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University of Massachusetts Amherst

Doctoral Dissertations

2020

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Essays On Women And Work In India And On Other-Regarding Preferences, Sai Madhurika Mamunuru Dec 2020

Essays On Women And Work In India And On Other-Regarding Preferences, Sai Madhurika Mamunuru

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a collection of three essays. In Essay I, I explore declining female workforce participation in India and propose the following explanation: Traditionally, Brahmin (upper caste) women were more secluded and did not work outside the house, while non-Brahmin, often poorer, women did. With increased income, non-Brahmin families withdraw women from the workforce in order to signal their enhanced social status. This is a part of a larger process of cultural emulation referred to as the Sanskritization of non-Brahmin families. Using a nationally representative panel dataset, I show, in favor of this hypothesis, that while Brahmin women’s participation …

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The Emptiness Of The Present: Fronting Constructions As A Window To The Semantics Of Tense, Petr Kusliy Dec 2020

The Emptiness Of The Present: Fronting Constructions As A Window To The Semantics Of Tense, Petr Kusliy

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is devoted to the temporal interpretation of fronting constructions in English and the phenomenon of the Sequence of Tense. It provides and analyzes previously unobserved data from verb phrase fronting constructions in which the simultaneous interpretation of a present tense embedded under a matrix past tense is available. These data are theoretically unexpected and challenging because most theories of English tense disallow this interpretation for Present-under-Past configurations. An account that captures the new data is proposed. It establishes a connection between the simultaneous interpretation of Present-under-Past and the mode of semantic composition between a verb and its complement. …

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Three Essays On Political Economy Of Uneven Development: Space, Class And State In Pakistan, Danish Khan Dec 2020

Three Essays On Political Economy Of Uneven Development: Space, Class And State In Pakistan, Danish Khan

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation delineates the underlying dynamics of the political economy of uneven development by focusing on the dynamic interaction between socially produced space, class and the state in the context of postcolonial capitalism in Pakistan. The first essay (chapter two) focuses on the political economy of urban slums in the context of a postcolonial city of Islamabad, Pakistan. It presents a new conceptual framework of ‘expulsionary development’ to illustrate that the growth of slums and high-end gated housing enclaves are two sides of the same coin at the urban scale. Dispossession and urban sprawl are the underlying factors which mediate …

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Talking About Her(Self): Ambiguity Avoidance And Principle B. A Theoretical And Psycholinguistic Investigation Of Romanian Pronouns, Rudmila-Rodica Ivan Dec 2020

Talking About Her(Self): Ambiguity Avoidance And Principle B. A Theoretical And Psycholinguistic Investigation Of Romanian Pronouns, Rudmila-Rodica Ivan

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation answers a deceivingly simple question: why can her in Hermione talked about her refer to the sentence subject in Romanian, but not in English? The Romanian facts, which are surprising for both classic and competition-based accounts of the Binding Theory over the last 40 odd years, bring us to the following overarching question: what are the constraints on pronominal reference? To address these main questions, I carry out a psycholinguistic investigation of Romanian pronouns and argue that the distribution and interpretation of pronominal forms is jointly determined by pragmatic and morphosyntactic constraints. I discuss evidence from four experiments, …

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Older Women’S Experiences Of Intimate Partner Violence: A Phenomenological Study, Lourdes Irene Dec 2020

Older Women’S Experiences Of Intimate Partner Violence: A Phenomenological Study, Lourdes Irene

Doctoral Dissertations

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global public health problem, linked to long-term health, social, and economic consequences. Despite the growing number of women over age 60 in Puerto Rico, knowledge is lacking about culturally specific IPV in women of this age group. This lack of knowledge is problematic because women experiencing abuse often do not report it, health professionals are not educated to identify cases of abuse in older women, and researchers often includes IPV with other types of abuse, such as negligence by families. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore and describe the experiences and …

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Emergent Typological Effects Of Agent-Based Learning Models In Maximum Entropy Grammar, Coral Hughto Dec 2020

Emergent Typological Effects Of Agent-Based Learning Models In Maximum Entropy Grammar, Coral Hughto

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation shows how a theory of grammatical representations and a theory of learning can be combined to generate gradient typological predictions in phonology, predicting not only which patterns are expected to exist, but also their relative frequencies: patterns which are learned more easily are predicted to be more typologically frequent than those which are more difficult. In Chapter 1 I motivate and describe the specific implementation of this methodology in this dissertation. Maximum Entropy grammar (Goldwater & Johnson 2003) is combined with two agent-based learning models, the iterated and the interactive learning model, each of which mimics a type …

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Three Essays On The Economics Of Corporate Governance, Kuochih Huang Dec 2020

Three Essays On The Economics Of Corporate Governance, Kuochih Huang

Doctoral Dissertations

The Great Recession and the revival attention on inequality have cast doubts on various aspects of the governance of Corporate America. Not only the specific design of corporate governance institutions, but also the very purpose of the firm have became hotly debated issues. The first essay investigates the effect of the CEO's equity-based pay on workers' wages and whether the effect is amplified by product market competition. Since the 1980s, Chief Executive Officers' (CEO) pay has exploded, largely in the form of equity-based incentive compensation such as stock awards and options. Using a two-tiered principal-agent model, we show that aligning …

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Person-Based Prominence In Ojibwe, Christopher Hammerly Dec 2020

Person-Based Prominence In Ojibwe, Christopher Hammerly

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation develops a formal and psycholinguistic theory of person-based prominence effects, the finding that certain categories of person such as "first" and "second" (the "local" persons) are privileged by the grammar. The thesis takes on three questions: (i) What are the possible categories related to person? (ii) What are the possible prominence relationships between these categories? And (iii) how is prominence information used to parse and interpret linguistic input in real time? The empirical through-line is understanding obviation — a “spotlighting” system, found most prominently in the Algonquian family of languages, that splits the (ani- mate) third persons into …

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It’S All The Rage: An Animated Approach To Screening For Postpartum Depression, Amanda Gorham Dec 2020

It’S All The Rage: An Animated Approach To Screening For Postpartum Depression, Amanda Gorham

Doctoral Dissertations

Postpartum depression presents a complication for mothers which can, in some cases, be severe and even life-threatening. Instruments commonly used to screen for this psychological condition have been challenged by an extensive body of literature, with many mothers being unidentified and even untreated for their symptoms. The presented research introduces a newly developed screening instrument for detecting probable postpartum depression using text-free scenario-based animations, based on the lived experience of the condition as qualified by empirical research and the existing body of literature. Developed items were controlled for quality via Think Aloud Protocol and alignment studies with subject matter experts …

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Representing Context: Presupposition Triggers And Focus-Sensitivity, Alexander Goebel Dec 2020

Representing Context: Presupposition Triggers And Focus-Sensitivity, Alexander Goebel

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the role of Focus-sensitivity for a typology of presupposition triggers. The central hypothesis is that Focus-sensitive triggers require a linguistic antecedent in the discourse model, whereas presuppositions of triggers lacking Focus-sensitivity are satisfied as entailments of the Common Ground. This hypothesis is supported by experimental evidence from two borne out predictions. First, Focus-sensitive triggers are sensitive to the salience of the antecedent satisfying their presupposition, as operationalized via the Question Under Discussion, and lead to interference-type effects, while triggers lacking Focus-sensitivity are indifferent to the QUD-structure. Second, Focus-sensitive triggers are harder to globally accommodate than triggers lacking …

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Precarious Pipes: Governance, Informality, And The Politics Of Access In Karachi, Usmaan M. Farooqui Dec 2020

Precarious Pipes: Governance, Informality, And The Politics Of Access In Karachi, Usmaan M. Farooqui

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation looks beyond narratives of the chaotic urban south to examine the politics of city planning and everyday service access in Pakistan. I draw on a case study of Karachi, what is perceived to be one of the world’s most unruly cities, to demonstrate how planning enables the representation of political order. Drawing on field research, I also explore the materialities, subjectivities, and histories of service access that shape urban politics in Karachi. I begin by tracing how planners in postcolonial Karachi have, for decades, described the rapidly expanding city as an object of correction. While early master plans …

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Place Vibrancy And Its Measurement: Construct Development, Scale Development, And Field Study Of Its Relationship To Planning Interventions For Three Villages In The Town Of Montague, Massachusetts, John D. Delconte Dec 2020

Place Vibrancy And Its Measurement: Construct Development, Scale Development, And Field Study Of Its Relationship To Planning Interventions For Three Villages In The Town Of Montague, Massachusetts, John D. Delconte

Doctoral Dissertations

The process of using arts and culture to change the physical and social character of places has been defined as ‘creative placemaking’. Creative placemaking granting agencies originally considered constructing ‘livability’ and ‘vibrancy’ indicators to characterize the outcomes of their programs. However, the research community critiqued these indicators, which were considered too nebulous, and efforts to develop them were halted. Other researchers have sought to measure place vibrancy in other contexts. This study revives the initial line of inquiry for using ‘vibrancy’ as a measure of creative placemaking effectiveness and of revitalization efforts more generally. Here, place vibrancy is proposed as …

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Military-Themed Video Games And The Cultivation Of Related Beliefs And Attitudes In Young Adult Males, Greg Blackburn Dec 2020

Military-Themed Video Games And The Cultivation Of Related Beliefs And Attitudes In Young Adult Males, Greg Blackburn

Doctoral Dissertations

Military themed games have been broadly critiqued as ideological vehicles that support western military institutions and militaristic attitudes. At the heart of these critiques is a concern for the potential influence these games may have on their audience, yet little empirical evidence exists to either support or refute that concern. Using cultivation theory as a general framework, this study investigates whether associations between playing military themed video games and military-related thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes can be found in an online, national survey of 410 young adult men. Consistent with cultivation theory’s predictions, significant associations between the use of military themed …

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Three Essays On The Past And Future Of Socialism, Mihnea Tudoreanu Dec 2020

Three Essays On The Past And Future Of Socialism, Mihnea Tudoreanu

Doctoral Dissertations

The idea of economic planning and state ownership of the means of production, which had been central to socialist economic thought for a century and a half, suddenly fell out of favor even among socialists after the fall of the Soviet Union. The three essays of this dissertation are in essence critiques of this 21st century orthodoxy. The first essay addresses the idea of market socialism, as proposed by several academic works in the decades before and after the fall of the USSR. The essay questions whether market socialism would be substantially different from capitalism in practice. It aims to …

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Uncovering The Neural And Behavioral Factors That Underlie Changes In Processing Visual Orientation, Patrick Sadil Dec 2020

Uncovering The Neural And Behavioral Factors That Underlie Changes In Processing Visual Orientation, Patrick Sadil

Doctoral Dissertations

From moment to moment, the visual environment appears stable; despite prolonged scrutiny, the edge of a desk is not perceived to change. But this apparent stability emerges from perceptual and decisional systems that undergo continuous modulation. In two chapters, I focus on two different kinds of modulation to the processing of visual orientation (i.e., the tilt of an edge). In both chapters, the form of modulation is latent, obscured by standard analyses. To detect those latent changes in perceptual decisions, I develop in this dissertation new statistical tools, at both behavioral and neural levels. In the first chapter, I consider …

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Three Essays On The Economics And Political Economy Of The “School-To-Prison Pipeline”, Anastasia C. Wilson Dec 2020

Three Essays On The Economics And Political Economy Of The “School-To-Prison Pipeline”, Anastasia C. Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the political economy and economics of the school-to- prison pipeline (STPP). In my first essay, I interrogate approaches to the economics of the STPP. I then situate my analysis within the theoretical lens of Robinson (2000)’s racial capitalism, to show a political economy approach for understanding the nexus of public schooling and the carceral state. Building on the concept of enclosure as presented by Sojoyner (2013, 2016), I describe the emergence and impacts of the STPP to show how this dynamic functions as a racialized economic enclosure, through punitive discipline, exclusion, and criminalization. Next, I examine the …

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Shared Neural Substrates Of Perception And Memory: Testing The Assumptions And Predictions Of The Representational-Hierarchical Account, D. Merika W. Sanders Sep 2020

Shared Neural Substrates Of Perception And Memory: Testing The Assumptions And Predictions Of The Representational-Hierarchical Account, D. Merika W. Sanders

Doctoral Dissertations

Proponents of the representational-hierarchical (R-H) account claim that memory and perception rely on shared neural representations. In the ventral visual stream, posterior brain areas are assumed to represent simple information (e.g. low-level image properties), but the complexity of representations increases toward more anterior areas, such as inferior temporal cortex (e.g., object-parts, objects), extending into the medial temporal lobe (MTL; e.g. scenes). This view predicts that brain structures along this continuum serve both memory and perception; a structure’s engagement is determined by the representational demands of a task, rather than the cognitive process putatively involved. In a neuroimaging study, I searched …

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Stigmatization And Community Connections: Associations With Mental Health, Sexual Identity Development, And Peer Relationships In Emerging Adults With Lgbq+ Parents, Krystal K. Cashen Sep 2020

Stigmatization And Community Connections: Associations With Mental Health, Sexual Identity Development, And Peer Relationships In Emerging Adults With Lgbq+ Parents, Krystal K. Cashen

Doctoral Dissertations

The present mixed-method research project aimed to examine the community connections of emerging adults with LGBQ+ parents as well as how these connections may mitigate associations between stigmatization experienced throughout development because of having LGBQ+ parents and developmental outcomes in emerging adulthood. Study 1 used a qualitative approach to examine whether emerging adults with LGBQ+ parents (N = 15) formed a connection to the LGBTQ+ community and/or a community of others with LGBTQ+ parents as well as whether connections to these two communities served distinct functions. Participants were interviewed through using a semi-structured interview protocol that included sections such …

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Criminalizing Childhood: The Politics Of Violence At Delhi's Urban Margins, Ragini Saira Malhotra Jul 2020

Criminalizing Childhood: The Politics Of Violence At Delhi's Urban Margins, Ragini Saira Malhotra

Doctoral Dissertations

The intensification of neoliberal economic reforms and new patterns of middle-class consumption in India have coincided with rising levels of urban inequality and poverty. Yet India’s capital, Delhi, positions itself as a “world-class city,” invoking neoliberal state aspirations to justify widespread violence against communities living and working in state-contested spaces. While much has been written about the reproduction of urban inequality and poverty in India, this body of scholarship under-emphasizes mechanisms of social control and violence, specifically, criminalization by the state.
To understand these dynamics, children’s experiences are particularly important given their age-based potential and vulnerabilities. To give visibility to …

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Three Essays On The Role Of Institutions In Indian Agriculture, Kartik Misra Jul 2020

Three Essays On The Role Of Institutions In Indian Agriculture, Kartik Misra

Doctoral Dissertations

Rural labor markets in India are characterized by high inequality in landownership, concentration of political power and caste fragmentation. Consequently, small and marginal farmers are vulnerable to land grabs by local landlords and large urban industrial corporations. Further, agricultural workers lack bargaining power in wage negotiations with monopsonistic employers. This dissertation analyzes the role of these power asymmetries in landownership, wage determination and the implementation of government programs aimed at poverty alleviation and structural transformation. My first chapter “Land Acquisition and Rural Labor Markets: Evidence from Special Economic Zones in India” examines whether Special Economic Zones (SEZs) effectively induce structural …

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Father Knows Best: The Interactive Effects Of Fathering Quantity And Quality On Child Self-Regulation, Mamatha Chetlur Chary Jul 2020

Father Knows Best: The Interactive Effects Of Fathering Quantity And Quality On Child Self-Regulation, Mamatha Chetlur Chary

Doctoral Dissertations

In the past decade, developmental research has seen a surge of work regarding fathers and their influences of various aspects of child outcomes- cognitive and socioemotional. Studies show that father involvement, or “quantity” of time the father spends with the child, as well as fathering “quality”, or the characteristics marking the father-child relationship (warmth, supportiveness, sensitivity etc.), can both contribute to variance in the development of individual differences in child outcomes such as language skills, academic success and psychological well-being. One facet of adaptive development, self-regulation (SR), is a robust and consistent predictor of high academic success, fulfilling interpersonal relationships, …

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“I Missed A Lot Of Childhood Memories”: Trauma And Its Impact On Learning For Formerly Incarcerated Adolescents In The Age Of Zero Tolerance Policies, Alberto Guerrero Jul 2020

“I Missed A Lot Of Childhood Memories”: Trauma And Its Impact On Learning For Formerly Incarcerated Adolescents In The Age Of Zero Tolerance Policies, Alberto Guerrero

Doctoral Dissertations

The literature makes abundantly clear that trauma has a detrimental impact on students’ academic and behavioral efforts. It also challenges the notion of zero tolerance disciplinary practices being effective in redirecting student behaviors, making schools safer, and creating an environment that is conducive to learning. Yet, our current school climate consists of educators who have not been exposed to trauma-informed learning, while also incorporating disciplinary practices that are both draconian in nature and push students out of their learning spaces. This unfortunate reality is felt even more harshly by students who return to schools following an incarceration. This phenomenological study …

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Using Consultation With Performance Feedback To Align Classroom Management Strategies With A Social Emotional Learning Curriculum In Early Childhood, Jessica Kemp Jul 2020

Using Consultation With Performance Feedback To Align Classroom Management Strategies With A Social Emotional Learning Curriculum In Early Childhood, Jessica Kemp

Doctoral Dissertations

Traditionally, school-based preventative frameworks have been implemented in isolation with little consideration of alignment and integration of practices throughout the school day. The present study aims to address this gap by increasing school psychologists’ preventative involvement with consultation in early childhood school settings. Using an integrated approach through a multiple baseline design, four Head Start teachers were trained in classroom management practices, to increase opportunities throughout the day for teaching, prompting, and reinforcing key skills taught through the Second Step social emotional learning curriculum. Findings suggest that a brief professional development session (1-hour) followed by weekly performance feedback (15 minutes) …

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The People Who “Burn”: “Communication,” Unity, And Change In Belarusian Discourse On Public Creativity, Anton Dinerstein Jul 2020

The People Who “Burn”: “Communication,” Unity, And Change In Belarusian Discourse On Public Creativity, Anton Dinerstein

Doctoral Dissertations

The main intellectual problem I address in this study is how everyday communication activates the relationship between creativity, conflict, and change. More specifically, I look at how the communication of creativity becomes a process of transformation, innovation, and change and how people are propelled to create through everyday communication practices in the face of conflict and opposition. To approach this problem, I use the case of communication in modern-day Belarus to show how creativity becomes a vehicle for and a source of new social and cultural routines among the independent grassroots communities and initiatives in Minsk. On one level, I …

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Incorporating Physical Activity In Mental Health Intervention Service Delivery: School Psychologists’ Perspectives, Scott Greenspan Jul 2020

Incorporating Physical Activity In Mental Health Intervention Service Delivery: School Psychologists’ Perspectives, Scott Greenspan

Doctoral Dissertations

Epidemiological data posits that youth in the United States (US) experience significant mental health concerns. Approximately 10% of youth meet criteria for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnoses (Danielson, Bitsko, Ghandour, Holbrook, & Blumberg, 2018) and approximately 7% of youth have a behavioral conduct problem or anxiety (Ghandour et al., 2018). Literature continues to suggest that physical activity is a viable modality in supporting the mental health of youth (e.g., Ahn & Fedewa, 2011; Annesi, 2005; Biddle et al., 2018). While it is recommended that youth achieve one hour of physical activity daily (Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee [PAGC], 2018), …

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Three Essays On Gender-Specific Employment Outcomes Of Macroeconomic Policies, Selin Secil Akin Jul 2020

Three Essays On Gender-Specific Employment Outcomes Of Macroeconomic Policies, Selin Secil Akin

Doctoral Dissertations

This three-essay dissertation examines the impact of fiscal and monetary policies on gender-disaggregated employment outcomes both theoretically and empirically. The first essay constructs a structuralist macroeconomic model that explores channels whereby fiscal and monetary policies impact women’s paid and unpaid work. The essay discusses two factors related to labor market segregation that can explain differential effects of macroeconomic policies on male and female employment: the labor intensity of female-dominated sectors, and different responses of capacity utilization to aggregate demand shocks in male and female-dominated sectors. In addition, a decline in output resulting from aggregate demand shocks may increase women’s unpaid …

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Shadows Of The Past: The Effects Of Movements' Past Strategy On Third-Parties' Support For Its Current Strategy, Seyed Nima Orazani Jul 2020

Shadows Of The Past: The Effects Of Movements' Past Strategy On Third-Parties' Support For Its Current Strategy, Seyed Nima Orazani

Doctoral Dissertations

Social movements benefit from third-party support in waging social change. The budding literature on the effects of social movements’ strategy (violent vs. nonviolent) on third-parties’ willingness to support and join the social movement has mainly regarded social movements’ strategy as something fixed and unrelated to its past strategy. Using varied contexts, I investigated how social movements’ past strategy may affect, if any, third parties’ moral perception of the current strategy of social movements and how this perception translates into third parties’ (un)willingness to support and join social movements. In the context of the conflict between hate groups and counter-protestors in …

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The Impact Of Psychosocial Treatment On Medication Treatment For Opioid Use Disorder, Tara Mariolis Jul 2020

The Impact Of Psychosocial Treatment On Medication Treatment For Opioid Use Disorder, Tara Mariolis

Doctoral Dissertations

In 2017, more than 70,000 people in the United States died due to drug overdoses; of that number, approximately 68% involved prescription or illicit opioids (CDC, 2019). Presently, insurance companies and physicians require all opioid use disorder (OUD) patients to receive counseling during medication treatment for OUD, despite the lack of evidence it is necessary for all patients. This requirement restricts access and creates hardship for those who may benefit from medication alone. In an effort to inform policy and improve quality of treatment, this nonexperimental, correlational study examined the relationship between individual counseling status and treatment outcomes in patients …

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The Development And Initial Validation Of The Suicide Prevention Attitudes Rating Scale, Erik Reinbergs Jul 2020

The Development And Initial Validation Of The Suicide Prevention Attitudes Rating Scale, Erik Reinbergs

Doctoral Dissertations

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for the 10-24 age range (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018). Despite national attention, youth suicide rates have increased by 50% since 1999 (CDC WISQARS, 2018). To better target and evaluate school-based suicide prevention efforts, this study undertakes the development and initial validation of the Suicide Prevention Attitudes Rating Scale (SPARS) in a sample of California school principals. After a thorough literature review and initial item development, experts in the suicide prevention field reviewed and provided feedback on the initial items and construct definition. A cognitive interview protocol with school principals …

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The Effectiveness Of Point-Of-View-Video Modeling On Improving Social And Communication Skills, Beyza Alpaydin Jul 2020

The Effectiveness Of Point-Of-View-Video Modeling On Improving Social And Communication Skills, Beyza Alpaydin

Doctoral Dissertations

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurobiological disorder with symptoms that affect individuals’ social interaction capabilities, their verbal and nonverbal communications, and the repertoires of activities and interest. These deficits in social and communication skills directly or indirectly influence the individual with ASDs’ lives. Therefore, many interventions have been developed to increase social and communication skills for individuals with ASD. Video modeling (VM) is one of the effective interventions in teaching social communication skills for children with ASD. There are multiple variations of VM interventions. One of the forms of VM intervention is point-of-view video modeling (POVVM) that has …

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