Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Psychoanalysis And Constructionalism: Clinical And Metapsychological Implications, Richard H. Loewus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Attempts to reconceptualize the epistemological basis of psychoanalytic metapsychology and clinical praxis from constructionalist perspectives are reviewed and critiqued. The constructionalist epistemology of the American philosopher, Nelson Goodman, is absent in these discussions. Goodman offers a relativism with restraints, a constructionalist epistemology that asserts no one given reality to which our constructions must answer, but does not accept that therefore all constructions are equally valid. Instead, constructions, or what Goodman calls world versions must answer to standards of "Rightness". Goodman's reconception of philosophy subsumes the concept of truth as a special class of rightness, and replaces the concept of knowledge …

Saving The Environment: Science And Social Action, Patricia D'Andrade

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes environmental arguments for their stance toward science. It is a sociology of knowledge investigation of arguments made primarily by environmental scientists in the United States in the 1960s and 70s.

The environmental crisis puts science in question but at the same time looks to science for information and solutions. Thus, science is a center of contention around which arguments develop and oppositions are established. Science is beginning to take the place of political thought in providing legitimating concepts for arguments intended to effect social change. Major environmental books and articles by American authors of the 1960s and …

Social Order And Contest In Meanings And Power: Black Boycotts Against Korean Shopkeepers In Poor New York City Neighborhoods, Jeongduk Yi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to provide an analysis of the process of social reproduction revealed through the conflict between Korean shopkeepers and poor Black inner city residents in New York City. The major concepts, discussed in the introduction, include culture, power, domination, resistance, and conceptual orders.

The pervasive racism and capitalism in America provides the context where the two minority groups have been constituted and where opposing meanings are contested as the conflict between Korean shopkeepers and poor Blacks develops. State agents, Whites, and news media also join in the process of the conflict. They contest with various combinations of coercion, …

The Politics Of Memorialization: Creating A Holocaust Memorial Museum In New York City, Rochelle G. Saidel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study of how government intervention affects the implementation of a project of an interest group analyzes the political processes of the 45 year impasse in completing a major Holocaust memorial in New York City. Using as a case study the 1981-1991 effort to create such a project, the study develops a new concept for analyzing long-term public-private projects. This study develops and uses a so-called Mutagon to analyze the complicated and changing political coalition that has endeavored for ten years to create a Holocaust museum.

The Mutagon concept augments existing interest group theories, (e.g., iron triangle and issue network …

Elite Reproduction And Ethnic Identity In Belize, Karen Judd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the construction and representation of ethnic identity by elite groups over time in Belize, focusing on the creole middle class of the late 19th century. It analyzes the formation and reproduction of local white, creole, and "Spanish" elites in terms of their economic and social locations as well as through the reproduction over several generations of representative elite families. It looks particularly at the role of the colonial authorities in differentially shaping economic and social options and constraints for each group, as well as at the efforts of different groups to insert themselves into this process. Through …

Taxi Driving: A Study Of Leasing In New York City, Allen Russell Stevens

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study uses ethnography, survey research and organizational analysis to examine the impact that taxicab leasing has had upon the occupational, social and personal lives of fleet taxicab drivers. Ethnography has been conducted at the Yellow Taxi Company (a pseudonym for a major taxicab fleet garage in New York City); 408 surveys were completed by fleet drivers, and 50 interviews were conducted (30 with lessees 10 with management at various garages and 10 with local 3036 taxi union personnel). And organizational analysis was used in the description of how the shift from the commission remuneration system to the lease remuneration …

Pygmalion Goes To School: The Effects Of Goal Setting, The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy And Self-Efficacy On Trainee Performance, James Michael Benton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined the effectiveness of motivation techniques for increasing performance in a skill training program. A PC based software program provided structured training to increase subjects' typing skills. Motivation was manipulated by the use of goal setting and the self-fulfilling prophecy (SFP), alone and in combination. The moderating effects of self-efficacy on motivation, defined as a generalized "can do" personality orientation, were also examined. Two levels of goal setting were employed: (1) "do your best"; and, (2) a difficult, specific goal. The SFP was tied to the situation, not the person. It was invoked by informing subjects that the …

The Dynamics Of Program Development: A Case Study In Urban Mental Health Services, John Kastan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study describes the planning, development and implementation of the on-site school mental health program, an innovative mental health services program for schoolchildren in New York City. The program, developed jointly by the New York City Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Alcoholism Services and the New York City Board of Education in 1982, was fully implemented in 1986. This study uses data gathered via the method of participant-observation (the author was employed by the Department of Mental Health), supplemented by the review of documents and discussions with key individuals.

The study begins by providing background on the two …

The Psychological Determinants Of Occupational And Non-Occupational Risk-Taking Among Law Enforcement Officers, William F. Mccarthy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this study was to identify and statistically examine the psychological determinants of risk-taking among law enforcement officers. This study was conceptualized and designed on a rather simple premise that risk-taking in one's leisure would have a dramatic and predominant influence on the grouping of subjects into definable personality trait categories. The suspicion regarding these categories was that subjects who engaged in risk-taking in their leisure time would be distinctively different from all other emerging groups, with regard to the 16 PF Cattell factors. It was also suspected that this leisure time risk-taking group's personality profile would be …

Visual-Spatial And Set-Shifting Functions In Patients With Parkinson's Disease, Sarah A. Raskin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) (N=20) were compared to age and education-matched normal control subjects (N=20) on 18 paper-and-pencil neuropsychological measures. These tests were chosen to measure two specific functions. The first set of tests was chosen to measure spatial orientation, and these tests were divided into those that measure personal orientation, extrapersonal orientation, mental rotation, and right/left orientation. The second set of tests was chosen to measure the ability to shift mental set. Hotelling's multivariate T² tests revealed a significant difference between the PD patients and the normal control subjects on the tests chosen to measure set-shifting ability …

Serial, Parallel And Delay Strategies In The Processing Of Structurally Ambiguous Language Constructions, Harvey Slutsky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Through a set of two experiments, the present study attempted to determine which of three language processing strategies, that is, serial, parallel or delay is employed in parsing two kinds of structurally ambiguous visually presented sentences (transitive and verb complement). The study used a relatively new technique, a self paced syntactic decision task whose sensitivity to local parsing complexity was demonstrated in the first experiment through a partial replication of Ford's (1983) work with relative clause sentences. The findings showed Object relatives to be harder to process at the position of the main verb. The same findings from a followup …

Children's Video Usage: A Comparative Study Of Nine To Eleven-Year-Olds Living In London And New York, Seth P. Welins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this cross-cultural study identifies which video and non-video related activities are selected by nine-to-eleven year old children living in New York and London, England. Four hundred children were surveyed and interviewed about their television and VCR viewing habits and their use of computers and computer/video games as well their after-school, non-video activities.

A uses-gratifications approach provides a general framework for the analyses of the data. These data show that there is a complex interplay between children's activity choices and the occupational status of the child's parents, the child's race/ethnicity, gender, ecological environment, family structure and social structure. …

Attitudes About Disabled People And Evaluations Of A Disabled Or Nondisabled Task Partner After Success Or Failure, Joan Weisenfeld Bailey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined the issue of ambivalence-induced behavioral amplification as applied to physically disabled individuals. The theory maintains that: (a) attitudes toward the disabled tend to be ambivalent rather than hostile, sympathetic or indifferent; (b) under certain conditions behavior toward disabled individuals may be more extreme than behavior toward nondisabled individuals; and (c) the extreme behavior is mediated by individual differences in ambivalence about disabled people in general. These three notions were tested. Internally consistent, independent scales of pro and anti attitudes toward the physically disabled were developed, supporting the notion of a high potentiality for ambivalence in attitudes toward …

Prediction Of Treatment Response In Chronic Pain Patients: The Relationship Between Illness Behavior And Self-Concept, Andrew Bruce Rosenblum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigated self-concepts held by chronic pain patients. It was hypothesized that self schemas of probable and ideal levels of control, dependence on medical care, physical vulnerability, affiliation and conflict with physicians would predict response to treatment.

At intake into a three week in-patient program 72 pain patients were given a self perception scale which measured these five dimensions across three "possible selves" (now self, probable self and ideal self). Patients were also given at intake, and at follow-up (5 weeks after discharge), a battery of psychological and behavioral measures. Control, dependence on medical care, and vulnerability (CDV) were …

Cold Type: Computerized Typesetting And Occupational Subcultures In The New York City Newspaper Industry, Eve Fay Hochwald

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Using a framework drawn from recent social science discussions of the labor process and from the anthropological literature on culture as the generative basis through which people adapt to or transform their social circumstances, this dissertation analyses the changes occurring in the occupational subcultures and political organization of printers, journalists, and computer service workers in the New York City newspaper industry since the introduction of computerized typesetting in the mid-1970s. One consequence has been a restructured labor force, entailing a shift of skilled, traditionally male, manual craft jobs to, on the one hand, clerical "women's work," and, on the other, …

A Comparison Of The Symbolic Function In Delicate Self-Mutilators With Joyce Mcdougall's Conceptualization Of The Symbolic Function In Psychosomatic Illness And Sexual Perversion, Thomas Richard Negron

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The syndrome of delicate self-mutilation is reviewed with emphasis on the psychoanalytic interpretations that have been offered to explain this behavior. These interpretations generally find a symbolic meaning in this symptom, while also noting the pre-verbal level of development that is a marked aspect of these patient's functioning. The alternate hypothesis is offered that delicate self-mutilators suffer from a deficit in their capacity to create symbolic symptoms.

The work of Joyce McDougall with patients manifesting sexual perversions and psychosomatic symptomology is reviewed. She hypothesizes that these patients suffer a deficit in their capacity for symbolic functioning, and she coins the …

Social Security, Savings, And Labor Supply Of The Elderly In Japan, Tetsuji Yamada

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The study examines the controversial, inconsistent empirical results of the effect of social security on personal savings and analyzes the interdependency in the context of social security between the personal savings and labor supply behavior of elderly workers.

Very few studies in this field have been done, and it has not theoretically and empirically been accomplished yet in Japan. Time-series data are used for 1946-1982, and the methods of technique are ordinary least squares and a simultaneous-equation model in the life cycle framework.

The study finds that social security affects personal savings and that the benefit effect dominates the retirement …

The Impact Of Presentence Investigations On Plea Bargained Dispositions In Kings County Supreme Court, Joseph G. Enright

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the presentence function of probation from an historical and empirical perspective which argues that the purported diminution of the role of the presentence report (PSR) in the sentencing process–as a result of sentence bargaining–is more reflective of a prevailing disenchantment with the rehabilitative ideal than any thoroughly considered, reliable validation of the PSR's dispensibility. It is demonstrated, through a review of the literature, that poorly conceived, polemically biased empirical research has helped to perpetuate the notion that these reports have little value. A survey of studies and inquiries conducted in New York over the past twenty years …

Israeli, Palestinian And Egyptian Explanations Of Political Actions In The Middle East, Bethamie Horowitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigated how people affiliated with different parties in an international conflict understand their own actions and the actions of their adversaries. Using data gathered in the Middle East in 1982, the study examined the explanations offered by 1336 Israeli Jews, Palestinians (living in Israel) and Egyptians to three political events in the Middle East: 'Israeli Air Force conducts a raid on Beirut,' 'Palestinians attack a bus on the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway,' and 'A peace treaty is announced between Israel and Egypt.'

The study, an exploratory analysis, was carried out in a sequence of stages. First, the analysis involved …

The Experience Of Public Art In Urban Settings, Roberta Degnore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The sine qua non for an artwork in the urban realm is neither its judged "goodness" nor the ability of audiences to perceive it "correctly," but is the total experience the work contributes to as part of the fabric of interlocking meanings that places have in people's lives.

In urban settings, the physical attributes and private intentionality of a work do not stand alone. As carefully as an artist installs his/her pieces in a gallery, the same concern for their working together and with their total environment must be applied to artworks in complex public settings, where choice to be …

Precursors Of Creativity: Metaphor, Symbolic Play And Categorization In Early Childhood, Jay A. Seitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Four and 6-year-olds were presented with seven different types of metaphorical relationships in both pictures and words. The core task consisted of a metaphor comprehension task of identical triads (target, nonliteral match, literal match) comprising perceptual/color, perceptual/shape, physiognomic, cross-modal, collectional, psychophysical and taxonomic matches. Children matched items based either on nonliteral similarity or literal contiguity. A series of symbolic play tasks were given to half the subjects at each age group and were hypothesized to facilitate the comprehension of metaphor because of an underlying structural similarity common to systems of reference invoked in both the act of metaphor comprehension and …

Working At Home And Being At Home: The Interaction Of Microcomputers And The Social Life Of Households, Jamie L. Horwitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Not until the recent upsurge of interest in microcomputers and home work has attention been devoted to the household as a setting for technical learning and invention, or organizational and independent work. Drawing upon theoretical implications of research on industrial technology and the household, this study contributes to the development of an empirical basis for understanding the first ten years of microcomputer use at home.

The environmental approach to this psychological study includes two stages. In the first, a survey and content analysis of over 400 articles in mainstream periodicals and national newspapers revealed that since 1976 the representation of …

Viewers' Perceptions Of Gender Roles On Television, Susan Barbara Prager

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation develops and applies a method for studying viewers' perceptions of gender roles on television. Two hypotheses–selective perception and oversocialization–were tested. In contrast to other studies which rely on subjects' long-term memories, subjects were shown a tape of One Day at a Time, a popular television show, immediately prior to responding to a questionnaire on the show. Subjects were also asked for demographic data and administered the Demplewolff Sex Role Attitude Test. T-Tests and correlations were done, using groups formed around the sex role attitudes of the subjects (as measured by the Demplewolff Sex Role Attitude Test), as …

Working At Home And Being At Home: The Interaction Of Microcomputers And The Social Life Of Households, Jamie Horwitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Not until the recent upsurge of interest in microcomputers and home work has attention been devoted to the household as a setting for technical learning and invention, or organizational and independent work. Drawing upon theoretical implications of research on industrial technology and the household, this study contributes to the development of an empirical basis for understanding the first ten years of microcomputer use at home.

The environmental approach to this psychological study includes two stages. In the first, a survey and content analysis of over 400 articles in mainstream periodicals and national newspapers revealed that since 1976 the representation of …

Trouble-Shooters And Trouble-Makers: Witchfinding And Traditional Malawian Medicine, Arnold Paul Wendroff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation describes and analyzes the system of traditional medicine operating in northeastern Malawi, especially those beliefs in witchcraft and spirit possession which cause people to seek out traditional rather than Western healers. Although a wide range of illustrative material is presented, the discussion focuses on an analysis of client correspondence to traditional herbalists (nganga) and diviner-witchdoctors (nchimi). Such correspondence is apparently the first reported in the anthropological literature of central and eastern Africa, and the letters that comprise it are used to elucidate the role of traditional healers and the nature of the healer-client relationship. An examination is also …

The Political Economy Of Populist-Nationalism In Argentina, 1943-55: Peronism As A Transitional Stage In The Development Of A Dependent Industrial Economy, Thomas M.H. Kappner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Focusing on the Peronist period from 1943 to 1955 as the high point of a transitional process between two patterns of dependency on foreign capital, the study explores the dynamics underlying the pendular cycle so characteristic of Latin American political life–the dialectical movement between some variant of populist rule and that based on military power as a means of repressing popular aspirations. Peronism emerged in the context of contradictions within a developmental pattern based on an alliance of the export producing, landowning oligarchy with foreign, primarily British, commercial and financial groups. The developmental model promoted by the Peron government in …

Analyzing Country Risk: Estimating The Probability Of External Debt Repudiation In The Post-Oil-Embargo Decade, Thomas Joseph Webster

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the use of logit analysis as a tool for assessing the likelihood that a sovereign risk cannot, or will not, adhere to the terms of its foreign debt obligations as a result of adverse political, social, economic, or financial disruptions. The discussion is divided into two parts. Part one is devoted to a review of the topic of assessing the likelihood of debt servicing difficulties by borrower nations by first tracing the growth of international bank lending activities by U.S. commercial banks, followed by a general discussion of the international debt crisis and a brief survey of …

The Utilization Of Communicational Cues By One- And Two-Year-Old Children, Rhianon Allen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The relationships between three models for describing pragmatic response to utterances were surveyed and the application of these models to young children's response patterns evaluated. Of particular interest was how children might discriminate action-directive and information-testing usage of language.

In order to empirically test the validity of these models, sixteen one- and two-year-old children were visited in their homes. Each child participated in two video recorded play sessions with an experimenter, during which he or she was asked complex What-questions that could take either informational or action responses. Gestural accompaniments and preceding discourse were systematically varied in Experiment I. Each …

The State And Underdevelopment In Spanish America: The Political Roots Of Dependency In Peru And Argentina From The Conquest To 1895, Douglas Stuart Friedman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study challenges the dependency perspective claim that Spanish American countries developed agro/mineral export economies in the nineteenth century as a result of their integration into the capitalist international economy. It offers an alternative interpretation which argues that the process of State building and the response of the emergent Spanish American States to internal political class struggles were chiefly responsible for setting the direction of their economies as well as the degree and character of their integration into the international economy.

Rather than focusing on the effects of the international economy in explaining the roots of dependency and underdevelopment in …

Neighborhood Change In New York City: A Case Study Of Park Slope, 1850 - 1980, Timothy James O'Hanlon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is a case study about social and economic changes in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Since the 1960's communities in New York City have been undergoing the process of deterioration and abandonment, or alternatively, the conversion of homes and warehouses for upper income families in high rent districts. In Park Slope both of these trends have been occurring. This study aims through an examination of a single community to provide both a comprehensive and comprehensible account of the process of neighborhood change in New York City.

This research describes the pattern of change in Park Slope within the context of the …