Digital Commons Network^™

Making The Most Of People We Do Not Like: Capitalizing On Negative Feedback, Christopher Edward Anderson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Capitalization was first articulated by Langston (1994) to describe how individuals increase their own positivity by sharing good news with others. This study tests the idea that sometimes people share positive news with others they do not like in an attempt to savor their dissatisfaction with shared accomplishments. A fully crossed randomized 2 X 2 experiment was used to set an initial impression (positive or negative) followed by an interview procedure where the participants would disclose some recent positive event and the confederate interviewer would provide feedback (positive or negative). This procedure was used to test capitalization processes in a …

Negative Allosteric Modulation Of Nmda Receptors With Glun2a Gain-Of-Function Mutations, Jill Christine Farnsworth

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

N-methyl D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors are calcium permeable, glutamate-gated ion channels that mediate many forms of synaptic plasticity in the central nervous system. Due to their pivotal role in regulating synaptic plasticity, a canonical correlate of the molecular and cellular basis for learning and memory, they are implicated in the pathophysiology of various neurological disorders. Recently, advances in genome sequencing has identified the NMDA receptor to be intolerant to genetic variation, as variation often leads to disease. For example, mutations in the GluN2A subunit of the NMDA receptor are implicated in the etiology of severe epilepsy-aphasia spectrum disorders. Here we selected …

Cognitive Impacts Of Age Based Stereotype Threat In Older Adults, Cali Caughie

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The present study examined the effects of age-based stereotype threat (ABST) exposure on cognitive performance in older adults. Forty-nine community volunteers age 65 and older were stratified by age and gender and then randomly assigned to either an ABST group or a Control group. The ABST group read a paragraph describing the expected negative effects of age on cognition and the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease in older adults. Participants in the Control group read a neutral paragraph of similar length and difficulty. It was hypothesized that individuals in the ABST group would perform worse on neuropsychological testing than individuals in …

Enhancing The Emotional Impact Of Prospections Via Personal Values, Bethany Grace Gorter

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Prospection involves imagining future events using mental representations. When people engage in positive, vivid, prospections they report “boosts” of mood, and higher rates of well-being. This study sought to cultivate positive affect in response to prospections by incorporating values into future imagery. Two groups imagined everyday future events in detail. One group additionally learned about values and linked these values to the everyday future events. We hypothesized that the values-based prospection would result in greater increases in mood, and that this increase would be mediated by additional access to details and phenomenological features. Contrary to hypotheses, there was no positive …

Disentangling The Relations Between Acute Stress, Chronic Stress, And Prospective Memory, Brandon Taylor Stewart

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Given the importance and prevalence of Prospective Memory (PM) in daily life and the common experience of stress, it is critical to understand the relations between them. Despite a growing literature base, the answers to some of the simplest questions about these relations remain unanswered. The present study was designed to investigate the relations between both acute and chronic stress and time- and event-based PM. Several methodological features make this study unique and may contribute to a broadening of our understanding of PM in daily life. The results of the present study revealed that chronic stress was negatively correlated with …

Constructing Distance, Responsibility, And Memory Management Theories: An Anthropological Approach To Death Notification Interactions, Teresa Ann 'Lilly' White

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Following a sudden or unexpected death, coroners often communicate the death to the next-of-kin. Death notifications may occur in hospitals, assisted living or dying facilities, homes, offices or workplaces, correctional facilities, schools, or other locations. A death notification has been perceived by outsiders and many researchers as a one-time, unilateral death-telling event. I argue, instead, death notifications are a series of social interactions and processes necessitating multiple actors and mechanisms. The death notification processes begin for the coroner when they are dispatched to a death scene, while the processes begin for the next-of-kin upon the death-telling event. The end is …

Learning From Stone: Using Lithic Artifacts To Explore The Transmission Of Culture At Bridge River, British Columbia, Anne V. Smyrl

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Inherent in all tool-making traditions is the necessity of teaching the next generation of toolmakers. The learning process, although crucial to our understanding of past societies, is difficult to study archaeologically, due to its intangibility. However, some technologies leave visible traces of their production. Key among these are chipped stone tools, known as lithics, which leave distinct archaeological traces of each part of the creation processes. Modern experimenters have recreated these processes, and as a result, have revealed archaeologically-visible differences between novice and expert knappers. These can be identified in archaeological lithic assemblages, and serve as a starting point for …

Native American Conservation Corps Programs: Cultural Heritage As An Approach To Community Well-Being, Michaelle Anne Machuca

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis features a case study and research survey to expand awareness of the ways in which Native American communities use and are impacted by culturally specific, relevant, and useful qualities of cultural heritage and cultural resource management (CRM). The case study and survey are framed by theoretical backdrops that include colonialism, post colonialism, and decolonization. Using the Southwest Conservation Corps Ancestral Lands (SCC AL) Program as the subject of this case study, this thesis addresses whether and how participants in the SCC AL Program observed the program’s potential to generate societal benefits that positively influence and/or contribute to individual …

Mindfulness Training For Pre-Service Teachers Using Ecological Momentary Assessment, Emily A. Hattouni

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

There is a high-rate of burnout among teachers around the US often linked with the increasing stressors and demands (e.g., Iancu, Rusu, Măroiu, Păcurar, & Maricuțoiu, 2018). Additionally, Jennings and Greenberg (2009) demonstrated the importance of teachers’ social and emotional competence for promoting well-being and academic success in classrooms. Stress that is overwhelming or unaddressed can lead to teacher burnout, but there may be effective ways of promoting self-care among teachers, such as mindfulness-based practices. The current project included psychoeducation on the applications of mindfulness for teachers and repeated collections of self-report questionnaires to investigate the utility of mindfulness-training for …

Exploitation Or Empowerment? Women’S Experiences In The Cam Modeling Industry, Ekaterina Bays

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sex work and the experiences of women within it have been studied in-depth over the past four decades. However, the majority of studies on sex work focus on women who work in prostitution, overlooking rapidly growing cam modeling industry and its female workers. Over the past ten years cam modeling has become an increasingly popular adult entertainment industry, gradually displacing traditional pornography from the online sex market (Senft 2008). In this study, I used theoretical frameworks of radical and liberal feminists as well as polymorphous paradigm to investigate if the cam modeling industry is either an empowering or an exploitative …

Patterns Of Wildfire Risk In The United States From Systematic Operational Risk Assessments – How Risk Is Characterized By Land Managers, Erin Kathleen Noonan-Wright

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Since the turn of the 21st century, the complexity and costs of wildfires have increased substantially. There is a need to evaluate entrenched fire management practices that encourage status quo decision making to suppress fires. Data stored in mandated reporting systems collected during wildfires may provide a perspective on fire management decision-making needed to change wildfire governance structures. The Relative Risk Assessment (RRA) resides within a federally mandated workflow process necessary for all longer duration federal wildfires since 2010. Land managers rate hazard, probability and values at risk as high, moderate or low throughout the course of an incident to …

The Impact Of Industrial Agriculture On Social-Ecological Resilience: A Case Study Of The Fairfield Bench, Montana, Anne Preston Harney

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Agricultural systems can be understood as social-ecological systems, in which humans and the natural world interact with and influence each other. The concept of resilience within social-ecological systems has gained considerable attention in recent years. Resilience is generally defined as the system’s ability to absorb and adapt to stressors while still maintaining a similar functioning state. With the major challenges created by the overarching system of industrial agriculture, such as weed resistance to herbicides, water pollution, market consolidation, and declining numbers of farmers, resilience in agricultural systems is a critical concept to explore and understand. However, despite the popularity of …

Cultural Property Protection And Preservation During Counterinsurgency Operations: A Handbook For Archaeologists Choosing To Serve With The American Military In The Global War On Terrorism, Thomas Joseph Livoti

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This dissertation is dedicated to an applied archaeological approach as stated in the mission declaration of UMDA’s Ph.D. program in Cultural Heritage and Applied Anthropology: “An overlapping concern of the Ph.D. program is applied anthropology, the use of the anthropological perspective to solve real-world problems, including cultural heritage, medical anthropology, and a host of international development issues. At the heart of our program is a strong commitment to employ anthropological theory to engage contemporary relevant issues with focused research for communities. While some that [sic] are awarded a Ph.D. in Anthropology from [sic] University of Montana will look toward teaching …

Economic Perspectives On Free Speech, Daniel Hemel

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

The metaphor of a ‘marketplace of ideas’ has long pervaded discussions of free speech in and beyond the United States.¹ For early scholars of law and economics (L&E), the similarities and differences between the metaphorical marketplace for ideas and literal markets for goods and services were subjects of much attention. Aaron Director—the University of Chicago law professor who helped to found the L&E movement but rarely reduced his own ideas to writing— devoted one of his few published papers to the contrast between the laissez-faire approach to speech and command-and-control regulation of other markets in mid-twentieth century America.^{2 …}

Economies Of Surveillance, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Aziz Z. Huq

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Changing People's Preferences By The State And The Law, Ariel Porat

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

In standard economic models, two basic assumptions are made: the first, that actors are rational and, the second, that actors' preferences are a given and exogenously determined. Behavioral economics—followed by behavioral law and economics—has questioned the first assumption. This article challenges the second one, arguing that in many instances, social welfare should be enhanced not by maximizing satisfaction of existing preferences but by changing the preferences themselves. The article identifies seven categories of cases where the traditional objections to intentional preferences change by the state and the law lose force and argues that in these cases, such a change warrants …

Slices And Lumps: Division And Aggregation In Law And Life (Intro + Ch 1), Lee Anne Fennell

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

If you were a superhero, what would be your superpower?¹ Flying? Invisibility? Time travel? I would pass up these familiar options in favor of the profoundly important but woefully underrated power of configuration—the ability to divide things up that arrive in lumps and to put things together that arrive in pieces.² These feats might sound simple, but they are extraordinarily valuable and often maddeningly elusive.

To see why, think of all the things that might do you more good if they were sliced up differently. Perhaps you would prefer a job that involves a third less work and …

Property Attachments, Lee Anne Fennell

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

For a property scholar, the most intriguing part of Eric Posner and Glen Weyl’s Radical Markets is its proposal for a self-assessed system of property rights. Their “common ownership self-assessed tax” (COST) would place everyone’s belongings perpetually on the block at prices that the owners themselves choose (and must pay taxes on).¹ The idea of making self-assessed valuation the basis of both taxation and involuntary dispossession is not new; such mechanisms have been discussed by scholars for many decades ² But the Posner and Weyl proposal is unique in its breadth and in the boldness of the challenge it …

Some Doubts About “Democratizing” Criminal Justice, John Rappaport

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

The American criminal justice system’s ills are by now so familiar as scarcely to bear repeating: unprecedented levels of incarceration, doled out disproportionately across racial groups, and police that seem to antagonize and hurt the now distrustful communities they are tasked to serve and protect. Systemic social ailments like these seldom permit straightforward diagnoses, let alone simple cures. In this case, however, a large, diverse, and influential group of experts—the legal academy’s “democratizers”—all identify the same disease: the retreat of local democratic control in favor of a bureaucratic “machinery” disconnected from public values and the people themselves. Neighborhood juries, for …

Privacy’S Political Economy And The State Of Machine Learning, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Aziz Z. Huq

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

Our aim in this essay is to consider how policymakers make decisions about government surveillance in what we might call the machine learning state –– a nation-state equipped with sufficient bureaucratic and technological capacity to rely extensively on machine learning techniques for surveillance, law enforcement, and national security. We focus particularly on the question of how the state’s political economy influences its decision to adopt privacy-relevant machine learning technologies. Since machine learning tools can also be deployed in many ways that are not pertinent to privacy, our focus therefore is on a specific subset of state uses of such technology …

Equality’S Understudies, Aziz Z. Huq

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

Our Republic these days is riven by divides about what equality demands of us as private and public actors. Consider just a few recent examples:

• Harvard University is challenged in federal court for preferring African-Americans over other racial minorities, especially Asian-Americans, in their admissions pool^.1 Harvard’s flagship law review, meanwhile, faces its own suit over its preferment of minority candidates.²

• Virginia’s Governor Ralph Northam and its Attorney General Mark Herring are swept up into political controversy by news that both dressed in ‘blackface’ during their college or medical school days.³ The historical significance of ‘blackface’ …

Democracy As Failure, Aziz Z. Huq

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

The theory and the practice of democracy alike are entangled with the prospect of failure. This is so in the sense that a failure of one kind or another is almost always to be found at democracy’s inception. Further, different kinds of shortfalls dog its implementation. No escape is found in theory, which precipitates internal contradictions that can only be resolved by compromising important democratic values. Out of localized failure, indeed, comes wholesale breakdown. A stable democratic equilibrium proves elusive because of the tendency of discrete lapses to catalyze wider, systemically disruption. Worse, the very pervasiveness of local failure also …

State Standing’S Uncertain Stakes, Aziz Z. Huq

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

Whether states have Article III standing is a question that has in recent years induced a puzzling and nonstandard patterning of votes amongst the Justices of the Supreme Court. It is, of course, not uncommon for that bench to be characterized by sharp ideological divides. What is unusual and symptomatic in the state standing litigation context is rather this: Specific Justices seem to adopt divergent, seemingly inconsistent, positions on the same basic question of constitutional law when it is presented in different litigation matters.¹ When it comes to state standing, the Court’s ideological divide is not merely acute but …

The Impact Of Artificial Intelligence On Rules, Standards, And Judicial Discretion, Frank Fagan, Saul Levmore

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

Artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning in particular, promises lawmakers greater specificity and fewer errors. Algorithmic lawmaking and judging will leverage models built from large stores of data that permit the creation and application of finely tuned rules. AI is therefore regarded as something that will bring about a movement from standards to rules. Drawing on contemporary data science, this Article shows that machine learning is less impressive when the past is unlike the future, as it is whenever new variables appear over time. In the absence of regularities, machine learning loses its advantage and, as a result, looser standards …

Abortion, The Disabilities Of Pregnancy, And The Dignity Of Risk, Mary Anne Case

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

When abortion is discussed in the context of destigmatizing disability, it is usually in connection with the potential disabilities of the fetus. Disability rights activists increasingly encourage both lawmakers setting abortion policy and women contemplating abortion to think that a life with disabilities is worth living. In particular, they argue that a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome, let alone one with a cleft palate, should not for that reason be aborted.While taking this line of argument into account, this Chapter will shift the frame of reference to various ways in which the law and bioethics of abortion treat pregnant women …

How Clear Is "Clear" Enough?, Ryan D. Doerfler

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

“How much ambiguity is enough?” was the deceptively simple question repeatedly put forward by Justice Neil Gorsuch in oral argument for American Hospital Association v. Becerra. Silly as the question was meant to seem, much turns on the response. Most obvious are the effects on the practice of administrative agencies and the implications for years of precedent surrounding the Chevron doctrine. But far beyond administrative law, the response also has substantial ramifications for the law of interpretation since it is centered in the complementary notion of clarity. Notwithstanding the stakes, the government’s lawyer struggled to give a concise response. Rather …

Experiences With Personalized Learning In A Blended Teaching Course For Preservice Teachers, Karen T. Arnesen, Charles R. Graham, Cecil R. Short, Douglas Archibald

Faculty Publications

In this study, we explored the experiences of preservice teachers as they learned about and experienced personalized learning in a one-credit class designed to introduce students to four core competency areas in K–12 blended teaching contexts: online integration, data practices, personalization, and online interactions. The course included online synchronous, online asynchronous, and in-person class meetings. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, we examined students’ pre and post readiness surveys, activity data, and reflections on their experiences in the course. We found that through course readings; creation of an online module based on blended learning pedagogies, which included personalized learning experiences; …

Online Teaching Competencies In Observational Rubrics: What Are Institutions Evaluating?, Jonathan E. Thomas, Charles R. Graham

Faculty Publications

Evaluation of online instructors is a developing field of research. Institutions have made great progress in recent years to refine their efforts to evaluate online teaching in order to improve online teaching. Some institutions, however, still struggle to evaluate online instructors who did not design the course they are teaching. The purpose of this study was to identify some of the most important observable teaching behaviors identified in evaluation rubrics and how these compare to established online teaching competencies. Findings indicate that there is a growing consensus of what are the most important, observable teaching behaviors, and that this can …

Interaction, Student Satisfaction, And Teacher Time Investment In Online High School Courses, Chad Turley, Charles R. Graham

Faculty Publications

This case study explores differences between two online course models by investigating the results of a student end-of-course evaluation survey and teacher communication logs in two online high school courses. The two course models were designed with different types and levels of interaction, one with high levels of student-content interaction, the second with high levels of student-content and student-teacher interaction. The majority of research on interaction in online learning has been conducted with adult learners at the university level. There is far less literature focusing on K-12 online learning while investigating interaction, student satisfaction, and teacher time investment. This case …

K–12 Blended Teaching Readiness: Model And Instrument Development, Charles R. Graham, Jered Borup, Emily Pulham, Ross Larsen

Faculty Publications

An increasing number of K–12 schools have adopted blended learning approaches. Current empirical research has been sparse regarding preparing teachers for blended teaching, including the skills they must develop to teach in blended contexts. This research is focused on that weakness, with the purposes of systematically identifying the skills needed for teaching in a blended learning context and of developing and testing an instrument that can be used to determine individual and school-wide readiness for blended teaching. In this study we present a measurement model used to develop items for measuring K–12 blended learning readiness. Specifically the instrument contained the …