Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Mapping The Spatial And Temporal Dynamics Of Visual Percepts Elicited By A Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation Technique, Kelly Webster

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While many of us rely on vision to interact with and experience the world, for people with damage or disease to the eye or visual cortex, experience through this modality is extremely limited. Brain and retinal stimulation devices show exciting promise for restoring vision, but little is understood about where and when vision percepts can be induced through stimulation. Using a non-invasive brain stimulation technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), we characterized the spatial and temporal dynamics of perception induced through brain stimulation. In the first set of experiments, we explore the importance of higher visual and non-visual areas vs. …

Essays On The Application Of The Machine Learning Methods In Finance And Policy Evaluation, Olga Guska

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the age when "Big Data" is becoming almost a household word, such abundance of information in different forms and representations can be of a great help for one's decision-making let it be a trader betting on a stock, or a policy-maker assessing the potential impact of proposed regulation. Whereas traditional economic research is primarily based on the use of numerical data continuous or discrete, there is a great deal of useful information that can be extracted from text data. Such information can power novel identification strategies or help perceive solutions from a different angle, but observed volumes of such …

Exploring Vicarious Resilience Among Practitioners Working With Clients Who Have Experienced Traumatic Events, Adam Reynolds

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Vicarious Resilience is the positive impact that practitioners may experience when working with individuals who have lived through traumatic events. The effects of this phenomenon may be noticed as changes in life goals and perspective, client-inspired hope, increased recognition of clients’ spirituality as a therapeutic resource, increased capacity for resourcefulness, increased self-awareness and self-care practices, increased consciousness about power and privilege relative to clients’ social location, and increased capacity for remaining present while listening to trauma narratives.

While prior research into vicarious resilience has focused primarily on practitioners in trauma-specific settings, this quantitative dissertation studied the experiences of a convenience …

Asians Applying For Postsecondary Success: Students, Schools, And Socioeconomic Status, Avery M.D. Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Higher education recruitment rates are rapidly declining as schools are stymied by dynamic demographic shifts and a competitive ecosystem. Despite the constant realities of this challenge for tertiary institutions, the complexities of the interplay for demographics, student motivation, parental influences, and school environments during the postsecondary education application process is often overlooked. This thesis analyses how these four domains impact Asian American students within the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) in terms of the number of postsecondary schools to which they apply? This study examines a sample (N = 662) of the ELS by employing multivariate regression analysis on the number …

Arnova-L And The Cinderella Syndrome, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

In this brief newsletter column, the author recounts the story of how a LISTSERV-based discussion list founded in 1991 helped to transform an international multi-disciplinary research society from a "Cinderella organization" that convened once a year for a three-day conference and then effectively disappeared again until the next annual conference. Communications fostered through the discussion list helped to transform the organization into a fully-functioning, year-round operation as subscriptions burgeoned from an original 32 subscribers to more than 1,500.

The U.S. Approach To Peacebuilding In Afghanistan: A Comparative Analysis Of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, And Donald Trump Administration Policies In Afghanistan, Mohammad Rasouli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research paper addresses the efforts of the U.S. to achieve some level of reconciliation with the Taliban after more than 18 years of war in Afghanistan. It deals with the history of U.S.-Taliban negotiations and the U.S. initiatives to engage with the Taliban, as well as outlining the challenges to these initiatives and determining how effective they have been. In addition, the prospects of the U.S.-Taliban peace talks are assessed.

Since the 2001 U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, the first two U.S. administrations under consideration—those of George W. Bush and Barack Obama—justified intrusive interventions into the political, economic, and social …

The History Of Martha J. Lamb: Her Origin, Rise, And Progress., Mary Collins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

On June 16, 1883, Harper’s Weekly ran a story foreshadowing the transformation of the City of New York from the island of Manhattan to a massive metropolis, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. Another article on the page announced that Martha J. Lamb “has become editor of the ‘The Magazine of American History.’” It does not mention that she was also president of the company purchasing the journal. Ten years later, just a few months after her death, Mrs. Lamb’s great work, her History of the City of New York: Its Origin, Rise, and Progress, was included in …

The “Olympiad Of Photography”: Fiap And The Global Photo-Club Culture, 1950–1965, Alise Tifentale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the global photo-club culture of the 1950s through the work of the International Federation of Photographic Art (Fédération internationale de l'art photographique, FIAP), founded in 1950. By 1965 FIAP united national associations of photo clubs in fifty-five countries across Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The regular exhibitions and publications of FIAP provided a unique platform where photographers living in the “second” and “third worlds” were welcome to present their work on equal grounds with their peers from the “first world.” FIAP, I posit, created a nonprofit, egalitarian, and open system of image production …

Beyond Exposure: Markers Of English Proficiency In School-Aged French–English Bilinguals, Erin Quirk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bilingual children show more variation in their language development than monolingual children, a fact that has been linked to their experience with their languages. Bilingual language experience also varies more than monolingual children's, both in terms of how much they hear the language spoken around them (exposure) and how much they speak the language themselves (production). This dissertation investigates the following aspects of the relationship between bilinguals’ language experience and development which are not well-understood: how children’s language production relates to their proficiency in that language, how children’s language exposure relates to receptive versus expressive and lexical versus grammatical skill, …

Applying A Metacognitive Framework In The Neuropsychological Assessment Of Subjective Cognitive Decline And Mild Cognitive Impairment, Susan Y. Chi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The characterization of the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a topic of major research interest because it is critical for early diagnosis and emerging interventions. Metamemory, or knowledge about memory, including awareness of one’s own memory functions, has been investigated in AD especially in relation to how impairment in memory and executive functions contribute to unawareness of cognitive deficits, termed anosognosia. Previous research, however, has not systematically investigated metamemory functioning in older adults with prodromal dementia conditions. Therefore, we investigated metamemory accuracy in cognitively healthy older adults (HC) and those with subjective cognitive decline but intact neuropsychological test …

Goals, Power, And Culture: The Effects Of School Organizational Features On Parental Involvement, Vandeen A. Campbell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Drawing on organizational theory and the school effectiveness literature, this project incorporates new methodological approaches to the analysis of a national longitudinal data set (ECLS-K: 2011) in order to investigate ways in which school goals around parental involvement, distribution of power, and culture affect parental involvement in children’s education, especially in schools serving large proportions of lower socioeconomic status families.

Parental involvement is widely accepted among researchers and policymakers to be essential for students’ academic success; however, parents with lower socioeconomic status exhibit less participation in both home-based and school-based activities compared to those of higher socioeconomic backgrounds.

Many recent …

Identifying Construct-Irrelevant Variance And Construct Under-Representation As Support Of External Evidence Of Validity, Jennifer Case

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Test validity has commonly been defined in terms of a test measuring what it is supposed to measure, however there has been a century of discussion and debate on test validity and what qualifies as evidence of test validity. Some argue in favor of restricting test validity evidence to that which is internal to the test, such as the test items, while others argue that external information, such as the relationships with other variables, also offers evidence toward test validity. Cronbach and Meehl’s groundbreaking paper in 1955 introduced the concept of the nomological net, which is the construct’s lawful relationships …

A Grounded Theory Investigation Of The Subjective Responses From Partners In Couples Where Infidelity Has Occurred, Malika Bhowmik

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This qualitative study investigates the subjective responses elicited by partners in long-term committed couples where infidelity has taken place. Each of these couples attended a couple therapy session in the aftermath of their experience of an affair, and the transcriptions of these therapy sessions served as the data set for this investigation. In their seeking of help, most couples articulated a broad, comparable trajectory of the issues; their post-affair understanding of their pre-affair relationship including the state of their pre-affair sex, the origins of the unfaithful partner’s ability to stray from the primary relationship, the impact of the affair on …

Knowledge Of The Present Perfect By Albanian/English Bilinguals, Erjon Xholi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper concerns the acquisition process of a specific part of English grammar by native speakers of Albanian. The focus is the English present perfect, and the similarities and differences that it bears to the Albanian Compound Perfective. The two constructions are made from similar parts, but they crucially differ in the aspectual nature of their participles. While the Albanian particle is perfective, the English is underspecified. We argue that the process of the acquisition of the PP by Albanian bilinguals is one where input, analogy, and direct grammar teaching do not suffice. We apply Generative Grammar logic to the …

The Interplay Between Interference Control And L2 Proficiency In L2 Auditory Sentence Comprehension In The Presence Of Verbal And Non-Verbal Masking, Jungna Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Speech perception and comprehension in the presence of interfering auditory stimuli is a challenge for bilingual listeners (e.g., Ezzatian, Avivi-Reich, & Schneider, 2010; Krizman, Bradlow, Lam, & Kraus, 2017). How efficiently and skillfully listeners manage auditory interference may also be closely related to their ability to pay attention to a target and suppress irrelevant information. Based on Friedman and Miyake’s (2004) framework of interference control, this dissertation investigated the underlying mechanisms of late Korean-English bilingual individuals’ auditory interference control in the presence of auditory verbal and nonverbal masking and evaluated the potential interaction between L2 proficiency and interference control.

Two …

Spatial Distribution Of Chinese Language Education And Historical Development Of Chinese Language Pedagogy In Higher Education In The United States, Jing Zhao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project includes two major components: an interactive digital map that displays the geographical distribution of Chinese language programs in colleges and universities in the United States, their program starting years, the types of such universities and colleges, and their names and states; and a multimedia essay on the evolution of Chinese language pedagogy in colleges and universities in the United States. Data has been collected on the program start year, school names, states where schools are located, school types, and whether the school had been funded by two federal sponsored language programs: the National Defense Education Act in …

Recording Studios Since 1970, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Like many other specialty, purpose-built spaces, we tend to think of recording studios in instrumental terms, meaning that the space is defined in relation to the nominal type of work that the space is instrumental towards. While audio recordings have been made in spaces since 1877, not all of these spaces tend to be regarded as recording studios, partly since so many recordings were made in environments designed for other types of work; indeed, much of the first seventy years of US and UK recorded music history transpired at radio stations, concert halls and lightly treated mixed-use commercial spaces (e.g. …

A New Materials And Design Approach For Roads, Bridges, Pavement, And Concrete, Alan Fuchs, Tathagata Acharya, Luis Cabrales, Jesse Bergkamp, Nyakundi Michieka

Mineta Transportation Institute

Increased understanding of demand for transport energy and how to improve road pavement materials would enable decision makers to make environmental, financial, and other positive changes in future planning and design of roads, bridges, and other important transportation structures. This research comprises three studies focused on pavement materials and a fourth study that examines energy demand within the road transportation sector. These studies are as follows:

1. A techno-economic study of ground tire rubber as an asphalt modifier;

2. A computational fluid dynamics analysis comparing the urban heat island effect of two different pavement materials – asphalt and Portland Cement …

A Phenomenological Investigation Of Doctoral Students’ Gatekeeping Experiences, Shawna M. Corley, Jessica Lloyd-Hazlett, Hope Schuermann, Noel Blessing

Teaching and Supervision in Counseling

Counselor education doctoral students serve as gatekeepers simultaneous to their own training and evaluation. We used transcendental phenomenology to examine the gatekeeping experiences of 15 doctoral students at three programmatic levels. Findings and implications related to two primary themes, (a) precarious positions and power and (b) developing a gatekeeper identity, are discussed.

Exploring School Counselors’ Preparation To Address Disproportionality Of African American Students In Special Education, E Mackenzie Shell

Teaching and Supervision in Counseling

While school counselors work with students in special education, little research describes their work with African American students in or at risk of special education or the phenomenon of disproportionality of African American students in special education. This phenomenological study explored the experiences and perceptions of eight high school counselors with African American students in special education and disproportionality. The researcher identified three themes: (a) Dis-Regard, (b) separate worlds and (c) professional knowledge. Intentional strategies to introduce counselors to the concept of disproportionality and its antecedents may mitigate processes that potentially lead to overrepresentation of African Americans in special education.

A Phenomenological Study Of Felt Sense Among Beginning Counselors, Perry Peace, Sondra Smith-Adcock

Teaching and Supervision in Counseling

This qualitative study explored the lived experiences of felt sense among six graduate counseling students. Each participant engaged in two semi-structured interviews and completed a journal of felt sense experiences. A Hermeneutic phenomenological method was used to analyze interview transcripts and journals. Findings, as well as implications for counselor education, supervision, and counseling practice, are discussed.

Critical Knowledge, Points Of Confusion, And Training Recommendations For Client Referrals, Jessica Lloyd-Hazlett, Samantha Airhart-Larraga, Lucy L. Purgason

Teaching and Supervision in Counseling

The intersection of personal and professional values in relation to client referrals may cause uncertainty and confusion among counseling students. Current literature on this topic demonstrates a lack of agreement exists among student counselors about how to navigate the referral process, especially as it relates to making decisions about when to refer (Author, 2017). This content analysis examines what student counselors (N=104) perceive as critical areas of knowledge, points of confusion, and suggestions for training on ethical referrals. Emergent themes and implications for counselor education and future research are discussed.

Factors Influencing Publication Rates Among Counselor Educators, Sean Newhart, Patrick R. Mullen, Ashley J. Blount, W. Bryce Hagedorn

Teaching and Supervision in Counseling

Factors influencing publication rates were examined among a simple random sample of 257 counselor educators. The factors of: a) gender, b) experience as a counselor educator, c) faculty rank, and d) working in a research institution predicted peer-reviewed publication rates in the counselor educator sample, with a large effect size. Additional results, limitations of the investigation, areas for future research, and implications for counselor educators are discussed.

Integration Of Shame Resilience Theory And The Discrimination Model In Supervision, William B. Lane Jr.

Teaching and Supervision in Counseling

Shame is a destructive feeling if unaddressed leads to difficulty in the supervisory hour. A supervisorial model to address shame within supervision could guide supervisors on how to work with and diffuse the symptoms and defense mechanisms of shame. Shame Resilience Theory (SRT) and the Discrimination Model (DM) of supervision have been synthesized within this conceptual article to create the Shame Resilience Discrimination Model (SRDM) which is designed to help supervisees work through shame. Examples of how to use the model and a case example have been provided. The SRDM has been displayed in a table at the end of …

Reflective Practice: Counseling Students’ Letters To Their Younger Selves In Practicum, Daniel A. Decino, Phillip L. Waalkes, Joel Givens

Teaching and Supervision in Counseling

In this reflective narrative study, we explored the stories of counselors-in-training at the end of their practicum courses. Thirty-six counselors-in-training (N= 36) engaged in reflective practice and wrote letters to their younger selves about their practicum experiences. Using a narrative-focused data analysis process, we created a thematic structure to retell the grand narrative of participants' practicum training experiences. Discussion and implications of this letter writing activity are offered to help understand how counselor educators can use reflective practices in their training courses.

Racial Mislabeling In Multiracial Individuals: Implications For Professional Counseling And Education, C. Peeper Mcdonald, Catharina Y. Chang Ph.D., Caroline O'Hara, Kan Guvensel, Lindy Parker

Teaching and Supervision in Counseling

With the extreme growth of people who identify as Biracial or Multiracial, it is evident that their unique racial experiences need to be better understood, especially within the field of professional counseling to underscore competent practice (Charmaraman, Woo, Quach, & Erkut, 2014; Jackson, Yoo, Guevarra & Harrington, 2012; Tran, Miyake, Martinez-Morales, & Csizmadia, 2016). As a result, the researchers in this study investigated the lived experiences of racial mislabeling for Multiracial individuals. The participants of this study were fourteen (n=14) individuals who identified as Multiracial and endorsed experiencing the specific form of racial invalidation entitled racial mislabeling. Data were collected …

A Duoethnographic Exploration Of Two Counselor Educators’ Growth In Assessment In Teaching, Phillip L. Waalkes Dr., Daniel A. Decino Dr.

Teaching and Supervision in Counseling

Assessment in teaching is a challenge for many beginning counselor educators. Although many researchers have discussed the importance of student learning outcomes, few have explored counselor educators’ experiences using assessment in their courses. In this duoethnographic inquiry, we engaged in a critical and reflective dialogue of our experiences with assessment. We aimed to acknowledge our biases, identities, and emotions related to assessment in transformative ways. For [researcher 1], our dialogue helped me gain theoretical and emotional perspective on assessment and inspired specific changes to my assessment practices including focusing more on process-based, low stakes assessment, developing clearer learning goals, and …

The Relationship Between Theory Of Mind And Executive Function: Are They Two Facets Of The Same Process Or Two Distinct Processes?, Isu Cho

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the relationship between Theory of Mind (ToM) and Executive Function (EF). There has been debate on whether ToM and EF are two facets of the same process or are two distinct processes. Distinguishing between these possibilities empirically is challenging because the two abilities have similar developmental timetables and ToM tasks typically place high demands on EF, with the consequence that ToM and EF performance measures may be artificially correlated. Three experiments explored the nature of this relationship. Experiments 1 and 2 tested whether socio-cultural factors known to influence individual differences in EF (i.e., bilingualism, country-of-origin) extend to …

Insight Gains Of Narrative Case Studies, H. Luis Vargas

Counseling and Family Therapy Scholarship Review

The Editor provides an Editorial for the new issue.

The Empress's Nose: A Parable, After Feynman, Robert Dawson

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.