Scholars of cybercrime have used social learning theory (SLT) and routine activities theory (RAT) to explain the variation in offending and victimization; however, to date, only RAT has been used to explain the specific behavior of cyberbullying. Therefore, this study combines SLT and RAT concepts to explain the cyberbullying phenomenon. Today's adolescents are exposed early to cyberspace and this has given them more opportunities to bully their peers, especially in an environment that is difficult to monitor by adults. The results from this study of a sample of Southeastern middle and high school students suggest that the opportunity component of RAT explains both cyberbullying victimization and offending, and the differential association component of SLT increases youths' likelihood of offending. Additionally, the findings suggest a correlation between victimization and offending. The results also show that the differential association-opportunity interaction increases the likelihood of offending, but the relationship was not statistically significant.

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It was hypothesized that differences would exist in the aggressive content of the word association responses of aggre-sive (A) and non-aggressive (KA) subjects (Ss) to a word association test (WAT) containing homonymic words having alternate meanings, aggressive and non-aggressive (A:NA). In Study I the WAT was constructed as the research instrument and administered to A and NA groups of Ss previously assessed as to aggressive personality characteristics by the total inventory score of the Buss-Durkee Hostility-Guilt Inventory. The Ss' responses to the A:NA stimulus words were rated for aggressive content and a comparison between A and NA groups performed. The results indicated that two of the twelve A:NA words yielded significant differences between groups. Suggestions for improvement of the methodology and extension of the theoretical framework and analyses were proposed and subsequently incorporated into Study II. The ideas for improvement outlined in Study I were introduced in Study II. These modifications included determining the reliability of ratings of the A:NA words which was assessed and found to be adequate. Next, a larger group of experimental Ss was sampled. The Buss-Durkee Hostility-Guilt Inventory was rescored to obtain a measure of aggression more indicative of verbal hostility. Finally, the reliability of ratings of the aggressive content of responses to the A:NA words was assessed and found to be adequate. The data in Study II were analyzed to test the hypothesis that the A group would respond with significantly more aggressive word associations to the A/NA words than would the WA group, and the results were in the direction predicted. The second part of the study involved an attempt to determine which of the A:NA words contributed significantly to differentiating A and NA groups. A comparison across groups of the mean response values (average aggressive content) of the associations to the A:NA words indicated that five of the twelve terms subscribed significantly to the discrimination. The third segment of the research involved an attempt to test the hypothesis (Berkowitz, 1962, p. 257) that the A individual reacts in a hostile manner to suitable stimuli, but does not behave aggressively in the absence of such cues. In accordance with this suggestion, it was hypothesized that A Ss would respond with hostile associations to the A:NA words more frequently than to any neutral (Nu) word on the WAT. Therefore, the Ss' word association responses to twelve randomly selected Nu words were rated for aggressive content. The results indicated that A Ss responded with more hostile word associations to the A:NA terms than to the Nu words. The fourth part of the study attempted to determine if an examination of relatively unique word association responses to the A:NA words would result in a greater disparity between the aggressive content of the free associations of the A Ss and those of the NA Ss. The results did not support the hypothesis. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Introduction The present study evaluated reported methodological characteristics of GWAS, investigating relationships between reported methodological characteristics and outcomes observed. Methods GWAS were identified from NHGRI’s catalogue of GWAS (2005 to 2009). Multivariate meta-regression models (random effects) were produced to identify the impact of reported study characteristics and the strength of relationships between the variables and outcomes. Results The summary odds ratios for replication components of GWAS in cancer was 1.34 (95% CI 1.25, 1.43) and neuropsychiatric disorders was 1.43 (95% CI 1.30, 1.57). Heterogeneity was accounted for by nature of the control group, relationship between case/control groups, whether cases/controls were drawn from the same population, if data was a primary collection or a build on pre-existing data, if quality assurance was reported, and if the study reported power/sample size. Conclusion Evidence supports the existence of variability in reporting, with index components demonstrating less variability than replication components in the GWAS.

The effect of semantic satiation of the mediator on A-C learning was investigated in the A-B, B-C, A-C mediation paradigm. The possibility of evaluating the "pseudomediation" proposal is discussed. Two experiments were conducted, both yielding the same results: mediated pairs were learned more easily than non-mediated pairs, and satiation did not appear to have any effect. The "pseudomediation" hypothesis was not tested, and several explanations are offered for the apparent failure of satiation. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

The next generation of artificial intelligence is based on human knowledge and experience that can assist the evolution of artificial intelligence towards learning the capability of planning and reasoning. Although knowledge collection and organiza- tion have achieved tremendous progress, it is non-trivial to construct a comprehen- sive knowledge graph due to different data sources, various construction methods, and alternate entity surface forms. The difficulty motivates the study of knowledge association. Knowledge association has attracted the attention of researchers, and some solutions have been proposed to resolve the problem, yet these current solutions of knowledge association still suffer from two primary shortages, i.e., generalization and robustness. Specifically, most knowledge association methods require a sufficient number of labeled data and ignore the effective exploration and utilization of complex relationships between entities. Besides, prevailing approaches rely on clean labeled data as the training set, making the model vulnerable to noises in the given labeled data. These drawbacks motivate the research on generalization and robustness of knowledge association in this dissertation. This dissertation explores two kinds of knowledge association tasks, i.e., entity alignment and entity synonym discovery, and makes innovative contributions to ad- dress the above drawbacks. First, semi-supervised entity alignment frameworks, which take advantage of both labeled with unlabeled entities, are proposed. One em- ploys an entity-level loss that is based on the cycle-consistency translation loss, and another one dually minimizes both entity-level and group-level loss by utilizing opti- mal transport theory to ease the strict constraint imposed by the cycle-consistency loss and match the whole picture of labeled and unlabeled data in different data sources. Second, robust entity alignment methods are proposed to solve the draw- back of robustness. One is designed by following adversarial training principle and leveraging graph neural network, and is optimized by a unified reinforced training strategy to combine its two components, i.e., noise detection and noise-aware entity alignment. Another one resorts to non-sampling and curriculum learning to address the negative sampling issue and the positive data selection issue remaining in the previous method. Lastly, a set-aware entity synonym discovery model that enables a flexible receptive field by making a breakthrough in using entity synonym set informa- tion is proposed to explore the complex relationship between entities. The contextual information of entities and entity synonym sets are arranged by a two-level network from which both of them can be mapped into the same space to facilitate synonym discovery by encoding the high-order contexts from flexible receptive fields.

"The purpose of this study is to establish that the Alabama Library Association has wielded a powerful influence on the promotion and development of public, school and college libraries within the state, that the Association has been instrumental in securing passage of all legislation relating to libraries enacted up to the present time, that Alabama's Public Library Service Division was created as a function of state government through the efforts of Association leaders, and that the Association spear-headed the library movement in Alabama. The study is a history of the Alabama Library Association, 1904-1939. In it the writer has made an effort to (1) trace the organization, growth and development, (2) record for the profession some highlights concerning a selected group of officers and leaders, (3) report the significant achievements, (4) discuss and evaluate conference programs, themes and speakers, (5) trace and evaluate the scope and limitations of the publications, (6) interpret the primary role of the Association in the promotion and development of library service, (7) point out the influence of the Association in securing municipal and state aid"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August, 1962." / "Submitted to the Graduate School of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Sciences." / Advisor: Louis Shores, Professor Directing Study. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-155).

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