Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Development Of The Meanings Of Think And Know Through Conversation, Lea Kessler Shaw

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

An apparent discrepancy in the literature on mental verbs between findings of experimental studies (young children fail to contrast terms) and observational studies (children use terms correctly in conversation) can be reconciled using Nelson and Lucariello's (1985) theory of word meaning development. According to their analysis, three aspects of word meaning develop in order: reference, denotation, and sense. For success at experimental tasks, children must have attained a system of interrelated word meanings (sense). However, children's initial uses of think and know take their meanings from the roles in the language games in which they occur (Wittgenstein, 1953).

In this …

Juergen Habermas And Marx: Critique Of An Incipient Public Sphere, Russell Lee Rockwell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the relationship of Jurgen Habermas's ideas to those of Marx. A close reading of Habermas's major works, in conjunction with a close reading as well of the Marx texts he analyzes, comprises the thematically first part. The Habermas texts include the following, with original German publication dates: "Between Philosophy and Science: Marxism as Critique" (1960); Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962); Knowledge and Human Interests (1968); Legitimation Crisis (1973); "Reconstruction of Historical Materialism" (1975); and, The Theory of Communicative Action (1981). These texts are shown to contain a two decade-long argument that, (a) the relevance of …

Adult Attachment And Maternal Representations Of Gender During Pregnancy: Their Impact On The Child's Subsequent Gender Role Development, Leslie A. Gibson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigated the relationship between attachment, maternal gender representations of the child formed during pregnancy, and the development of sex-typed play at 28 months in 34 mother-infant pairs. Mothers were interviewed during their third trimester using the Pregnancy Interview (PI), a semi-structured interview that assesses women's representations of their babies and their overall experience of pregnancy, and the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), which assesses adults' working models of attachment. Maternal gender representations were scored using the Maternal Gender Representation Codes which assess subjects' overall narratives regarding the issue of gender with respect to their children during the Pregnancy Interview. …

Indexical Expressions: Syntax And Context, Barbara Bevington

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Indexicals are those expressions in natural language–such as I, you, here, and now–whose reference varies with occasion of use, picking out individuals in virtue of their contextual roles. Although analyses of the semantics of indexicals have been advanced–most notably by Kaplan–their syntax has heretofore been largely ignored. This dissertation puts forth a theory of the syntax of indexical expressions, within the framework of generative grammar, and proposes a new model of the formal context for natural language.

The central argument against prior accounts of indexicals is that such theories draw the distinction between the first and second person pronouns versus …

"To Sew Or To Sow?” European Gender Images And Development In Rural Ecuador, Barbara Grunenfelder-Elliker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the impact of a gender specific Swiss development project on Andean artisans women who struggle to intensify their craft production in the face of an increasing subsistence crisis characteristic among rural small producers around the globe. The selection of a project which has proven sustainable over a number of years allowed the author to conduct fieldwork in three different settings (1992-1995): among two hundred artisan women from eleven rural communities in Ecuador's Azuay province, who embroider table linen and apparel for export; among Ecuadorian and expatriate Swiss development specialists in Quito and Cuenca; and, to a limited …

Feeding Ecology And Aspects Of Life History In Microcebus Rufus (Family Cheirogaleidae, Order Primates), Syivia Atsalis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Annual fluctuations in body fat and activity levels, and feeding behavior in relationship to environmental seasonality were investigated in Microcebus rufus for 17 months in Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar.

Cyclical changes in thermoregulatory behavior occur in some small mammals during periods of environmental stress. It is common to associate the seasonal fattening and torpor characteristic of some Cheirogaleidae with the markedly seasonal climate and resource availability in west coast dry forests where most studies on cheirogaleids have taken place. Furthermore, primates of small body size are expected to include a high proportion of insects in their diet to meet protein …

The Administrative Efficiency Of Hospitals And The Effect Of Electronic Data Interchange: A Critical Evaluation Of The Stochastic Frontier And The Data Envelopment Analysis Models To Efficiency Measurement, Dimitrios N. Tsaprounis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The investigation and measurement of administrative efficiency is an issue of great concern for health care policy decision makers and has important implications for the efficiency of the overall health care sector itself as well as for the cost containment efforts and the restructuring of the health care system.

The administrative cost efficiency of the United States health care system has received much attention during the last years, and has been under continuous criticism since it became widely known that the country's administrative costs are higher than those of any other country in the world.

As criticism on administrative inefficiency …

The Politics Of Economic Integration In Latin America: A Case Study Of The Andean Group, 1969–1995, Julio J. Chan-Sanchez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines and confirms the hypothesis, through the study of the evolution of the Andean Group (a subregional economic integration unit in South America), that economic integration is a quasi-cyclical process involving phases of progress, stagnation, and decline. It is not a smooth linear progression. This quasi-cyclical evolution is fundamentally determined by the governments of the member countries. As such, the individual governments are the most important actors in setting the evolution of the economic integration process.

The integration process will progress when all the governments of the member countries find the Andean Group useful for attaining some of …

An Empirical Analysis Of Alcohol Addiction, Ismail Sirtalan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study is an empirical application of the rational addiction theory to the consumption of alcohol and heavy drinking. The model, developed by Becker and Murphy, emphasizes the interdependency of past current and future consumption of an addictive good. This is different than myopic addiction models where the current consumption is dependent on past consumption but not on future consumption. The data employed is the Monitoring the Future Survey, a panel representative of young adults between seventeen and twenty-seven years old, over a period of fourteen years from 1976 to 1989. Since alcohol abuse is most prevalent in this age …

Gatekeepers To The Franchise: Election Administration And Voter Participation In New York, Ronald Joseph Hayduk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Political scientists continue to debate the causes, consequences and remedies for America's exceptionally low voter turnout. While scholarly investigation has focused on several factors which produce low voter turnout, the machinery that administers elections in the U.S. has been ignored. Nor have the political influences and environments that determine these agencies' procedures and their place in the electoral system been adequately analyzed. There is, nevertheless, good reason to believe boards of elections play a greater role in shaping participation than is generally appreciated. Evidence indicates that in conducting elections and in implementing electoral rules–such as voter registration procedures–boards of elections …

An Examination Of The Socio-Economic Determinants Of Punishment Using Abductive Polynomial Networks, Farrukh Behzad Hakeem

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this research is to examine aspects of the relationship between socio-economic conditions and imprisonment in a particular historical setting. Previous research suggests that this relationship is problematic and situationally variable. The approach taken in this dissertation reflects a belief that earlier studies can be faulted for their failure to take account of the fiscal climate of the state as an influence on the size of prison populations.

This analysis will employ the Marxist model, as developed by Rusche and Kirchheimer (1939) and widely applied (though with mixed results) in research conducted over the last half-century. This model …

Social Consequences Of Delayed Childbearing And Infertility, Joan Liebmann-Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is a qualitative longitudinal study of delayed childbearing and infertility. The initial sample consisted of 35 women. Although they knew they might never have biological children, most did not regret postponing parenthood.

Because infertility is a socially defined illness, the doctor-patient relationship was fraught with conflict. It tended to follow a set pattern: from dependency to disappointment to discord to dissociation. The optimal doctor-patient relationship was mutual participation.

Infertility adversely affected marriages. The "medicalization of masturbation" and intercourse caused many marital problems. Couples also argued over how often and with whom to discuss infertility, when to stop treatment and …

Child Sexual Abuse, Moral Panic, And The Mass Media: A Case Study In The Social Construction Of Deviance, Steven M. Gorelick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is a case study of newswork in a moral panic. Specifically, Stanley Cohen's concept of "moral panic" is used to examine the practices of a group of reporters who covered a widely publicized case of alleged child sexual abuse in a day-care center. Moral panics occur when a perceived threat to the social order emerges with such force, and with such little overt warning, that routine discourse about right and wrong gives way to a flood of indignation about an extraordinary breach of normal moral boundaries. Suspending normal rules governing social control, officials rush to crack down on the …

Perceptions Of Patients Meeting The Criteria For A Diagnosis Of "Multiple Chemical Sensitivities": Exploration Of Social Situation And Need, Beth Miriam Lewis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While no one explanation as to the possible nature of "multiple chemical sensitivities" has gained unanimous acceptance within the medical/science community, similar controversy does not exist with regard to the recognition of social problems generated for people suffering from this condition. In an effort to identify areas of psychosocial need requiring social work intervention, a descriptive study was carried out with a group of patients seen in an outpatient occupational health clinic. Medical charts of a deliberate sample of 423 clinic patients, seen during the period 1980-1990, were reviewed, yielding a total of 83 patients meeting criteria specific to MCS. …

Saving The Environment: Science And Social Action, Patricia D'Andrade

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes environmental arguments for their stance toward science. It is a sociology of knowledge investigation of arguments made primarily by environmental scientists in the United States in the 1960s and 70s.

The environmental crisis puts science in question but at the same time looks to science for information and solutions. Thus, science is a center of contention around which arguments develop and oppositions are established. Science is beginning to take the place of political thought in providing legitimating concepts for arguments intended to effect social change. Major environmental books and articles by American authors of the 1960s and …

Social Order And Contest In Meanings And Power: Black Boycotts Against Korean Shopkeepers In Poor New York City Neighborhoods, Jeongduk Yi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to provide an analysis of the process of social reproduction revealed through the conflict between Korean shopkeepers and poor Black inner city residents in New York City. The major concepts, discussed in the introduction, include culture, power, domination, resistance, and conceptual orders.

The pervasive racism and capitalism in America provides the context where the two minority groups have been constituted and where opposing meanings are contested as the conflict between Korean shopkeepers and poor Blacks develops. State agents, Whites, and news media also join in the process of the conflict. They contest with various combinations of coercion, …

Psychoanalysis And Constructionalism: Clinical And Metapsychological Implications, Richard H. Loewus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Attempts to reconceptualize the epistemological basis of psychoanalytic metapsychology and clinical praxis from constructionalist perspectives are reviewed and critiqued. The constructionalist epistemology of the American philosopher, Nelson Goodman, is absent in these discussions. Goodman offers a relativism with restraints, a constructionalist epistemology that asserts no one given reality to which our constructions must answer, but does not accept that therefore all constructions are equally valid. Instead, constructions, or what Goodman calls world versions must answer to standards of "Rightness". Goodman's reconception of philosophy subsumes the concept of truth as a special class of rightness, and replaces the concept of knowledge …

The Politics Of Memorialization: Creating A Holocaust Memorial Museum In New York City, Rochelle G. Saidel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study of how government intervention affects the implementation of a project of an interest group analyzes the political processes of the 45 year impasse in completing a major Holocaust memorial in New York City. Using as a case study the 1981-1991 effort to create such a project, the study develops a new concept for analyzing long-term public-private projects. This study develops and uses a so-called Mutagon to analyze the complicated and changing political coalition that has endeavored for ten years to create a Holocaust museum.

The Mutagon concept augments existing interest group theories, (e.g., iron triangle and issue network …

Elite Reproduction And Ethnic Identity In Belize, Karen Judd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the construction and representation of ethnic identity by elite groups over time in Belize, focusing on the creole middle class of the late 19th century. It analyzes the formation and reproduction of local white, creole, and "Spanish" elites in terms of their economic and social locations as well as through the reproduction over several generations of representative elite families. It looks particularly at the role of the colonial authorities in differentially shaping economic and social options and constraints for each group, as well as at the efforts of different groups to insert themselves into this process. Through …

The Psychological Determinants Of Occupational And Non-Occupational Risk-Taking Among Law Enforcement Officers, William F. Mccarthy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this study was to identify and statistically examine the psychological determinants of risk-taking among law enforcement officers. This study was conceptualized and designed on a rather simple premise that risk-taking in one's leisure would have a dramatic and predominant influence on the grouping of subjects into definable personality trait categories. The suspicion regarding these categories was that subjects who engaged in risk-taking in their leisure time would be distinctively different from all other emerging groups, with regard to the 16 PF Cattell factors. It was also suspected that this leisure time risk-taking group's personality profile would be …

Taxi Driving: A Study Of Leasing In New York City, Allen Russell Stevens

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study uses ethnography, survey research and organizational analysis to examine the impact that taxicab leasing has had upon the occupational, social and personal lives of fleet taxicab drivers. Ethnography has been conducted at the Yellow Taxi Company (a pseudonym for a major taxicab fleet garage in New York City); 408 surveys were completed by fleet drivers, and 50 interviews were conducted (30 with lessees 10 with management at various garages and 10 with local 3036 taxi union personnel). And organizational analysis was used in the description of how the shift from the commission remuneration system to the lease remuneration …

The Dynamics Of Program Development: A Case Study In Urban Mental Health Services, John Kastan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study describes the planning, development and implementation of the on-site school mental health program, an innovative mental health services program for schoolchildren in New York City. The program, developed jointly by the New York City Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Alcoholism Services and the New York City Board of Education in 1982, was fully implemented in 1986. This study uses data gathered via the method of participant-observation (the author was employed by the Department of Mental Health), supplemented by the review of documents and discussions with key individuals.

The study begins by providing background on the two …

Pygmalion Goes To School: The Effects Of Goal Setting, The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy And Self-Efficacy On Trainee Performance, James Michael Benton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined the effectiveness of motivation techniques for increasing performance in a skill training program. A PC based software program provided structured training to increase subjects' typing skills. Motivation was manipulated by the use of goal setting and the self-fulfilling prophecy (SFP), alone and in combination. The moderating effects of self-efficacy on motivation, defined as a generalized "can do" personality orientation, were also examined. Two levels of goal setting were employed: (1) "do your best"; and, (2) a difficult, specific goal. The SFP was tied to the situation, not the person. It was invoked by informing subjects that the …

Visual-Spatial And Set-Shifting Functions In Patients With Parkinson's Disease, Sarah A. Raskin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) (N=20) were compared to age and education-matched normal control subjects (N=20) on 18 paper-and-pencil neuropsychological measures. These tests were chosen to measure two specific functions. The first set of tests was chosen to measure spatial orientation, and these tests were divided into those that measure personal orientation, extrapersonal orientation, mental rotation, and right/left orientation. The second set of tests was chosen to measure the ability to shift mental set. Hotelling's multivariate T² tests revealed a significant difference between the PD patients and the normal control subjects on the tests chosen to measure set-shifting ability …

Serial, Parallel And Delay Strategies In The Processing Of Structurally Ambiguous Language Constructions, Harvey Slutsky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Through a set of two experiments, the present study attempted to determine which of three language processing strategies, that is, serial, parallel or delay is employed in parsing two kinds of structurally ambiguous visually presented sentences (transitive and verb complement). The study used a relatively new technique, a self paced syntactic decision task whose sensitivity to local parsing complexity was demonstrated in the first experiment through a partial replication of Ford's (1983) work with relative clause sentences. The findings showed Object relatives to be harder to process at the position of the main verb. The same findings from a followup …

Children's Video Usage: A Comparative Study Of Nine To Eleven-Year-Olds Living In London And New York, Seth P. Welins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this cross-cultural study identifies which video and non-video related activities are selected by nine-to-eleven year old children living in New York and London, England. Four hundred children were surveyed and interviewed about their television and VCR viewing habits and their use of computers and computer/video games as well their after-school, non-video activities.

A uses-gratifications approach provides a general framework for the analyses of the data. These data show that there is a complex interplay between children's activity choices and the occupational status of the child's parents, the child's race/ethnicity, gender, ecological environment, family structure and social structure. …

Prediction Of Treatment Response In Chronic Pain Patients: The Relationship Between Illness Behavior And Self-Concept, Andrew Bruce Rosenblum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigated self-concepts held by chronic pain patients. It was hypothesized that self schemas of probable and ideal levels of control, dependence on medical care, physical vulnerability, affiliation and conflict with physicians would predict response to treatment.

At intake into a three week in-patient program 72 pain patients were given a self perception scale which measured these five dimensions across three "possible selves" (now self, probable self and ideal self). Patients were also given at intake, and at follow-up (5 weeks after discharge), a battery of psychological and behavioral measures. Control, dependence on medical care, and vulnerability (CDV) were …

A Comparison Of The Symbolic Function In Delicate Self-Mutilators With Joyce Mcdougall's Conceptualization Of The Symbolic Function In Psychosomatic Illness And Sexual Perversion, Thomas Richard Negron

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The syndrome of delicate self-mutilation is reviewed with emphasis on the psychoanalytic interpretations that have been offered to explain this behavior. These interpretations generally find a symbolic meaning in this symptom, while also noting the pre-verbal level of development that is a marked aspect of these patient's functioning. The alternate hypothesis is offered that delicate self-mutilators suffer from a deficit in their capacity to create symbolic symptoms.

The work of Joyce McDougall with patients manifesting sexual perversions and psychosomatic symptomology is reviewed. She hypothesizes that these patients suffer a deficit in their capacity for symbolic functioning, and she coins the …

Cold Type: Computerized Typesetting And Occupational Subcultures In The New York City Newspaper Industry, Eve Fay Hochwald

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Using a framework drawn from recent social science discussions of the labor process and from the anthropological literature on culture as the generative basis through which people adapt to or transform their social circumstances, this dissertation analyses the changes occurring in the occupational subcultures and political organization of printers, journalists, and computer service workers in the New York City newspaper industry since the introduction of computerized typesetting in the mid-1970s. One consequence has been a restructured labor force, entailing a shift of skilled, traditionally male, manual craft jobs to, on the one hand, clerical "women's work," and, on the other, …

Israeli, Palestinian And Egyptian Explanations Of Political Actions In The Middle East, Bethamie Horowitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigated how people affiliated with different parties in an international conflict understand their own actions and the actions of their adversaries. Using data gathered in the Middle East in 1982, the study examined the explanations offered by 1336 Israeli Jews, Palestinians (living in Israel) and Egyptians to three political events in the Middle East: 'Israeli Air Force conducts a raid on Beirut,' 'Palestinians attack a bus on the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway,' and 'A peace treaty is announced between Israel and Egypt.'

The study, an exploratory analysis, was carried out in a sequence of stages. First, the analysis involved …