This instructional study of fostering student independence while teaching them to read revealed how first grade students develop independent reading behaviors during their 18-22 weeks of instruction. The observations were made of three Reading Recovery teacher/student dyad behaviors during three videotaped lessons; one in the beginning of instruction, one near the middle of instruction and the last just before the students discontinued from their respective programs. Individual units of reading behaviors were identified and labeled as assisted, assisted dependent, assisted independent, or independent based on specific behaviors observed when miscues occurred. The questions guiding the study were directed at student behaviors, teacher behaviors, and student changes over time. The data collected comprised transcripts of the taped sessions, daily lesson plans, running records, and results from scheduled Observation Survey assessments. The concept of independence was discussed as (1) a disposition for independence, (2) functional independence, (3) independence as a self-regulatory behavior, and (4) examples of how children contribute to and extend their learning independently. When they began, the students, Title I students, were among the bottom 10% of readers in their classrooms. When they discontinued (graduated), they functioned as average readers in their classrooms. When the students were assessed again in June after Reading Recovery lessons had ended, they had maintained their gains. In addition each student had acquired an expanding disposition of independence that is expected to be maintained as learning continued. The findings suggest that fostering independence in tutorial settings accelerates learning and enables students to become average readers. / Ed. D.

Because cognitive categories associated with the evaluation of a working relationship are stable at times, yet dynamic under specific conditions, understanding leader-member exchange (LMX) and identifying cognitive correlates associated with exchange quality is perplexing (Foti, Knee & Backert, 2008). The purpose of this study was to investigate how congruence between a leader's and follower's leader and follower prototypes affects the quality of the leader-member exchange relationship as assessed by each partner in the dyadic pair. Leaders and followers in 68 dyadic pairs performed a series of tasks in a laboratory setting. Multiple assessments of liking and trust for each other, as well as LMX quality from their perspective were made. Congruence on leader prototypes significantly predicted follower assessed LMX; followers' liking and trust for leaders fully mediated this relationship. In addition, congruence on follower prototypes significantly predicted leader assessed LMX; leaders' liking for followers fully mediated this relationship. These results emphasize the reciprocal nature of LMX relationships. Practical implications of having high quality LMX include, but are not limited to, higher satisfaction and commitment, less conflict, and higher performance ratings. / Master of Science

Individuals who suffer from severe dementia require assistance when performing activities of daily living. The highly important person transfer situation is influenced by complex, intertwined biopsychosocial factors that are related to the expression of personal, environmental and behavioral variables, which can interfere with the performance of dementia-care dyads' transfer situations. The overall aim of this study was to leverage a behavioral medicine perspective in physiotherapy to explore, intervene in, and develop an assessment scale for problematic person transfer situations including persons with dementia and the interaction with the caregiver in these transfer situations. Interviews were performed with ten caregivers who were recruited to two focus groups and worked in a special care unit for persons with dementia; interviewees described their experiences pursuant to assisting persons with dementia in transfer situations (I). Literature review and video recordings elicited 93 possible items for the new scale. Expert opinions and item-content validity index reduced the number of items to 17 that spanned two areas. Eight items related to the actions of persons with dementias, whereas nine related to caregiver actions. The feasibility testing of the scale in eight person transfer situations showed that the scale was ready for inter- and intra-rated reliability testing (II). Inter- and intra- rater reliability was good (III). In two single-case experimental design studies, the new scale was shown to contribute to a substantial gathering of data on behaviors in care dyads' person transfer situations (IV). In summary, the results of the thesis show that person transfer situations in dementia special care units are influenced by different biopsychosocial factors and that the new assessment scale can support decision-making about treatment strategies. These findings are important in promoting evidence-based behavior change strategies that can facilitate both sets of individuals—i.e., both persons with dementia and caregivers—in transfer situations. The results highlight important research issues that merit attention in future studies.

L'objet de cette thèse de bioinformatique est de mieux comprendre l’ensemble des systèmes de régulation génique chez les bactéries. La disponibilité de centaines de génomes complets chez les bactéries ouvre la voie aux approches de génomique comparative et donc à l’étude de l’évolution des réseaux transcriptionnels bactériens. Dans un premier temps, nous avons implémenté et validé plusieurs méthodes de prédiction d’opérons sur base des génomes bactériens séquencés. Suite à cette étude, nous avons décidé d’utiliser un algorithme qui se base simplement sur un seuil sur la distance intergénique, à savoir la distance en paires de bases entre deux gènes adjacents. Notre évaluation sur base d’opérons annotés chez Escherichia coli et Bacillus subtilis nous permet de définir un seuil optimal de 55pb pour lequel nous obtenons respectivement 78 et 79% de précision. Deuxièmement, l’identification des motifs de régulation transcriptionnelle, tels les sites de liaison des facteurs de transcription, donne des indications de l’organisation de la régulation. Nous avons développé une méthode de recherche d’empreintes phylogénétiques qui consiste à découvrir des paires de mots espacés (dyades) statistiquement sur-représentées en amont de gènes orthologues bactériens. Notre méthode est particulièrement adaptée à la recherche de motifs chez les bactéries puisqu’elle profite d’une part des centaines de génomes bactériens séquencés et d’autre part les facteurs de transcription bactériens présentent des domaines Hélice-Tour-Hélice qui reconnaissent spécifiquement des dyades. Une évaluation systématique sur 368 gènes de E.coli a permis d’évaluer les performances de notre méthode et de tester l’influence de plus de 40 combinaisons de paramètres concernant le niveau taxonomique, l’inférence d’opérons, le filtrage des dyades spécifiques de E.coli, le choix des modèles de fond pour le calcul du score de significativité, et enfin un seuil sur ce score. L’analyse détaillée pour un cas d’étude, l’autorégulation du facteur de transcription LexA, a montré que notre approche permet d’étudier l’évolution des sites d’auto-régulation dans plusieurs branches taxonomiques des bactéries. Nous avons ensuite appliqué la détection d’empreintes phylogénétiques à chaque gène de E.coli, et utilisé les motifs détectés comme significatifs afin de prédire les gènes co-régulés. Au centre de cette dernière stratégie, est définie une matrice de scores de significativité pour chaque mot détecté par gène chez l’organisme de référence. Plusieurs métriques ont été définies pour la comparaison de paires de profils de scores de sorte que des paires de gènes ayant des motifs détectés significativement en commun peuvent être regroupées. Ainsi, l’ensemble des nos méthodes nous permet de reconstruire des réseaux de co-régulation uniquement à partir de séquences génomiques, et nous ouvre la voie à l’étude de l’organisation et de l’évolution de la régulation transcriptionnelle pour des génomes dont on ne connaît rien. The purpose of my thesis is to study the evolution of regulation within bacterial genomes by using a cross-genomic comparative approach. Nowadays, numerous genomes have been sequenced facilitating in silico analysis in order to detect groups of functionally related genes and to predict the mechanism of their relative regulation. In this project, we combined prediction of operons and regulons in order to reconstruct the transcriptional regulatory network for a bacterial genome. We have implemented three methods in order to predict operons from a bacterial genome and evaluated them on hundreds of annotated operons of Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis. It turns out that a simple distance-based threshold method gives good results with about 80% of accuracy. The principle of this method is to classify pairs of adjacent genes as “within operon” or “transcription unit border”, respectively, by using a threshold on their intergenic distance: two adjacent genes are predicted to be within an operon if their intergenic distance is smaller than 55bp. In the second part of my thesis, I evaluated the performances of a phylogenetic footprinting approach based on the detection of over-represented spaced motifs. This method is particularly suitable for (but not restricted to) Bacteria, since such motifs are typically bound by factors containing a Helix-Turn-Helix domain. We evaluated footprint discovery in 368 E.coli K12 genes with annotated sites, under 40 different combinations of parameters (taxonomical level, background model, organism-specific filtering, operon inference, significance threshold). Motifs are assessed both at the level of correctness and significance. The footprint discovery method proposed here shows excellent results with E. coli and can readily be extended to predict cis-acting regulatory signals and propose testable hypotheses in bacterial genomes for which nothing is known about regulation. Moreover, the predictive power of the strategy, and its capability to track the evolutionary divergence of cis-regulatory motifs was illustrated with the example of LexA auto-regulation, for which our predictions are remarkably consistent with the binding sites characterized in different taxonomical groups. A next challenge was to identify groups of co-regulated genes (regulons), by regrouping genes with similar motifs, in order to address the challenging domain of the evolution of transcriptional regulatory networks. We tested different metrics to detect putative pairs of co-regulated genes. The comparison between predicted and annotated co-regulation networks shows a high positive predictive value, since a good fraction of the predicted associations correspond to annotated co-regulations, and a low sensitivity, which may be due to the consequence of highly connected transcription factors (global regulator). A regulon-per-regulon analysis indeed shows that the sensitivity is very weak for these transcription factors, but can be quite good for specific transcription factors. The originality of this global strategy is to be able to infer a potential network from the sole analysis of genome sequences, and without any prior knowledge about the regulation in the considered organism.

Contemporary theories frame emotion as an intra-personal system comprised of subcomponents such as experience, expressive behaviors, and physiology that interact over time to give rise to emotional episodes. Emotional episodes occur in the context of a social interaction or an ongoing relationship making it important to also conceptualize the inter-personal emotion system in which the subcomponents of the emotional response interact not only within the individual but across the partners as well. Emotion theory has been constricted by a dominant linear information processing metaphor and has not yet fully embraced a dynamic systems approach integrating concepts of open, self-organizing systems to interpersonal emotion regulation processes. To address these limitations, this study examined the emergence of structure and patterns in real-time dyadic interactions between pairs of female strangers where one partner is purposefully regulating her emotional responding. One member of each dyad was randomly assigned to suppress, positively reappraise, or act normally during an interaction task. Three subcomponents of emotion were examined (expressive behaviors, experience, and physiology) along with three features of dynamic systems (attractor basins, flexibility/entropy, and physiological linkage). Results indicate differences in the emergence of structure and patterns in real-time dyadic interactions that varies by emotional responding type. Suppression dyads were characterized by a non-emotional response attractor, reduced behavioral flexibility, stronger physiological linkage as compared to control and reappraisal dyads. Reappraisal dyads expressed more positive emotions during the interaction than control or suppression dyads, and reappraisal partners showed evidence of positive physiological linkage with the reappraiser. In conclusion, structural patterns do differ by emotion regulation condition indicating the importance of intrapersonal phenomena on the emergence of interpersonal system dynamics.

Team conflict research, taken as a whole, has produced some conflicting results, especially regarding task conflict, which has demonstrated substantial heterogeneity across situations and an overall near-zero effect. Accordingly, several groups of scholars have called for new ways to study conflict. In this dissertation, I extend past conflict asymmetry research, which has considered only agreement between two parties, by investigating whether the two parties’ conflict inferences of each other are accurate. To do so, I draw from the Truth and Bias model of judgment to understand the biases and inaccuracies associated with conflict inferences. Further, I incorporate the partner’s conflict communication and the actor’s perspective taking as moderators to shed light on the contingencies of accurate conflict perceptions. To highlight the bottom-line implications of achieving accuracy, I use polynomial regression and link various aspects of accuracy to important dyadic outcomes. To test my dissertation model, I collected data from ongoing student project teams using a time-lagged round-robin design. Results from the social relations modeling indicate that dyadic conflict inferences are inaccurate, being characterized by a negative directional bias, a significantly stronger bias force than the truth force, and low levels of actual similarity. Further, moderation analysis identifies the partner’s suppressive conflict communication as a contingency factor that can weaken the truth force, suggesting that more open communication can help dyad members achieve accuracy. Exploratory analysis also shows that perspective taking can strengthen the bias force. Further emphasizing the importance of accuracy, the polynomial regression results indicate that conflict inference accuracy (versus inaccuracy) is associated with higher levels of attributional confidence and problem-solving behaviors. Moreover, the level of accuracy in task conflict perceptions has an inverse U-shape relationship with problem-solving behaviors, whereas higher levels of accuracy in both task and relationship conflict perceptions are associated with lower levels of relationship satisfaction. Supporting the benefit of positive illusions, under-perception (versus over-perception) is related to higher levels of attributional confidence and relational satisfaction. In contrast to the importance of achieving accuracy (versus inaccuracy), agreement (versus disagreement) is not associated with positive outcomes. Supplementary analysis indicates that these dyadic outcomes, when aggregated to the team level, are strongly associated with team satisfaction and effectiveness. Overall, this research suggests that focusing solely on the team level risks overlooking the existence and the various sources of inaccuracy in dyadic conflict perceptions. Further, the accuracy of the dyad partners’ conflict inferences of each other plays an important role in shaping their subsequent interactions. To the extent that conflict is a relational, multilevel phenomenon, dyadic conflict inferences should become an integral part of scholarly understanding of conflict; this perspective holds promise for not only accounting for the conflicting results in the conflict literature, but also informing managerial practices that are conducive to effective conflict management in the workplace.

The old practice of separating the mother-baby-dyad was without measurable benefits to mothers or their infants. Evidence has shown that skin-to-skin care (SSC) prevents hypothermia and hypoglycemia, decreases crying during painful procedures in newborns, and reduces maternal anxiety, stress, and postpartum depression. Rooming-in care (RIC) has been linked to an increase in the rate of breastfeeding and mother-infant interaction, as well as a decrease in the infant morbidity rate. This project assessed the effect of an educational intervention to increase rates of SSC and RIC in an obstetric unit, in addition to measuring nurses' attitudes and barriers in relation to SSC and RIC. The obstetric nurses received educational content related to SSC and RIC based on Kotter's model of change. A pre and postintervention evaluation showed a significant increase in the rates of SSC and RIC from pretest of 10%, to posttest of 96%; and RIC from pretest of 10% to posttest of 92%. Using a Wilcoxon test, a significant difference was found from pretest to posttest for every subscale score of the Mother-Newborn Skin-to-Skin Contact Questionnaire and Nurse Attitudes and Barriers to nonseparation Scale (p < 0.001), with the exception of belief about obstacles for SSC, which yielded a nonsignificant change (p = 0.57). This DNP project led to changes in the organization's culture, including the closure of the well-baby nursery. This project promoted social change across the organization, in that the team health care providers delivered evidence-based, standardized, unbiased, and family-centered care to the mother-baby dyad.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur samspelet mellan föräldrar avspeglas i samspelet mellan föräldrar och barn, utifrån ett intersubjektivt perspektiv. Uppsatsen är genomförd som en pilotstudie, med ett begränsat urval, för att pröva tillämpningen av intersubjektivitet som utgångspunkt för metod och tillämpning i samspelsstudier. Fem familjer har ingått i undersökningen och filmer av deras samspel har kodats och analyserats. Uppsatsen ger intressanta utgångspunkter för fortsatt forskning på området. En slutsats som dras är att samspelet avspeglas genom att hög grad av delad uppmärksamhet, intentionalitet och synkronicitet i föräldrardyaden har starkt samband med detsamma i föräldra/barn-triaden, vilket kan anses vara användbar kunskap inom familjerådgivande och föräldrastödjande verksamheter.

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease. Despite the debilitating nature of this disease, some evidence suggests patients maintain their quality of life (QOL). Caregivers, on the other hand, experience decreased QOL. Evidence suggests existential aspects of well-being such as purpose in life (PIL) may be unique and stable sources of well-being for patients and caregivers. Furthermore, patients’ and caregivers’ well-being may impact one another. The present study examined the variance structure, trajectory, and dyadic relationship of PIL and QOL in patients with ALS and their caregivers (N = 110 dyads). Data from the Seattle ALS Patient Profile Project were utilized; PIL and QOL were assessed seven times, over eighteen months. PIL was more stable than QOL and therefore a psychological resource for patients and caregivers. PIL and QOL declined with time and disease severity. Individual differences in proximity to diagnosis and death moderated within-individual change. Decline was more rapid following diagnosis and approaching death, suggesting these are critical periods in which individuals need increased support. Well-being within the dyad was interrelated. Average QOL was similar across dyads. PIL within the dyad changed together over time. Dyadic relationships may reflect similar life conditions and a shared disease experience.

This qualitative multiple-case study examined the pedagogical role that performance arts training played in the emergence of students’ mature artistic identities. As one of many instructors in the musical theatre program of a post-secondary college, the author fulfilled both the roles of researcher and studio music teacher. Multiple learning contexts were observed for eight first-year students; these contexts included the regimens in various artistic classrooms and in the vocal studio. The data comprised field observations from studio and classroom settings, individual interviews with eight students from the vocal studio, and audio recordings from their studio sessions. Data analysis revealed that the students’ construction of identity was positively impacted by: the “triple-threat” program components, the unique dyad relationship between the vocal studio teacher and her students, and the rigorous, professional training the students underwent. A study of the interactions amongst the disciplines of music, dance, and drama exhibited several implications in relation to the students’ acute identity experiences. Recommendations for improved musical theatre curricula centred on improved integration of the three disciplines, enhanced studio time, and greater skill development in the studio. Suggestions for future research in performance arts education were also offered. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2008-08-12 23:23:52.131