Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Effects Of Innovations In Health Care Provision And Financing, Hoda Nouri Khajavi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of four chapters that study the impacts of innovations in health care provision and financing. The relentless rise in US health care costs has led the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to launch various pilot programs to create financial incentives for health care providers, suppliers, and local communities to improve the efficiency of the health care system. The fist chapter of this manuscript reviews the main pilot programs implemented and/or funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services since the 111th United States Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as …

Heritage Speaker And Late Bilingual L2 Relative Clause Processing And Language Dominance Effects, Leeann S. Stevens

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Traditionally, heritage speakers are recognized as a heterogeneous group whose skills in their heritage language are unlike those of monolinguals or L2 learners of that language. Indeed, much evidence confirms the cognitive and linguistic uniqueness of this population. However, highly proficient heritage speakers may pattern more similarly to another bilingual population than typically assumed: first-generation late bilinguals.

The present study examines group-level processing differences between Spanish heritage speakers and Spanish-English late bilinguals in English, the second-learned and current societal majority language of these populations. Dominance is also analyzed as a possible effect of group processing differences, since traditionally and definitionally …

The Origins Of The Jones Act Of Puerto Rico, Stephanie Mercedes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

After the Spanish-American War that ended in 1898, Puerto Rico was given to the United States by Spain as a war booty, becoming a US colony. The first law ever created by the United States to control Puerto Rico was the Foraker Act (also known as the Organic Act of 1900). This established a civilian government in Puerto Rico. It also extended the federal government rulings to the island. After its creation, the Puerto Rican population began to wonder what their political status was since nothing was concretized until the Jones Act was signed. The Merchant Marine Act of 1920, …

Exploring The Structural Effects On The Lethal Violence At The U.S. Counties Under The Situational Action Theory: An Application Of Multivariable Spatial Regression Model, Yunho Yeom

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the stream analogy (Unnithan, Corzine, Huff-Corzine, & Whitt, 1994) and the frustration-aggression approach (Henry & Short, 1954) in lethal violence phenomenon analysis, several scholars have integrated theories from outside of their fields of study to understand lethal violence under a single theoretical framework. Some of these researchers have focused on deteriorating socioeconomic conditions and the collective attributional style when explaining the causes of lethal violence; others have failed to assume the non-independence of observation among contextual predictors. Recognizing these shortcomings, this study integrates the social components of situational action theory to examine their mediating effects on the relationship between …

Murine Genetic Variance In Sugar And Fat-Conditioned Flavor Preferences: Roles Of Dopamine, Opioid And Nmda Receptors And Nutritive Sensing, Tamar T. Kraft

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As obesity and diabetes have emerged as a severe public health crisis, understanding the mechanisms underlying the consumption of sugars and fats has become a topic of vigorous study. From a biological standpoint, genetic dispositions, neurochemical and hormonal influences, and predetermined orosensory and postingestive signals that modulate the hunger and satiety process may govern physiological aspects of the obesity puzzle. In addition to an innate appetite and attraction for simple carbohydrates and fats, learning plays an important role in modulating preferences for sugar- and fat-rich foods in rodents, including inbred mouse strains. Marked genetic variance has been observed among murine …

Clinical Characteristics And Neuroanatomical Predictors Of Acute Antidepressant Outcome For Patients With Comorbid Depression And Mild Cognitive Impairment, Jeffrey N. Motter

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Older adults presenting with both a depressive disorder (DEP) and cognitive impairment (CI) represent a unique, understudied population. The classification of cognitive impairment severity continues to be debated though it has recently been subtyped into late (LMCI) versus early (EMCI) stages. Previous studies have found associations between treatment outcome and both cortical thickness and white matter hyperintensities (WMH), though report inconsistent directionality and affected regions. In this study, we examined baseline clinical characteristics and neuroanatomical features as prognostic indicators for older adults with comorbid DEP and CI participating in an open antidepressant trial. EMCI is hypothesized to have greater …

Rezoning, Real Estate, And The Dynamics Of Displacement In Inwood, Damaly Gonzalez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis asks how New York City’s rezoning process combine with the dynamics of real-estate sales to create displacement pressures for low-income communities of color. A case study of the recent rezoning of Inwood, a neighborhood in upper Manhattan, in August 2018, will help to illustrate these dynamics. Through an analysis of building sales and extreme rent inflation embedded in a historical and contemporary analysis of zoning and the influence of real-estate developers and owners on these processes, this thesis paints a dire picture of the risks faced by the mostly-Dominican-American renters in Inwood. The principal contribution of the …

The Interaction Of Attention And Memory On The Reorienting Negativity, John C. Moses

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The three-stage model of distraction asserts that when we are presented with salient but task-irrelevant information, our sensory systems first detect the distracting stimulus by way of sensory memory buffers, which is indicated electrophysiologically by the mismatch negativity (MMN). Following detection, attentional resources are involuntarily allocated towards the processing of the distraction, as represented by the P3a. Finally, attentional resources are shifted away from the distracting stimulus and returned to the task-relevant information, as indicated by the reorienting negativity (RON). A great deal of research has focused on this last step in the model, largely centering around defining the mechanisms …

Sedimenting Territory: A Political Geology Of Oil, Earth, And Spatial Politics In Turkey, Zeynep Oguz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Building on the recent turn to the material and earthly aspects of resources and political power in environmental anthropology and political geography, this work historically and ethnographically examines the kinds of territorial politics that oil’s materiality, geological qualities, and infrastructures have generated in Turkey. Despite being surrounded by oil-rich neighbors in the Middle East, Turkey’s domestic oil reserves supply only 7 percent of the country’s oil, all of which has been drilled in the Kurdish provinces of Batman, Diyarbakır, and Adıyaman in Turkey’s southeast, where the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) has been fighting the Turkish state since 1984 for cultural …

Cue-Based Reflexive Reference Resolution: Evidence From Korean Reflexive Caki, Namseok Yong

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to reveal cognitive mechanisms and factors that underlie the reflexive dependency formation. In recent years, a lot of attention has been paid to the question of how our mind works in building linguistic dependencies (including an antecedent-reflexive dependency) because relevant research has proved promising and illuminating in regard to the properties (e.g., system architecture, computational algorithms, etc.) of human language processor and its close connection with other cognitive functions such as memory (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005; Lewis, Vasishth, & Van Dyke, 2006; McElree, 2000; McElree, Foraker, & Dyer, 2003; Van Dyke & Johns, 2012; Wagers, Lau, & …

Same-Sex Union Formation And Dissolution In The United States And Europe, Eric Ketcham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite recent improvements in the availability of data on same-sex union formation and dissolution, the field remains understudied. Recent findings on the stability of same-sex unions in the United States and in Europe are inconsistent both within and between countries. Using three data sets – How Couples Meet and Stay Together, the Generations and Gender Survey, and the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social sciences surveys – event-history analyses are conducted to examine the stability of same-sex unions relative to male-female unions in the United States and continental Europe. The availability of partners for LGBT-identified males and females in eighteen …

Transforming Through Power: Teachers And The Negotiation Of Authority In Schools, Madhu Narayanan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Schools are unique institutions where structural and cultural dynamics shape the actions of humans. Teachers work within structures of power to establish themselves as legitimate figures of authority worthy of the right to command respect. Such efforts are complicated by the multi-faceted and swirling relationships of power that exist everywhere in schools, defining and guiding individuals. In this study, I interview and observe the practice of seven secondary teachers working in New York City public schools. All in their third year of teaching, they were at an interesting time in their development, not novice teachers and not quite veteran. Using …

Visual Entrainment Of Perception-Related Neural Oscillations As A Mechanism For Maintaining Rhythmic Temporal Expectations Across A Wide Range Of Frequencies, Michael James Gray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Visual sensitivity fluctuates rhythmically, in-synch with ongoing, EEG-recorded neural oscillations across a wide range of frequencies (~1-25hz). Some recent work has suggested that these perception-related neural oscillations can be entrained by rhythmic visual stimulation. Evidence is also emerging that the entrainment of ongoing oscillations in visual and auditory cortices is involved in rhythmic temporal expectations. In the introduction chapter, I attempt to bridge these bodies of literature and hypothesize that rhythmic visual stimuli automatically entrain ongoing, perception-related neural oscillations and that this mechanism supports the maintenance of rhythmic temporal expectations. Chapters 2 and 3 address this hypothesis from different angles. …

Cyborgs For Environmental Justice: East Asian American Stories From The 1991 People Of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, Lisa Ng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this paper is threefold: to serve as an oral history archive of the East Asian American experience at the 1991 People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, to analyze the role of East Asian Americans in the Environmental Justice Movement (EJM), and to fill an ideological and political vacuum that exists in East Asian American communities. This work analyses the experiences of East Asian Americans who were present at the 1991 People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit--an event scholars have attributed to igniting the EJM. The paper argues that East Asian Americans act as “Cyborgs”—both as their ascribed …

Essays On The Economic Consequences Of Capital Controls, Richard J. Nugent Iii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters. In Chapter One, we review the literature on the economic consequences of capital controls. Capital controls are advocated as second-best policy in the presence of a pecuniary externality. Restricting capital inflows as a prudential tool during economic booms may distort the efficient allocation of capital but it invokes precautionary saving behavior so that agents do not overborrow. The financial crises that are fueled by capital market distortions can be mitigated by the use of prudential capital controls, heightened during the boom and released during the bust. The empirical evidence on capital controls has revealed …

Systems Analysis Of Faculty Hiring Process Within Academia, Nicole P. Farrell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There are three levels of performance discussed in organizational behavior management (OBM): (a) the organization level, (b) the process level, and (c) the job/performer level. Among these three levels of performance, individuals often focus least on the process level – which is the level that explains “how” work gets done (Rummler & Brache, 1995). However, if the processes are not effective, workers cannot complete tasks adequately, regardless of the contingencies applied by an organization. One way researchers can evaluate the effectiveness of processes within an organization is through the use of systems analysis. The purpose of the present study was …

Some Non-Human Languages Of Thought, Nicolas J. Porot

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What might we learn if we take seriously the possibility of non-human Languages of Thought (LoT)? A LoT is a combinatorial set of mental representations. And, since mental representations and rules of combination vary in kind, there are many possible LoTs. Simple LoTs might lack familiar features of the putative human LoT, such as object representations, recursively defined rules of combination, sentential connectives, or predicate-argument structure. The most familiar arguments for the existence of LoTs, such as those from productivity, systematicity, concept learning, and perceptual computation, all fail when applied to non-human animals. But recent empirical evidence motivates attributing LoTs …

Emotion Processing Deficits In Psychopathy: Does Cueing To Relevant Facial Features Increase Cognitive And Emotional Empathy?, Shawn E. Fagan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Psychopathy is a multifaceted disorder characterized by a lack of cognitive and emotional empathy. The traditional model of psychopathy divides the disorder into two factors: Factor 1 consists of the interpersonal and affective traits of psychopathy while Factor 2 measures antisocial behaviors and lifestyle choices. The attention-to-the-eyes hypothesis argues that psychopathic individuals have impaired emotion recognition (specifically for fear) due to deficits in orienting attention to salient facial features like the eyes. Psychopathic individuals also display blunted autonomic responding to emotional stimuli, though whether this is due to attention-orienting deficits remains to be clarified. The present project investigated whether empathy-related …

Exploring Political Action And Socialization Through Group Improvisation Within The Music Of Frederic Rzewski And Cornelius Cardew, Marcel Rominger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the late 1960s, socialist composers, Cornelius Cardew and Frederic Rzewski, each established ensembles with the purpose of performing works consisting of experimental forms of improvisation. By employing group improvisation, and including untrained, non-musicians within their performances, they strove to use these ensembles as a model for society itself; this model includes a dissolution of the hierarchy among performers and the barrier between performer and audience. Improvisation helped music resist commodification by the culture industry or appropriation by authoritarian regimes for the purpose of propaganda. This dissertation aims to explore how Cardew and Rzewski constituted effective socialization and political action …

Dios En Carne: Rastafari And The Embodiment Of Spiritual Blackness In Puerto Rico, Omar Ramadan-Santiago

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In my dissertation, I examine how the Rastafari community in Puerto Rico constructs, reshapes, imagines and embodies blackness as a personal, political, and ideological identity. I argue that my interlocutors refuse non-black privilege and choose blackness, an act that is understood as identification not with subjugation but with power. I consider their identification with blackness and enactment of this identity as a performance. My analysis, based on 22 months of ethnographic research, and utilizing ethnography, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews, explores how my interlocutors claim blackness as a spiritual identity. In doing so, they demonstrate the metaphysical nature of race …

Prepositional Phrase Attachment Ambiguities In Declarative And Interrogative Contexts: Oral Reading Data, Tyler J. Peckenpaugh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Certain English sentences containing multiple prepositional phrases (e.g., She had planned to cram the paperwork in the drawer into her briefcase) have been reported to be prone to mis-parsing of a kind that is standardly called a “garden path.” The mis-parse stems from the temporary ambiguity of the first prepositional phrase (PP1: in the drawer), which tends to be interpreted initially as the goal argument of the verb cram. If the sentence ended there, that would be correct. But that analysis is overridden when the second prepositional phrase (PP2: into her briefcase) is encountered, since the …

The Diffusion Of A Movement Moment: Labor Organizing In The Shadow Of Occupy Wall Street, Pamela Whitefield

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There is widespread agreement that the Occupy Wall Street mobilization reshaped American public life. The mobilization which took the stage on September 17, 2011 decried corporate abuse, rising inequality, and political corruption. Since its emergence in 2011, there has been a proliferation of scholarship on this critical movement episode. Conspicuously absent in this body of research, particularly within the field of social movement studies, is any focus on labor specifically as it relates to movement “spillover,” diffusion, or consequences. Through a set of case studies, this research examines the extent to which Occupy Wall Street alters the political opportunity structure …

Mood Choice And Context Availability: A Variationist Approach To The Subjunctive In New York City Spanish, Joanna Birnbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the variable treatment of the Subjunctive in Spanish in New York City. Both Mood choice (Subjunctive versus Indicative) and Linguistic context availability (the presence and absence of Subjunctive-inducing contexts in speech) are studied. Data are from sociolinguistic interviews with 142 informants, stratified with respect to immigrant generation, gender, age, socio-economic status, national origin, etc. Subjunctive rates are analyzed, at the macro-level, in nine linguistic contexts and, at the micro-level, in the four most popular contexts (Modal, Protasis Si, Temporal, and Apodosis Si). Results of bivariate Pearson correlations and Chi-square tests reveal consistent usage patterns of …

New Factor Structure Models And Idiosyncratic Volatility, Ossama Elhadary

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I propose new factor structures that are based on the Fama-French style factors but include additional locations like the industry groups and the exchanges where the stocks are traded. I show that the stock returns are clustered around the industry groups and the exchanges. Idiosyncratic volatility calculated using the new factor structure models tend to be smaller than those calculated using the traditional Fama-French model. By sorting portfolios using the idiosyncratic volatility computed using the new factor models, a trader can gain larger profits compared to sorting the portfolio using the traditionally calculated idiosyncratic volatility.

Electroencephalographic Asymmetry, Emotion Regulation, And Their Relationships With Depression Risk, Aliza Jacob

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Research investigating patterns of electroencephalographic (EEG) brain asymmetry aids our understanding of neural systems involved in the processing of emotion, motivation, and psychopathology. Withdrawal-motivated negative emotions characteristic of depression are associated with relative right prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity, whereas approach- motivated positive emotions are associated with relative left PFC activity. Styles of emotion regulation (ER), or modulation of the intensity and duration of emotional responses, are also associated with presence (e.g., suppression, or maladaptive ER) versus absence (e.g., cognitive reappraisal, or adaptive ER) of depression vulnerability. Most PFC asymmetry studies of emotion, depression, and/or ER rely upon EEG recorded …

Behavioral Effects Of Restrictive Housing On Prisoners, Mijin Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Restrictive housing (RH) is a complicated and controversial management tool used by local, state, and federal correctional agencies. Unlike previous studies that predominantly examined the psychological harms of restrictive housing placement, this study aims to extend the understanding of the use of restrictive housing, the conditions and specific utility of restrictive housing, and how such use can impact inmates’ subsequent behavioral outcomes or misconducts inside of the correctional facility. Restrictive housing data from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PADOC) was used to identify the differential impact of different types of restrictive housing (i.e., administrative, disciplinary, and protective RH) through a …

Do It Like A Syntactician: Using Binary Gramaticality Judgements To Train Sentence Encoders And Assess Their Sensitivity To Syntactic Structure, Pablo Gonzalez Martinez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The binary nature of grammaticality judgments and their use to access the structure of syntax are a staple of modern linguistics. However, computational models of natural language rarely make use of grammaticality in their training or application. Furthermore, developments in modern neural NLP have produced a myriad of methods that push the baselines in many complex tasks, but those methods are typically not evaluated from a linguistic perspective. In this dissertation I use grammaticality judgements with artificially generated ungrammatical sentences to assess the performance of several neural encoders and propose them as a suitable training target to make models learn …

Waiting: History, Fear, And Healing In Ballynafeigh / The Upper Ormeau Road Of Belfast, Northern Ireland, Molly J. Hurley-Depret

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in one neighborhood of Belfast called Ballynafeigh / the upper Ormeau Road in 2006–2007, I argue we need to pay closer attention to the “inconspicuous transformations” that may have been occurring in parallel to the official peace process. Walter Benjamin notes that “refined and spiritual things” do “make their presence felt in the class struggle. They manifest themselves in this struggle as courage, humour, cunning, and fortitude.” Benjamin states that “the past strives to turn toward that sun which is rising in the sky of history. A historical materialist must be aware of …

Dermatoglyphic Measures In Relation To Depressive Symptoms Among Non-Clinical Adolescents And Young Adults, Yosefa A. Modiano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Depressive disorders are highly prevalent and can be devastating. Increasingly, depressive symptomatology is understood from a dimensional perspective such that non- or sub-clinical presentations may share a similar etiology. Depression etiology is believed to include genetic and environmental factors that may contribute to underlying vulnerability (diathesis) by way of neurodevelopment. Birth cohort studies have provided empirical evidence of the relationship between prenatal insult and later experience of adverse outcomes, including increased risk for depressive disorders. Retrospective investigation of the possible influence of prenatal disturbance on later experience of depressive symptoms has methodological limitations. Dermatoglyphic measurements offer a more methodologically viable …

Essays On New Keynesian Term Premium Model With Financial Risks, Weiguo Fu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation studies the modeling of U.S. Treasury (UST) yield curve term premia under the New Keynesian (NK) framework. Loosely speaking, term premium is the difference between a government bond’s yield for a specific tenor and the average of the expected short rates up to that tenor. The dissertation is divided into three chapters. The first chapter proposes a New Keynesianism-based macro-finance model estimated by a one-step full information maximum likelihood (FIML) method. The second chapter shows that the one-step FIML method may produce estimation biases, which result in biased expected short rates and term premia. The chapter then presents …