Childhood aggression has captured media attention over recent years. Aggression and violence have permeated schools and affected many communities. There are policies and programs in place for young adults, teens and children in some high schools and elementary schools, but not in preschools or daycare centers. However, intervention programs need to be introduced at the preschool level. There is also a scarcity of nursing research on aggression among preschoolers and successful early intervention anti-aggression programs. This study evaluated the Second Stepª anti-aggression program, utilized as a nursing intervention tool, among 41 preschool children aged 3, 4, and 5 years of age. The 3-month long research study was based on King's 1981 general systems theory, which is classified as an interaction model. The research design was a randomized pre-test post-test, 2-group (control and experimental) experimental one, to test the hypothesis that children's aggression scores would be lower and their prosocial scores would be higher after the intervention program. It was also hypothesized that boys would have higher aggression scores than girls and that there would be differences in post aggression scores in the treatment group. Repeated measures ANOVA showed that there were no significant differences between the make-up of each group (p = .05). There was no statistically significant difference between pre- and post-test aggression scores (p = .14) or between genders (p = .13), with the exception that the preschool girls in both groups had slightly higher relational aggression scores than boys, pre- and post-test. The differences were statistically significant at p = <.05. The post-test relational aggression scores were not lower in either group. These findings are discussed in this paper. / by Carol W. Stephenson. / Thesis (D.N.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This thesis applies Higgins (1997) Regulatory Focus Theory to the study of conflict by exploring the relationship between power and promotion vs. prevention orientation. After considering the earlier work of Keltner, Gruenfeld & Anderson (2003) that established the considerable effect that power has on approach and avoidance behaviors, the present research shows that this link also applies to regulatory focus. In this study, participants had their sense of power experimentally manipulated by a set of vignettes and then answered follow-up questions to determine what effect this had on their regulatory focus orientation. Results indicated that high power is associated with a promotion focus, while low power, a prevention focus. The implication of these findings were discussed and were integrated with the work of Cesario, Higgins & Scholer (2008) on regulatory fit and persuasion to create a novel strategy for conflict resolution. / by Noel J.M. Trew. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Locus of an author poses questions of intentionality, how intention is discovered, expressed, hidden, revealed and interpreted. The purpose of the study is to find and apply productive interdisciplinary concepts in intentionality detection, decoding and evaluation in fictional texts. The investigation integrates traditions in literature, linguistics, cognitive science and creative writing, posing a pragmatics of intent that complements and complicates precepts in reader reception-based constructivism. Basic to a vision of pragmatic strategies: 1) situating effect and affect in an embodied mind; 2) acknowledging mutual and/or oppositional intentionalities which an embodied author and embodied reader bring to the process of fictional communication; 3) accepting language as communication that requires cognitive translation of consensually-agreed upon symbols into private representations in an embodied mind; 4) assuming that an author's fictionalizing consciousness is more discernible w hen it is navigating tensions of selection, proportion, intervention and perspective. Perceptual and close reading of J.M. Coetzee's Foe yields descriptive problematics. Analytical readings in a neglected byway of I.A. Richards' New Criticism provide pragmatic cues for detecting and evaluating intentionalities in prose. Three cross-disciplinary strategies emerge to enhance perceptual and close readings of fictional texts: 1) awareness of priming effects in form and content; 2) identification of markedness patterns; and 3) perception of tensible connections in prosaic language and artistic devices. / The study concludes that: reading in tensible awareness of author intentionality adds productively to critical analysis and argument; acknowledging positioned voices in texts supports ethical criticism and multicultural aesthetics; reading to apprehend perceptual units (image structures sensed through story) supports and contextualizes close reading of propositional units(discourse/language) . The formal element of perspective emerges as the most intensive locus of the reader's sense of integrated consciousness and management of effect in fiction. Perspective can create the most ergative construction of authorial perspective, i.e., one in which transitive energy appears equalized and the subject and patient / writer and reader positions in syntax can pivot. / by Lois Wolfe. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2008. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2008. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

by Poon Wing-tong. / Thesis (M.A.Ed.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Bibliography: leaves 102-108.

by Simmy Lai-sim Chu. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-71). / Abstract and questionnaire also in Chinese. / Abstract --- p.ii / Acknowledgement --- p.iii / Table of Contents --- p.iv / List of Tables --- p.vi / List of Appendices --- p.vii / Chapter Chapter I - --- Introduction --- p.1 / Marital conflicts and children's adjustment --- p.1 / Theory linking marital conflicts and children's adjustment --- p.3 / The role of attribution --- p.4 / Factors affecting children's attribution --- p.7 / Moderating effect of parent-child relationship and maternal stress --- p.9 / Purposes of the present study and hypotheses --- p.10 / Chapter Chapter II - --- Method --- p.12 / Participants --- p.12 / Child-completed measures --- p.13 / Mother-completed measures --- p.17 / Procedure --- p.19 / Coding of responses --- p.20 / Chapter Chapter III- --- Results --- p.22 / Exploration of children's and mothers' attribution of marital conflicts --- p.22 / Children's involvement --- p.33 / Factors associated with attribution --- p.34 / Predicting children's adjustment --- p.36 / Relationship between attribution and adjustment --- p.44 / Chapter Chapter IV- --- Discussion --- p.48 / Children's attribution of marital conflicts --- p.48 / Link between marital conflict and children's adjustment --- p.53 / Parent-child relation --- p.56 / Implication in intervention for children exposed to marital conflicts --- p.58 / Limitation and suggestion for further study --- p.59 / References --- p.62 / Appendices --- p.72

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 98-104).

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 1998. Graduate Programme in Psychology. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-72). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pMQ39231.

Thesis (M.Ed.), Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Classical attribution theorists developed models of causal attribution that reflected their belief that people were primarily interested in attribution accuracy. These models did not consider contextual factors such as relationships and societal norms which resulted in the emergence of several empirical puzzles many of which are related to the use of consensus information. This study investigates whether the puzzle of the differential treatment of consensus information can be solved if it is assumed that people are primarily concerned with social features of the attribution setting rather than strict attribution accuracy. This study experimentally tests the role of key aspects of the social context such as the impact of social strategies in Kelley’s model of attribution to explore whether some of its empirical anomalies could have their origins in the social aspects of attribution in research contexts. The study found that participants were 2.63 times more likely to provide ‘inaccurate’ responses when there was a risk that the accurate answer would be socially disruptive. Findings from this study suggest that participants prioritise the implications of the social context over attribution accuracy. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.