Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Neural Entrainment Indexes Statistical Learning In Children, Christine Moreau

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Statistical learning is proposed as a mechanism for discovering structural patterns in speech through incidental exposure. However, studies have largely relied on assessing explicit memory after learning has occurred, which does not capture the time course and process of statistical learning per se. To better understand the dynamics of statistical learning, we assessed 8- to 12-year-old children using an EEG measure of learning, which captures changes in neural entrainment to words embedded in a continuous artificial language. Statistical learning was assessed post-learning using implicit and explicit behavioural tests. The neural entrainment results demonstrated rapid learning of word-level information, while post-learning …

Empirical Analysis Of Urban Sprawl In Canadian Census Metropolitan Areas Using Satellite Imagery, 1986-2016, Xiaoxuan Sun

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Major Canadian cities have experienced rapid sprawl in the last 30 years. This dissertation presents two studies that empirically examine the causes of urban sprawl, merging census socioeconomics data and satellite imageries of 11 major Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs). The monocentric city model and the Tiebout model are the main traditional theories explaining urban boundary changes and mobility residential. The first study focuses on the cross-sectional comparison among the 11 CMAs in 2016. In the second study, we zoom into the Toronto CMA and examine the longitudinal changes in its urban coverage at the fringe. We detect land cover/use changes …

Leadership On The Ropes: How Hostile Followership Affects Leadership Behaviour, Noelle Baird

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The current study examined the effect of followership on leadership behaviours, and whether leaders’ responses to hostile followership varies as a function of individual differences. This study used a randomized controlled between-subjects experimental design. Participants were assigned to the role of either the “team leader” or a “team member”. As the focal manipulation, participants were assigned to a hostile followership condition or a control condition. In these two conditions, a confederate either antagonized and challenged the leader’s ideas (i.e., hostile followership) or engaged in neutral behaviours (i.e., control condition) throughout a virtually-mediated group decision-making task. Support was found for the …

The Politics Of Where: The Federal Government And Canada's Urbanization, 1867-2017, Charles D. Crenna

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation responds to a single overarching research question: what is the nature and extent of the federal government’s influence on urbanization in Canada, both on its systems of cities and on their internal structure? Lessons learned regarding the federal role in Canada’s urbanization remain relevant and applicable to emerging conditions. They offer a sound, streetwise foundation for future urban policy development, based on understanding the vital politics of where.

Large, complex systems of cities are both self-organizing and responsive to strategic guidance by the federal government. Politically-difficult choices among competing urban locations can be made both by hiding …

Modern Homonegativity And Lgbtq Activism: The Role Of Identity And Behaviour In Attitude Formation, Sarah E. Moroz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Although reported prejudice toward sexual minorities seems to be decreasing over time, sexual minorities themselves continue to report many experiences of prejudice and discrimination. One potential explanation for this discrepancy in the sexual prejudice literature is that explicit prejudice is being measured in a manner that is no longer culturally relevant, as proposed by Morrison and Morrison (2003) in the development of their Modern Homonegativity Scale. Modern homonegativity (MH) is characterized by negative attitudes toward behaviours and policies that benefit LGBTQ people, rather than a negative attitude toward homosexuality itself. The present work aimed to further the field’s understanding of …

A New York State Of Infrastructure: Stuck In Traffic During Last Saturday’S Blackout, Erika Simpson Ponders Vulnerable Infrastructure, Erika Simpson

Political Science Publications

The article recounts a chaotic evening in New York City during a widespread blackout affecting lower west Manhattan. As thousands were stranded in darkness due to an electrical failure, initially thought to be caused by a fire in a manhole, concerns about infrastructure resilience and disaster preparedness were heightened. The incident underscored the vulnerability of urban electrical grids, prompting reflections on the city's readiness for emergencies like terrorist attacks and climate-related disruptions. Despite disruptions to Broadway and other events, the city showed resilience, highlighting the importance of robust infrastructure and emergency planning in urban centers.

Resedent Study- Reducing Sedentary Behaviour May Slow Cognitive Decline In Older Adults With Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Pilot Study, Kirsten B. Dillon

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Physical activity (PA) has been shown to slow down dementia. Unfortunately, older adults spend most of their day in sedentary behaviours (SB). Breaking up prolonged bouts of sitting with intermittent bouts of light intensity PA may reduce glycemic variability in the brain; potentially mitigating cognitive decline. This study investigated how interrupting SB with 10 min bouts of light intensity PA 3x a day would affect mild to moderate cognitive impairment progression (primary outcome) in older adults residing in an assisted living facility. Participants (n=25) were assigned in clusters into a two arm 10-week single site pilot randomized controlled trial. Secondary …

Health Policy And Social Change: Women’S Advocacy Groups And Narrative Mobilization, Jill Moffatt

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The goal of this study is to systematically investigate the mobilization of co-created (storyteller and story-gatherer) narratives for policy and social change. A case study format investigated the mobilization of narratives by a women’s health organization in London, Ontario. Semi-structured interviews resulted in transcripts from key actors. These transcripts were thematically coded and analyzed. All interview participants emphasized that from their perspective the organization did influence health policy or social change through their narrative use. Specific policy change examples were provided by participants, and social change was subjectively recognized as realized through the creation of awareness and affirmed through audience …

A Study Of Multiple Predictors Of Cognitive Fatigue In Individuals With Multiple Sclerosis, Leila M. Mackay

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Persons with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) commonly experience cognitive fatigue (CF), defined as a decrease in cognitive performance over a sustained activity and measured objectively or subjectively. In the present research, we evaluated the extent to which depression, anxiety, information processing speed, sleep quality, and disease severity predict subjective and objective CF, in a sample of 55 PwMS (37 females, M = 44.23). Although no statistically significant predictors of objective CF were demonstrated, all variables predicted subjective CF, R2adj = .384 [F (6, 40) = 5.783, p = .0002]. In particular, depression and information processing speed were found to be significant …

Cortical Beta Oscillations Are Associated With Motor Performance Following Visuomotor Learning, Svenja Espenhahn, Bernadette C.M. Van Wijk, Holly E. Rossiter, Archy O. De Berker, Nell D. Redman, Jane Rondina, Joern Diedrichsen, Nick S. Ward

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2019 The Authors People vary in their capacity to learn and retain new motor skills. Although the relationship between neuronal oscillations in the beta frequency range (15–30 Hz) and motor behaviour is well established, the electrophysiological mechanisms underlying individual differences in motor learning are incompletely understood. Here, we investigated the degree to which measures of resting and movement-related beta power from sensorimotor cortex account for inter-individual differences in motor learning behaviour in the young and elderly. Twenty young (18–30 years) and twenty elderly (62–77 years) healthy adults were trained on a novel wrist flexion/extension tracking task and subsequently retested …

Glucocorticoids And “Stress” Are Not Synonymous, Scott Macdougall-Shackleton

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Synopsis

Reference to glucocorticoids as “stress hormones” has been growing in prevalence in the literature, including in comparative and environmental endocrinology. Although glucocorticoids are elevated in response to a variety of stressors in vertebrate animals, the primary functions of glucocorticoids are not responding to stressors and they are only one component of complex suite of physiological and behavioral responses to stressors. Thus, the use of the short-hand phrase “stress hormone” can be misleading. Further, simply measuring glucocorticoids is not equivalent to measuring a stress response, nor is manipulating glucocorticoids equivalent to exposing an animal to a stressor. In this commentary …

Investigating How Neural Entrainment Relates To Beat Perception By Disentangling The Stimulus-Driven Response, Aaron Wc Gibbings

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Beat perception – the ability to perceive a steady pulse in music – is nearly ubiquitous in humans, but the neural mechanisms underlying this ability are unknown. A growing number of electroencephalography (EEG) studies suggest that beat perception is related to neural entrainment, a phenomenon in which cyclic changes in the excitability of populations of neurons synchronize with a rhythmic stimulus. However, the relationship between acoustically-driven and entrainment-driven neural activity is unclear. This thesis presents EEG research that extends our understanding neural entrainment is related to beat perception by characterizing, equating, and finally removing the stimulus-driven response in the neural …

Descriptive And Prescriptive Belief In A Just World, Joel Armstrong

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Justice Motive has traditionally been conceptualized as a homeostatic, prevention-focused motivation, but attempts to measure individual differences in the Justice Motive (i.e., the Belief in a Just World) have not treated it as one. The measurement of a motivation requires accounting for both the current state and the goal state, but traditional measurement techniques have relied solely on beliefs about how just the world currently is (i.e., the current state). This has resulted in two major issues in the literature. First is the assumption that everyone who reports believing in a just world has reached that belief because of …

Missed Opportunities For Saving Children From Domestic Homicide: Implications For Prevention, Intervention, & Community Collaboration, Katherine Reif

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation is comprised of three studies that explored the risks faced by children exposed to domestic violence, as well as systemic and agency-related recognition of, and responses to, these risks. Literature in the field has demonstrated that children living in these circumstances are at risk of significant adverse outcomes stemming from their exposure to domestic violence, and at its extreme, domestic homicides (Alisic et al., 2017; Jenney & Alaggia, 2014). In addition, these children are also at risk of becoming homicide victims in the context of domestic violence, either through being directly targeted in the homicide, or as a …

Product Categories As Judgment Devices: The Moral Awakening Of The Investment Industry, Diane-Laure Arjaliès, Rodolphe Durand

Business Publications

Product categories are more than classification devices that organize markets; when reflecting market actors' purposes, they are also judgment devices. Taking stock of the literature on product categories and drawing on the distinction between the faculties of knowing and judging, we elaborate a framework that accounts for how and why market actors include or exclude normative attributes in a product category definition. Based on a field study of the development of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) funds in France, we describe the phases and conditions of a judgment framework for category definition, for both established and nascent categories. We discuss implications …

Spatial Data Analysis: Examining The Quality Of Life For Ethiopians And Nigerians In The City Of Toronto And Edmonton, Ebyan Hassan

MPA Major Research Papers

Canadian cities have experienced an increase of immigrants, more notably, from Nigeria and Ethiopia. Both groups have settled in Canadian cities to improve their overall Quality of Life (QOL). Areas such as education, employment, safety, and housing conditions were top priorities in choosing a new location to live. Studies, however, show a large proportion of immigrants from Nigeria and Ethiopia have settled in regions that contradict their desires and actually obtain a ‘high’ standard of quality of life. The research findings show both groups have settled in areas with high unemployment rates; highly educated populates with lower-paying jobs; and lower …

An Examination Of Municipal Policy-Makers’ Responses Towards The Provincial Implementation Of Retail Cannabis Stores Within Ontario, Mark Dean

MPA Major Research Papers

The rationale for this study is founded on the important role of municipal governments within the domain of cannabis legalization in Canada. In Ontario, a strategy of privatization for physical cannabis stores was implemented by the provincial government. The policy gave municipalities the authority to decide whether they opted in or out of physical cannabis stores within their specific communities. This scenario of allowing local governments to determine the introduction of physical cannabis stores has demonstrated a need for a deeper understanding towards the various factors that influence the decisions of municipal policy makers. This is a unique situation that …

Investigating The Effects Of Telephone And Internet Voting On Election Administration In Rural Ontario Municipalities, Carson Lamb

MPA Major Research Papers

Existing research that has been conducted on telephone and internet voting in Canada has focussed almost exclusively on large, urban municipalities. Yet in Ontario, local governments of all sizes have adopted these modes of voting. As a result, very little is known about the effects of telephone and internet voting in rural municipalities and this is problematic. This paper attempts to address this gap in the literature by examining telephone and internet voting in the context of rural municipalities in Ontario. It relies on a qualitative multi-case cross-sectional design to generate exploratory findings on the effects that the adoption of …

Building A Smart City: Insights And Perspectives From The Winners Of Smart City Challenge, Andi Maloku

MPA Major Research Papers

When Canadian Government launched smart city initiative over 130 municipalities, large and small have submitted their innovative ideas. On May 14, 2019, the four winners of the Canadian Smart Cities Challenge were announced in Ottawa: Town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia winning $5M Prize Category; the Nunavut Communities, Nunavut winning $10M Prize Category; the City of Guelph and Wellington County, Ontario winning $10M Prize Category and the City of Montréal, Quebec winning $50M Prize Category. This paper focuses on these four cities by exploring two main research questions: (1) what does “smart cities” mean for Canadian municipalities; and, (2) what are …

Late Positive Complex In Event-Related Potentials Tracks Memory Signals When They Are Decision Relevant., Haopei Yang, Geoffrey Laforge, Bobby Stojanoski, Emily S Nichols, Ken Mcrae, Stefan Köhler

Psychology Publications

The Late Positive Complex (LPC) is an Event-Related Potential (ERP) consistently observed in recognition-memory paradigms. In the present study, we investigated whether the LPC tracks the strength of multiple types of memory signals, and whether it does so in a decision dependent manner. For this purpose, we employed judgements of cumulative lifetime exposure to object concepts, and judgements of cumulative recent exposure (i.e., frequency judgements) in a study-test paradigm. A comparison of ERP signatures in relation to degree of prior exposure across the two memory tasks and the study phase revealed that the LPC tracks both types of memory signals, …

Understanding The Neural Bases Of Implicit And Statistical Learning, Laura J. Batterink, Ken A. Paller, Paul J. Reber

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2019 Cognitive Science Society, Inc. Both implicit learning and statistical learning focus on the ability of learners to pick up on patterns in the environment. It has been suggested that these two lines of research may be combined into a single construct of “implicit statistical learning.” However, by comparing the neural processes that give rise to implicit versus statistical learning, we may determine the extent to which these two learning paradigms do indeed describe the same core mechanisms. In this review, we describe current knowledge about neural mechanisms underlying both implicit learning and statistical learning, highlighting converging findings between …

Macaque Anterior Cingulate Cortex Deactivation Impairs Performance And Alters Lateral Prefrontal Oscillatory Activities In A Rule-Switching Task, Liya Ma, Jason L. Chan, Kevin Johnston, Stephen G. Lomber, Stefan Everling

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2019 Ma et al. In primates, both the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) are key regions of the frontoparietal cognitive control network. To study the role of the dACC and its communication with the dlPFC in cognitive control, we recorded local field potentials (LFPs) from the dlPFC before and during the reversible deactivation of the dACC, in macaque monkeys engaging in uncued switches between 2 stimulus-response rules, namely prosaccade and antisaccade. Cryogenic dACC deactivation impaired response accuracy during maintenance of—but not the initial switching to—the cognitively demanding antisaccade rule, which coincided with a …

The Rohingya Muslims’ Crisis In The Rakhine State Of Myanmar: ‘Recognition As Toleration’ And ‘Religious Toleration’, Md. Ishrat Ibne Ismail, Md. Ishrat Ibne Ismail

Western Research Forum

Title:

The Rohingya Muslims’ Crisis in the Rakhine State of Myanmar: ‘Recognition as Toleration’ and ‘Religious Toleration’

Abstract:

The inhuman annihilation of the Rohingya people from the Rakhine state by the Myanmar military and the Buddhist majority, which is supported by the Myanmar government as they watched the massacre silently, could be considered as genocide. Ashley Kinseth claims: “in terms of rate of escalation, this is the greatest mass exodus - and has the makings to become the most significant humanitarian catastrophe - since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when over 800,000 Hutus and moderate Tutsis were slaughtered.” The main reason …

Public Policy Advocacy In The Canadian Context: A Review Of The Current Literature, Amy Lewis, Abram Oudshoorn, Helene Berman

Western Research Forum

Public Policy Advocacy in the Canadian Context: A Review of the Current Literature

Background: Public policy advocacy is an important competency for students from healthcare and social service programs to develop; however, integration of policy advocacy within university curricula remains inconsistent. Identifying the knowledge and skills that healthcare and social service professionals use in policy advocacy supports the development of educational competencies to achieve entry-to-practice objectives. A review of the literature published on the topic of public policy advocacy in higher education was undertaken to determine the current state of this evidence.

Methods: For this scoping review, CINAHL, Scopus, and …

An Empirical Examination Of Contemporary American Spiritualism And Mediumship At Lily Dale, New York, Diana Ali

Western Research Forum

American Spiritualism is an American religion that was born in 1848 in Hydesville, New York. Its central principles state that there is life after death and that mediums have the capability to communicate with discarnate beings. Mediums are persons who claim they can communicate with the dead. Today, Lily Dale, New York is the largest surviving community of American Spiritualism, with a population of mediums that host an annual festival that draws large crowds from around the world upwards of 20,000-30,000 visitors. The author of the present interdisciplinary study outlined a historical overview of American Spiritualism and conducted empirical research …

Does Self-Regulation Mediate The Relationship Between Locus Of Control And Resiliency Related Outcomes?, Alexander J. Mcgregor 6971928

Western Research Forum

Locus of control (LOC) has been implicated in predicting mental wellbeing outcomes in a variety of theories and empirical studies, however the mediating mechanisms between the trait and mental wellbeing are not well known. The King and Rothstein (2010) model of resiliency posits self-regulation as the active mechanism that leads to recovery in resiliency related outcomes following significant adversity. This study investigated the mediating role of affective, behavioral, and cognitive self-regulation between locus of control, depression, and anxiety using mediation analysis. The results showed LOC significantly predicted all three self-regulation components, as well both depression and anxiety. behavioral and cognitive …

The Fear And Biopolitical Control Of The ‘Terrorist Other’, Percy Percy Sherwood

Western Research Forum

“I think Islam hates us,” Donald Trump said as a presidential candidate in a CNN interview in March 2016, conflating the religion with ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ Trump’s statement exemplifies the prevailing fabricated enemy and resulting Islamophobia in the context of the ‘global war on terror.’ Since 9/11, powerful actors are using abstractions, ideologies, and narratives—that are usually defined along racial lines—to conjure up a fear so permeable that it serves to legitimize massive levels of violence in the name of self-righteousness. How do the racist abstractions, ideologies, and narratives that are associated with Islam and Muslims produce fear and insecurity …

The Dissociable Impact Of Auditory Vs. Visual Emotional Cues On Visual Processing, Emma K. Stewart Bsc, Derek Gv Mitchell Phd

Western Research Forum

Background: Emotional information has privileged access to processing resources, which can cause it to have a distracting or facilitating effect on task performance for reasons that are poorly understood. The sensory modality through which it is presented may be one determining factor. Some findings suggest that auditory stimuli facilitate visual task performance while visual stimuli interfere with it, but there are conflicting findings.

Hypothesis: We hypothesize that emotional content of a different sensory modality from the task improves task-related performance via a general alerting and arousing effect for all stimuli, while emotional content of the same modality disrupts performance when …

Cross-Linguistic Effects Of Intention Recognition In Malay Bilinguals, Maziyah Mohamed, Debra Jared

Western Research Forum

Does the language we speak influence the way we interpret intentions of others? Prior literature has shown that obligatory markers in a language may influence the way we think. In Malay texts, accidental actions are marked using a prefix. Malay speakers are, thus, quick to identify the accidental actions of others. Conversely, it may be that Malay speakers often interpret intentions as deliberate given a more ambiguous context where the prefix is absent. The goal of the current study was to determine whether this way of interpreting one’s intentions of others extends to English texts for Malay-English bilinguals. In Study …

Trauma And Violence Informed Care Workshop For Teachers, Christina Amico, Michelle Philippe

Western Research Forum

Teachers play an integral role in the healthy growth and development of their students. Students that have experienced traumatic events, chronic adversity, and structural violence are vulnerable to a myriad of biological, social, emotional, and behavioural impairments (Blaustein, 2013). Problematic classroom behaviour, therefore, could be a reflection of exposure to trauma and violence. As teachers play an important front-line role in the lives of their students (Brunzell, Waters, & Stokes, 2015), it is important that teachers receive relevant and high-quality professional development, particularly in the area of trauma and violence-informed teaching practices. There is a gap in research on effective …