Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Students' Experiences Of Othering: Recommendations For Inclusive Classroom Climates, Stela Saltaga

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

As universities in the United States become increasingly diverse, the problem of “othering” in classrooms becomes an important issue to explore. Othering is the process of treating or perceiving one as different from ourselves, and can result in alienation and other challenges for students succeeding in higher education. Embracing a qualitative research approach, this study explores the experiences of “othering” through the stories of twelve students who have been treated differently than others in the classroom. The findings of this study provide insights into the complex relationships between “othering” and students’ experiences in the classroom, and contributes to more informed …

The Right To Be Forgotten: Analyzing Conflicts Between Free Expression And Privacy Rights, Mindy Weston

Theses and Dissertations

As modern technology continues to affect civilization, the issue of electronic rights grows in a global conversation. The right to be forgotten is a data protection regulation specific to the European Union but its consequences are creating an international stir in the fields of mass communication and law. Freedom of expression and privacy rights are both founding values of the United States which are protected by constitutional amendments written before the internet also changed those fields. In a study that analyzes the legal process of when these two fundamental values collide, this research offers insight into both personal and judicial …

Jornaleros Engaged In A Multidimensional Struggle: A Critical Ethnography With Day Laborers In Las Vegas, Jorge Adrian Castrejon

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Day labor work has spread across the entire Unite States as part of the secondary labor market, or as Cherrie Moraga describes it- survival work. Day laborers in Las Vegas, Nevada have become a significant part of this trend in the Southwest, where the highest rate of day laborers work, and for which little community and scholarly work has been produced. The National Day Labor Survey, the most comprehensive study with day laborers, reports that the day labor market is rife with abuse and violations of worker rights. But, the exploitation of this predominantly migrant workforce would not be possible …

Neurocognitive Correlates Of The Comprehensive Trail Making Test (Ctmt) In Brain Injured Children, Abigail Rose Mayfield

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Comprehensive Trail-Making Test (CTMT) is a commonly used assessment tool shown to be sensitive to brain dysfunction. Research has found cognitive abilities such as possessing speed, working memory, motor speed, sustained attention, and cognitive flexibility influence performance on the CTMT in non-clinical populations.

However, little research has been done to examine the neurocognitive abilities that influence performance on the CTMT in clinical populations. Research has demonstrated that the factor structure of the CTMT differs between clinical and non-clinical groups, which supports the need for further validation of the CTMT in clinical populations. This study examines the neurocognitive correlates that …

Iran Through Time: A Visual And Content Analysis Of Iranians On The Cover Of Time Magazine, Kianoosh Mousavi Niaraki

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study analyzed media bias in the coverage of Iran by studying the covers of Time magazine that have featured Iranian individuals, politicians, and ordinary citizens. Previous literature has studied media’s influence on shaping perceptions of various issues and foreign culture and politics, as well as more detailed studies of media’s coverage of foreign countries and societies; however, this study focused on a neglected area of scholarship regarding depictions of Iranians in popular media. It used visual and content analyses of covers to determine the way Time magazine depicts Iran to American audiences.

The Psychophysiological Correlates Of Personality, Trauma, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder And Social Support, Meghan E. Pierce

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Theories considering the etiology of psychopathy suggest that trauma exposure, specifically childhood maltreatment and sexual abuse, is related to the development of callous-unemotional traits in children and adolescents, which are precursors to psychopathic traits in adulthood. Furthermore, posttraumatic stress disorder has an opposite relationship with many of the emotional and behavioral components of the two-factor model of psychopathy. Specifically, PTSD is positively associated to IA and traits associated with it and negatively associated with FD. Thus, this study sought to expand upon the current theories of a trauma-based etiology of psychopathy by investigating the relationship between trauma, PTSD, and psychopathic …

Launching Conservative Resistance: A Rhetorical Criticism Of The Young Americans For Freedom, Tyler John Snelling

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

At the end of the 1940s, conservatives faced internal divisions, an elitist image, and people supporting government post Great Depression. Liberalism seemed entrenched throughout society. Yet, the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), the first national, conservative movement, formed in 1960. This thesis investigates YAF’s earliest “publicity” in National Review, an influential magazine, to understand part of what preceded conservatism’s evolution. Publishing “The Ivory Tower: Young Americans for Freedom” by William F. Buckley and the “Sharon Statement,” YAF’s manifesto, side-by-side formed a new identity—young conservative—that empowered activists. From Maurice Charland’s “constitutive rhetoric,” chapter two investigates Buckley’s telling of the past as …

Neural Processes Underlying Auditory Context Effects, Breanne Yerkes

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Auditory information within our natural environments is disorganized and often ambiguous, leaving our auditory systems with a complex task: organizing sound into coherent objects. The auditory system uses both current and prior information to assist in completing this task. The influences of previous context on current perception have been referred to as context effects. A contrastive context effect results in a current perception that is opposite of what is expected based on the physical stimulus properties presented during an immediate context. A facilitative context effect results in a current perception that is the same as the perception during the immediate …

Broadcast News Directors' Perceptions Of Race: A Survey Of Psychological And Sociological Measures, Amaya Nichele Worthem

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Understanding the role of media in the lives of consumers has been a longstanding concern of various scholars. Although the news media do not tell consumers what to think explicitly, they do imply what consumers should think, via the contexts in which news is presented. The central thrust of this thesis is a psychological and sociological perception study of news directors’ implicit and explicit perceptions of race when creating news content. The aim is to discover whether an implicit or explicit racial bias can be found amongst some news directors when covering racial minority groups. A better understanding of bias …

Symbolic Versus Sustainable: Tracking The Apparel Industry’S Response To Crisis Over Time, Sadell R. Crabb

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In this study I investigate the impact different director types have on firm commitments to voluntary labor regulation. Using an author-constructed dataset of eight focal firm’s boards of directors for a nineteen-year period, I examine the impacts of gender and racial diversity, as well as the inclusion of independent interlocking board members on firm commitments to voluntary labor regulation following a legitimacy crisis in the 1990s. Framing firms’ responses within a chronological approach to institutional theory, I test how trends for these three director types varied for firms most and least committed to voluntary labor regulation, as well as for …

An Exploration Of Youth Experiences In Chatrooms, Emily A. Greene-Colozzi

Student Theses

Internet predation of minors has increasingly become a focus of child abuse research and legislation. Concerns have arisen regarding “online grooming,” the ongoing process during which an adult offender prepares a child for sexual abuse by gaining emotional access to the child through an intimate online relationship. The present study provided one of the first comprehensive examinations of a victim's perspective of online grooming. Participants were 374 male and female college students at a public undergraduate institution who completed an online survey covering demographics, lifestyle factors, and experiences online of sexual solicitation or online grooming. Results showed that approximately 30% …

Retrieval-Induced Forgetting Via Social Media: The Mnemonic Consequences Of Posting Pictures On Instagram, Chi Lap Wong

Student Theses

Social media has become a common tool for individuals to selectively offload personal memories to the internet. Such selectivity may reinforce the posted “memory” but induce forgetting for related “memories” (Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994). To explore this possibility, the present study adopted the retrieval-induced forgetting paradigm to the context of social media, Instagram. Participants were required to write a diary attached with pictures relevant to the events and then post pictures to the Instagram, followed by the final recall test. The results indicated that posting personal pictures online induced forgetting in related memories but not pictures, and posting …

The Effects Of Real Words On The Pronunciation Of Nonwords, Jill Metzger

Honors Scholar Theses

Certain letter strings in the English language can be pronounced in multiple different ways. This study looked at how college students’ pronunciations of nonwords with ambiguous letter strings were influenced by real word primes. The nonwords were directly derived from real words with identical letter strings. Subjects saw real words that had either the default pronunciation or alternative pronunciation of that letter string. Results showed there were a higher proportion of alternative responses to nonwords primed by words with alternative pronunciations. These findings support previous research that shows the pronunciation of nonwords can be affected by priming or tasks that …

Growth And Poverty Traps: Examples From Literature, Danielle Chaloux

Honors Scholar Theses

The writings of Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Knut Hamsun, and Laura Ingalls Wilder capture humanity on the page. The characters in the works of these authors are confronted by realistic or autobiographical situations and make choices based on history, personal preferences, societal pressures, and economic constraints, just as real-life individuals do. They can thus serve as data for illustrating the implications of economic models, specifically poverty traps. To do so, I will draw from Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens, The Fat and the Thin (1873) by Emile Zola, Hunger (1890) by Knut Hamsun, and The First Four Years (1971) …

Bilingual (Spanish-English) Marketing As A Catalyst For Cultural Awareness: The Effect On Parents In The Toy Market, Margo K. Bailey

Honors Scholar Theses

Due to globalization, multinational companies are increasingly cognizant of the language used in marketing materials. The growing Hispanic population in the U.S. and the increasing desire to learn and consume English in Spain makes marketers think twice about how they use language. This research is multi-method, using in-depth interviews and an experiment to learn more about how languages are used in advertisements to target monolingual and bilingual consumers within a country, and how consumers respond to monolingual and bilinguals advertisements.

I started by interviewing two marketing managers with experience in bilingual advertising in various media to better understand their decisions …

Trust In Direct Leader And Employee Outcomes: The Moderating Effects Of Leaders’ Perceived Emotional Sincerity, Christopher Morgan

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Emotional sincerity, an emerging construct in the trust in leadership literature, refers to the congruence between emotions internally experienced and externally expressed. With regard to attribution theory, observers (employees) can use the emotional expressions of others (supervisors) as an information source for making judgments. Although previous research has examined the uniqueness and explanatory power of the leaders’ perceived emotional sincerity construct (LPES), relatively few studies have examined LPES as a moderator. The present study examined the moderating effects of LPES on well-established relationships between trust in direct leader (TDL) and several employee outcomes (i.e., turnover intentions, altruistic behaviors, and organizational …

The Role Of Resilience, Emotion Regulation, And Perceived Stress On College Academic Performance, Katherine A. Pendergast

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Stress is a common problem for college students. The goal of this thesis was to examine the relationships between protective and risk factors to experiencing stress and how these factors may predict academic performance in college students. 125 college students were surveyed twice over the course of a semester on emotion regulation strategies, trait resilience, and perceived stress. The relationships between these variables and semester GPA were analyzed using correlational, multiple regression, and hierarchical regression analyses. It was determined that trait resilience scores do predict use of emotion regulation strategies but change in stress and trait resilience do not significantly …

Examining The Impact Of Selection Practices On Subsequent Employee Engagement, Sofia N. Rodriguez

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Employee engagement is often defined as the vigor, dedication, and absorption one feels about and/or displays within their job. It has long been asserted that engagement is highest for employees who “fit” better with their work. Applicants determine their anticipated levels of fit throughout the selection process. Therefore, it is crucial that the information organizations provide will allow applicants to make accurate assumptions of fit to increase the probability that the vacancy will be filled by an applicant best suited for the position. This study was designed to identify if the practices used during organizations’ selection processes influence the accuracy …

The Effect Of Unresolved Interruptions On Prospective Memory, Joseph T. Slayton

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

I investigated how memory for future intentions (termed prospective memory or PM) was impacted by interruptions, unresolved interruptions, and delays. The PM task was to shop for eight items within an environmental sustainability rating task. A comedy routine appeared after participants had rated several items for both interruption groups, while the delay group viewed the comedy routine before beginning the shopping task. In the unresolved interruption group the comedy routine never reached its conclusion. I predicted that 1) PM performance would be hindered by interruptions with the unresolved group performing worst, 2) that working memory capacity would moderate effects of …

Fyla Newsletter, Issue 8, May 2017, Oberlin College Libraries

Notes from your First Year Library Advisor

No abstract provided.

The Relationship Between Social Status Motivation And The Detection Of Trustworthy And Affiliative Cues In Faces, Christopher J. Lustgraaf

Dissertations

A prominent feature of human (and non-human primate) social group structure involves the establishment and maintenance of a social hierarchy; that is, social groups are arranged hierarchically, based on individuals’ level of status, and conspecifics who more effectively ascend this status hierarchy accrue more reproductive and resource benefits (Hawley, 1999). Thus, for any individual, other group members could be either a threat to one’s status, or an ally to assist status goals, and accurate identification of these various social targets would have adaptive utility in status maintenance or status hierarchy ascension. The current study tested the hypotheses that activation of …

“A Theoretical Model For Critical Geographies Of Gentrification: A Comparative Analysis Of Globalization In Two Gay Villages”, Spencer Nelson

Geography Honors Projects

Abstract: The role of gay villages in gentrification has long been contemplated yet their relationship to the global circulation of capital is understudied. This thesis sheds light on this phenomenon through an urban political ecology of gentrification and provides a new model of critical geographies of gentrification. The model is illustrated through ethnographic research in the two gay villages of De Waterkant in Cape Town, South Africa, and Loring Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The relationship between gentrification and globalization is analyzed through the four lenses that bring flows of financial capital, culture, technology, and ideology into focus and offers a …

Social Scrutiny: How Viewers' Comments Affect Female Tv Journalists' Appearance, Heather Reena Arevalo-Flores

Theses and Dissertations

Television news anchors are often rated based on their appearance. News directors and consultants believe viewers want to see young and attractive women. While the media managers focus on high ratings, there are few studies that specifies how female journalist feel about being judged based on their appearance. There is no research that focuses on the comments female journalist receive on social media. The present research will investigate if viewers’ comments affect a female journalists’ appearance and how it affects her credibility. This qualitative study asks female journalist about comments they have received from viewers on their appearance through social …

An Exploratory Study Of "The Right Days Game:" A Decision-Making Communication Game For Couples, David R. Cohen

Theses and Dissertations

An exploratory study was conducted using “The Right Days Game,” a decision making communication game in which couples take turns making decisions. for the couple on alternating days for four weeks. Several scales were used as well as an interview to obtain the data. Numerous obstacles were encountered that prevented addressing the original hypotheses.

Approximately 1,000 people clicked on the introduction survey; 81% of these were women. Approximately 50% dropped out when they were asked for their email. An email was sent to the participant’s partner inviting them to join the research. The response rate was 20% with a dropout …

The Dialectics Of The Community: Mexican Production Of Death, Blanca Judith Martinez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work attempts to provide a discussion of the current waves of violence present in the northern border of Mexico. The country became a neoliberal state during the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The external debt and the historical corruption of the Mexican government placed Mexico in a vulnerable stage leaving its sovereignty with a fissure before the eyes of international circles of power. The adoption of a neoliberal economic system has impacted all the social tissue. The euphoric discourse of advancement and opportunity was spread by ideological apparatus, and people in constant need accepted positively the system. The …

Trout Fishing In The Smokies And The Blue Ridge, 1880-Present: How-To, History, And Habitat, Nathaniel Cole Skaggs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on trout fishing in the Great Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge Mountains from 1880 to 2017. I begin with a collection of personal narratives of fly-fishing in Tennessee to portray the allure of southern Appalachia trout fishing. I then describe the transition from native Cherokee fishing practices to sport fishing in the Smokies and the Blue Ridge by 1880. I explore a brief history of the National Parks and the United States Forest Service during the early 1900s, and address European fly-fishing influences in the United States during the twentieth century. I examine the habitats of …

Measuring Adaptive Behaviors In Individuals With Autism Enrolled In Project-Based Therapy, Sarah Yoder, Nghi Tran, Jason Ichimaru, Emily Lu

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

As the number of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) entering adulthood increases, this population faces limited resources to foster independent living. Therefore, it is crucial to explore innovative interventions that help this population develop the skills necessary to live more independently. This exploratory prospective cohort study evaluated the effectiveness of Autistry Studios, which focuses on improving adaptive behavior skills for adults and adolescents with ASD using project-based therapy. The study used the Brief Adaptive Behavior Scale (BABS), a novel quantitative assessment, to track the development of adaptive behaviors in individuals with ASD within the domains of Executive Functioning (EF), …

And, The Winner Is…A Visual Preference For Endpoints Over Starting Points In Infants’ Motion Event Representations, Laura Lakusta, Stephanie Difabrizio

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Infants represent objects that are endpoints in motion events and show a preference for encoding the endpoint (the duck waddles into a bowl) over the starting point (the duck waddles out of a box). This asymmetry continues to appear in nonlinguistic cognition and language throughout development. This study tests whether this asymmetry also shows up in 16-month-old infants’ visual preferences for motion events, and if so, for which types of events. Infants looked longer at events depicting an “agentive” figure (e.g., duck) moving into an object (endpoint) than out of an object (starting point), and this asymmetry persisted even when …

Urban Governance Reconsidered : Assessing The Roles Of Public-, Private-, And Third Sector Leaders In Governing The Modern City., Benjamin Colby Leamon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As central cities redefine themselves after decades of commercial abandonment, “urban renaissance” movements, white flight, and the gentrification of their central urban neighborhoods, are cities still governed by the political-business coalitions conceptualized by urban regime theorists, or have new players emerged? Further, as cities continue to evolve within the post-Fordist landscape, do extant theories of urban governance, themselves built upon decades-old observations, continue to provide adequate models for urban governance as it actually exists in cities today? This dissertation is a quantitative and qualitative examination of contemporary urban governance in the United States, and the roles of CDCs and anchor …

Late Magdalenian Lithic Technological Organization At Lapa Do Picareiro, Central Portugal., Melissa Jean Holst

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lapa do Picareiro, a cave located in Portuguese Estremadura, contains continuous deposits dated to the Late Pleistocene. As one of the highest elevation Upper Paleolithic sites currently known in Portugal, questions are raised about the function of the site during this time. This thesis presents a comprehensive analysis of the lithic assemblage recovered from the Late Magdalenian layer of F/G (13,442 to 14,011 cal BP). The data generated from this study, when looked at in conjunction with the previously analyzed faunal assemblage, helps to provide a broader understanding of the site’s function during the Late Magdalenian. The analysis focuses on …