Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Toddlers And Technology: An Examination Of How The Digital Surround May Be Related To Prototypic Vocabulary Development And Social Interactions During Play, Hannah Biarnesen Hutcheson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study sought to examine how the digital technology that surrounds young children may be related to prototypic vocabulary development and Social interactions during play. Twenty-six families in the Northwest Arkansas region with children between 15-36 months of age participated in the study. Thirteen children attended a campus preschool, six children attended a grant-funded local preschool, and seven children, all from the Northwest Arkansas area, were part of an earlier home-based study. The materials for the study included a developmental-technology use questionnaire and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Archival videotaped play sessions with the seven home-based children utilized a “Little …

“Between The Yes And The No”: Alternative Ontologies And Literary Depictions Of Mysticism In Borges And Mahfouz, David Shane Elder

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the advent of the modern era and the subsequent age of Enlightenment, the rational tradition has enabled the West to assert command of a large area of the globe and its population. While advancing the conditions of living for many, rational structures have also been used to control and repress others. The theosophy of the medieval Islamic mystic Ibn al-ᶜArabī, with its basis in irrational thought, offers a counterpoint to the rational and empirical traditions, the Social orthodoxies to which these epistemologies contribute, and the ontologies with which these epistemologies and orthodoxies are correlated. Yet mystical expression is very …

The Mediating Effect Of Moral Beliefs On Responses To Cyberbullying Scenarios, Valdis Rice

Psychology

Just as in traditional bullying, bystanders play a pivotal role in cyberbullying as well. The current study sought to elucidate characteristics that distinguish individuals who act as passive bystanders from those who intervene on a victim’s behalf who is cyberbullied (“active bystanders”). Of particular interest was to examine whether empathy, moral beliefs and emotion regulation predict bystanding. Social self-efficacy, i.e., the belief in one’s ability to express one’s opinion and handle interpersonal conflict, was also examined. A sample of 400 college students completed a set of self-report instruments assessing these constructs and cyberbullying. Additionally, participants were asked how they would …

Struggle For Survival: The History And Ethics Of Living Collections, Emily Simms

Museum Studies Theses

This thesis explores the ethics involved with institutions caring for living collections worldwide such as zoos, national parks, and aquariums. There are several main concerns that these institutions are currently facing: poaching, keeper negligence, euthanasia within zoos themselves, and public opinion. The moral issues engrained can help guide keepers of these collections to take better care of the animals for which they are responsible. It also explores specific cases in the past in which living collections have managed serious issues and how they resolved these issues.

Differential Maya Economies: A Comparative Zooarchaeological Study Of Political Economies At The Postclassic Site Of Mayapán, Katarina Spero

Anthropology

Previous research on the archaeological site of Mayapán , the las t political capital of the Maya, located in the N orthwest of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula , has focused mainly on urban life and the monumental architecture of the city center. In the 1950s the Carnegie Institution of Washington initially mapped and investigated Mayapán but the more recent contributions of both the Mexican government’s National Institute of Anthrop ology and History (INAH) and the Economic Foundations of Mayapán Project (PEMY) have greatly expanded current knowledge regarding the social, political, and economic organization of the population that once inhabited the metropolis …

The Investigation Of Dna And Rna Structural Differences Using Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatography, Evanna Lerouge, Maria Basanta-Sanchez, Srivathsan V. Ranganathan

Anthropology

DNA and RNA chromatography is extensively used for nucleic acid analysis. To better understand the chromatographic mechanisms by which DNA and RNA oligonucleotides are separated, ion pair reverse-pair ultra-high performance liquid chromatography (IP RP UHPLC) methods were developed. 11mer and 12mer DNA and RNA oligonucleotides of various compositions were used during this study. The first part of this study analyzed 11mer DNA and RNA oligonucleotides to better understand the chromatographic separations of DNA and RNA. The results gathered through the IP RP UHPLC analysis of these oligonucleotides demonstrated the existence of structural features that affect the chromatographic separations of DNA …

Sex Differences In Calbindin-D28k Expressing Cells In The Brains Of Progesterone Receptor Knock Out Mice, Alexandria Sarenski

Anthropology

No abstract provided.

An Experimental Investigation Of Procurement Auctions With Asymmetric Sellers, John Aloysius, Cary A. Deck, Li Hao, Ryan French

ESI Publications

Electronic reverse auctions are a commonly used procurement mechanism. Research to date has focused on suppliers who are ex ante symmetric in that their costs are drawn from a common distribution. However, in many cases a seller's range of potential costs depends on their own operations, location, or economies of scale and scope. Thus, understanding how different bidder types impact auction outcomes is key when designing an auction. This paper reports the results of the first controlled laboratory experiment designed to compare prices between first-price and second-price procurement auctions for homogeneous goods when seller cost types are asymmetric and the …

Date Stamping Bubbles In Real Estate Investment Trusts, Diego Escobari, Mohammad Jafarinejad

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

We test for the existence of single and multiple bubble periods in four Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) indices using the Supremum Augmented Dickey-Fuller (SADF) and the Generalized SADF. These methods allow us to estimate the beginning and the end of bubble periods. Our results provide statistically significant evidence of speculative bubbles in the REIT index and its three components: Equity, Mortgage and Hybrid REITs. These results may be valuable for real estate financial managers and for investors in REITs.

Us Airport Ownership, Efficiency, And Heterogeneity, Levent Kutlu, Patrick Mccarthy

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

All US commercial airports are in the public sector yet not all have the same ownership type. For medium and large hub US airports we use stochastic frontier analysis to analyze the efficiency differences for alternative airport ownership types. We find that while form of ownership may matter for cost efficiency, in general its effect is relatively small. Yet type of public sector ownership does have cost efficiency implications in certain environments. Further, when heterogeneity is not controlled, the results change substantially so that type of ownership matters much more which demonstrates the importance of controlling for cross section heterogeneity.

Eyes Wide Open: Pupil Size As A Proxy For Inhibition In The Masked-Priming Paradigm, Jason Geller, Mary L. Still, Alison L. Morris

Psychology Faculty Publications

A core assumption underlying competitive-network models of word recognition is that in order for a word to be recognized, the representations of competing orthographically similar words must be inhibited. This inhibitory mechanism is revealed in the masked-priming lexical-decision task (LDT) when responses to orthographically similar word prime-target pairs are slower than orthographically different word prime-target pairs (i.e., inhibitory priming). In English, however, behavioral evidence for inhibitory priming has been mixed. In the present study, we utilized a physiological correlate of cognitive effort never before used in the masked-priming LDT, pupil size, to replicate and extend behavioral demonstrations of inhibitory …

Impact Of Universal Social-Emotional And Behavioral Screening Among Middle School Students: A Multistage Approach To Identification, Kristen M. Ballinger

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Mental health problems often have an onset during the school age years and significantly impact the development, academic achievement, and future success of children and adolescents (Kessler et al., 2005). Less than half of the 10% to 20% of youth believed to be emotionally and behaviorally at-risk receive the mental health services they need (Bradshaw et al., 2008; Gresham, 2007). As a result, universal screening for mental health risk has been recommended as the best initial step to identifying and intervening with at-risk students. Numerous screeners and methods of implementation exist, but a widely accepted and utilized process has failed …

Family, Housing, And The Political Geography Of Gay Liberation In Los Angeles County, 1960-1986, Ian M. Baldwin

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examines the gay liberation movement in Los Angeles County through the lens of housing rights. It illustrates how sexual justice activism evolved in tandem with the fates of the welfare state and urban politics. Like racial minorities, queers have been stymied by economic barriers. Beginning in the 1930s, federal housing agencies established “family” requirements to housing subsidies, which the state defined through biology or marriage. In L.A. County, activists worked to overcome this heteronormative barrier at the grassroots and within the political establishment. Binding gay liberation to economic and family justice, queers opened housing shelters and social service …

Understanding Contingent Faculty: A Quantitative Study Of Engagement, Satisfaction, Commitment, And Mentoring Needs, Heidi Batiste

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The representation of contingent faculty in higher education is prevalent, as a result of changes in the staffing practices in academia. The American higher education system currently employs roughly 4 contingent faculty members for every one, which is tenured or on the tenure-track. As a result of an extensive study on part-time academic faculty, Gappa and Leslie (1993) developed a typology as a way to categorize them. The typology consisted of four employment profiles based primarily on academic background, employment history, and career motivations: career-enders, specialists/experts/professionals, aspiring academics, and freelancers (Gappa & Leslie, 1993). This quantitative study used survey research …

Commingled Tombs And Arcgis: Analyzing The Mortuary Context And Taphonomy At Bronze Age Tell Abraq, Maryann Calleja

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The use of global positioning systems (GPS) and mapping software are commonplace in today’s archaeology. Artifacts and human remains can be plotted on maps and digitized immediately on sites allowing for instant analysis. Yet, the use of GPS in some locations may not be feasible due to natural or human-made terrain features such as canopy cover, densely built urban environments, caves, or other environments where satellite access may be limited. Additionally, prior to the widespread use of GPS, field archaeologists had to rely solely upon systematic, detailed notes and sketches. Such was the case at the Bronze Age tomb at …

Analyzing The Relationship Between Job Demands, Job Resources, And Personal Resources On Employee Engagement And Exhaustion Of Juvenile Probation/Parole Officers, Danilo Estuardo Chavarria

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Organizations should constantly strive to improve their levels of employee engagement, because improving employee engagement influences the well-being of both employees and organizations (Bakker, 2011, p. 268). In today’s workplaces, organizations need employees who are psychologically connected to their work, who are willing and able to invest themselves in their roles, and who are proactive and committed to high quality standards.” (Bakker, Albrecht, & Leiter, 2011, pp. 4-5). This is important; not only for private organizations but for public organizations as well, especially organizations in the criminal justice system who continuously strive to keep the peace, have constant contact with …

The Development Of Sexual Attitudes In The Family Of Origin And Sexual Satisfaction Later In Life, Bryant Christlieb

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study was to determine if variance for individuals’ sexual satisfaction as well as attitudes toward sexual instrumentality, sexual permissiveness, sexual communion and attitudes could be predicted by family sexual communication during adolescence as well as various demographic factors such as age, years together, gender, race, income level, religion, religiosity and sexual orientation. This was done by recruiting 250 people via Mechanical Turk (www.mturk.com) and through undergraduate courses at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. The researcher used an enter-method multiple regression model and Kendall’s Tau for non-parametric data. The results of this study show that sexual satisfaction …

Teachers + School Librarians = Student Achievement: When Will We Believe It?, Gaetana D'Agata

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

School librarians, teachers, and administrators have understood that student achievement can be enhanced when teachers and librarians collaborate. Most of the scholarly literature concerning teacher-school librarian collaboration has been written by school librarians rather than teachers and administrators. Consequently, the purpose of this study was to describe the concept of teacher-librarian collaboration from the perspectives of school librarians. Content analysis of 37 responses to a school librarians’ online discussion board revealed the barriers to and some of the supports for collaboration.

How Queer!: Camp Expression In Francis Poulenc's Trio For Oboe, Bassoon, And Piano, Kevin Ryland Eberle

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The music of Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) contains a great deal of humor, irony, and drama. These elements have mostly been attributed to Poulenc’s personal frivolity and associations with over-the-top figures such as Jean Cocteau. Poulenc’s homosexuality, until recently, was marginalized by a discourse shaped by Claude Rostand’s 1950 binary of “monk” (moine) and “bad boy” (voyou). In the early 21st century, Richard Burton notes that this cliché focused the discourse of a sacred/profane binary instead of a heterosexual/homosexual binary. The sacred/profane binary is used by scholars such as H. Wendell Howard to explain the distinction between Les Mamelles de Tirésias …

Assessing Clinical Significance Of The Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment And Cognitive Testing Battery When Comparing Adjusted And Unadjusted Rci Methods For Different Ranges Of Baseline Scores, Ashley N. Figaro

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The growing concern revolving around the dangers of sports-related concussions have led to the most recent implementation of neurocognitive (NC) test batteries as a means to objectively determine the presence of a cognitive defect. Whereas any other sports-related injury can be diagnosed with tools such as an x-ray or MRI, a concussion represents a metabolic disturbance that cannot be identified by these diagnostic tools. Many neurocognitive test batteries employ statistical techniques to derive cut off scores in order to represent significant or insignificant changes as compared to individual baseline scores, or pre-established normative values. If an individuals’ post-injury score exceeds …

Concurrent Mental Health And Sport Performance Enhancement In An Athlete Initiating Behavioral Intervention With No Assessed Pathology: A Case Examination Supporting Optimization, Yulia Gavrilova

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Collegiate athletes are often exposed to unique environmental stressors that may negatively impact the way they think, behave, and feel in athletic, academic, and social domains, potentially compromising their performance and mental health when cognitive and behavioral skills are relatively underdeveloped. Behavioral interventions have been shown to enhance cognitive and behavioral skills in persons with assessed mental health deficits in the general population. However, little is known about the relative effects of psychologically-based programs in persons who do not evidence pathology. Along these lines, The Optimum Performance Program in Sports (TOPPS), based on Family Behavior Therapy, was recently developed with …

#Therighttoremainsilent: Police Department Adoption And Deployment Of Social Media, 2010-~2015, Paul Geary

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Police have a complex myriad of ever-changing responsibilities and fluid expectations from the public, and traditional media has performed a largely ambivalent self-appointed oversight and agenda-setting function vis-à-vis police for decades. But in the last five years, the second wave of the first new mass communications medium since the 1940s, social media, has democratized both that oversight function as well as traditional media's agenda-setting ability. Meanwhile, police have been characterized as slow to adapt to change and to adopt new practices in response to a changing world. This work analyzed police agency social media adoption and explained the rate at …

Consumer Perspectives: Corporate Social Responsibility Through Advertisement And Publicity, Margaret George

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Corporations around the globe invest a considerable amount of resources in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. A delicate challenge for practitioners of this growing business practice is effectively leveraging media to communicate CSR to encourage positive perceptions of that brand from the public. Grounded in legitimacy theory, this study seeks to determine the most effective medium to communicate companies’ environmental and social CSR to increase positive perceptions. The research is operationalized through a quasi-experimental design that deployed two sets of questionnaires containing an advertisement and publicity stimuli depicting a brand’s environmental or social CSR to a random population. Participants’ responses …

The Birth Of An Arts Scene, William Goldberg

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Scenes, created and defined by particular social settings offer a central activity that help to focus community interaction, a sense of purpose and of being in the right place. This dissertation is about the grassroots development of an art scene in the most unlikely of places – Las Vegas, a city sociologists have often described as having an isolating character with an outward focus on tourism, a weak civic culture and social fragmentation, resulting in an individually-focused and socially isolated population.

Using the multiple techniques of ethnographic research, this work comes out of: (1) conversations with early visionaries, (2) participant …

Inner Experience And Self-Ratings Of Inner Speaking, Jason Michael Kelsey

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Questionnaires are often used as measures of inner experience. This study questions the adequacy of such measures, using inner speech as an example. We compared two questionnaire measures of inner speaking to each other and to inner experience as apprehended by Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES, a naturalistic, high fidelity method of exploring inner experience). Undergraduate volunteers (N = 260) took two questionnaires designed to measure inner speaking: the Self-Talk Scale (STS) and the Nevada Inner Experience Questionnaire (NIEQ). A subset of these (N = 16) participated in DES to investigate their inner speaking with fidelity. Scores on the NIEQ and …

A Qualitative Study Of Job Competencies For Healthcare Social Work Administrators: An Application Of The Short Competency Model Process Used To Identify The Behaviors And Personal Characteristics Of Exemplary Performers, Lashonda Jones-Moore

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Job competencies are central to every organization’ s human resource management system. Competencies can be used to help organizations create high performance cultures, select and hire a workforce, develop leaders, and establish a foundation for training strategies. Social work, as a profession, has developed competency models for many specialized fields of social work. Health is the second most common practice area reported by social workers with a master’ s degree in social work, the predominant social work degree for licensed social workers. In highly structured, rapidly evolving, and complex organizations such as healthcare systems, leaders and managers require distinctively different …

Investigating Inner Experience While Reading An Erotic Short Story, Leiszle Rae Lapping-Carr

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

An investigation of the phenomenological aspects of sexual response is needed for a more comprehensive understanding of human sexuality. To obtain high fidelity descriptions of inner experience during a sexually oriented task, the current study used Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) while seven participants read an erotic short story. Participants were trained in DES by sampling during everyday activities. After training, they were sampled while reading two classic short stories on a web-based program. Participants then sampled their experience while reading an erotic short story using the same web-based program. Some of the participants were willing to discuss their inner experience …

A Content Analysis Of Gender-Specific Media Coverage Of Sport: Ncaa Athletic Department Home Webpages, Margo R. Malik

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Studies have found that media coverage of women’s sports is inadequate when compared with coverage of men’s sports. The results of these studies have revealed inadequacies in terms of amount of coverage as well as type of coverage. Findings demonstrate that there is a certain way media frame female athletes when they are covered. Female athletes are often portrayed in overly sexualized images, as feminine role models, as passive rather than active, and in sports that are considered gender-appropriate. These types of portrayals can perpetuate gender bias and stereotypes, undermine the true athletic ability of female athletes, and give the …

The Effects Of Psychopathic Traits On Social Support Networks, Stephanie Marie Molina

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Psychopathy is a personality disorder with distinctive behavioral, emotional and interpersonal features. The dual process model of psychopathy conceptualizes the construct via two distinct factors: fearless dominance (FD) and impulsive antisociality (IA). While individuals higher in psychopathic traits are less likely to cooperate with others, research examining the impact of psychopathy on individuals’ social networks is lacking. In the current study, 377 first year undergraduate students completed the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire, the Ten Item Personality Inventory, and ratings regarding their social networks via Qualtrics. Students were asked to list up to ten friends and rate their relationship via a newly …

A Comparison Of The Effects Of Peer Networks And Peer Video Modeling On Positive Social Interactions Performed By Young Children With Developmental Disabilities, Conrad Oh-Young

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A concern that parents of children with disabilities have is whether or not their offspring are able to interact and be accepted by children who do not have disabilities. Unfortunately children with developmental disabilities (DD) may experience difficulties when interacting with typically developing peers. One method of addressing this issue has been to ensure that children with DD receive instruction in the same school setting as their peers. However, simply attending the same school as children who are typically developing may not be enough. Hence the need for interventions such as peer network (PN) and peer video modeling (PVM), that …