Jamaica's Finance Sector, Malaika Tahirah Edwards

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Along with the increase in the number of older people globally, is an increase in the number of older people in the labor force. Older adults increasingly represent a large segment of the working population. The purpose of this study was therefore to explore workplace aging, with specific reference to Jamaica’s finance sector, in relation to organizational preparedness for the aging workforce.

This study examined aging from an organizational perspective, a national perspective, and an individual perspective, through the lens of Baby Boomers. The study was framed through the lens of the Four Frames Model, and the Metaperspectives Theory, which …

Intimate Fictions: The Rhetorical Strategies Of Obscene Violence In Four Novels, Steven Monk

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Richard Wright, Marlon James, Cormac McCarthy and Ken Levine are each celebrated in their respective fields but notorious for their obscene depictions of violence. Contrary to trauma theorists’ claims that violence shatters language and cannot be spoken, these writers speak violence in its most disturbing forms: torn eyeballs, dead infants, forced fecal consumption and mechanized rape. I argue that obscene violence, much like obscene language, creates a space of intimacy in which transgressive, subversive and oppositional thoughts may be spoken. By alienating their texts from the larger reading public, these writers entice a smaller group of sympathetic readers to develop …

Examining Values Of E-Luxury Among Young Consumers, Nancy Haddad

LSU Master's Theses

Over the past few years, changes in technology, especially the increased use of online shopping, has impacted fashion retailers. Many brands, such as luxury brands, have recognized the online shopping potential and have engaged in setting up their websites in ways that are geared towards meeting luxury consumers’ online shopping needs. Previous research has examined consumers’ luxury consumptions, but there is no known study that has examined young consumers online luxury consumption and which value perceptions can impact shopping intentions. Therefore, the purpose of the current study is to shed some light on understanding young consumers’ online luxury consumption. Specifically, …

Examining Two Self-Assessment Measures Of Teacher Multicultural Competence And Their Predictive Value To Student Behavior Outcomes, Melissa Jo Hamilton Grisdale

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Multicultural competence is a construct that has been discussed in the education literature as an essential skill for teachers' success in reaching all children in the classroom. The current study advances the literature on multicultural competence, specifically pertaining to teachers within their classrooms. Additional evidence was found building upon the technical adequacy of two, theoretically different, measures of teacher multicultural competence. Teachers who received a greater number of hours of multicultural training had significantly higher self-efficacy regarding engaging in culturally responsive teaching practices, than those who had received fewer hours. This study also replicated previous research (Hamilton, 2016) finding that …

So Long, Sinkhole City!, Heather Molecke

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract

A sinkhole is land that appears structurally sound, but underneath its surface lacks foundation. If there is not enough support for the land above, a sudden collapse of the surface happens. Sinkhole City is a conceptual three-part installation that metaphorically conveys experiences of childhood sexual abuse, incarceration in adolescent psychiatric hospitals, and young adult drug addiction. This work illuminates and explores the relationship between childhood trauma and drug addiction.

Sinkhole City takes the viewer on a journey through semi-autobiographical life passages. In this three-part installation assemblage I am confronting my own sense of past shame, the emotional roller coaster …

Cognitive Intra-Individual Variability: The Effects Of Affect In A Healthy Young Adult Sample, Tovah M.D. Cowan

LSU Master's Theses

Cognition is foundational to our experience of the world, but also to how psychologists understand dysfunctions. Cognitive impairment is a feature of a variety of mental disorders, but traditional assessment measures have key limitations in prediction and classification. A proposed alternative is cognitive intraindividual variability (cIIV), which is suggested to measure cognitive control or neural inefficiencies, fluctuating within a task, or over short periods of time. cIIV has been shown to be more sensitive in classification for a variety of conditions than overall performance, including in affective disorders. Further, some research suggests that cIIV is related to self-report cognitive abilities, …

Modeling Melodic Dictation, David John Baker

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Melodic dictation is a cognitively demanding process that requires students to hear a melody, then without any access to an external reference, transcribe the melody within a limited time frame. Despite its ubiquity in curricula within School of Music settings, exactly how an individual learns a melody is not well understood. This dissertation aims to fill the gap in the literature between aural skills practitioners and music psychologists in order to reach conclusions that can be applied systematically in pedagogical contexts. In order to do this, I synthesize literature from music theory, music psychology, and music education in order to …

Examining Successful Aging And Resilience After Disasters, Katie Elizabeth Stanko

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Resilience, a psychological adaptive process and outcome, is the ability to return to normal functioning after a traumatic event, such as a natural disaster. Successful aging entails biological, psychological, and social factors. The Great Flood of 2016 in the greater Baton Rouge area caused catastrophic structural damage to thousands of homes and businesses. Some of these individuals had previously moved to the Baton Rouge area after receiving catastrophic damage during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In this study, I investigated the role that age group (younger, middle-aged, older) and disaster exposure group (control, single exposure, double exposure) had on post-disaster well-being. …

Stress And Suicidality: Effects Of Stressful Life Events, Contextual Socioeconomic Disadvantage, And Early Life Traumas, Muhammed Yildiz

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Determining the risk factors and associated pathways that lead individuals to suicidal behavior is an important endeavor in developing appropriate intervention and prevention strategies. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, this dissertation examines how stressful life events, contextual socioeconomic disadvantage, and major early life traumas are associated with suicidal tendencies of U.S. individuals. In addition to direct associations, some of the potential mediating mechanisms that these stressors exert their effects through were also investigated. The major findings indicated that stressful life events increased the risk of suicidal ideation and attempt among adolescents, both directly, …

Forget Me Not: Are Stronger Memories More Susceptible To Retrieval-Induced Forgetting?, Laura Lee Heisick

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Successfully retrieving information sometimes causes forgetting of related, but unpracticed, information, termed retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). One explanatory mechanism of RIF suggests related, but currently irrelevant, information is inhibited during retrieval, resulting in poorer memory for competing representations. Critically, this perspective suggests stronger memories are more susceptible to RIF because stronger representations produce additional competition when unpracticed. To resolve this competition, strong competing items are inhibited, resulting in the counterintuitive prediction that stronger memories are more likely to be forgotten. The aim of the current experiments was to replicate and extend recent work suggesting non-typical objects and own-race faces, both of …

Factors Influencing Safety Performance Among Industrial Manufacturing Facilities In Louisiana, Sarah Emily Ragona

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the influence of selected organizational, demographic, and safety practice factors on the number and types of injuries within the industrial manufacturing plants in eight parishes in southern Louisiana. The target population was industrial organizational facilities. The accessible population was industrial manufacturing plants in the eight parishes surrounding Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who are members of a trade association comprised of industrial manufacturers. The sample was 100% of the defined as the accessible population. The researcher contacted a trade organization to identify the data source, requested and was granted permission to both access …

#Whyididntreport: Using Social Media Analysis To Inform Issues With Sexual Assault Reporting, Jordyn Warren

LSU Master's Theses

The #MeToo movement allowed victims of sexual assault to go public with their stories. When Dr. Christine Blasey Ford came forward with allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in September of 2018, she was scrutinized by President Trump for not reporting the incident to authorities “when it happened nearly 30 years ago.” Promptly, #WhyIDidntReport came to fruition on Twitter, uncovering the shame victims feel and the complexities behind why so many individuals didn’t and still don’t report their assaults. Victim-service agencies “provide victims with support and services to facilitate their physical and emotional recovery, offer protection from future victimizations, …

Painterly Reality, Chao Ding

LSU Master's Theses

During my three years in the LSU M.F.A. painting program, I experimented with many different directions, but I have always returned to painterly figuration as the means best suited to the expression of my thoughts and feelings. Symbolism of alienation and isolation have always been extremely important to me, but as my painting has evolved formal issues of composition and color have become increasingly important, allowing me to address more complex metaphorical structures.

Abject Objects, Erfan Ghiasi

LSU Master's Theses

In this thesis paper, I explore Object-Oriented Ontology’s definition of aesthetic and its relation to Bertolt Brecht’s Epic theater in both theory and praxis by utilizing my artworks, as examples, presented in my thesis show entitled Abject Objects.

Influence Of Hydration Status On Running Performance And Makers Of Psychological And Physiological Stress In High School Cross Country Runners, Joshua Granger

LSU Master's Theses

Adequate hydration is an important attribute to an individual’s health and wellbeing. This is highlighted in athletic populations, who are at great risk for hypohydration, regardless of age, sex, and sport. The rampant hypohydration observed in athletes is present at all levels of competition, from professional athletes, with access to substantial monetary and nutrition support to division 3 and recreational athletes who often face monetary challenges. This trend continues to trickle down to lower levels of competition, such as high school, where athletes often practice and compete in dehydrated states. Practicing in these hypohydrated states can cause health issues such …

Exploring The Role Of Gender And Race In Salary Negotiations, Chelsea D. Hightower

LSU Master's Theses

Research findings from the negotiation literature have revealed significant differences in the negotiation behaviors of men and women, specifically that women do not negotiate as often or as successfully as men do. This difference has been cited as one of many factors contributing to the persistence of the gender wage gap. A possible explanation for the differences is that men and women are treated differently when they negotiate. Thus, there is evidence that women negotiators tend to receive multiple forms of social and economic punishment (i.e., backlash) for engaging in behavior that is inconsistent with stereotype-based expectations of women in …

Second Language Identities Of International Teaching Assistants In The U.S. Classroom, Adam Agostinelli

Faculty Publications

Sociolinguistic research has yet to comprehensively address changes in the second language mediated identity, or second language identity (L2I), of English as a second language (ESL) students that take place as a result of traveling abroad and experiencing English in authentic circumstances. First, this study provides an outline of L2I and proposes a framework for evaluating L2I in authentic contexts (i.e. in a country where the target language is the primary means of communication). Second, personal narratives, formal reports, and observed classroom comments of international graduate teaching assistants (ITAs), who were placed in a required English Speaking course as a …

Second Language Identities Of International Teaching Assistants In The U.S. Classroom, Adam Agostinelli

Faculty Publications

Sociolinguistic research has yet to comprehensively address changes in the second language mediated identity, or second language identity (L2I), of English as a second language (ESL) students that take place as a result of traveling abroad and experiencing English in authentic circumstances. First, this study provides an outline of L2I and proposes a framework for evaluating L2I in authentic contexts (i.e. in a country where the target language is the primary means of communication). Second, personal narratives, formal reports, and observed classroom comments of international graduate teaching assistants (ITAs), who were placed in a required English Speaking course as a …

Sodium Reduction Through Salt Substitute Mixtures, Visual Cues, And Salt Level Statements, And Its Effects On Consumer Perception: A Case Of Barbecue Sauce, Jose Ramon Alonso Marenco

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading causes of death in the USA and associated with excessive sodium (Na) intake. Thus, reducing the Na intake is vital to alleviate health concerns. One serving of the average Barbecue sauce (BBQs) may contribute around 15%-20% of the daily Na allowance (2,300 mg). No research has evaluated salt substitutes or visual cues on salty taste perception of BBQs, thus it was the aim of this research. Consumer studies followed a Balanced Incomplete Block (BIB) designs. For Study I, BBQs prototypes followed a 3-components (NaCl : KCl : Glycine) mixture design, with 38% - 87% less …

“I Need To Believe That Something Extraordinary Is Possible”: Effects Of Transcendent Media Experiences On The Destigmatization Of Mental Illness, Stephanie Whitenack

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Entertainment psychology is moving toward an area of study where being entertained means experiencing pleasure and/or satisfying fundamental, meaningful needs as human beings (Vorderer, 2011). Now, scholars are examining meaningful media experiences and a recent subset known as transcendent media experiences. Transcendent media experiences are defined as experiences that elicit mixed affective states that can heighten feelings of elevation, compassion, and connectedness that lead to more prosocial motivations. These subjective experiences of meaningfulness can inspire universality by cultivating desires to overcome intergroup hostility (Oliver et al., 2018).

Much is known about the cognitive processes that contribute to lessening social distance …

Time In Giorgio De Chirico's Metaphysical Paintings, Ge Chen

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract

A subtle transformation in the fundamental cognition of a generation could trigger overwhelming ripples throughout the society. Time as an essential concept went through tempestuous changes in late nineteenth-century Europe because of the revolutionary development in railway system. Art world in cross-century Europe also witnessed unprecedented upheavals. Founder of Metaphysical Painting, Giorgio de Chirico was born to that age and was renowned for his complicated opinion towards modernism. This thesis intends to present how the change in the basic perception of time permeated the society, influenced ways of production, inspired art movements, and got reflected in art works.

Railway …