Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1991. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 246-256). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201-210).

The purposes of this study were to determine if there are differences between the responses of abusive and nonabusive adults to potentially anger-provoking child behaviors; if there are differences between abusive and nonabusive adults; if there are differences between the children of abusive and nonabusive adults; and if there are combinations of these characteristics of the adults and characteristics of children as well as the behaviors of children which relate to child abusiveness in adults. The basic problem was to determine factors that help identify potentially child abusive adults. Certain factors, such as the limited size of the sample and the initial use of a new instrument, served as limitations to broad generalizations. However, based on the analysis of the data of this study, the following conclusions seem tenable 1. Certain behaviors of children are more upsetting to abusive adults than to nonabusive adults. 2. Characteristics of adults are not necessarily related to child abusiveness in adults. 3. The age of the child and the number of children living in the home are significantly related to child abusiveness in adults. 4. The findings indicate that a predictive model may be developed in conjunction with the Child Behavior Inventory for use in predicting child abusiveness in adults.

No description available.

No description available.

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

Understanding the process of language acquisition is a challenge that many researchers spanning different disciplines (e.g. linguistics, psychology, neuroscience) have grappled with for centuries. One which has in recent years attracted a lot of attention has been in the area of non-native phoneme acquisition. Speech sounds that contain multiple phonetic cues are often difficult for foreign-language learners, especially if certain cues are weighted differently in the foreign and native languages. Greek adult and child speakers of English were studied to determine which cues (duration or spectral) they were using to make discrimination and identification judgments for an English vowel contrast pair. To this end, two forms of identification and discrimination tasks were used: natural (unedited) stimuli and another ‘modified’ vowel duration stimuli which were edited so that there were no duration differences between the vowels. Results show the Greek speakers were particularly impaired when they were unable to use the duration cue as compared to the native English speakers. Similar results were also obtained in control experiments where there was no orthographic representation or where the stimuli were cross-spliced to modify the phonetic neighborhood. Further experiments used high-variability training sessions to enhance vowel perception. Following training, performance improved for both Greek adult and child groups as revealed by post training tests. However the improvements were most pronounced for the child Greek speaker group. A further study examined the effect of different orthographic cues that might affect rhyme and homophony judgment. The results of that study showed that Greek speakers were in general more affected by orthography and regularity (particularly of the vowel) in making these judgments. This would suggest that Greek speakers were more sensitive to irrelevant orthographic cues, mirroring the results in the auditory modality where they focused on irrelevant acoustic cues. The results are discussed in terms of current theories of language acquisition, with particular reference to acquisition of non-native phonemes.

Children are endowed with agency, a fundamental trait of humanity which is accomplished through collective striving. This striving occurs as children meet, and create, their world and its expectations of them. I explore how one particular 2-year-old child, Emily, encounters her world. The study focuses on Emily’s agency and power as she meets an adult society which extends control into her life. Through Emily’s life, I illustrate how this extension of control creates confined spaces of childhood which infantilize and regulate Emily. The socially constructed childhood Emily encounters denies and ignores much of her agency. Yet, Emily powerfully and irreparably alters the world she meets, generating novel landscapes as she pushes back against the world. Emily refuses to concede to the world presented to her; she instead takes the world and changes it. I use ethnographic, idiographic methods to describe the extension of control into children’s lives as adult imperialism and locate Emily’s powerful agency in her transformative dissent and stance of opposition. Field observations occurred over a nine-month period; interviews were conducted with Emily, her parents, and her teachers. The Transformative Activist Stance, a critical expansion of cultural-historical activity theory outlined by Dr. Anna Stetsenko, is used as an orienting framework. All data was audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed to offer a convincing argument regarding agency and imperialism in Emily’s life. I argue that Emily’s transformative dissent is the social assertion of her agency and that she, like all children, deserves to be appreciated and celebrated for her capacity to matter in the world-as-it-is-being-made. Social accomplishments are implicated in the research as manifestations of individual agency: Emily matters because of how she engages with others. This research suggests a critical shift away from vertical adult-child relationships, which are presented in the data as defined by regulation and control, and towards horizontal relationships, oriented around recognition and appreciation. A horizontal relationship implies shedding developmental assumptions about children and ceding back to them areas of their own lives.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2003. / A case study conducted in a Chicago Catholic parish exploring adult participation in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 209-213).

Although it is acknowledged in the Southern African literature that children living in conditions of poverty have always assumed more household responsibilities, the AIDS epidemic has exacerbated this and significantly changed the nature of childhood as an increasing number of children face life without parents. The study sought to gain insight into the experiential lives of six “child” heads of households and their siblings and to explore, in particular, how they construct their sense of self and family. For the purposes of the study a child-headed household was deemed a household in which a child of 18 or under or still in school was the household head in the absence of any other dependable, permanent adult figure. The study used a narrative approach and thematic analysis and the results emerging from the children's accounts of themselves were focused around the core themes of adult responsibility in the absence of adult status and relationships with adults in the extended family and wider community. The idea of children or adolescents competently running households, taking responsibility for themselves and their futures and adopting a more democratic and shared means of decision making, further challenges conventional conceptions of the „borders‟ between childhood and adulthood and family structure that have been contested and shifting through history. However, being on the front line of social change comes at a cost. Challenging society's popular understanding of children as passive, dependent and innocent positions these young people outside of the norm and what they report is that they feel alone, unheard and victimised. The findings are discussed within the context of Burman's critique of psychology's traditional theoretical notions of universal and innately driven development and a re-conceptualisation of children‟s experiences in terms of the context in which they live, and Crossley's perspective on narrative which emphasises agency grounded within cultural forms of sense-making. A new way of discussing these unconventionally structured families is also presented through the reconfiguration of relationships between family members, recognising connections that span generations and across different household spaces. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.