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University of Massachusetts Amherst

2022

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Articles 1 - 30 of 131

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Borderline Personality Disorder And Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Unique Patterns Of Emotion Reactivity And Regulation, Clara Defontes Oct 2022

Borderline Personality Disorder And Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Unique Patterns Of Emotion Reactivity And Regulation, Clara Defontes

Masters Theses

Both borderline personality disorder (BPD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are associated with emotion dysfunction and often co-occur. Emotional reactivity is also evident in some studies in BPD and PTSD. Despite the frequent co-occurrence of these diagnoses, only a few studies have examined the independent and joint effects of BPD and PTSD on emotional functioning. Some data suggest that co-occurring PTSD may drive discordance between domains of emotional reactivity in BPD, dampening physiological reactivity but increasing subjective reactivity. Low reliance on acceptance-based emotion regulation may also account for this divergence. The current study examined the independent and interactive effects of …


Lgbtq+ Divergent Paths In Utah: Identity And Space-Making Practices In Queer And Religious Spaces, Taliah C. Mortensen Oct 2022

Lgbtq+ Divergent Paths In Utah: Identity And Space-Making Practices In Queer And Religious Spaces, Taliah C. Mortensen

Masters Theses

This research explores the unique and divergent experiences of LGBTQ+ young adults as they engage in identity and space-making practices at the intersection of gender/sexuality and religion. Utilizing queer theorists’ conceptualization of identity as a form of embodied and spatial labor, I critique the approach of existing scholarship that constructs LGBTQ+ and religious identities as incompatible or at least in need of reconciliation. Based on thirteen semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ+ young adults in Utah, my research makes visible how vulnerability and risk impact the strategies that LGBTQ+ young adults employ to navigate their identities and make space. It shows that …


Youth-Perceived Variability In Harsh Parenting From 8-14 Years As A Predictor Of Internalizing And Externalizing Symptoms At 15 Years, Ann E. Folker Oct 2022

Youth-Perceived Variability In Harsh Parenting From 8-14 Years As A Predictor Of Internalizing And Externalizing Symptoms At 15 Years, Ann E. Folker

Masters Theses

Harsh parenting behaviors have been shown to predict internalizing and externalizing symptoms in children. These symptoms of psychopathology can persist into adolescence, which can negatively impact social, academic, and emotional functioning. Most studies, however, focus on between-person differences in average harsh parenting, rather than within-person changes in harsh parenting over time. This variability in harsh parenting has a potentially unique impact on the development of adolescent psychopathology. The present study aims to understand if child/adolescent-perceived variability in harsh parenting over time (intraindividual variability; IIV) predicts higher levels of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in mid-adolescence, while controlling for average levels of …


Changing Criteria: What Decision Processes Reveal About Confidence In Memory, Johanny N. Castillo Oct 2022

Changing Criteria: What Decision Processes Reveal About Confidence In Memory, Johanny N. Castillo

Masters Theses

Source memory is our ability to relate central information (the “item”) to the context (the “source”) in which it was learned or experienced. People are often highly confident in their source judgements even when this information is incorrectly recalled. Past work has aimed to explain why source errors made with high confidence occur with a framework called the Converging Criteria (CC) account. The CC account posits that item memory can interact with source memory by altering decision criteria as item confidence increases, increasing the probability of a high confidence source judgement. This prediction differs from alternate models, like the Fixed …


A New Way To Get Groceries? Ride-Hail Services And Navigating Outside Of Food Deserts, Kathryn Reynolds Oct 2022

A New Way To Get Groceries? Ride-Hail Services And Navigating Outside Of Food Deserts, Kathryn Reynolds

Masters Theses

Segregation has many negative consequences for marginalized populations, including poor health, increased poverty, low-quality housing, and limited education and employment opportunities. Scholars have recently recognized access to food as another piece of this “advanced marginality.” This study illuminates how lagging food and transportation infrastructures exacerbates these interlocking inequalities and whether new ride-hail technologies' promise that ride-hail services like Uber and Lyft will help affected populations access food stores with lower prices and higher food quality. As a descriptive understanding of the intersection between food, transportation, and racial residential segregation in Chicago, Illinois, this study analyzes two questions: (1) how often …


Borderline Personality Disorder And Learning: The Influences Of Emotional State And Social Versus Nonsocial Feedback, Elinor E. Waite Oct 2022

Borderline Personality Disorder And Learning: The Influences Of Emotional State And Social Versus Nonsocial Feedback, Elinor E. Waite

Masters Theses

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) has been linked to impulsive behaviors, interpersonal difficulties, and emotional reactivity. Although these impairments imply underlying deficits in decision-making, theory suggests that such deficits may be context dependent. Both emotional state and social context may influence learning in BPD. Reinforcement learning models offer an avenue to parse types of impairments in learning. The current study used reinforcement learning models to examine whether the type of feedback (social vs. nonsocial) moderates the association between BPD and learning under conditions of distress. Adults with BPD (N = 37), subthreshold BPD (N = 29), and without BPD …


The Role Of Autobiographical Memory Recall In Reappraisal Efficacy And Effort Across Age, Irina Orlovsky Oct 2022

The Role Of Autobiographical Memory Recall In Reappraisal Efficacy And Effort Across Age, Irina Orlovsky

Masters Theses

Socioemotional theories posit that the experience of overcoming unique life challenges over a lifetime enhances self-efficacy and emotional resilience among older adults. Older adults demonstrate greater emotional well-being and motivation to regulate emotions than younger adults, but specific regulatory mechanisms supporting late-life emotional resilience remain unclear. Cognitive reappraisal is an effective but cognitively demanding emotion regulation strategy and shows mixed efficacy in later-life. While a growing repertoire of autobiographical memories may be a resource with age, the role of autobiographical recall in momentary reappraisal has never been tested empirically. In this online study, older and younger adults were trained to …


Three Essays On The Political Economy Of Cultural Production And Creative Labor, Luke Pretz Oct 2022

Three Essays On The Political Economy Of Cultural Production And Creative Labor, Luke Pretz

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the relationships between capital, cultural production, and creative labor. Essay one theorizes the basis for the intensification of pop music stardom following the introduction of on-demand streaming technology. Prior to the emergence of on-demand streaming, record labels and broadcasters had a mutualistic relationship, wherein the near cost-free music provided by record labels formed the basis for radio broadcasts, which in turn formed the basis for the consumption of that music. Following the emergence of on-demand streaming the mutualistic relationship was ruptured. Broadcasters, in the form of streaming platforms, transitioned to the cost-efficient cultivation of masses of highly …


Three Essays On The Political Economy Of The Cfa Franc, Francis Perez Oct 2022

Three Essays On The Political Economy Of The Cfa Franc, Francis Perez

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is organized into three essays. The second essay provides a historical overview of the CFA franc and explores why the CFA franc has survived for so long. It argues that a historical and dialectical materialist analysis of the CFA’s history can best explain both its extraordinary longevity and the periodic major reforms to its functioning. The third essay assesses whether the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) has an independent monetary policy by examining the relationships between BCEAO’s foreign reserves and base money, and between BCEAO and the European Central Banks’s policy rates. The fourth essay evaluates …


Phonotactic Learning With Distributional Representations, Max A. Nelson Oct 2022

Phonotactic Learning With Distributional Representations, Max A. Nelson

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the possibility that the phonological grammar manipulates phone representations based on learned distributional class memberships rather than those based on substantive linguistic features. In doing so, this work makes three primary contributions. First, I propose three novel algorithms for learning a phonological class system from the distributional statistics of a language, all of which are based on partitioning graph representations of phone distributions. Second, I propose a new method for fitting Maximum Entropy phonotactic grammars, MaxEntGrams, which offers theoretical complexity improvements over the widely-adopted approach taken by Hayes and Wilson [2008]. Third, I present a series of …


The Quotidian Quantifier: Fitness Tracking And The Mundanity Of Surveillance, Marianne Neal-Joyce Oct 2022

The Quotidian Quantifier: Fitness Tracking And The Mundanity Of Surveillance, Marianne Neal-Joyce

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses the rise of wearable fitness tracking as a lens through which to examine the predominance of quantification in everyday life. With over a third of U.S. adults owning a tracker, the increased use of body-surveilling technologies provides an opportunity to investigate some central sociological questions. In this project, I ask why individuals track their health behaviors with technology and how we may understand this behavior in the context of medical and corporate interests. I further ask how people think about the privacy implications of their use and what concerns they have about data collection and sharing. I …


Productive Women: Gender, Sex, And Labor In The Digital Cultural Economy, Kavita Nayar-Jablonka Oct 2022

Productive Women: Gender, Sex, And Labor In The Digital Cultural Economy, Kavita Nayar-Jablonka

Doctoral Dissertations

Explicit sex and sexuality have come to figure more prominently in mainstream media and popular culture in recent years, sparking public concern and scholarly debate on how the “sexualization” of culture particularly affects women. Against this backdrop and amidst digitally reconfigured circuits of media production and consumption, ordinary women participate in, and potentially profit from, the commodification of sexual interactions and relationships. This study compares women’s practices in cultures of cam modeling and sugar dating in order to better understand their meanings and contexts. Whether performed in tandem with romantic dating scripts and roles, as is common in sugar dating, …


Learning By Doing: Preparing Student Activists For Democratic Engagement, Marjorie G. Valdivia Oct 2022

Learning By Doing: Preparing Student Activists For Democratic Engagement, Marjorie G. Valdivia

Doctoral Dissertations

This study explores how college students' experiences with co-curricular social justice advocacy activities supports capacity-building for progressive, democratic, civic engagement. Given the increasing and widening of economic inequality in the U.S. (Hernandez Kent & Ricketts, 2020), exploring how co-curricular experiences in higher education settings can support students to gain capacities for progressive, democratic, civic engagement. While there is a significant amount of scholarship on how diversity education and service-learning contribute to college students' civic engagement, the literature on student involvement in campus activism on progressive, democratic, civic engagement is sparse (Kezar & Maxey, 2014) Using a mixed methods approach, this …


Tense In Conditionals: Ins And Outs, Zahra Mirrazi Oct 2022

Tense In Conditionals: Ins And Outs, Zahra Mirrazi

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is concerned with the role of tense in bringing about the semantic and pragmatic differences in conditionals. Investigating the contribution
of tense and aspect in Farsi conditionals, this dissertation expands the typology of
temporal morphology in antecedents of conditionals.
First, I make a novel observation that Farsi morphologically distinguishes between hypothetical and factual conditionals. Conditionals with zero tense in their
antecedent require the truth of their antecedent to be unsettled in the context, and
they yield hypothetical interpretation. Conditionals with present tense in their
antecedent require the truth of their antecedent to be settled in the projected context …


Debris Of Progress: A Political Ethnography Of Critical Infrastructure, Ethan Tupelo Oct 2022

Debris Of Progress: A Political Ethnography Of Critical Infrastructure, Ethan Tupelo

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I advance a political ethnography of critical infrastructure to better understand terminal capitalism, in which the waste products of commodification and resource depletion are destroying the ecological systems that support life. My object of study is the massive disjuncture between individual knowledge and intention, and these catastrophic collective planetary outcomes. Theoretically, I develop critical infrastructure theory to diagnose these destructive structures. By “infrastructure,” I mean systems of material and discursive flows fundamental to sedentary human organization, connecting local actions with global systems. Such infrastructure is “critical” in three senses: A) denoting the most important forms of infrastructure …


Negotiation And Peacemaking In Conflict Narratives: The Influence Of Narrative Reminders Of Peace Processes On Attitudes Toward Protracted Conflicts Via Zero-Sum Beliefs, Quinnehtukqut Mclamore Oct 2022

Negotiation And Peacemaking In Conflict Narratives: The Influence Of Narrative Reminders Of Peace Processes On Attitudes Toward Protracted Conflicts Via Zero-Sum Beliefs, Quinnehtukqut Mclamore

Doctoral Dissertations

“Hegemonic” conflict narratives help reinforce intergroup conflict through focus on ingroup victimhood, denying outgroup narratives, and advancing beliefs that the conflict is “zero-sum” in nature. Many researchers have used narrative-based interventions to shift exclusive focus on ingroup victimhood and denial of outgroup narratives, but relatively little attention has been paid to the role of zero-sum beliefs. Here, I argue that narrative primes recalling past peace processes can potentially be used to shift zero-sum beliefs, thereby shifting conflict-relevant outcome variables indirectly. In two survey studies of American participants (Studies 1 & 2), I found evidence that participants who read about the …


Examining Variability In Spanish Monolingual And Bilingual Phonotactics: A Look At Sc-Clusters, Katerina A. Tetzloff Oct 2022

Examining Variability In Spanish Monolingual And Bilingual Phonotactics: A Look At Sc-Clusters, Katerina A. Tetzloff

Doctoral Dissertations

Current models of generative phonology have failed to address the variability that is observed in bilingual language patterns patterns. This dissertation addresses exactly that issue by examining the perception of Spanish sC-clusters in Spanish monolinguals and English-Spanish bilinguals. Surface sC-clusters in onset position are prohibited in Spanish and are repaired by inserting a prothetic /e/ (sC $\rightarrow$ esC). English differs in that it allows sC-cluster onsets, and the structure of the sC-cluster has been shown to differ based on the sonority profile (i.e., s+stop clusters are bisyllabic, s+liquid clusters are tautosyllabic). A batch version of a Harmonic Grammar Gradual Learning …


Familial And Environmental Contributions To Child Theory Of Mind Development, Sarah Mccormick Oct 2022

Familial And Environmental Contributions To Child Theory Of Mind Development, Sarah Mccormick

Doctoral Dissertations

Theory of mind is a social cognitive domain, reflecting the understanding that internal mental states motivate outward behavior, that develops rapidly over the preschool time period. While critical for healthy social development, less is known about the how aspects of the family environment interact to influence this development or the neural mechanisms that support it. Several decades of research have demonstrated behaviorally that aspects of parent behavior and language are associated with theory of mind skill use in early childhood. Many of the earliest social interactions occur with parents within the family context and little research to date has examined …


Essays On Anti-Discrimination Legislation Enforcement And Sex-Based Discrimination In U.S. Labor Markets, Carly Mccann Oct 2022

Essays On Anti-Discrimination Legislation Enforcement And Sex-Based Discrimination In U.S. Labor Markets, Carly Mccann

Doctoral Dissertations

This project focuses on gender and anti-discrimination legislation enforcement in U.S. labor markets. In this dissertation, I examine the efficacy of existing legal and political institutions in place to redress employer sex discrimination. This work provides new understandings of sex discrimination by focusing on the experiences of pregnant workers, an understudied population that continues to lack adequate workplace protections. My research utilizes new administrative data containing formal charges of discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to provide new insights into the workplace experiences of pregnant workers as well as employer responses to anti-discrimination enforcement. Chapter 1 analyzes …


Enacting A Critical Media Production Pedagogy, James D. Swerzenski Oct 2022

Enacting A Critical Media Production Pedagogy, James D. Swerzenski

Doctoral Dissertations

This project draws upon earlier calls—particularly in the critical pedagogy, critical media literacy, and cultural production fields—to outline a teaching approach that balances technical media production practices and critical media studies. I refer to this synthesis as critical media production pedagogy. This blending of critical analysis and technical skill, I argue, is especially important at the university level where my research is focused, as students in these courses will likely enter industry fields in which they can influence culture on a mass level. Creating opportunities for a media theory/production synthesis enables students to translate critical ideas beyond the academy and …


The Gendered, Racialized, & Dis/Abled Experiences Of Neurodivergent Black Women Graduate Students Across Higher Education, Kat Stephens Oct 2022

The Gendered, Racialized, & Dis/Abled Experiences Of Neurodivergent Black Women Graduate Students Across Higher Education, Kat Stephens

Doctoral Dissertations

Black women graduate students with dis/abilities; those identifying as neurodivergent are scarce in contemporary research. Throughout widespread disability studies, research, and the research on neurodiversity, this lack is consistent regarding minoritized race and gender groupings (Matthews, 2019; Strong et al., 2020). Larger neurodivergent, ADHD, and Autism conversations tend to skew toward White boys and men (Travers, 2018). The convergence of disability (race, gender, and place/space) as another marginalized community and diverse student population, is an additional gap in the literature, despite the benefits of DisCrit (Annamma et al., 2013). Black women graduate students with disabilities, specifically those identifying as neurodivergent …


Four Essays On Peace Consolidation And Ethnic Reconciliation In Postwar Sri Lanka, Narayani Sritharan Oct 2022

Four Essays On Peace Consolidation And Ethnic Reconciliation In Postwar Sri Lanka, Narayani Sritharan

Doctoral Dissertations

In four essays, this dissertation explores the process of peace consolidation and economic recovery from the devastating conflict of 1983-2009 in Sri Lanka. This dissertation addresses a timely and important topic. The findings make an important contribution to the literature on economic development and peacebuilding, specifically on the role of foreign aid in alleviating the risks of conflict and helping countries rebuild their economies after conflict. The dissertation highlights important political economy dimensions that help illustrate social and political dynamics that lead to conflict, such as regional and ethnic inequalities, which also influence post-conflict reconstruction. In addition to a historical …


Acculturative Parenting Cognitions: Bicultural Socialization Beliefs Among Chinese American Parents, Albert Lo Oct 2022

Acculturative Parenting Cognitions: Bicultural Socialization Beliefs Among Chinese American Parents, Albert Lo

Doctoral Dissertations

Chinese American and Chinese immigrant parents within the United States possess parenting cognitions that reflect their multidimensional cultural experiences. One such parenting cognition is parents’ bicultural socialization beliefs, defined as their desire for their children to adopt both heritage Chinese values as well as destination American values in order to be successful in the United States. The aim of the current dissertation was to quantitatively examine bicultural socialization beliefs among Chinese American parents of adolescents and young adults. Four studies were conducted to model a pathway from parents’ social and cultural experiences to outcomes in their children. Study 1 examined …


Restrictive Tier Induction, Seoyoung Kim Oct 2022

Restrictive Tier Induction, Seoyoung Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation proposes the Restrictive Tier Learner, which automatically induces only the tiers that are absolutely necessary in capturing phonological long-distance dependencies. The core of my learner is the addition of an extra evaluation step to the existing Inductive Projection Learner (Gouskova and Gallagher 2020), where the necessity and accuracy of the candidate tiers are determined. An important building block of my learner is a typological observation, namely the dichotomy between trigram-bound and unbounded patterns. The fact that this dichotomy is attested in both consonant interactions and vowel interactions allows for a unified approach to be used. Another important piece …


Social Stressors, Emotional Responses, And Nssi Urges And Behaviors In Daily Life, Lauren A. Haliczer Oct 2022

Social Stressors, Emotional Responses, And Nssi Urges And Behaviors In Daily Life, Lauren A. Haliczer

Doctoral Dissertations

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is prevalent among young adults, and is associated with myriad negative outcomes, including heightened suicide risk. The defective self model of NSSI theorizes that individuals who are highly self-critical and who feel they are deserving of punishment are more likely to choose NSSI over other emotion regulation strategies. This empirically-supported model has a number of under-examined implications. Specifically, individuals who engage in NSSI may be more prone to experiencing self-conscious emotions in response to negative social feedback, and this may place individuals at heightened imminent risk for NSSI in everyday life. Few studies have examined self-conscious emotional …


Interpersonal Process Differentiating Patient-Therapist Dyads With High Versus Low Convergence In Alliance Ratings, Brien Goodwin Oct 2022

Interpersonal Process Differentiating Patient-Therapist Dyads With High Versus Low Convergence In Alliance Ratings, Brien Goodwin

Doctoral Dissertations

Objective: In a study of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), greater early patient-therapist convergence on post-session perceptions of their shared alliance quality was associated with better subsequent outcomes (Coyne et al., 2018). To further understand this evidence-based process, the present study examined whether in-session interpersonal microprocesses differentiated dyads known to possess high versus low early alliance convergence. First, I hypothesized that high versus low convergence dyads would be characterized by more overall positive interpersonal complementarity; moreover, in light of an interpersonal vulnerability associated with GAD (i.e., high deference to others), I investigated whether a …


The Roles Of Identity And Beliefs About Social Change In Decision Making Processes For Identity-Laden Social Change Efforts, Joel Ginn Oct 2022

The Roles Of Identity And Beliefs About Social Change In Decision Making Processes For Identity-Laden Social Change Efforts, Joel Ginn

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents three investigations into distinct processes that attempt to explain people’s decision making around social change action in three identity-laden domains. Chapter 1 reviews existing literature and theory on how social identity and social change beliefs can impact social change action. Chapter 2 examines identity-based motivated cognition by showing how identification as a meat-eater leads to biased estimates of meat reduction’s climate change impacts. Chapter 3 examines cisgender student reactions to faculty who use gender pronouns as an inclusion strategy for transgender and gender nonconforming students to examine if this action leads to stereotyping and judgement. Chapter 4 …


How Well Does The New York State Higher Education Opportunity Program Work For Black Men? A Mixed Methods Study, Michael A. Dejesus Iii Oct 2022

How Well Does The New York State Higher Education Opportunity Program Work For Black Men? A Mixed Methods Study, Michael A. Dejesus Iii

Doctoral Dissertations

Previous research trended towards a deficit-oriented approach to understanding and explaining Black male underachievement. The past education research has focused on discussing the underachievement of Black males in Higher education. Finding solutions often were prescriptive in “fixing” behaviors in Black males to improve academic achievement. Additionally, there has been a trend towards race-neutrality in education policies, programs, and admissions criteria. And there is a lack of research on whether race-neutrality further exacerbates Black male underachievement by ignoring key race and gender targeted supports services that could improve Black male academic outcomes in higher education. While Black men have historically struggled …


Theorizing Black Statecraft, Samantha Davis Oct 2022

Theorizing Black Statecraft, Samantha Davis

Doctoral Dissertations

A guiding principle of black political theory and postcolonial thought, to use Audre Lorde’s famous dictum: the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. As a result, scholars wanting to challenge and decolonize the canon and its concepts tends to disavow turns to the state in black politics because these efforts imply a form of false consciousness, blacks fighting for freedom and liberation are tricked or fooled by European concepts and ideas. They are conscripts, not agents. The disavowal of “statist impulses” across the history of black postcolonial politics in the United States and the Caribbean has the consequence …


Essays On Advertising, Sodium Intake, And Soda Taxes, Ezgi Cengiz Oct 2022

Essays On Advertising, Sodium Intake, And Soda Taxes, Ezgi Cengiz

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation empirically explores the economics of advertising, sodium intake, and sweetened beverage taxes in food and beverages industries in the United States. I use recent advances in econometrics and statistics and provide causally interpretable results to deepen our understanding of how individuals respond to changes in advertising and public health policies in consumer packaged good industries. In the first chapter, titled “Is traditional advertising effective? New evidence from mass-produced lager beer in the United States,” I present new evidence regarding the effectiveness of traditional advertising on product demand for mass-produced lager beer in the United States using …