Digital Commons Network^™

College Students, Technology, And Time, Mariana Regalado, Maura A. Smale

Publications and Research

Our research explores CUNY students’ lived experiences using digital technology in and out of class, on and off campus. Beyond checking grades or emailing a professor, students use digital technology to create space and time for their schoolwork. However, technology can also impede students’ opportunities for making space and time. Understanding how students use digital technology is crucial for colleges and universities to better support students in their academic work.

Music And Words: Connecting The Love Of Music With Language, Eileen P. Kennedy, Raymond Torres- Santos

Publications and Research

Children from different cultures have a natural affinity for rhymes, rhythm and music. Imagine if students were able, from the beginning of their education and experiences with academic writing and literacy, to access their unconscious and original selves from which to create their writing. The study of music can help to access this aware, inventive side that can enhance anyone’s writing. As an early childhood writing teacher and a composition teacher, we draw on our experiences with young children with words and music. We examine the relationship between music and words in an effort to bring the primitive drive of …

Introduction: Reframing The Inequality Debate Toward Opportunity And Mobility, Norman Eng, Allan Ornstein

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Effects Of An 18- Week Strength, Conditioning, And Circuit Training Program On Weight Loss In A Middle Aged Adult Male, Aryeh D. Spingarn

Publications and Research

Aryeh Spingarn Queens College, City University of New York Department of Family, Nutrition, and Exercise Sciences, Effects of an 18-week strength, conditioning, and circuit training program on weight loss in a middle-aged male. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a strength, conditioning, and circuit training program on weight loss in a middle age adult. Methods: The subject participated in an 18-week strength and conditioning program 2 days per week for one hour per session, totaling 2 hours of training time per week. The first 12 weeks of the program included only strength training for …

Education Inequality: Broadening Public Attitudes Through Framing, Norman Eng

Publications and Research

Research over the last 50 years have been remarkably consistent when it comes to addressing education inequality: background factors like family and socioeconomics matter to school success. Yet policies remain narrowly focused on school-based reforms like testing, standards, and charter schools due in large part to America’s limited understanding of education and inequality. I argue that scholars, as the experts, are ultimately responsible for changing how policymakers and the public think about these issues—a duty they have yet to embrace. In this connection, the use of framing can help education researchers broaden attitudes and stimulate political will. Drawing mainly from …

The Future Of Web Citation Practices, Robin Camille Davis

Publications and Research

Citing webpages has been a common practice in scholarly publications for nearly two decades as the Web evolved into a major information source. But over the years, more and more bibliographies have suffered from “reference rot”: cited URLs are broken links or point to a page that no longer contains the content the author originally cited. In this column, I look at several studies showing how reference rot has affected different academic disciplines. I also examine citation styles’ approach to citing web sources. I then turn to emerging web citation practices: Perma, a “freemium” web archiving service specifically for citation; …

Being A Scholar In The Digital Era: Transforming Scholarly Practice For The Public Good, Polly Thistlethwaite, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

What opportunities do digital technologies present scholars? How do developments in digital media support scholarship and teaching, and how can academics apply them to further social justice activism? The authors, a sociologist and a librarian, examine scholarly practice in the digital era to explore how academics, journalists, and activists can combine efforts to support social justice issues. With scholarly communication undergoing rapid change, and with digital innovation applied in higher education for many reasons, authors outline what scholars can do to channel their work to benefit the public good.

The Power Of Associative Learning And The Ontogeny Of Optimal Behaviour, Magnus Enquist, Johan Lind, Stefano Ghirlanda

Publications and Research

Behaving efficiently (optimally or near-optimally) is central to animals’ adaptation to their environment. Much evolutionary biology assumes, implicitly or explicitly, that optimal behavioural strategies are genetically inherited, yet the behaviour of many animals depends crucially on learning. The question of how learning contributes to optimal behaviour is largely open. Here we propose an associative learning model that can learn optimal behaviour in a wide variety of ecologically relevant circumstances. The model learns through chaining, a term introduced by Skinner to indicate learning of behaviour sequences by linking together shorter sequences or single behaviours. Our model formalizes the concept of conditioned …

Stimulus Threat And Exposure Context Modulate The Effect Of Mere Exposure On Approach Behaviors, Steven G. Young, Isaiah F. Jones, Heather M. Claypool

Publications and Research

Mere-exposure (ME) research has found that initially neutral objects made familiar are preferred relative to novel objects. Recent work extends these preference judgments into the behavioral domain by illustrating that mere exposure prompts approachoriented behavior toward familiar stimuli. However, no investigations have examined the effect of mere exposure on approach-oriented behavior toward threatening stimuli. The current work examines this issue and also explores how exposure context interacts with stimulus threat to influence behavioral tendencies. In two experiments participants were presented with both mere-exposed and novel stimuli and approach speed was assessed. In the first experiment, when stimulus threat was presented …

Dissociable Early Attentional Control Mechanisms Underlying Cognitive And Affective Conflicts, Taolin Chen, Keith M. Kendrick, Chunliang Feng, Shiyue Sun, Xun Yang, Xiaogang Wang, Wenbo Luo, Suyong Yang, Xiaoqi Huang, Pedro A. Valdes-Sosa, Qiyong Gong, Jin Fan, Yue-Jia Luo

Publications and Research

It has been well documented that cognitive conflict is sensitive to the relative proportion of congruent and incongruent trials. However, few studies have examined whether affective conflict processing is modulated as a function of proportion congruency (PC). To address this question we recorded eventrelated potentials (ERP) while subjects performed both cognitive and affective face-word Stroop tasks. By varying the proportion of congruent and incongruent trials in each block, we examined the extent to which PC impacts both cognitive and affective conflict control at different temporal stages. Results showed that in the cognitive task an anteriorly localized early N2 component occurred …

Street By Street: Cross-Site Evaluation Of The Ojjdp Community-Based Violence Prevention Demonstration Program, Kathleen A. Tomberg, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) launched the Community-Based Violence Prevention (CBVP) program to reduce youth violence through targeted community-level initiatives. The program offered grants to cities for implementing evidence-based strategies, such as Cure Violence and the Boston Gun Project, to address high-risk youth involvement in violence. The John Jay College Research and Evaluation Center evaluated the program’s impact on five recipient cities: Brooklyn, NY; Denver, CO; Newark, NJ; Oakland, CA; and Washington, DC. The evaluation focused on the effectiveness of these interventions in reducing violence among youth and young adults.

Validating A Measure Of Ethnic Identity In Afro-Caribbean American Students, Keisha V. Thompson

Publications and Research

The purpose of this study was to validate the Multi group Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) on a sample of Afro- Caribbean American college students. This investigation is unique in that it disaggregated the data to go beyond the usual labels of Black and African American used in past validation studies. Due to being subsumed in the past under such monikers, information on the ethnic identity of Afro-Caribbean American college students has largely been missing from the literature. This investigation served as a comparison to past investigations on ethnic identity in populations of African descent. The results of this study indicated …

Statistical Learning In Songbirds: From Self-Tutoring To Song Culture, Olga Fehér, Iva Ljubičić, Kenta Suzuki, Kazuo Okanoya, Ofer Tchernichovski

Publications and Research

At the onset of vocal development, both songbirds and humans produce variable vocal babbling with broadly distributed acoustic features. Over development, these vocalizations differentiate into the well-defined, categorical signals that characterize adult vocal behaviour. A broadly distributed signal is ideal for vocal exploration, that is, for matching vocal production to the statistics of the sensory input. The developmental transition to categorical signals is a gradual process during which the vocal output becomes differentiated and stable. But does it require categorical input?We trained juvenile zebra finches with playbacks of their own developing song, produced just a few moments earlier, updated continuously …

Illegitimate Tasks As An Impediment To Job Satisfaction And Intrinsic Motivation: Moderated Mediation Effects Of Gender And Effort-Reward Imbalance, Rachel Omansky, Erin M. Eatough, Marcus J. Fila

Publications and Research

The current work examines a contemporary workplace stressor that has only recently been introduced into the literature: illegitimate tasks. Illegitimate tasks are work tasks that violate identity role norms about what can reasonably be expected from an employee in a given position. Although illegitimate tasks have been linked to employee well-being in past work, we know little about the potential explanatory mechanisms linking illegitimate tasks to work-relevant negative psychological states. Using a sample of 213 US-based employees of mixed occupations and a cross-sectional design, the present study examines job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation as outcomes of illegitimate tasks. Additionally, we …

Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase Deficiency And Physical And Mental Health Until Adolescence, Man Ki Kwok, Gabriel M. Leung, C. Mary Schooling

Publications and Research

Background: To examine the association of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency with adolescent physical and mental health, as effects of G6PD deficiency on health are rarely reported.

Methods: In a population-representative Chinese birth cohort: ªChildren of 1997º (n = 8,327), we estimated the adjusted associations of G6PD deficiency with growth using generalized estimating equations, with pubertal onset using interval censored regression, with hospitalization using Cox proportional hazards regression and with size, blood pressure, pubertal maturation and mental health using linear regression with multiple imputation and inverse probability weighting.

Results: Among 5,520 screened adolescents (66% follow-up), 4.8% boys and 0.5% girls had …

Memorable Audiovisual Narratives Synchronize Sensory And Supramodal Neural Responses, Samantha S. Cohen, Lucas C. Parra

Publications and Research

Our brains integrate information across sensory modalities to generate perceptual experiences and form memories. However, it is difficult to determine the conditions under which multisensory stimulation will benefit or hinder the retrieval of everyday experiences. We hypothesized that the determining factor is the reliability of information processing during stimulus presentation, which can be measured through intersubject correlation of stimulus-evoked activity. We therefore presented biographical auditory narratives and visual animations to 72 human subjects visually, auditorily, or combined, while neural activity was recorded using electroencephalography. Memory for the narrated information, contained in the auditory stream, was tested 3 weeks later. While …

Less Citation, Less Dissemination: The Case Of French Psychoanalysis, Rémy Potier, Olivier Putois, Charlotte Dolez, Elliot Jurist

Publications and Research

The future of all publishing is open to question, and this is especially true in the case of psychoanalytic publishing. Stepansky (2009) has explored the future of psychoanalytic publishing with a particular emphasis upon how the digital era has had an impact upon the decline of scholarly publication in the United States. If this trend continues, the survival of contemporary psychoanalytic research will depend upon its capacity to embrace and utilize digital publishing.

Echoing this perspective, we tried to determine whether the seemingly small international visibility of contemporary French psychoanalytic research could be related to its lack of acknowledgment of …

Culturally Responsive Teaching: Implications For Educational Justice, Magnus O. Bassey

Publications and Research

Educational justice is a major global challenge. In most underdeveloped countries, many students do not have access to education and in most advanced democracies, school attainment and success are still, to a large extent, dependent on a student’s social background. However, it has often been argued that social justice is an essential part of teachers’ work in a democracy. This article raises an important overriding question: how can we realize the goal of educational justice in the field of teaching? In this essay, I examine culturally responsive teaching as an educational practice and conclude that it is possible to realize …

Neutrality, Autonomy, And Power, Eldar Sarajlic

Publications and Research

This paper critically examines Alan Patten’s theory of neutrality of treatment. It argues that the theory assumes an inadequate conception of personal autonomy, which undermines its plausibility. However, I suggest that the theory can resolve the problem by developing and reinterpreting its conception of autonomy and introducing an additional strategy for addressing the power imbalances that result from the market-based interactions between individuals and their conceptions of the good.

Critical Integral Contemplative Education, David Forbes

Publications and Research

Mindfulness programs in education proceed with little awareness of the cultural, social, political, and developmental context in which they operate. This chapter first argues that social critique is a valuable practice in its own right and can be useful toward developing more socially just and inclusive education mindfulness programs. It is critical of how mindfulness is practiced in schools to the extent it shares qualities of McMindfulness and reinforces neoliberal ideologies, policies, and practices. Without this critical awareness of contexts programs tend to promote individualistic solutions to social problems and inequities and thereby serve to maintain the status quo of …

Ashamed And Afraid: A Scoping Review Of The Role Of Shame In Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Ptsd), Tanya Saraiya, Teresa Lopez-Castro

Publications and Research

Background: Despite considerable progress in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a large percentage of individuals remain symptomatic following gold-standard therapies. One route to improving care is examining affective disturbances that involve other emotions beyond fear and threat. A growing body of research has implicated shame in PTSD’s development and course, although to date no review of this specific literature exists. This scoping review investigated the link between shame and PTSD and sought to identify research gaps. Methods: A systematic database search of PubMed, PsycInfo, Embase, Cochrane, and CINAHL was conducted to find original quantitative research related to shame …

Perceived Body Image, Eating Behavior, And Sedentary Activities And Body Mass Index Categories In Kuwaiti Female Adolescents, Lemia H. Shaban, Joan A. Vaccaro, Shiryn D. Sukhram, Fatma G. Huffman

Publications and Research

Background. The State of Kuwait has a growing obesity epidemic in both genders and all age groups; however, obesity rates in the young seem to be rising. Methods.We conducted a cross-sectional survey in 169 Kuwaiti female adolescents attending both private and public schools spanning the six governorates in the State of Kuwait in order to explore female adolescents’ self-image, body dissatisfaction, type of school (private versus public), TV viewing, and computer games and their relationship to body mass index.

Results. Approximately half the students classified as obese perceived their body image to lie in the normal range. Females in the …

Naïve Beliefs About The Natural World In A Case Of Childhood Onset Amnesia, William Winter

Publications and Research

The individual profiled here (M.S.) suffered an episode of severe oxygen deprivation (anoxia) at the age of eight, damaging memory relevant structures in the mid-temporal lobes, including the hippocampus bilaterally. The resulting anterograde amnesia was characterized by profound deficits in autobiographical memory, but also a compromised ability to acquire new facts and information (semantic memory), resulting in the formation of idiosyncratic and naïve beliefs about the natural world that have persisted into his adult years. This article presents an interview with M.S. in which many of these idiosyncratic beliefs are detailed, and argues that they can be broadly viewed as …

Improved Parental Dietary Quality Is Associated With Children’S Dietary Intake Through The Home Environment, Karen R. Flórez, A. S. Richardson, M. B. Ghosh-Dastidar, R. Beckman, C. Huang, L. Wagner, T. Dubowitz

Publications and Research

Background Improving access to supermarkets has been shown to improve some dietary outcomes, yet there is little evidence for such effects on children. Relatedly, there is a dearth of research assessing the impact of a structural change (i.e. supermarket in a former food desert) on the home environment and its relationship with children’s diet.

Objective Assess the relative impact of the home environment on children’s diet after the introduction of a new supermarket in a food desert.

Methods Among a randomly selected cohort of households living in a food desert, parental diet was assessed before and after the opening of …

Direct Current-Induced Calcium Trafficking In Different Neuronal Preparations, Andrzej Wieraszko, Zaghloul Ahmed

Publications and Research

The influence of direct current (DC) stimulation on radioactive calcium trafficking in sciatic nerve in vivo and in vitro, spinal cord, and synaptosomes was investigated. The exposure to DC enhanced calcium redistribution in all of these preparations. The effect was dependent on the strength of the stimulation and extended beyond the phase of exposure to DC. The DC-induced increase in calcium sequestration by synaptosomes was significantly reduced by cobalt and rupture of synaptosomes by osmotic shock. Although both anodal and cathodal currents were effective, the experiments with two electrodes of different areas revealed that cathodal stimulation exerted stronger effect. The …

Molecular Mechanisms Of Stress-Induced Increases In Fear Memory Consolidation Within The Amygdala, Antonio V. Aubry, Peter A. Serrano, Nesha S. Burghardt

Publications and Research

Stress can significantly impact brain function and increase the risk for developing various psychiatric disorders. Many of the brain regions that are implicated in psychiatric disorders and are vulnerable to the effects of stress are also involved in mediating emotional learning. Emotional learning has been a subject of intense investigation for the past 30 years, with the vast majority of studies focusing on the amygdala and its role in associative fear learning. However, the mechanisms by which stress affects the amygdala and amygdala-dependent fear memories remain unclear. Here we review the literature on the enhancing effects of acute and chronic …

A P-Value Model For Theoretical Power Analysis And Its Applications In Multiple Testing Procedures, Fengqing Zhang, Jiangtao Gou

Publications and Research

Background: Power analysis is a critical aspect of the design of experiments to detect an effect of a given size. When multiple hypotheses are tested simultaneously, multiplicity adjustments to p-values should be taken into account in power analysis. There are a limited number of studies on power analysis in multiple testing procedures. For some methods, the theoretical analysis is difficult and extensive numerical simulations are often needed, while other methods oversimplify the information under the alternative hypothesis. To this end, this paper aims to develop a new statistical model for power analysis in multiple testing procedures.

Methods: We propose a …

Rapid And Objective Assessment Of Neural Function In Autism Spectrum Disorder Using Transient Visual Evoked Potentials, Paige M. Siper, Vance Zemon, James Gordon, Julia George-Jones, Stacey Lurie, Jessica Zweifach, Teresa Tavassoli, A. Ting Wang, Jesslyn Jamison, Joseph D. Buxbaum, Alexander Kolevzon

Publications and Research

Objective There is a critical need to identify biomarkers and objective outcome measures that can be used to understand underlying neural mechanisms in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Visual evoked potentials (VEPs) offer a noninvasive technique to evaluate the functional integrity of neural mechanisms, specifically visual pathways, while probing for disease pathophysiology.

Methods Transient VEPs (tVEPs) were obtained from 96 unmedicated children, including 37 children with ASD, 36 typically developing (TD) children, and 23 unaffected siblings (SIBS). A conventional contrast-reversing checkerboard condition was compared to a novel short-duration condition, which was developed to enable objective data collection from severely affected populations …

Immediate Blood Draw For Cd4+ Cell Count Is Associated With Linkage To Care In Durban, South Africa: Findings From Pathways To Engagement In Hiv Care, Susie Hoffman, Theresa M. Exner, Naomi Lince-Deroche, Cheng-Shiun Leu, Jessica L. Phillip, Elizabeth A. Kelvin, Anisha D. Gandhi, Bruce Levin, Dinesh Singh, Joanne E. Mantell, Kelly Blanchard, Gita Ramjee

Publications and Research

Background Timely linkage to care by newly-diagnosed HIV+ individuals remains a significant challenge to achieving UNAIDS 90-90-90 goals. Current World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines recommend initiating anti-retroviral treatment (ART) regardless of CD4+ count, with priority given to those with CD4+/μl. We evaluated the impact of not having a day-of-diagnosis CD4+ count blood draw, as recommended by South African guidelines, on time to linkage, using data from a prospective cohort study.

Methods Individuals (N = 2773) were interviewed prior to HIV counseling and testing at three public sector primary care clinics in the greater Durban area; 785 were newly-diagnosed and eligible …

Burnout Et Dépression, Entre Normal Et Pathologique? Histoire D’Une Différenciation Hasardeuse, Bianchi Renzo, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Eric Laurent

Publications and Research

Initial described in the 1970s, the burnout syndrome has been difficult to characterize. It has been difficult to distinguish it from both clinical and subclinical depressive syndromes. In this chapter, we present a logical analysis of the distinction between burnout and depression. We synthesize the results of studies that bear on that distinction. We find that methodological and the historical separation of two lines of research as well as the lack of articulation between dimensional and categorical approaches to psychopathology.