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Lgbtq Experiences With The Courts: The Role Of Gender Nonconformity And Assertiveness, Alexis Forbes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Using lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) and non-LGBTQ participants, a pair of studies explored the influence of LGBTQ identity and gender nonconformity (GNC) in experiences of discrimination in court settings. A one-way ANOVA tested whether LGBTQ participants were more likely to score low on the treatment in court scale. Additionally, two separate multiple regression analyses tested whether high scores on the Gender Nonconformity Scale (GNCS; Forbes & Nadal, under review), were associated with low scores on a measure of treatment in court. It was discovered that LGBTQ identity did not have a statistically significant effect on factor in …

The Knowing Body: Participatory Artistic-Embodied Methodologies For Re-Imagining Adolescence, Madeline Fox

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Braiding critical youth studies, social science methodologies, participatory action research, performance studies, and art, this dissertation investigates how we can produce knowledge collectively toward reimagining adolescence. Polling for Justice was a multi-generational participatory action research project that took place between 2008 and 2011. Polling for Justice was interested in understanding young people's lived experiences at the intersections of education, criminal justice, and public health in New York City. The study centered on a city-wide survey and a series of data-driven focus groups. The Polling for Justice research collective used participatory artistic-embodied methodologies to make sense of, and later perform, the …

Moral Motivation And The Authority Of Morality: A Defense Of Naturalist Moral Realism, Lily Eva Frank

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Moral realism has been continuously accused of positing the existence of queer properties, facts, judgments, and beliefs. One of these queer features is supposed to be the normative force of morality-that is the way in which morality guides our actions. Critics of moral realism argue that nothing else in the world has this feature. This is a reason to doubt that moral facts and properties exist at all. This objection can be interpreted in at least two ways. One way to interpret it has to do with moral motivation, this is the internalism objection. The other has to do with …

Cisgenderism In Gender Attributions: The Ways In Which Social, Cognitive, And Individual Factors Predict Misgendering, Erica Jayne Friedman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The current program of research investigated the ways in which social representations of gender, cognitive processes, and individual factors can be integrated to predict "misgendering," an example of cisgenderism in which people are categorized as a gender with which they do not identify. I proposed an (In)consistency Processing Model of Gender Attribution in which perceivers make a gender attribution by interpreting the stereotype-(in)consistencies of a target's gender characteristics through either a biology- or identity-based schema. Five studies were conducted to test different aspects of this model, the first of which was a secondary data analysis on a sample of students …

Yes We Can: A Dyadic Investigation Of Cognitive Interdependence, Relationship Communication, And Optimal Behavioral Health Outcomes Among Hiv Serodiscordant Same-Sex Male Couples, Kristine Elizabeth Gamarel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research suggests that couples who adopt a "we" orientation in relation to illness demonstrate greater resiliency and an increased capacity to cope with stressors. HIV serodiscordant couples (one partner is HIV-positive, the other is HIV-negative) have been identified as a critical mode of HIV transmission. The present study integrates dyadic coping models and interdependence theory to examine whether cognitive interdependence (i.e., the extent to which couples include aspects of their partner into their self-concept) and communication strategies are associated with sexual behavior, antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence, depressive symptoms, sexual satisfaction, and relationship satisfaction. The study also tested whether the associations …

The Lived Experience Of Young Adult Burn Survivors' Use Of Social Media, Marie S. Giordano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to illuminate the meaning of social media use by young adult burn survivors. Five females and four males, aged 20-25, who sustained burns > 25%, were interviewed. Van Manen's (1999) phenomenological methodology provided the framework for this study. The meaning of the context of the lived experience is described in the five essential themes of identity, connectivity, social support, making meaning, and privacy. These young adult burn survivors, having experienced the traumatic effects of a burn during adolescence, use social media as a way of expressing their identity, while being cautious about privacy. Part …

Internalizing Disorders In Early Childhood: Professional Development Framework For Teachers, Danielle Guttman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recent research indicates that internalizing disorders such as depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) manifest in young children. Since early childhood teachers spend a substantial portion of their day with young children, it is important to examine their beliefs and behaviors surrounding these disorders. The role of the school psychologist has come to include providing support for educators such as presenting up-to-date research through professional development (PD). The current investigation implemented an intervention designed to compare different forms of PD seminars ("Information" and "Strategies") designed to increase teachers' awareness of internalizing disorders in early childhood. Ninety-nine participants comprised the …

Enchanted Entrepreneurs: The Labor Of Esoteric Practitioners In New York City, Karen Gregory

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Through participant observation and in-depth interviews, this dissertation weaves portraits of urban esoteric practitioners together with contemporary social theories of labor in order to explore the embodied and subjectifying project of becoming a psychic or intuitive practitioner capable of offering emotional and psychological "support" to city dwellers. By placing this project in a larger, contemporary political-economic framework, this dissertation looks to explore how spirituality is "entangled" (Bender 2010) in both social structures and cultural practices, as well as shifting configurations of work and the nature of labor. Here, we meet a network of individuals who are predominantly Tarot card readers …

Homeostasis-Driven Responses To Consumer Sensations, Rhonda Hadi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research examines the effect of experienced physical temperature on an individual's decision-making process. Reliance on emotions can function as a warming process and reliance on cognitions can function as a cooling process, hence individuals are nonconsciously induced to alter their decision-making style according to their thermoregulatory objectives. My first two studies support a thermoregulatory account by demonstrating that the mere use of cognitive versus affective processing leads to both self-reported and objective changes in body temperature, and that the adoption of a compensatory pathway can indeed aid in providing temperature-related comfort. My last three studies demonstrate that individuals adopt …

Run For Health: Health(Icization), Supplements, And Doping In Non-Elite Road Running, April D. Henning

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Running races are commonly viewed as one of the clearest examples of competition and it is less common to view training or racing as a non-competitive health practice. However, the majority of non-elite runners who participate in races do so in order to reap benefits from the training process many undertake in preparation for a race. This dissertation is a study of non-elite or amateur runners' pursuit of health, their varied understandings of health, the ironies and inconsistencies of healthism, and the folk measures of health employed within the running community. Through qualitative interviews with amateur runners in New York …

Speech Act Theoretic Semantics, Daniel W. Harris

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I defend the view that linguistic meaning is a relation borne by an expression to a type of speech act, and that this relation holds in virtue of our overlapping communicative dispositions, and not in virtue of linguistic conventions. I argue that this theory gives the right account of the semantics-pragmatics interface and the best-available semantics for non-declarative clauses, and show that it allows for the construction of a rigorous compositional semantic theory with greater explanatory power than both truth-conditional and dynamic semantics.

Place Connections: A Study Of The Dynamics And Planning Process Of Remigration In Trinidadians And Tobagonians, Lystra Huggins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this dissertation is to study migration and remigration of Trinidadians and Tobagonians as it relates to the meaning, experiences, and attachment these individuals have with the different places they have lived. The research questions focus specifically on remigrants who have the choice to return to Trinidad and Tobago or not after long-term residence abroad and why they make the decision to return. Interviews and surveys were used to understand the roles of place identity, place attachment, and place dependence in choosing whether or not to remigrate to Trinidad and Tobago. Participants were asked about their understanding of …

I Didn't Consent To That: Secondary Analysis Of Discrimination Against Bdsm Identified Individuals, Larry Iannotti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sadomasochism (BDSM) sexual behavior is an understudied phenomenon within the social sciences generally, and social work in particular. While BESM sexuality encompasses a wide variety of activities a community of individuals interested in BDSM is identifiable and has coalesced around organized groups, events, political activism, and shared sexual interests. This community has experienced discrimination, violence, and harassment (DVH) as a result of social approbation and stigma associated with BDSM practices. The study examines results of a secondary analysis of data from the Survey of Violence & Discrimination against Sexual Minorities, conducted in 2008. Severity and frequency of various types …

Assembling Autism, Kate Suzanne Jenkins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Autism is a growing social concern because of the epidemic-like growth in diagnoses among children. The lives and experiences of adults who have an autism diagnosis, however, are not as well documented. This dissertation project seeks to resolve that dearth of research. I conducted a year of participant observation at four locations of social, self-advocacy, and peer to peer support groups. I also conducted interviews with leaders and participants. I also participated (as a researcher) in an experiment in social skills acquisition led by participants from my ethnographic field work, fulfilling the planned participatory action research component of my original …

Successful Aging: Use Of Communication Technology In An Adult Day Program, Wendy Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigated the relationship between learning digital communication technologies in an intergenerational intervention and successful aging among older adults. The specific goal of this study was to uncover the effects of this intervention on the cultural constructions of aging in an urban Adult Day Program in Trinidad and Tobago. This mixed method study utilized the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS; Sheikh & Yesavage, 1986), a life satisfaction scale, well-being measurements, open-ended survey questionnaires and a focus group session. The results from the quantitative items indicated no significant differences after the intervention; however, the focus group discussion and open-ended surveys provided …

Use Of An Interdependent Group Contingency To Improve Homework Completion, Homework Accuracy, And Achievement Of High School Students With Disabilities, Maria Carrino Kennedy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Homework is a frequently utilized teaching strategy in elementary and secondary classrooms. The completion of homework has been shown to have a strong positive effect on students' academic achievement across content and ability levels. Moreover, research suggests a stronger positive relationship between homework and achievement at the upper grade levels. Numerous interventions, both at home and at school, have been employed to increase students' level of homework completion and/or accuracy. The present investigation employed a single-subject reversal design to examine the effectiveness of an interdependent group contingency, with randomized components, on the homework completion, homework accuracy, and the academic achievement …

Teaching Gaze Shifting In The Context Of Requesting And Joint Attention To Toddlers With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Ivana Krstovska-Guerrero

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Impairment in eye gaze, including gaze shifting (GS) and making eye contact in early social communication is severely impaired in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This study examined the effectiveness of prompting and reinforcement to teach GS in the context of responding to a request and initiating joint attention to four toddlers with ASD. Intervention lasted 3-9 weeks with all toddlers demonstrating GS to mastery across both contexts. Toddlers also showed generalization to a repertoire of social-communication behavior, including increases in smiling. Some improvements in symptoms of autism and overall functioning were observed. Results suggest a promising brief intervention …

Access To Healthcare For Vulnerable Asian Subgroup Populations In The United States, Deborah Kim-Lu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Objectives: This dissertation examines the barriers for access to healthcare for the top four most uninsured Asian American subgroups (Bangladeshi, Cambodian, Korean, and Pakistani communities). Methods: Combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, this study consisted of: (1) an in-depth review of the Health Services Research literature; (2) qualitative interviews with 24 national health experts and advocates on Asian American health; (3) a survey of a non-probability sample of 107 Koreans in the tri-state region (Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York) using the Access to Healthcare Survey for Koreans in the U.S. instrument, which includes a Likert scale with 21 barrier questions …

An Investigation Of Factors That Create And Mitigate Confirmation Bias In Judgments Of Handwriting Evidence, Jeffrey Paul Kukucka

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over a century of basic cognitive and social psychological research shows that humans naturally seek out, perceive, and interpret evidence in ways that serve to validate their prevailing beliefs (i.e., confirmation bias; Nickerson, 1998). In criminal justice settings, a priori beliefs regarding the guilt or innocence of a suspect can likewise guide the collection, interpretation, and appraisal of evidence in a self-verifying manner (i.e., forensic confirmation bias; Kassin, Dror, & Kukucka, 2013). Recently, confirmation bias has been implicated as a source of forensic science errors in wrongful conviction cases (e.g., National Academy of Sciences, 2009; Risinger, Saks, Rosenthal, & Thompson, …

The Influence Of Naive And Media-Informed Beliefs On Juror Evaluations Of Forensic Science Evidence, Victoria Zoe Lawson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The National Academy of Sciences (2009) concluded that with the exception of nuclear DNA, none of the forensic sciences has been scientifically validated. It is not clear, however, that people are aware of these deficiencies. Indeed, people tend to think quite highly of forensic science, and find it to be convincing trial evidence. It is not clear to what extent their erroneous beliefs about validity influence the weight given to such evidence, or how best to challenge these beliefs. In the present research, I examined people's beliefs about forensic science and how their beliefs influenced their evaluations of forensic evidence. …

The Economic Causes And Consequences Of Overweight And Obesity In The United States, David Alan Lempert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Obesity is a serious public health issue, associated with increased risks of premature death, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, breathing problems, arthritis, reproductive complications, and other diseases. There are economic causes and consequences of overweight and obesity. Researchers have recently suggested that the inability of Body Mass Index to appropriately distinguish between body fat and non-body fat components may lead to inaccurate results when analyzing the economics of obesity. I use Percentage Body Fat, defined as Body Fat divided by the sum of Fat-Free Mass and Body Fat, as the primary measure of body composition.

A growing body of literature explores …

The Grammar Of Choice: Charles Dickens's Existential Idea Of Religion, Hai Na

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation challenges the received opinion that Charles Dickens's religious thinking is merely sentimental and philanthropic. Instead, I argue that there is in his works a very consistent "existential" sense of religion, especially in his mature novels. To be religious for him does not lie in the adherence to dogma or the study of theological arguments, but in the crucial choices people make every day. In order to illustrate this "existential" sense of religion, I analyze, in the first chapter, relevant works by Kierkegaard, Carlyle, George Eliot, and Dostoevsky, in order to establish the context in which Dickens's religious views …

Promoting Wellness Through Mindfulness-Based Activities, Malgorzata Powietrzynska

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The central idea of this dissertation is mindfulness framed as a sociocultural, secular, and multidimensional construct involving attention that is purposeful, in the present moment, and non-judgmental. Mindfulness represents a unification of century-old contemplative Eastern traditions (including Buddhism) and the recent developments of modern, Western science. Hence, supported by the emerging scientific evidence, I argue that mindfulness practices have a potential to offer a wide range of benefits related to wellness. In particular, I report on our hermeneutic-phenomenological studies investigating the centrality of emotions in teaching and learning. Our findings confirm that when adopted in education, mindfulness may mediate positive …

Hot And Bothered: The Role Of Arousal And Rejection Sensitivity In Dual Process Sexual Decision Making For Gay And Bisexual Men, H Jonathon Rendina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dual process theories of decision making acknowledge the functioning of two distinct yet simultaneous processes termed System 1 and System 2. While System 1 relies more heavily on automatic and affective processing, System 2 relies more heavily on effortful and cognitive processing. Over the past several decades, many lines of research have shown the importance of System 1 in decision making and several prominent social psychological theories of interpersonal behavior, such as rejection sensitivity, rely on this dual distinction between affective and cognitive processing. Despite the prominence of dual process theories in many areas of psychology, the role of System …

Neoliberalism And The "Obesity Epidemic", Dianne Rubinstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Neoliberalism has been described as a political and economic theory that proposes "human well-being can best be advanced by liberating... freedoms...within an institutional framework [of]...strong private property rights [and] free markets.... [I]f markets do not exist (...such as in... health care) then they must be created, by state action if necessary." I would argue that the "Obesity Epidemic" is just such a created Neoliberal market, and in fact does not actually exist as an "epidemic." By changing the computation of BMI (Body Mass Index) in 1998, the federal government created the "Obesity Epidemic" by definitional fiat, despite myriad contradictory evidence

The Degree Of Certainty System In Written Spanish In Mexico, Jaseleen Ruggles

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Practitioners in threat assessment have considered direct threats as being high-level threats of future violence (O'Toole 2000: 9), but empirical studies testing the predictive validity of direct threats have contradicted this intuition (Dietz, Matthews, Martell et al. 1991; Smith 2006). Studies that include analyses of the deployment of English verbal roots (such as kill, hurt, etc.) have failed to show significant correlations between lexical choices and the occurrence of realized outcomes (Dietz, Matthews, Martell et al. 1991; Scalora, Baumgartner, Zimmerman et al. 2002a: 1360; Scalora, Baumgartner, Zimmerman 2002b: 46, Smith 2006). This analysis focused on inflectional affixes, rather …

Social Context And Perceived Belonging: A Comparative Study Of Children Of Immigrants In New York And Madrid, Jessica Sperling Smokoski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project examines the ways in which distinct contexts - and, specifically, distinct histories of immigration and ethnoracial diversity - affect the form, nature, and salience of boundaries demarcating an us/them (immigrant/non-immigrant) divide, including the perceived possibilities of social membership and the compatibility of minority and majority identity. It centers on the following research questions: What do the young adult 1.5/2nd generation see as the dominant boundaries or social divides in their countries of residence, in terms of differentiating immigrant-origin or ethnoracial minority groups from a perceived native-origin/mainstream population? How fluid are these boundaries, and when/why may they be subject …

The Advance Of The Mobile Woman: Representations Of British Women's Physical Mobility, 1660-1820, Amanda Booth Springs

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Britain's long eighteenth century (1660-1820) underwent an infrastructure and transportation revolution. Over the same period of time, scholars argue, the ideology of "the domestic woman" grew increasingly prevalent. This dissertation explores the improvements to roadways and representations of the various ways in which British women of the period increasingly utilized transportation, equestrianism, and pedestrianism to traverse the nation, which was also reflected in the development of traveling clothing for women. It argues that these literary and pictorial representations depict the tensions around women's increasing capacity for physical movement, contending that the ideology of the domestic woman was largely reactionary rhetoric …

Coming Of Age In Neoliberal New York, Jennifer Hope Sugg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Thirty years of neoliberal policies have left New York a divided city, with ever-rising rates of income inequality and widening social disparity. Structural transformations associated with global capitalism have led to divergent experiences for male and female youth coming of age in the 21st century. Girls are experiencing greater social integration and social mobility whereas, boys are facing social exclusion and limited opportunities. As young men precariously forge new transitions to adulthood, young women are constructed as ideal flexible subjects, benefiting from feminist achievements, and advancing in the new service economy. Yet in reality, girls continue to face gendered base …

Mind, Media, And Techniques Of Remediation In America, 1850-1910, Dominique Zino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation describes the way a renewed interest in picturesque aesthetics engaged the imaginations of writers, visual artists, philosophers, landscape designers, and collectors during the second half of the nineteenth century, reinvigorating a mode of inquiry that sanctioned the act of composing representations--mental, visual, and verbal--as a suitable response to social, political, and philosophical problems. The chapters that follow describe the understanding of the relationship between language, visual representation, and feeling that picturesque aesthetics formalized alongside the surface discourse of picturesqueness that was circulating through everyday genres, such as illustrated viewbooks, by the second half of the century. This dynamic …