Digital Commons Network^™

Youth In Out-Of-Home Care: The Question Of Psychological Agency, Lauren M. Polvere

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the critical perspectives of formerly institutionalized youth with psychiatric disabilities through the lens of psychological agency. Framed in sociohistorical perspective, a theoretical shift is suggested for understanding the development of youth with mental health placement histories. In contrast to clinical approaches, which focus on psychopathology of youth in placement, this study elucidates the agentic meaning making processes employed by youth as they negotiate various treatment contexts and engage in activism. Participants in the study are 12 youth between the ages of 16-23, who are involved in peer-run groups for young people with out-of-home treatment experience, and 4 …

Anger Et Cetera: Understanding The Emotions In Ethics, Damien Dupont

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues in part that because the ethical theory of sentimentalism is based on the mistaken belief that emotions are non-cognitive, sentimentalism cannot account for the fact of the influence of cognition in morality and moral action. Therefore sentimentalism is of little use in ethics.

This work is done by going back to examine Western thinking on the emotions from its dawn in Homer's writing through to contemporary philosophy and neurophysiology on the emotions. Following the development of the way emotions were thought of and how they related to ethics allows the identification of an intellectual forked path brought …

"Reconnecting To Resilience" A Historical Study Of Slave Narratives With Implications For Social Work Practice With African American Youth From High Risk Environments, Barbara E. Milton Ii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The often times high risk environment of African American youth negatively impacts their psychological well being, their family relations and community connections. Many African American youth today are experiencing the vestiges of historical trauma that took root in America in the 17th Century when the first Africans came to America. As a result of generational transmission of historical trauma, many youths today are disproportionately underachieving in education, disproportionately poor, disproportionately monitored by police and incarcerated and disproportionately disrespected by the society at large. In order to reduce the disparity of contemporary problems effecting African American youth, social scientists need to …

Are Sisters Doing It (All) For Themselves? Elderly Black Women And Healthcare Decision Making, Carlene Buchanan Turner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the effects of health values on the decisions made by elderly Black women to use self-care methods and homecare services. The research is grounded in the healthicization or wellness promotion paradigm, which prescribes behavioral or lifestyle changes for previously biomedically defined events.

The dissertation consists of both quantitative and qualitative research. The quantitative component focuses on a sample of Black women over 70 years old (N= 642) from the 2000 NHI Second Longitudinal Study on Aging dataset. The qualitative component analyzes ten in-depth interviews with respondents from Southern Maryland used to supplement the quantitative findings.

Although the …

Resisting Regulation: Lgbtq Teens And Discourses Of Sexuality And Gender In High Schools, Darla Linville

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation documents a participatory action research project designed to understand discourses of sexuality and gender in New York City high schools. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual high school students participated as co-researchers in documenting discourses in popular culture, news reports, youth development reports, and through writing exercises about their own experiences. Together researchers created a modified Q sort (the Queer Q Sort) and surveyed a snowball sample of 21 lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) high school students about the discourses of sexuality and gender they encounter in their schools and the ways that they accept or reject …

Eduardo Chibás: The Incorrigible Man Of Cuban Politics, Ilan Ehrlich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There is ample evidence to suggest that Eduardo Chibás (1907-1951), despite never having been president, was of primary importance to Cuba’s political system in the years 1940-1952. As a congressman, senator and presidential candidate who was also the island’s most popular radio commentator, Chibás was afforded an excellent opportunity to alter government policy and shape public opinion. Specifically, Chibás denounced what he saw as the vices and inadequacies of Cuba’s fledgling democracy, especially corruption in public office. By all accounts, Chibás was a man of unquestioned probity. Unlike his political rivals, who gained financially from their elected positions, Chibás’ economic …

Beyond Observation: Literature And Science In Kafka, Rilke, Mann And Musil, Katya Ilina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The relationship between science and literature is an expanding area of scholarly interest which remains underrepresented within the field of Germanistik. This dissertation will attempt to close the gap by focusing on the interactions between the selected works of Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, and Robert Musil, and the scientific outlooks which began to emerge in the nineteenth century primarily by focusing on the concept of observation. Observation is a concept important for the period of my investigation because it signified a major shift in consciousness. The prior facile division into impartial experimenter and observed phenomenon, so characteristic …

Memorial Laws: Social And Media Construction Of Personalized Legislation, 1994-2005, Faith H. Leibman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the possibility that certain social, demographic, and political factors have led to the recent adoption by American state legislatures of what are known as Memorial Laws. First enacted in 1994, these laws have become increasingly common. However, there has been little or no formal academic research into them. This investigation aims to provide a preliminary analysis of Memorial Laws and to contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics affecting their passage. Specifically, this study examines a variety of demographic traits of victims and the characteristics of the crimes committed against them in an attempt to determine …

Predicting Within-Source Agreement In Multisource Feedback Ratings: An Examination Of Characteristics Of The Rater Group And The Focal Manager, Christine Schrader Fernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Multisource feedback (MSF) involves gathering information about a manager's effectiveness from his or her boss, peers, and subordinates. Researchers typically average MSF ratings within rating sources (e.g., peers or subordinates), which assumes that agreement within rating sources is relatively high. However, there is little prior MSF research that has addressed the issue of within-source agreement, and the extant studies have often used inappropriate statistical techniques such as reliability indices. Moreover, this research often focuses on assessing the mean level of agreement or reliability within rating sources but has ignored the variability surrounding these indices. The purpose of the present study …

Meritocracy: A Socio-Educational Policy Conundrum Transversing Selected Works Of James Bryant Conant, Benjamin Enoma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the United States, adjacent strands of the meritocratic discourse intercept by accident of history. It occurs either in the Jeffersonian tradition of culling from all sectors of the populace a natural aristocracy of talents as proposed by James Conant through the development of Scholastic Aptitude Tests, or by expanding the structure of opportunity to all individuals and leveling uneven terrains through social policies like desegregation of schools and affirmative action. In other words, it is a case of policies based on the 'laissez-faire' doctrine versus those based on governmental intervention. "This interception to some degree has fused the strands …

Toward A General Theory Of Polymeter: Polymetric Potential And Realization In Elliott Carter's Solo And Chamber Instrumental Works After 1980, Ève Poudrier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation proposes a conceptual framework and tools for the analysis of polymeter in contemporary musical practices applied to the short instrumental works of Elliott Carter, where multiple temporalities have been identified as an essential aesthetic component. Three works are discussed in more detail: Changes for guitar (1983), Esprit rude/Esprit doux I for flute and clarinet (1985), and 90+ for piano (1994). The composer's use of metrical modulations and structural polyrhythms is re-evaluated in the context of a theory of polymeter. Structural polyrhythms are represented by means of proximity charts, and Carter's compositional strategies are explored, including rhetorical use of …

The Phenomenon Of Amoralism: An Investigation Of The Cognitive And Emotive Roots, Andrei G. Zavaliy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

An amoralist is defined as a person who rejects the claims of moral reasons to special authority, and systematically acts without regard to the generally accepted moral standards. A psychopath can be seen as a paradigm case of an extreme amoralist, although the less severe cases of selective amoralists are considered. The research into the typical behavioral pattern, motivational structure, and the value system of psychopaths can shed light on at least three aspects related to the analysis of the moral agency. First, it can help elucidating the emotive and cognitive conditions necessary for moral performance. Secondly, it can provide …

Markers Of Dyslexia In Adult Spanish-Speakers Who Report Severe Difficulty Learning English, Elizabeth Ijalba

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The relationship between native-language reading ability and second-language (L2) learning was explored in a cohort of 60 adult Spanish-speakers learning English as a second language. The research questions centered on whether underlying nativelanguage deficits associated with dyslexia would be present in a subset of English Language Learners who reported severe difficulty learning English. Our participants were divided into two education groups (below and above12th grade). These two groups were classified into three groups based on self- and teacher- ratings of ease or difficulty in English learning ability: for the high-education group, Poor English Language Learners (PELL, N=7); Good English Language …

L1 Acquisition Of Japanese Particles: A Corpus-Based Study, Mari Fujimoto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a comprehensive examination of L1 Japanese particle acquisition using two sets of corpora of naturalistic speech, JCHAT, longitudinal speech data of three Japanese children and the mothers (Miyata 2004a, b, and c, and MacWhinney 2000), and CHJ, adult-to-adult telephone conversation. The analysis reveals that despite differences in their language environment, all three children complete particle acquisition around MLU (m) 3.00 regardless of differences in the threshold of particle use. Further, none of the three children mimicked their mother's frequency of particle use, even as they all conform to a particular sequence of particle acquisition. The first set …

The Impact Of A Home-Based Intervention Program On Maternal Reflective Functioning In First-Time Mothers, Maia Rebecca Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study investigates the impact of "Minding the Baby," a home-based intervention program, on maternal reflective functioning (RF). It was hypothesized that the reflective capacity of mothers who received the MTB intervention would increase over the course of the study, and that this increase would be reflected in the quality of their responses to clinical interviews administered before and after birth. The guiding premise of the intervention was that helping mothers develop a reflective stance would enable them to become more regulating, sensitive, and autonomy-promoting caregivers and thus positively affect a range of developmental outcomes in their infants.

The …

The Social Construction Of Authorship: An Investigation Of Subjectivity And Rhetorical Authority In The College Writing Classroom, Johannah Rodgers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although we use the term author on a daily basis to refer to certain individuals, bodies of work, and systems of ideas, as Michel Foucault and other critics have pointed out, attempting to answer the question “What is an Author?” is by no means a simple proposition. And, starting from the position that there is no single, or definitive answer to this complex question, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the genealogy of authorship by investigating the ways in which conceptions of the author have informed models of the writing subject in the field of rhetoric …

“Practicing In Slow Motion”: The Development And Assessment Of An Interprofessional Clinical Education Curriculum For Law And Social Work Students, Lyn K. Slater

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Interprofessional and interagency collaboration are currently considered to be essential features of professional practice for the provision of effective health, education and human services. Most major professional organizations have now acknowledged the importance of working collaboratively with other professions and have advocated that education programs prepare students to collaborate across professions through the development of interprofessional education programs. At this time there is little evidence to show that when professionals learn together that this enables them, in practice and in the future, to work more collaboratively to achieve client goals.

There is a gap in the current evaluation literature that …

An Empirical Test Of Terrie Moffitt’S Developmental Taxonomy Of Delinquency, Jessica M. Saunders

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Terrie Moffitt (1993) hypothesized that there will be three distinct types of juveniles: (1) Life-course-persistent offenders, who begin their antisocial behavior at a young age and continue to offend over their lives; (2) Adolescence-limited offenders, who are involved in criminal behavior only through their adolescent years, and; (3) Abstainers, who do not engage in any delinquent behavior. This study tested both the theory and methodology using general growth mixture modeling.

The methodological results were conclusive whereas the theoretical ones were less clear. The different latent variable variance structures were freed and fixed to test the best model …

Provocative Enactments As Regulators Of Underarousal And Its Associated Affects, Steven Bashkoff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This theoretical/clinical-case study explores the function of provocative enactments as a means to regulate underaroused states and the affects associated with underarousal. A great deal of psychoanalytic literature emphasizes the function of provocative enactments as destructive or as a way to devalue others or disconnect from them; this function certainly exists in one class of such enactments where the actor’s goal is to destroy interpersonal ties or enhance self-esteem by kindling negative affect in the other person. However, this dissertation proposes that there exists another, distinct class of provocative enactments where their function serves to activate or reengage another person …

Eliminative Materialism And The Distinction Between Common Sense And Science, Nada Gligorov

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It is one of the premises of eliminative materialism that commonsense psychology constitutes a theory. There is agreement that mental states can be construed as posited entities for the explanation and prediction of behavior, and that the nature of those states is dependent on the theory that features them. Disputes arise when it comes to the range of the commonsense theory of mental states. In chapter one, I review major arguments concerning the span and nature of folk psychology. In chapter two, relying on arguments by Quine and Sellars, I argue that the precise scope of commonsense psychology cannot be …

Family Temporal Organization And Children's Affect Regulation: A Quantitative And Qualitative Study Of First Generation Dominican Families, Alba Cabral

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined the hypothesis that temporal organization of family life is associated with children's affect regulation in first generation Dominican families. Eighteen families with children between ages one and half and five participated in this study, completing questionnaires about family time and routines, children's affect regulation, and child behavior problems. The families participated in interviews that inquired into family routines, family time and children's affect regulation according to the parent. Four of these families were selected for qualitative analysis of themes that illuminated the hypotheses tested. Correlational analysis confirmed the main hypothesis tested, namely, the existence of a relationship …

The Romantic Unconscious: Conflict And Compromise In The Research Of Romantic Love, Joseph S. Reynoso

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Social scientists continue empirically researching the psychology of romantic love. However, there is little attention spent evaluating the direction and nature of this work. In this theoretical study, the author argues that the research literature presents a limited view of romantic relationships. A contributing factor is the relative inattention to the interplay of conscious and unconscious mental processes in empirical models. The author examines the prevalent model of studying relationships for its assumptions about the accessibility of psychological states and the accuracy of participant reports. To support his case, the author reviews research that explores the limits of a psychology …

Beyond "Vectors Of Transmission" Through Commercial Sex: Exploring Models Of Sexual Risk Taking With Clients And Casual Partners Among Internet Based Male Sex Workers, David S. Bimbi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Male sex workers (MSWs) have often been portrayed as vectors of disease although most published studies have reported high rates of condom use with clients in this population. Regardless, social psychological models of sexual behavior that have been widely utilized to examine sexual risk taking in the gay and bisexual male community have not been applied to research with MSWs. Further, sexual behaviors with casual sex partners among MSWs has been absent in most reported research. More recently, the rise of barebacking (unprotected anal sex) in the gay male community has challenged assumptions that most gay and bisexual men want …

The Paradoxes Of Intimacy In Early Modern Drama, Brenda Marina Henry-Offor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the early modern period intimacy was neither well-defined nor discussed in the drama in the way that we do today. My dissertation is an examination of the paradoxical nature of intimacy in Renaissance drama and the impact of space on this intimacy. I am looking at the behavior of married couples and same-sex couples within the home during the early modern period. To elucidate my theory of intimacy I have chosen the plays: Christopher Marlowe's Edward II, Thomas Heywood's A Woman Killed With Kindness, William Shakespeare's Cymbeline, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and John Webster's …

The Qualitative Character Of Spatial Perception, Douglas Meehan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ordinary perceiving relies heavily on our sensing the spatial properties of objects, e.g., their shapes, sizes, and locations. Such spatial perception is central in everyday life. We safely cross a street by seeing and hearing the locations of oncoming vehicles. And we often identify objects by seeing and feeling their distinctive shapes.

To understand how we perceive spatial properties, we must explain the nature of the mental states figuring in spatial perception. The experience one has when seeing a cube, e.g., differs from the experiences one has when seeing other shapes, e.g., spheres and pyramids. We must explain how such …

Post-Error Slowing In Preschool Children And Adolescents With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Olga G. Berwid

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The objective of this dissertation was to examine whether post-error reaction time slowing, an index of self-regulation, is impaired in individuals with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) at two separate developmental time points: preschool and adolescence. Two studies were conducted with separate cohorts. Study 1 examined post-error slowing in a sample of preschool children rated by parents, teachers, and clinicians as exhibiting high levels of ADHD symptoms. In addition to group comparisons based on symptom status, a cross-sectional examination of age-related changes in post-error slowing in typically developing preschoolers (controls) was also conducted. Study 2 compared post-error slowing in individuals diagnosed with …

Relationship Between Parental Physical Discipline And Child Externalizing Problems In The Caribbean Subculture In New York City, Meltem Paker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigated the relationship between parental physical discipline (PD) and child externalizing behaviors (EB) in the Caribbean subculture and examined whether acculturation to the European American and Caribbean cultures, generational status, normativity of PD, and warmth in the parent-child relationship moderated this relationship. Eighty-nine parents of Caribbean origin answered an anonymous survey consisting of various scales and demographic questions.

Descriptive analyses indicated that parents in this study used PD an average of 10 times during the past year. The majority (69%) reported using at least one PD act in the past year. All forms of more severe PD (e.g., …

Autonomy And Subjugation: The Dynamics Of Emancipation And Race In The Writings Of Precolonial German Women Authors, Traci S. O'Brien

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a study of certain contradictions in texts written by three authors of the nineteenth century, Ida von Hahn-Hahn (1805-1880), Fanny Lewald (1811-1889) and Ottilie Assing (1819-1884). The seeming discrepancy between the general enlightenment principles of their work and their position vis-a-vis the racial Other is at the center of my exploration. My position in this dissertation is that it is not possible to discuss their emancipatory ideas separate from their racializing metaphors. In fact, such metaphors are vital to their articulation of progress and emancipation. The discursive context of precolonial Germany can in part explain the relationship …

An Opera In Aid Of The Reading Of History, B. Mcevoy Campbell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis consists of six chapters and a frontispiece/CD recording of a song cycle, Blue Orpheus: Hymns and Lullabies, written and performed by the author. This arrangement responds to currents within queer theory, which view questions concerning its historical and philosophical origins as diversions from its ability to determine present conditions, by reframing these "presentist" (and its close relative, "performative") orientations in terms of "place" and the corresponding laws and freedoms that originate from its cultivation—in politics, the art of memory, and systems theory and design. Generally speaking, to each concept of place I devote two chapters.

Chapter one …

Maze Learning And Recall In Weakly Electric Fish, Mormyrus Rume Proboscirostris Boulenger 1898 (Teleostei, Mormyridae): Sensory Bases, Alice G. Walton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Animals use navigational strategies ranging from taxes, landmark and compass orientation, and path integration to cognitive maps. The debate concerning the use of mapping strategies, or less complex mechanisms such path integration, landmark orientation, or dead reckoning is far from settled. Nocturnal weakly electric fish (family Mormyridae) leave their daytime hiding places at night to forage for food and return at dawn. Thus, these fish provide an excellent model to explore their navigational strategies.

The present studies explore these strategies using a novel paradigm: after learning to swim through a maze (acquisition), the maze barriers are removed and the fish …