Based within the Self-Determination Theory (SDT), the overall objective of this thesis was to examine how motivational processes involved in the regulation of eating give rise to different self-regulation strategies in terms of eating quality and quantity, and how the adoption of these strategies influence women’s eating behaviors and life satisfaction over time. This objective was achieved through a series of eight studies, divided into four manuscripts. First, a measure that would allow us to assess healthy and unhealthy eating behaviors based on recent recommendations of Canada’s Food Guide was developed and validated. In Manuscript #1, we validated the Healthy and Unhealthy Eating Behavior Scale (HUEBS) by examining the structure of the scale (Study 1 N = 360; Study 2 N = 711) and by establishing convergent validity through the examination of the relationships between motivational concepts, healthy and unhealthy eating behaviors as measured by the HUEBS, and waist circumference (Study 2 N = 711; Study 3 N = 264). Results supported the factor structure of the scale. It was also demonstrated that as women moved along stages of change for eating regulation, they reported higher levels of self-determined (versus non-self-determined) motivation and a higher consumption of healthy (versus unhealthy) foods. Furthermore, findings showed that healthy eating fully mediated the relationship between self-determined motivation and waist-circumference, and that the relationship between self-determined motivation and healthy eating was moderated by stages of change. Since there was also a need to develop a scale that would allow us to measure planning and self-monitoring strategies in terms of eating quality (i.e., nutrient intake) and quantity (i.e., calories and portion sizes), Manuscript #2 validated the Planning and Self-Monitoring the Quality and Quantity Scale (PMQQS; Study 1 N = 355; Study 2 N = 318). Results supported the 6-factor structure of the scale and demonstrated that strategies related to the quality of eating were more strongly and positively associated with healthy eating and more strongly and negatively associated with unhealthy eating, whereas strategies related to the quantity of eating were more strongly and positively associated with bulimic symptoms and Body Mass Index (BMI). Manuscript #3 then examined if the strategies assessed by the PMQQS provided additional variance to eating behaviors over and above the effects of motivation (Study 1 N = 456) and if the strategies mediated the relationships between motivation and eating, while controlling for BMI (Study 1 N = 456; Study 2 N = 979). Overall, it was found that strategies played a significant role in explaining eating behaviors and that planning and self-monitoring the quality of eating mediated the relationships between autonomous motivation and healthy and unhealthy eating, whereas planning and self-monitoring the quantity of eating mediated the relationship between controlled motivation and bulimic symptoms. Finally, in Manuscript #4, we tested a longitudinal model (N = 230) examining the roles of goals and motivation in the prediction of the strategies and various types of eating and the effects of adopting these behaviors on life satisfaction over a 3-month period. Results revealed that intrinsic goals were positively associated with autonomous motivation whereas extrinsic goals were positively associated with controlled motivation for eating regulation at Time 1 (the baseline), and that autonomous motivation positively predicted quality strategies whereas controlled motivation positively predicted quantity strategies at Time 2 (1 month). Planning and self-monitoring quality then predicted healthy and unhealthy eating behaviors, whereas planning and self-monitoring quantity predicted bulimic symptoms at Time 3 (3 months). Finally, healthy eating was positively associated with life satisfaction, whereas bulimic symptoms was negatively associated with life satisfaction at Time 3. Overall, this thesis increases knowledge on why some women succeed, whereas others fail, to regulate their eating behaviors over time.

In 1991, the Federal Communications Commission began regulating the tariffed rates of the nation's largest local exchange carriers under a new regulatory scheme: price-cap regulation. Price caps were intended to "remedy" the ills of traditional rate-of-return regulation. They were to provide incentive for the telephone companies to adopt innovative technology, cost-cutting measures and provide telephone services more efficiently. To test the effectiveness of this incentive, this study examined productivity of the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) under both rate-of-return regulation and price-cap regulation. A total factor productivity model was developed and productivity gains were calculated under both regulatory regimes. The assumption of total factor productivity was then relaxed and value-added productivity and labor productivity measures were also examined. The point estimates of productivity gains indicate that price caps have led to greater productivity gains. Although productivity gains varied greatly across individual RBOCs, use of total RBOC data indicated that average productivity gains improved 1.3 percent under price caps using the TFP model. Similar improvements under price caps were estimated using the value-added (1.1 percent) and labor productivity measurements (1.3 percent). However, because of the variability of the annual estimates, none of the productivity improvements are statistically significant. In conclusion, calculations of RBOC productivity gains suggest that price caps have led to more efficient use of inputs--labor; materials, rents and services; and capital--in the production of telephone company output. Yet, the statistical evidence is not strong enough to unequivocally support the assertion that price cap regulation has led to great productivity gains. / Master of Arts

Within the psychology of religion, research suggests that religious engagement influences self-regulation, i.e., a person’s ability to pursue goals. Theoretical explanations for this relationship tend to oversimplify both sides of the connection, construing religious engagement narrowly in terms of beliefs and interpreting self-regulation as a matter of self-interested restraint. These conceptual specifications are challenged by perspectives within religious studies that are committed to analyzing religions as ordinary social phenomena and by evidence from psychological studies of normative behavior. This dissertation employs these insights to broaden the theoretical scope of the study of self-regulation through a series of interdisciplinary reviews and an empirical study. To test the relationship between self-regulation and religious engagement, the dissertation presents a cross-sectional study of an online sample of 412 participants. Each participant completed five previously established psychological surveys and experiments that index: how conventional they consider their religiosity; the degree to which they are embedded in obligatory relationships, roughly called “social density”; their endorsement of what Moral Foundations Theory calls “binding” moral intuitions; emotional regulatory capacity; and delayed discounting rates, a common proxy for impulsivity. A series of hierarchical linear regressions showed that conventional religiosity was associated with both emotional regulation and delayed discounting. Delayed discounting and emotional regulation, however, were not associated. Statistical mediation analyses showed that the relationship between conventional religiosity and emotional regulation was fully mediated by social density, but the connection between conventional religiosity and delayed discounting was not influenced by any of the other variables. Collectively these results support the primary argument of this dissertation – that the theoretical focus within psychological research on religious engagement and self-regulation has become unduly narrow in its construal of both concepts. This dissertation concludes by reflecting on these results in light of what we know about formalized inquiries of this kind from the philosophy of science.

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The thermogenic effects in hypothermia of four substrates--alanine, glycine, ethano, and pyruvate - were studied in seventeen experiments. Albino rats were decapitated, and their livers were removed. The livers were homogenized with phosphate buffer at -5° C. After equilibration in a refrigerated Warburg apparatus at 20° C, the substrates were added and tissue respiration was recorded over three hours. Heat production was calculated from O2 uptake and CO2 production. Results showed that alanine, glycine, and pyrvate yielded 93.19, 89.86, and 89.89 x 10^6 kg-cal compared to a control value of 86.11 x 10^-6 kg-cal. Ethanol provided 110.31 x 10^-6 kg-cal, a value significantly greater than for the other substrates. The substrates studied, especially ethanol, did, therefore increase heat production in an artificially hypothermic environment in homogenized rat livers.

In September 1979, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued a statement entitled Financial Reporting and Changing Prices (FASB No. 33). FASB No. 33 requires publicly-held companies of a certain size to issue supplementary constant dollar and current cost disclosures along with their primary financial statements.To investigate the effect of the signals on security prices the study used a methodology known as "Iso-beta Portfolio Analysis" and employed different models in conjunction with the methodology, the market model (MM) and a new model called "the multi-index model" (MIM). Cluster analysis was used to develop the indexing used with the MIM.

Deliberate Emotion Regulation (ER), the effortful regulation of emotions, is strongly linked to psychopathology. In adults, deliberate ER is often experienced as a self-narrative, such as reappraising a negatively perceived scenario. However, researchers have yet to study how young children articulate deliberate ER strategies, whether these strategies relate to real-time ER neurophysiological processes, and how they are associated with psychopathology. Thus, from an existing sample of 59 children, I aimed to examine preschool-aged children’s verbally articulated ER strategies prior to a frustration challenge, and related these strategies to subsequent neural and physiological responses to frustration and psychopathology. I categorized children’s responses into two groups: those who articulated any emotion regulation strategy (i.e., “strategy”) and those who did not articulate a strategy (i.e., “no strategy”). We found that about 70% of children in this age range were able to articulate an emotion regulation strategy. Children who articulated a strategy had lower psychophysiological stress during a frustration task and fewer parent-reported ADHD inattention symptoms than children who did not articulate a strategy. There were no observed differences between groups for Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) activation, parent-reported externalizing symptoms, or parent-reported irritability symptoms. To our knowledge, this study is the first to provide evidence that emotion regulation strategy articulation is an emerging skill, and that children who are able to articulate emotion regulation strategies are also able to change their physiological stress in response to a negative emotion challenge and have fewer symptoms of psychopathology.

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Yes / This article takes a critical approach to emotion regulation suggesting that the concept needs supplementing with a relational position on the generation and restraint of emotion. I chart the relational approach to emotion, challenging the ‘two-step’ model of emotion regulation. From this, a more interdisciplinary approach to emotion is developed using concepts from social science to show the limits of instrumental, individualistic and cognitivist orientations in the psychology of emotion regulation, centred on appraisal theory. Using a social interactionist approach I develop an ontological position in which social relations form the fundamental contexts in which emotions are generated, toned, and restrained, so that regulation is decentred and seen as just one moment or aspect in the relational patterning of emotion.