Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Domain-Generality And Durability Of Efficient Learning, Christopher Zerr

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

People differ in how quickly they learn information and how long they remember it, and a common finding in the literature is that a quicker rate of learning coincides with better retention for the learned material. Zerr and colleagues (2017) termed the relation between learning rate and retention as learning efficiency, with more efficient learning representing both a faster acquisition rate and better memory performance after a delay. Zerr et al. also demonstrated in separate experiments that how efficiently someone learns is stable across a range of days and years. The current thesis includes two experiments addressing additional questions …

Exploring The Underlying Mechanisms Of Structure Building, Reshma Gouravajhala

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Structure building, the ability to build a coherent mental model of any narrative, requires the identification and integration of important parts of that narrative, as well as the suppression of irrelevant details. Critically, while individual differences in structure building have been shown to have important consequences in the classroom, little has been concluded about underlying deficits and causal mechanisms of low structure building ability. In the present study, we tested the theory that an impaired ability to suppress unimportant details is low structure builders’ sole deficit (Gernsbacher, 1990). We presented participants with educationally authentic text materials that offered varying degrees …

Do Learners Have Insight Into The Levels Of Processing Effect? Exploring Unresolved Levels Of Processing Phenomena With Judgments Of Learning, Elif Eylul Tekin

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The levels of processing (LOP) effect shows that semantic processing leads to better retention than other types of processing. The effect is routinely obtained on many types of tests, yet, to this day, its mechanisms are still debated and it is poorly understood. In two old/new recognition experiments, I investigated potential explanations as to why the LOP effect occurs under intentional learning instructions. I asked a) whether subjects were aware of the LOP effect while they were studying the material, b) whether explicitly encouraging subjects to study the words with their idiosyncratic strategies would eliminate the effect, and c) whether …

The Impact Of Delay On Retrieval Success In The Parietal Memory Network, Nathan Anderson

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent work has identified a Parietal Memory Network (PMN), which exhibits regular patterns of activation during memory encoding and retrieval. Among these characteristic patterns, this network displays a strong “retrieval success” effect, showing greater activation for correctlyremembered studied items (hits) compared to correctly-rejected novel items (CRs). To date, most relevant studies have used short retention intervals. Here, we ask if the retrieval success effect seen in the PMN would remain consistent over a delay. Twenty participants underwent fMRI while encoding and recognizing scenes. Greater activity for hits than for correctly-rejected lures within PMN regions was observed after a short delay …

The Effects Of Repeated Lineups And Delay On Eyewitness Identification, Wenbo Lin

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Prior eyewitness research has examined the effects of repeated identification procedures and delays on eyewitness identification, but these studies have either confounded these two factors or studied them in isolation. Experiment 1 attempted to disentangle these factors through systematic manipulations of the number of repeated lineups and the length of delay between the original event and the first lineup. Experiment 2 examined whether the length of delay between two lineups (Lineups 1 and 2) affects the subsequent lineup identification decisions. We found that people were more inclined to choose when a lineup was repeated. A longer delay between the crime …

Quizzing And Restudy Dynamics In A Tst Paradigm: The (Null) Effect Of Feedback And The (Significant) Effects Of Metacognition, Francis Anderson

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In authentic educational settings, using formative quizzes or tests can improve students’ memory by direct strengthening of the memory trace. There are other indirect effects of testing, however, such as improved understanding of what one does and does not know. That is, quizzes can benefit students’ metacognitive awareness, which may in turn affect their restudy behaviors. We tested whether different types of feedback (correct/incorrect, correct answer, or minimal) differentially affected students’ metacognition, changed their restudy behaviors, and influenced final test performance. We found no effect of feedback type, but were able to better understand quizzing and restudy dynamics in an …

Preschool Executive Function Predicts Childhood Resting State Functional Connectivity And Adhd And Depression, Elizabeth Hawkey

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Background: Measures of executive function (EF), such as the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function, distinguish children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) from control children, but less work has examined relationships to depression or brain network organization. This study examined whether early childhood EF predicted a new onset or worsening of ADHD and/or depression, and examined how early childhood EF related to functional connectivity of brain networks at school age. Methods: Participants were 247 children, enrolled at ages 3-6, from a prospective study of emotion development. The BRIEF Global Executive Composite (BRIEF-GEC) was used as the measure of EF in early …

How Does Increasing The Power Of Retrieval Cues Change The Experience Of Remembering?, Oyku Uner

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Increasing the power of retrieval cues typically enhances recall and recognition. Is this driven by remembering, knowing, or both? The current study used the remember/know paradigm in different recall tasks that manipulated the power of retrieval cues. In the first two experiments, participants studied words in a semantic or phonetic context, and were tested in one of these contexts, resulting in two match and two mismatch conditions. Participants recalled more in the match conditions, and this was driven by remembering. In the third experiment, participants studied multiple word lists and were tested immediately after each list with varying number of …

For One Drop Of Blood: Virginity, Sexual Norms And Medical Processes In Hymenoplasty Consultations In The Netherlands, Sherria Ayuandini

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hymenoplasty is a medical procedure done to alter the shape of the hymen membrane. Dutch women of predominantly Muslim migrant ancestry resort to the surgery to maintain the appearance of premarital virginity. This dissertation research studies hymenoplasty as a social phenomenon. It asks: how do the interconnecting issues of gender, religion and migration play out during interactions between doctors and Dutch patients of migrant ancestry in the medical and institutional context of hymenoplasty in the Netherlands? Findings were collected from 2012 and 2015 through participant observations of 70 hymenoplasty consultations in medical establishments in the Netherlands. These observations were complemented …

Between Political Tendentiousness And Mass Media: Popularizing Propaganda Under Party Politics (1927-1937) ---A Case Study Of Shenbao Free Talk, Lei Qin

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Through the study of Shenbao Free Talk, this dissertation showcases an urban underground left-wing propaganda during party politics of 1927-1937 that flowed between literature and journalism and between intellectual literary debates and writing experimentation on mass media. This study purposefully challenges the view of a static top-down propaganda mechanism that attached full agency to the CCP. As my project will show, the CCP had since its early phase in the 1920s and 1930s actively sought commercial media as a means to strengthen its appeal to the urban audiences. Such propaganda work in cities featured a gradual and indirect infiltration into …

Neurogenetics Of The Externalizing Spectrum, Caitlin E. Carey

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Externalizing spectrum disorders, which include attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, alcohol and substance use disorders, and antisocial personality disorder, are characterized by behavioral disinhibition and are thought to be manifestations of a common heritable liability factor throughout the lifespan. However, relatively little is known about their underlying etiology. Here, I probe genetic and neural risk mechanisms for externalizing psychopathology in three complementary studies. First, I report an indirect association between genetic risk for childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and problem drinking in young adulthood, mediated by heightened reward-related neural activity within the ventral striatum, among 404 college students. I …

Intimate Partner Violence Among South Asian Women In The United States: Prevalence And Help-Seeking Behaviors, Vithya Murugan

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Data suggests that over 35% of women in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime and have reported significant short and long-term impacts, such as post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and injury (Breiding et al., 2011). Ethnic/minority women are especially vulnerable to IPV with rates ranging from 44% for African American women to 46% for American Indian/Alaska Native women (Breiding et al., 2011).

Although South Asians are some of the most recent immigrants, they are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States, with a current population of …

Changes In Personality Traits And Personality Pathology In Older Adults: Self And Informant Perspectives, Hannah R. King

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A relatively small amount of research has examined personality and personality disorder change from more than one perspective, particularly in older adults. The main aim of this study is to examine personality and personality disorder change in older adults from multiple perspectives including an interview assessment, self-report, and informant-report. Data from the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network (SPAN), a representative sample of St. Louis residents with 1,630 participants and their informants, was used to study change. We use structural equation modeling to test mean-level changes and individual differences in change over the course of the study. For personality disorders, …

Participation In Governance And Well-Being In The Yukon Flats, Jessica Charlene Black

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explains the relationship between participation in governance and well-being in the Yukon Flats. To garner a deeper understanding of this relationship, definitions of governance and well-being are sought from the participants, thus providing holistic, Indigenous definitions of these concepts. Both formal and informal governance are also explored to understand the important institutions that underpin these larger relationships. Lastly, this dissertation investigates the relationship between participation in traditional hunting, fishing, and gathering and well-being in the Yukon Flats. Qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews, observations, and photographs are all used to document these relationships. Applied thematic analysis is used due …

Effects Of Regolith Properties On Uv/Vis Spectra And Implications For Lunar Remote Sensing, Ecaterina Ioana Coman

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lunar regolith chemistry, mineralogy, various maturation factors, and grain size dominate the reflectance of the lunar surface at ultraviolet (UV) to visible (VIS) wavelengths. These regolith properties leave unique fingerprints on reflectance spectra in the form of varied spectral shapes, reflectance intensity values, and absorption bands. With the addition of returned lunar soils from the Apollo and Luna missions as ground truth, these spectral fingerprints can be used to derive maps of global lunar chemistry or mineralogy to analyze the range of basalt types on the Moon, their spatial distribution, and source regions for clues to lunar formation history and …

Local Political Contexts And Immigrant Integration, Dalston Gawain Ward

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the causes of immigrant integration is critical, as its failure can pose substantial economic and social costs for natives and immigrants alike. In this dissertation, I explore the role of local politics and immigrant demographics in explaining variation in immigrant integration across localities. In the first chapter, I develop a theory linking local politics to immigrant integration. Specifically, I argue that when local governing parties have anti-immigrant ideologies, integration becomes more difficult. I test this argument using data from refugees entering Denmark between 1986 and 1998. These refugees were spatially dispersed across Denmark's 275 municipalities, allowing me to identify …

Native Roots And Foreign Grafts: The Spiritual Quest Of Uchimura Kanzō, Christopher Andrew Born

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Between 1875 and 1890, Japanese academics, writers, legal experts, and intellectuals discussed and debated a host of new ideas and programs in the rapidly-expanding national media. Of great consequence were the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education and the Meiji Constitution. The first sought to establish a strong nativist basis for a Japanese identity under the aegis of an imperial hegemon. The second sought to create a structure for modern citizenship based on Western notions of law and social contract. These seemingly antithetical documents came to symbolize the problematical status of the individual in Meiji Japan. They would become the touchstone …

The Developmental Interplay Of Personality And Relationship Quality In Young Adulthood, Kelci Harris

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I used the framework of the personality-relationship transaction to examine the co-development of personality and relationship quality during college in three different relationship contexts: an aggregate of friends, romantic partner dyads, and friend dyads. I treat the personality-relationship transaction as a dyadic process, rather than an ego-centric one, by including friends’ and romantic partners’ reports of personality and relationship quality. I created a multivariate latent growth curve model version of the Actor Partner Interdependence Model to test how personality and relationship quality co-developed. Initial correlations between personality and relationship quality reflect what is seen in previous work; self-reported extraversion, agreeableness, …

Essays On Liquidity, Informational Frictions, And Monetary Policy, Kee Youn Kang

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation, which consists of two chapters, is devoted to exploring the role of informational friction in monetary economics and finance.

Chapter Ⅰ: COUNTERFEITING, SCREENING AND GOVERNMENT POLICY.

In this chapter, I construct a search theoretic model of money in which counterfeit money can be produced at a cost but agents can screen for fake money also at a cost. Counterfeiting can occur in equilibrium when both costs and the inflation rate are sufficiently low. Optimal monetary policy is the Friedman rule. However, the rationale for the Friedman rule in an economy with the circulation of counterfeit money differs from …

Understanding Household, Network, And Organizational Drivers Of Adoption Of Cleaner Cooking Fuels In Rural India, Praveen Kumar

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Adoption of evidence-based cleaner cooking systems such as Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) is a crucial first step in eventually providing a sustainable solution for household air pollution. To promote adoption of LPG in below poverty line households, we require evidence-based implementation strategies. For these strategies to be feasible and scalable, they need to be grounded in a thorough understanding of the household, network, and organizational level drivers of LPG adoption. However, systematic research on adoption of LPG by poor communities is still lacking.

The overall objective of the study was to develop a better understanding about new insights on the …

Mental Health And Academic Outcomes Among Adolescents In South Korean Orphanages, Hollee Ann Mcginnis

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research conducted over the past 100 years in Western nations support the adverse effects of orphanages on children’s emotional, developmental, and social well-being as well as economic costs to society (Save the Children UK, 2009; Bakermans-Kranenburg, Van IJzendoorn & Juffer, 2008; Williams & Greenberg, 2010). Globally, the number of orphaned and abandoned children is conservatively estimated to be around 143 million, of whom the majority reside in Asia, followed by Sub-Saharan Africa (UNICEF, UNAIDS, & USAID, 2004). South Korea (hereafter “Korea”) is an exemplary nation for study because it has a well-established child welfare system, including family-based alternatives (domestic and …

Evaluating A Targeted, Universal Middle School Program For Childhood Overweight And Obesity: Stayingfit, Myra Altman

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Evaluating a Targeted, Universal Middle School Program for Childhood Overweight and Obesity: StayingFit

by

Myra Altman

Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology

Washington University in St. Louis, 2016

Professor Denise E. Wilfley, Chairperson

Childhood obesity is a pressing public health concern associated with significant medical and psychosocial comorbidities. Intervention is crucial, and schools are often suggested as an important venue through which to intervene, although the results of such interventions are inconsistent and mixed. The present study sought to expand on the literature by evaluating the effect of a targeted and universal school-based obesity intervention, StayingFit, in …

Is There A Higher-Order Mechanism That Explains Performance Across Prediction Tasks?, Michelle Lisa Eisenberg

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

People constantly make predictions about what will happen in the near future. People anticipate how other people around them will act, what other people will say, and what actions will help them achieve the greatest rewards. Because all of these behaviors are typically called prediction, it is easy to make the assumption that performance across all of these types of tasks is driven by the same underlying mechanism. However, there has been little investigation into whether the mechanisms underlying prediction are the same across multiple task modalities. Therefore, in the current study, 226 participants completed four types of tasks that …

A Context And Stakeholder Focused Exploration Of The Sustainability Of Local Organizations In Development, Brad Tucker

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The design and development of this study emerged as the result of the investigator’s work with local nonprofit organizations (NPOs) in the Global South – particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Through experience and study, the investigator observed: 1) The conceptualization and the study of organizational sustainability and effectiveness (OS/OE) – both in scholarship and in practice – are fragmented and, while emphasizing the critical importance of context, do not explain how context impacts sustainability. 2) Existing conceptualizations of OS/OE lack the perspectives of key stakeholders – namely the management and staff of the local NPOs themselves. 3) There is a considerable …

Emotion Dysregulation And Functional Connectivity In Children With And Without A History Of Major Depressive Disorder, Katherine Lopez

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent interest has emerged in understanding the neural mechanisms by which deficits in emotion regulation (ER) may relate to the development of depression. Cortico-limbic alterations reported in emotion dysregulation and depression may be one possible link. We examined the relationships between emotion dysregulation in school age, corticolimbic resting state functional connectivity (rs-FC) in preadolescence, and depressive symptoms in adolescence. Participants were 143 children from a longitudinal preschool onset depression study who completed the Children Sadness Management Scale (CSMS), Child Depression Inventory (CDI), and two resting state MRI scans. We examined rs-FC between four primary regions of interest (ROIs; bilateral dorsolateral …

Developmental Trajectories Of Executive And Verbal Processes In Children With Phenylketonuria, Zoe Hawks

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Phenylketonuria (PKU) is a recessive disorder characterized by disruption in the metabolism of the amino acid phenylalanine. Using a verbal fluency task, previous studies demonstrated that word production is reduced in individuals with PKU relative to controls. Beyond word production, verbal fluency output can be scored for clustering and switching, which enable characterization of verbal and executive processes, respectively. The present study is the first to evaluate clustering and switching in PKU within a longitudinal design, thereby elucidating the developmental time course of core cognitive processes. To this end, semantic (animals, food/drink) and phonemic (S words, F words) fluency data …

To Laugh Or Cry: Examining Intergroup Attitudes Through Humor, Katlin Bentley

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Determinants Of Americans' Attitudes Of Representation, Patrick Delonjay Tucker

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation evaluates how citizens approach the representational relationship in a polarized world. How, if at all, do citizens’ perceptions of their legislators change when party identification dominates the political landscape? The answer from this study may be surprising to casual observers of American politics. First, I find that Americans’ views of their legislators are dynamic. Using original, nationally representative panel data, I find that perceptions of legislators move a significant amount on both a non-policy and policy dimension. Second, these levels of affect and congruence are systematically responsive to perceptions of legislators’ public efforts and home styles. Even in …

How Do I Fit? Understanding Barriers And Facilitators To Social Services Among Women Involved In Commercial Sexual Exploitation Through Identities, Traumas, And Substance Use, Lara B. Gerassi

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation can lead to devastating health and mental health consequences for women, such as elevated rates of substance use, trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder, and depression, as well as sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. Consequently, access to and engagement with services that address addiction, mental health, housing, and provide general advocacy are critically important to women's increased safety, stabilization, and quality of life. The purpose of this grounded theory study is to 1) understand self-identities (with regard to sex trading) and the role of substance use among women involved in CSE and 2) identify perceived barriers …

Essays On Firms And Human Behavior, Nicolas Aguelakakis

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies three different topics related to the economic science. In the first chapter, it is shown that collaborations between firms can have more harmful consequences on prices than a consolidation between them. We analyze a symmetric joint venture in which firms facing external competition collaborate in input production. Under standard regularity conditions, the collaboration leads to higher profits than a horizontal merger, whereas the effect on prices and quantities depends on the form of downstream competition. When firms compete in prices, downstream prices for all firms are higher following a symmetric joint venture than following a merger. The …