Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Brain Breakdown: Bringing Neuroscience To A Broader Audience, Katharine Buehrig

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Neuroscience is a rapidly growing field, which needs to continue becoming more accessible and understandable to younger generations. Expanding access to neuroscience through different modes, such as podcasts, brings the discipline to a broader audience. Podcasts allow listeners to follow an outlined learning path they can pursue on their personal timeline. High school students often do not have access to neuroscience specific materials within their standard science curriculum. To address this knowledge gap, I collected questions about neuroscience from high school students across four schools in the United States to develop an understanding about what they are interested in learning. …

Is Health Deserved? Personal Autonomy, Framing, Ethical Intimidation, And The Politicization Of Healthcare In The United States V. Japan, Ava C. Azucenas

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Is health deserved? Is your health owed to you? What does this mean, and whose responsibility is it? I argue that American culture’s use of  personal autonomy, “framing”, and ethical intimidation has stunted the improvement of both political and legal structures. This is evident in the politicization of the ‘for-profit’ healthcare system in the United States. American policymakers frequently weaponize moral foundations in order to coerce voters into supporting or opposing certain healthcare policies derived from the principle that some people are more "deserving" of health than others. This calculated “framing” of health concepts has deeply politicized such an ethical …

The Supreme Court And Climate Law: A Qualitative Analysis, Tanner Blackington

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper seeks to explore the Supreme Court’s understanding of climate justice and its evolution over time. I begin with an explanation of the context on climate law, climate change, and the Supreme Court as an institution. I situate the study in the literature on judicial restraint, institutional barriers, and the powers of the Supreme Court as focal points. Then, drawing on a sample of 20 Supreme Court opinions issued between 2007 and 2025, I offer an empirical analysis which reveals the Supreme Court’s feelings of confinement within the boundaries of federalism and balancing power with the Legislative and Executive …

Ethical Participation In An Unethical System: Partnering With The New London Homeless Hospitality Center, Lucy Koester

Program in Community Action (PICA)

How can volunteers engage meaningfully and ethically within a system that does not always center the voices of the people it serves? This Senior Integrative Project (SIP) explores the College’s long-term partnership with the New London Homeless Hospitality Center (NLHHC), and how campus-community partnerships (CCPs) can build resilient and civically minded societies. Drawing on experiences volunteering and developing collaborative projects with the NLHHC, it reflects on the challenges and possibilities for improving the guests’ experiences. Using a sociological approach, this paper analyzes how organizations like the NLHHC are products of bureaucratic systems, and emphasize the importance of centering community voices …

Parents Caring For Adult Children With Co-Occurring Disorders: A Phenomenological Study, Cynthia D. Williams

Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences

The purpose of this study was to explore and understand the lived experiences of parents caring for an adult child, aged 18 to 30 years, with a co-occurring mental health and substance use diagnosis, with attention to how caregiving intersects with trauma, resilience, and systemic challenges. To guide this exploration, the Resilience Trauma Negotiation (RTN) framework was introduced to examine how exposure, appraisal, coping responses, and systemic context intersect to shape the complex realities of caregiving. Using Moustakas’s seven-step transcendental phenomenological approach, semi-directed interview questions were facilitated with 14 caregivers. Data were transcribed, coded, and analyzed to identify emerging themes …

Perceptions Of Correctional Staff Regarding Coping Strategies Used By Juvenile Female Offenders, Angela Pagano Johnston

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Developing An Effective Clinical Supervision Structure In An Outpatient Mental Health Group Practice, Kourtney Dockery

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Improving Human Visual Search: Enhancing Lung Cancer Nodule Detection In Medical Images, Christopher Khajira

Masters Theses

Human visual search involves the identification of relevant signals within information-rich environments, which is a fundamental problem in visual perception. While detection accuracy and response time are commonly used to evaluate performance in visual search, these measures do not reveal the underlying cognitive and computational structure that produces observable behavior. A key challenge lies in distinguishing between competing processing architectures, particularly in complex visual domains where different models can produce similar behavioral outcomes. This study addresses this challenge by developing a computational experimental framework for analyzing visual search behavior using System Factorial Technology (SFT). The experimental framework integrates naturalistic medical …

Centralization Vs. Decentralization: First Evidence From The Laboratory, Gabriele Camera, Gary Charness, Nir Chemaya

ESI Working Papers

The future architecture of financial systems is a subject of contention, with centralized and decentralized governance proponents. Here we ask: would the architecture affect the quality of decision-making? We propose a game where financial network participants demarcate the ownership of claims to income. This governance task can be decentralized (shared authority), centralized (single authority), or hybrid (alternating authority). Without communication all architectures supported poor outcomes. With communication, decentralization ensured good governance and maximum profits, while centralization did not—lowering communication’s potency in promoting socially optimal decisions. This indicates there is scope for decentralization in innovating financial institutions.

The Effects Of Mental Health Advertising On Brand And Product Perception, Faith L. Gideon

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Previous research has demonstrated that framing effects, influencer sponsorships, and brand campaigns significantly influence consumer behavior and, consequently, company profitability. Over the last few decades, many companies have aligned themselves with various social justice issues, including mental health advocacy. To date, little work has explored what effect such alignment might have on brand perception or consumer behavior. The aim of this study is to explore how mental health advertising influences these variables, taking brand familiarity into account. Participants rated brand authenticity, purchase intent, and willingness to pay premium prices for products after learning about campaigns from familiar or unfamiliar brands …

A Quantitative Critical Analysis Of Comprehensive Education Plan Effects As Implemented Under Title 5 In California Community Colleges, Nicole Jones

Dissertations

California Code of Regulations, Title 5, is the policy and regulatory guide of the California Community Colleges. Sections of Title 5 policy govern the implementation of programs and services at these colleges. It provides protection for colleges and specifies student entitlements under the law. The mission of the California Community Colleges is to serve as an open-access point, providing students with services and instruction. Access barriers to services like counseling can delay goal attainment, increase cost of attendance and time to completion, and result in lower successful retention or persistence rates. Additionally, resource allocation, Title 5 Section 59200 regulations (the …

Undertaking Short-Term Finance Transactions In Brazil - An Historic And Modern Look At The Brazilian Economy And Associated Risks, Shawn M. D'Aversa

Student Research

The following report discusses the risks and construction of a hypothetical short-term trade finance transaction involving the five parties: Citibank N.A., Caterpillar Inc. (CAT), Banco Do Brasil, Paracatu Gold Mine and EXIM Bank. Fair warning: this is a long paper for a short-term transaction.

For the deal, Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) has approached Citibank N.A. in New York regarding a financing transaction for five 797F-400 short-ton haul trucks. The trucks are worth $5mn each, including the costs of training and spare parts, for a total of $25mn. Put simply, the trucks are beasts for mining. They will then be shipped to …

Not Retirement, But A Rewiring And Fresh Perspectives Post-Dbs, Says Piyush Gupta [Interview With Business Times], Su Shyan Lee, Piyush Gupta

Oral History Collection

In an interview with The Business Times, SMU Chairman Piyush Gupta discussed topics ranging from meditation and conservation to the future of education. On his role at SMU, he emphasised his desire to help shape tertiary education and noted that the rise of AI makes it critical to rethink how we learn. Mr Gupta believes that in an AI-driven world, students must move beyond domain knowledge to focus on interpreting information, "connecting the dots," and engaging others with genuine empathy. He is supportive of a more experiential curriculum at SMU — one that focuses on regional exposure through internships and …

Mismatch Negativity (Mmn) And Neurodevelopmental Outcomes In Children Born Preterm, Aidee León Lúa

Theses - ALL

Premature birth is a leading factor contributing to neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism and cognitive disabilities. Early detection measures can help children access services earlier, even before behavioral traits manifest. Event-related potentials (ERPs), measured though electroencephalography (EEG), are objective and non-invasive methods to study brain activity in children born preterm. The mismatch negativity (MMN), measured by the difference in neural response to alternating frequent and rare stimuli, has been associated with cognitive abilities in preterm children, but its relation to autistic traits remains underexplored. The present study examined whether speech evoked MMN amplitude and latency in children born preterm between 5 …

Carrying Home Across Oceans: Embodied Adinkra Memory, Decolonial Resistance, And Diasporic Life Of Sankɔfa And Gye Nyame, Anthoniet Essien Christian

Theses - ALL

In this thesis, I explore how Ghanaian Adinkra symbols, particularly Sankɔfa and Gye Nyame, function as living expressions of memory, spirituality, and belonging within diasporic life. Drawing on autoethnography, story circles conducted at Pentecost International Worship Centre (PIWC) in Syracuse, New York, and embodied experience, the study examines how these symbols move beyond decoration to become active tools for remembering, resisting, and reconnecting with ancestral knowledge. Through everyday practices such as dress, ritual, worship, and digital expression, Sankɔfa and Gye Nyame carry memory across generations and geographies, shaping how diasporic subjects understand home, identity, and faith. The research shows that …

Feminization, Fetishization, And Gender Hierarchy: How Trans Women Are Represented In Porn For A Cishetero Audience, May Van Linden

Theses - ALL

Trans people, especially trans women, are a highly-targeted minority group and suffer rapidly-increasing discrimination, often predicated on the notion that trans women are dangerous sexual deviants. Further, trans women are often fetishized in their day-to-day lives, regularly manifesting as abuse. At the same time, demand for porn featuring trans women has skyrocketed, but literature about trans women in porn remains extraordinarily lacking in both quantity and quality. My research critically examined how trans women are represented in mainstream internet pornography consumed by a cishetero audience. I performed textual analysis of internet porn featuring trans women through a theoretical lens of …

Who Gets Better Buses? Studentification, Bus Geographies, And Transit Privilege In Postindustrial Upstate New York, Carlos Jose Gonzalez

Theses - ALL

Decades of deindustrialization have forced several American cities to seek other sources of economic life for their shrinking populations and increasingly impoverished populations. One sector that has shown much potential for revitalization has been the “meds and eds” of hospitals and universities. The growth of higher education is fueled by a rise in enrollment that has transformed the demographic, economic, and social atmospheres of university neighborhoods. Yet an important transformation missed by these “studentification” scholars are the accompanying reconfigurations of public transit. Given that students, and young people generally, are less likely to own their own car, universities have to …

Authentic And Thriving: The Role Of Authenticity In Friendship And Well-Being, Arina Stoianova

Theses - ALL

Generally, authentic people have satisfying close relationships and greater well-being (Rivera et al., 2019). Having satisfying friendships is important for personal well-being and a fulfilling life (Anderson & Fowers, 2020). Thus, in three pre-registered studies, I tested whether authenticity is related to well-being through friendship satisfaction among single and partnered people. In Study 1 (N=326), singles’ authenticity was associated with having satisfying friendships, which in turn predicted greater general well-being (i.e., life satisfaction and purpose in life), but not singlehood-specific outcomes. In Study 2 (N = 623), I examined whether this finding extends to partnered people’s well-being and found that …

Sexual Identity And Sleep Health In Adolescents: The Role Of Parenting Practices, Alexa Grace Deyo

Theses - ALL

Adolescence is a developmental period marked by heightened vulnerability to insufficient sleep, which contributes to adverse emotional, cognitive, and physical health outcomes. Evidence indicates that adolescents who identify as lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) are at an increased risk for poor sleep relative to their heterosexual peers. However, little is known about which dimensions of sleep health differ by sexual identity or modifiable factors that may underlie these differences. This study examined whether adolescent sleep duration, sleep efficiency, and daytime sleepiness differed by sexual identity, and investigated whether parental acceptance and parental monitoring helped explain these differences. Participants were 5,919 …

Persuasive Effects Of Paired Synthetic Images In Online Branding: A Comparative Study Using Elaboration Likelihood Model, Cancan Yu

Theses - ALL

The growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in brand visuals has prompted interest in whether presenting synthetic images alongside real counterparts changes how consumers engage with and evaluate them. This between-subjects online experiment (N = 211) tested whether paired versus single presentation of synthetic and real brand images affected engagement and attitudes, including perceived trustworthiness and perceived attractiveness, using the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). Results did not reveal that presentation format affects engagement, engagement predicts either attitudinal outcome, or format moderates the engagement-attitude relationship. The strong covariance between trustworthiness and attractiveness may reflect a holistic mode of brand evaluation or …

Assessing The Impact Of Land Use Land Cover Change On Habitat Quality In Onondaga County, New York: A Thirty-Year Spatial Analysis., Favour Nkwando Sedwaa

Theses - ALL

The Earth's terrestrial surface is experiencing rapid and unprecedented transformation driven by human land use activities. An estimated 75% of the global land area has been altered, and land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) is widely recognized as the largest contributor to biodiversity loss worldwide. Habitats, the ecological spaces that sustain biodiversity, are particularly vulnerable to the compounding pressures of habitat loss and fragmentation associated with urbanization and agricultural intensification. This study investigates the impacts of LULCC on landscape fragmentation and habitat quality in Onondaga County, New York, over a 30-year period from 1994 to 2024. Using Annual National Land Cover …

Complementation In Guadeloupean Creole: An Experimental And Computational Account, William Joseph Kezerian

Theses - ALL

This thesis presents an experimental and computational investigation of complementizer variation in Guadeloupean Creole (GC). Despite its morphosyntactic innovations distinct from its lexifier, French, the subordinate structure of GC remains understudied. The project presented here involves a psycholinguistic experiment targeting complementizer usage, using binary choice tasks to gather grammaticality judgments. This was administered during field research in Guadeloupe to 9 youth speakers and 11 adult speakers of GC and French. Ethnographic interview recordings in GC were also collected from adult speakers, which were then transcribed for the purpose of text extraction of key words. I use NLP text-mining methods such …

Evapotranspiration Everywhere, All The Time: Towards A Unified View From Earth Observation, Joshua B. Fisher, Martha C. Anderson, Diego G. Miralles, Kanishka Mallick, Paul C. Stoy, Youngryel Ryu, Wim G. M. Bastiaanssen

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Scientists want to know everything, everywhere, and all the time. This is particularly true in Earth science, where we seek to understand processes that span from the molecular to the planetary scale in how the world works, how it affects us, and how we impact it—especially the water cycle. Evapotranspiration (ET) was the last component to be measured in closing the water cycle: for decades, closing the water budget meant adding up all the measurable components, then inferring ET as the residual. Early measurements relied on water loss from pans and weighing lysimeters, followed by sensors inserted into plants to …

Who Really Cares: A Critical Textual Analysis Of Television Portrayals Of The Fictional “Black Lady Therapist” Post-Pandemic, Tiara Johnson

Dissertations - ALL

Given television’s capacity to shape audience perceptions (Bryant & Oliver 2009) and help our cultural understandings of mental health (McMahon-Coleman & Weaver, 2020), both academic and industry research on mental health depictions and stigmas on television have increased. However, with the growing crisis and need for mental healthcare within the Black community over the past 15 years, this research uses a critical qualitative textual analysis to explore television's portrayal of fictional Black Lady Therapist (BLT) as a main character, and how these depictions counter and support stereotypical depictions of the Black woman and how these depictions can be used to …

"I Just Wanted To Help": Certified Recovery Peer Advocates And Disconnected Labor, Rosie Benser

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation examines the remaking of the recovery industry via the rise of Certified Recovery Peer Advocates (CRPA), or recovery peers, and the conditions that enable and constrain their labor. Peer Based Support Services (PBSS) was professionally recognized in the substance use disorder (SUD) treatment field starting in the early twenty-first century through federal grants for the underinsured and the ability to submit services for Medicaid/Medicare insurance repayments. As a result, CRPAs are especially present in low-income communities, dispatched to serve people seeking recovery from SUD with a mandate to “have conversations about change.” Drawing from in-depth interviews, participant observation …

Estimator And System Variables On Eyewitness Identification Procedure Outcomes, Gabriella Kathryn Larson

Dissertations - ALL

Eyewitness identification is fundamentally a recognition memory task, yet the field has historically been disconnected from broader memory research. The present dissertation bridges this gap by applying foundational recognition memory principles, including list length effects, encoding strength, output interference, and retention interval, to eyewitness lineup identification across three experiments. Using signal detection theory (SDT) as a theoretical framework, discriminability was assessed through both theoretical (d′) and empirical (AUC) measures, alongside positive predictive value (PPV) and confidence-accuracy calibration analyses. Experiment 1 employed a 4 × 3 × 3 factorial design (n = 181) to examine the effects of lineup size, encoding …

“The Least You Can Do Is Start A Meeting With A Karakia”: Challenging The Culture Order In A New Zealand Cricket Organisation, Stephanie Foxton, Tame Pere

Journal of Global South Sport Studies

Previously, it was documented that cricket operated as a tool of colonisation, serving to spread British culture and values across the empire, reinforcing British identity and asserting cultural superiority (Baucom, 1999). In places like Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), cricket became a cornerstone of colonial social life, solidifying the dominance of British culture. Employing the Colonial Matrix of Power framework (Mignolo, 2007; Quijano, 2007) alongside the concept of the culture order (Holmes, 2018), this article aims to understand how Aotearoa NZ’s ever-evolving cricket culture sustains, and in some cases challenges, the dominance of Pākehā/British norms. By weaving these theoretical …

The Association Between Proximal Sexual And Gender Minority Stressors And Alcohol-Related Outcomes: The Moderating Role Of Experiential Avoidance, Nicolas Cardenas

Theses - ALL

Unhealthy alcohol use is prevalent in college environments, and disproportionately higher among sexual and gender minority (SGM) undergraduate college students. Minority stress theory posits that SGM stressors, particularly proximal forms of stressors (e.g., internalized stigma), negatively impact psychological processes, which are then associated with an increased prevalence of alcohol use. Experiential avoidance, or the avoidance of uncomfortable internal experiences, is one such psychological process that may influence the association between internal SGM stress and alcohol-related outcomes. The purpose of this study was to determine if experiential avoidance significantly moderates the association between SGM internal stressors (i.e., internalized stigma and rejection …

Agency At The End Of History: Time, Terrorism, And Technologies Of Innocence In Engaging The Far Right, Gabriel Gr Herring

Theses - ALL

This thesis explores the way political rhetorics of time, morality, and political violence play out in visual representations of the far right in the United States via maps. In Out of Joint: Power, Crisis, and the Rhetoric of Time, Nomi Claire Lazar argues that governments and political movements use temporal-rhetorical frameworks to generate political legitimacy by associating their movement with time, which is generally understood as natural. I argue that every temporal-rhetorical frame also implies a set of moral codes which are understood to be materially true, despite the fact that our experiences of time are only ever aim-dependent and …

Remembering Return: Diasporic Identity And The Tabom Community In Accra, Elizabeth Akosua Adobea Danso

Theses - ALL

This thesis examines the historical and cultural significance of the Tabom community in Accra, Ghana, as a case study in diasporic identity, collective memory, and return migration. As descendants of Afro-Brazilian returnees who arrived in the Gold Coast in the early nineteenth century, the Tabom occupy a distinctive position within Ghana's social and historical landscape, navigating multiple cultural affiliations across Brazilian, Yoruba, Hausa, Ga, and Ghanaian identities over generations. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Jamestown, Accra, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and oral history collection, this thesis argues that Tabom identity is neither static nor reducible to a singular …