This study examines associations of emotion language with emotion understanding and emotion regulation during the preschool years. There is evidence that the way parents talk about emotions with their children promotes children's emotion understanding and regulation (e.g. Bird and Reese, 2006; Laible, 2011). However, there has been little attention paid to associations of these outcomes with children's emotion language. In this study, I examined associations of children's emotion language on their emotion understanding and emotion regulation, and tested whether parents' emotion language was indirectly associated with these outcomes through children's emotion language. One hundred fifty-six 3- to 5-year-old children participated with their primary caregiver. Parent-child dyads engaged in an emotion-laden conversation to measure parent and child emotion language. Children also engaged in the locked box task (Cole et al., 2009; Goldsmith et al., 1993) to measure emotion regulation and completed the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy (Nowicki and Duke, 1994) to measure emotion understanding. Results differed for younger preschoolers (36 - 53 months) compared with older preschoolers (54 - 69 months) in regard to emotion regulation. For younger preschoolers, path analyses indicated an indirect effect in which parent emotion talk was associated with less attention shifting during the locked box task. There was also a direct effect in which children's greater use of emotion labels was positively associated with emotion understanding. Results may reflect the rapid emotional development occurring during the preschool years and suggest the importance of early emotion socialization. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this study was to examine the difference between working and nonworking mothers in terms of mother infant interaction social experience of their infants and infants' responsiveness to a stranger. The total number of subjects was 76 with 51 infants of nonworking mothers and 25 infants with working mothers. There were 38 males and 38 females and the infants ranged in age from 3 to 12 months. The measures consisted of a questionnaire and a laboratory observation. The questionnaire was designed to assess quantitative dimensions of mother infant interaction and previous social experiences of infants. The structured laboratory observation focused on infant's reaction to an approaching stranger. Infants in the working and nonworking group did not differ in the amount of mother infant interaction time either on weekdays or weekends. Both groups were similar in terms of the age at which the infants were first taken on outings to public places, the frequency of outings and the number of unfamiliar visitors in the home. Likewise both groups of mothers did not differ in the number of caregiving activities performed with their infant. A significant interaction was found between maternal work status and age of the infant. However, neither age of the infant nor maternal work status emerged as significant main effects. The significant interaction between the age of the infant and mother work status needs to be more thoroughly investigated to determine the variations in reaction at monthly intervals. / Master of Science

The purpose of this study was to better understand associations between acculturation, parental beliefs, mother-child emotion talk, and emotion understanding in Latino preschool-aged children. Research on Latino families may prove to be important given the little research that has focused on emotion understanding strictly in Latino cultures. Forty Latino mother-child dyads were observed throughout a series of naturalistic observations. Mothers self-reported their acculturation and their beliefs about the value and danger of children's emotions, children's emotional development processes, and their role in guiding their children's emotions. Mother-child emotion talk and framing was measured during a 15 minute story-telling task using a Lego house and through a wordless picture book. Children's emotion understanding was measured using two standard tasks. Results showed that mothers' acculturation was related to their beliefs about the danger of emotions, their role in guiding their child's emotions, and their child's readiness to learn about emotions. Mothers' acculturation was also related to children's emotion understanding. Mothers' beliefs about guiding children's emotions were related to mothers' labeling of emotions and to children's emotion understanding. This study confirms and expands several previous findings relating to emotion socialization of children. Overall, results highlight the importance of acculturation for parents' beliefs about emotions and children's emotion understanding. / Master of Science

No / Objective. To explore the lived experiences of pharmacy students undertaking an early pre-registration training placement in the United Kingdom, particularly with respect to the development of different aspects of their professionalism. Methods. Fourteen students returning from an early pre-registration placement (during the third year of their pharmacy degree) were interviewed, using a semi-structured approach. Grounded theory methods were used to analyze the transcripts and a theory was developed. Results. ʻDeveloping a professional identityʼ was the core process that occurred during the placement. This included four stages: (1) Reflection (2) Selection of attributes (3) Professional socialization and (4) Perception of role. As a consequence of ʻDeveloping a professional identityʼ, participants had a strong vision of the kind of pharmacist they wanted to be when qualified. They articulated an increased responsibility as students, and began to see themselves as ʻNow a trainee professionalʼ. Conclusion. This study strongly supports the use of an early pre-registration period to develop pharmacy students’ sense of professional identity and strengthen their motivation to learn.

This qualitative research focuses on the meanings that contemporary, working women assign to the experience of motherhood, how the role of work intersects the role of motherhood, and how these women are constructing and deconstructing gender with their preschool-age sons. Feminist and symbolic interactionist perspectives are utilized to ground the study empirically. The results are based on the in-depth interviews the researcher conducted with five working mothers living in a rural, college town. / Master of Science

Federal law requires institutions to designate campus-based administrators to oversee Title IX processes and investigations, but little is known about how these have been professionally prepared for their roles. The purpose of this study was to understand the professional preparation, educational experiences, and professional training of Title IX administrators and to understand their independence in decision-making in those roles. This study utilized qualitative content analysis and a social constructionist approach to analyze data generated from interviews and document analysis. Sixteen current and former Title IX administrators (investigators, deputy coordinators, coordinators) provided their perspectives on their professional training and development. Using frameworks of work/professional socialization and professions theory, findings illustrated complex systems for knowledge acquisition, professional preparation, and professional socialization based on factors including resources, institutional context, and role prioritization. Participants' formal education, formative experiences, position-specific training, and professional organizations training all served as preparation for their roles. Discussion focused on implications for graduate programs, training and trainers, institutions and supervisors, the field of higher education, and current Title IX practitioners regarding professional preparation for these roles.

<p dir="ltr">Organizational newcomers strive to adjust when they start new jobs, yet little is known about how remote and hybrid work structures influence this process. Previous research has adopted variable-centered approaches to explore the frequency with which newcomers engage in dozens of proactive behaviors in traditional, face-to-face work environments. The current study builds upon this work to capture the socialization process in modern work environments. Adopting a person-centered approach, this study 1.) identifies profiles of newcomers’ perceptions of their work environments, 2.) identifies profiles of newcomer proactive behaviors, 3.) examines the effect of virtuality on these two sets of profiles, and 4.) explores which behavior profiles are associated with the most favorable changes in adjustment.</p><p dir="ltr">A sample of 464 organizational newcomers responded to a survey about their environment perceptions, the frequency with which they engaged in a variety of proactive behaviors, and their feelings of adjustment. Latent profile enumeration resulted in three environment profiles (Average Environment, Peer-Centric Environment, and Favorable Environment) and seven behavior profiles (Low Frequency Seeker, Moderate Frequency Seeker, High Frequency Seeker, Direct Solo Seekers, Typical Limit Testers, Social Limit Testers, and Balanced Limit Testers). While the hypothesized virtual environment and behavior profiles were not found, one environment profile (Average Environment) and two behavior profiles (Low Frequency Seekers; Direct Solo Seekers) were significantly and positively associated with virtuality. Further, newcomers in the Average Environment profile tended to be Low Frequency Seekers, while newcomers in the Favorable Environment profile tended to be Moderate or High Frequency Seekers. Additionally, the Direct Solo Seekers were more likely to perceive their environment as Favorable, relative to the Low Frequency Seekers.</p><p dir="ltr">A total of 173 of the newcomers completed a follow-up survey about their feelings of adjustment. Significant differences across behavior profiles in changes in adjustment (while controlling for newcomer tenure) demonstrate the complex dynamics of the newcomer adjustment process. Specifically, the two highly virtual behavior profiles – Low Frequency Seekers and Direct Solo Seekers – showed different relationships with outcomes over time, suggesting that some behavioral repertoires are more effective than others for adjusting in virtual environments. Supplemental analyses further showed that the behavior profiles offered incremental validity over a main effects model of proactive behaviors in predicting feelings of social acceptance. Additionally, supplemental analyses demonstrated that jointly accounting for environment and behavior profiles can meaningfully explain differences in adjustment across newcomers. Collectively, this study shows the utility of using person-centered approaches for understanding how configurations of environment perceptions and proactive behaviors shape newcomers’ experiences in modern work environments.</p>

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Previous studies in child language socialization have adopted the approach of studying how children become competent members of their social groups through the use of language. This study began as an attempt to study child language socialization within selected Tucson U.S. Mexican households within this prevailing paradigm. During the course of fieldwork, it was found that the complexities of Borderlands structural and hegemonic relationships could not be adequately addressed within a theoretical assumption of homeostatic and monosemic communities. The ambiguities of "Mexican-ness" do not provide a consensually agreed upon or collectively implicit framework for language socialization. Instead, fluid domains are contested and negotiated as language socialization is construed as a constitutive process of "selfhood" for the child. Rather than replicating and reproducing previously transmitted information, certain parents and caregivers were found to actively engage in constructing an ethos for their own childhood experiences. Multivocality within multiple interactive spheres was identified as parents and caregivers often alternated between symbolic resistance and opposition, and accomodation. Additionally, an affective base for language socialization is postulated. An "emotion of minority status" that is structurally constituted and embedded within regional hegemonic relations is presented as a formative backdrop for children in this population. The essential methodology involved lengthy ethnographic observations coupled with audiocassette recordings of naturally occurring speech. Caregivers were supplied with tape recorders and cassettes and were asked to record interaction within the households, specifically at mealtime, bed time and homework sessions. In-depth open-ended interviews were taped with parents, and in some cases, grandparents, regarding their own perceptions of child-rearing, language habits, and value orientations. Extensive household histories, detailing residential, labor and family history, were also collected.

The general purpose of this study is to examine the effects of socialization background and cognitive style on individuals' patterns of behavior. The more specific purpose is to integrate the individual differences factor using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator with Meadian Theory of Socialization in order to explore the ways in which a group of incarcerated individuals with prior felony and misdemeanor convictions and a group of college students are different regarding their different socialization background and cognitive styles. Data for this study were collected from a university and a county jail in Texas. During the process of data collection, two questionnaires consisting of 117 items were used to measure individual characteristics and elements of socialization background. This study is organized into four different chapters. Chapter I involves a detailed review of related literature, the purpose of the study, stated hypotheses, significance of the study, and limitations. Chapter II discusses methodological procedures and Chapter III presents the findings of the study. The last chapter includes a detailed conclusion and practical implications of the study. The findings in this study indicated that the group of incarcerated individuals and the group of college students are significantly different in terms of their different individual characteristics and socialization backgrounds. However, it was found that socialization background has the most significant effects on patterns of behavior among the two groups under study. It was concluded that while accepting the crucial importance of socialization factors, specific psychological characteristics of people also need to be integrated into sociological studies concerning human behavior for the better understanding of different groups and individuals in society.