<p> School culture develops as staff members interact with each other, the students, and the community. It becomes the guide for behavior shared among members of the school at large. School culture is a self-repeating cycle; culture is shaped by the interactions of the personnel, and the actions of the personnel become directed by culture (Hinde, 2004). The culture of a school can be a positive influence on student learning or it can inhibit the functioning of the school. Stakeholders in any environment prefer to be in a situation that is appealing and welcoming. When students attend school, the expectation is that it is a place where they like to be, a place that offers support and encouragement, and a place where physical comfort levels are optimal (MacNeil, Prater, &amp; Busch, 2009). Research indicates school culture plays a significant role in educational reform efforts (Gruenert &amp; Whitaker, 2015). </p><p> This study investigated how perceptions of teachers, support staff, and administrators affect school culture and academic achievement, and aimed to define how Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) impacts school culture. The data collected and the statistical tests performed included Correlations, a Mann-Whitney Test, and a One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The SCS-FF Open-ended responses were coded and synthesized, and interviews with six certificated employees were coded and categorized into nine themes divided into four meta-codes. Lack of implementation with fidelity and consistent progress monitoring of the PBIS program suggests that there is a lack of cohesiveness shared among staff members at XYZ K-8 School. Consistent expectations for all stakeholders, set forth by administration, emerged as imperative to program success and a positive school culture.</p><p>

<p> This dissertation aims to understand various developmental decision making phenomena associated with turning points in the lives of middle-aged adults. More specifically, the decision processes of persons who lived in pre-war Nazi Germany were studied in relation to their decisions around emigration, based on their memoirs. The source material is from an archive located at Houghton Library, Harvard University, entitled &ldquo;My Life in Germany before and after January 30, 1933,&rdquo; collected in 1939&ndash;40. The study reveals three main reasons given for deciding to emigrate, the loss of employment opportunities, a feeling of moral repugnance for the Nazi regime, and an experience of physical threat. Developmental findings related to the turning point, following Maslow, revealed coping abilities amid an atmosphere of tension, reflecting maintained attainment of adult functioning and a persistent sense of self. Turning point findings supported an extended rather than pinpoint definition of the turning point.</p>

<p>An interesting unsolved case in cognitive science, and one that impacts education and decision-making, is the whole number bias: when people compare fractions they rely on the numerical values of the components (numerator or denominator). A handful of theories have been proposed to explain the bias in Arabic formats, all sharing the assumption of some fundamental difficulty in estimating ratio magnitudes. This thesis contrasts them in a perceptual setting by means of a cognitive model of ratio comparisons. Contrary to the assumption, for the visual system the bias is automatic even when fraction magnitudes are mentally available (Chapter 2a). Moreover, it is present in indigenous populations living in the Amazon, suggesting a limited role of culture and a more generic feature of cognition (Chapter 2b). The automatic activation of numerical magnitude can impact confidence (Chapter 2c), visual selection (Chapter 3) and modulate how the motor system displaces effectors (Chapter 4). The overall results are consistent with the view that the whole number bias is part of a larger phenomenon: people spontaneously and robustly represent numerical value across a variety of perceptual decision tasks.

<p>The effect of self-control on one?s criminal offending is a product of both an individual?s capacity to exercise self-control as well as their desire to exercise self-control. The present study utilized self-report data gathered at a large urban university in Florida (n=1,307) to test the independent and interactive effects of control-capacity and control-desire on intimate partner violence perpetration. The study suggests that while both capacity and desire for control have effects on one?s likelihood of reporting IPV, these effects are independent of each other.

Handedness is a widely studied behavioral asymmetry that is commonly measured as a preference for using one hand over the other. Right hand preference in humans occurs at a ratio of 9:1, whereas left hand preference in rhesus monkeys has been estimated at 2:1. Despite differences in the direction and degree of hand preference, this dissertation investigated whether primates share common underlying factors for the development of handedness. Previous work in human infants has identified a predictive relationship between rightward supine head orientation and later right hand preference. Experiment 1 examined the relationship between neonatal head orientation and later hand use in rhesus monkey infants (N=16). A leftward supine head orientation bias was found that corresponded to greater left hand activity for hand-to-face movements while supine; however, neonatal head positioning did not predict later hand use preference for reaching or manipulation on a coordinated bimanual task. A supine posture is common for human infants, but not for rhesus monkey infants, indicating that differences in early posture experience may differentially shape the development of hand use preference. Movement quality is an additional factor that may affect how the hands are used in addition to neonatal experience. 2-D and 3-D kinematic analyses were used to examine the quality of reaching movements in rhesus monkey infants (N=16), human infants (N=73) and human adults (N=12). In rhesus monkey infants, left hand reaches were characterized as ballistic as compared to right hand reaches independent of hand use preference (Experiment 2). Left hand ballistic reaching in rhesus monkeys may be a carryover from earlier primates that relied on very fast reaches to capture insect prey. Unlike monkey infants, reach quality was a function of hand preference in human infants (Experiment 3). By contrast, a right hand advantage for reaching was observed in human adults regardless of left or right hand preference (Experiment 4). Differential hand experience due to hand preference in early infancy may in part be responsible for the hand preference effects on movement quality observed in human infants but not monkey infants. Motor control may become increasingly lateralized to the left hemisphere over human development leading to the right hand advantage for reaching observed in human adults, as well as over primate evolution leading to right hand use preferences in higher primates like chimpanzees. An underlying mechanism such as a right shift factor in humans and a left shift factor in rhesus monkeys may be a common basis for primate handedness. Environmental and experiential factors then differentially shape this mechanism, including species-typical development. Further work examining the ontogeny of hand preference and hemispheric specialization in various primate infants will lead to a greater understanding of how different factors interact in the development of hand use across primate species.

Recently, investors have asserted that firms' loss contingency disclosures are not adequate to allow them to assess the likelihood of material losses due to litigation (i.e., litigation risk), and a debate has developed over whether the threshold for disclosure should be lowered to provide investors with more information relating to litigation. Using an experiment, I investigate two unintended consequences of lowering a disclosure threshold, as the FASB has recently proposed. First, I find that adding low probability lawsuits to the disclosure of reasonably possible lawsuits lowers prospective investors' perceptions of litigation risk relating to the disclosure, even though more lawsuits are disclosed. Second, lowering the threshold allows firms to portray the entire disclosure opportunistically, diverting attention from higher probability to lower probability lawsuits. I find evidence that firms can use such an opportunistic presentation under a lower threshold to their advantage. Specifically, prospective investors' and even short investors' perceptions were just as favorable to the firm as long investors' when the disclosure threshold was lower and firms adopted an opportunistic disclosure strategy. Thus, my findings suggest that the FASB's proposal to require disclosure of lower probability loss contingencies may have unintended consequences for investors' perceptions of firms' loss exposure.

Under the principal-agent framework, the first essay studies and compares different compensation schemes commonly adopted by hedge fund and mutual fund managers. We find that the option-like performance fee structure prevalent among hedge funds is suboptimal to the symmetric performance fee structure. However, the use of high water mark (HWM) mitigates the suboptimality, though to a very limited extent. Both our theoretical models and simulation results show that HWM will induce more managerial efforts only when a fund is slightly under the water but it will unfavorably dampen incentives when a fund is too deep under the water and when the manager’s skill is poor. Allowing managers to invest personal wealth in their own funds, however, helps align interests and provides positive managerial incentives. Existing literature has detected a ”tournament behavior” among mutual fund managers that mid-year underperformers tend to take relatively higher risk than peers in the second halfyear. The second essay reexamines this issue and provides empirical evidence that such behavior does not exist among hedge fund managers, either at fund level or risk style level. Instead, hedge fund managers shift risk at mid-year in response to the moneyness of their incentive contracts. Also, risk shifting decisions are more driven by underperformance than by outperformance. High Water Mark can strongly rein in excess risk-taking and therefore better aligns interests. Last, risk shifting on average does not improve either performance, moneyness of incentive contracts, or cash inflows. The third essay uses factor models and optimal changepoint regression models to capture the intra-year risk dynamics of hedge fund managers. Those risk shifting managers are further divided into Informed’, ’Uninformed’ and ’Misinformed’ groups, according to their post-shifting risk adjusted performance. We find evidence that supports the existence of an ’Adverse Selection’ problem of managers compensation schemes. Namely, incentive contracts, designed to share risks and align interests, induce the strongest risk taking from the least informed or skilled hedge fund managers, whose risk-shifting decisions result in undesired or even deteriorated risk-adjusted returns for investors. We also find that the High Water Mark has only limited influence on mitigating excessive risk shifting.

Cocaine abuse and addiction are widespread problems with profound medical and socioeconomic consequences. At present, the neurobiological adaptations associated with short- and long-term cocaine abuse are not well understood, which contributes to the lack of availability of broadly effective treatments for this type of addiction. Recently, some studies have implicated GABAA receptor subtypes in the neuroadaptations underlying addiction. To explore the contributions of GABAA receptors to the neurobiological basis of cocaine abuse, we utilized a non-human primate model of cocaine self-administration and examined changes in species typical behaviors, and corresponding alterations in three GABAA receptor subtypes within five reward-related areas of the brain. Sixteen rhesus monkeys either self-administered cocaine intravenously (1-hr/day, 0.03 mg/kg/injection of cocaine) or received passive infusions of saline yoked to the cocaine injections (yoked control). Monkeys either self-administered cocaine for ~10 days (short-term group) or ~100 days (long-term group). Twenty-four hours after the last session, animals were sacrificed and brains were removed. We examined alterations in &agr;1, &agr;2, and &agr;3 subunit-containing GABAA receptors (&agr;1, &agr;2, and &agr;3GABAA receptors) using immunohistochemistry (IHC), in situ hybridization (ISH), and real-time PCR experiments (RTPCR) within reward-related areas of the brain including the nucleus accumbens, ventral tegmental area, caudate, putamen, and anterior cingulate cortex. Long-term cocaine taking animals self-administered cocaine in a cyclical pattern, and increased number of cocaine injections taken within the initial portion of daily self-administration sessions. We observed behavioral alterations in behaviors including locomotor, stereotypic, scratching and affiliative behaviors. IHC results demonstrated alterations in &agr;1GABAA receptors within all regions of interest after long-term self-administration. After short-term cocaine self-administration decreases in &agr;3GABAA receptors were observed in all regions examined. When examining transcript levels using ISH and RTPCR, we found relatively few changes in comparison to protein alterations. The notable change was a decrease of all three receptor mRNAs within the anterior cingulate cortex after short-term cocaine exposure. The present model of drug may expand our understanding of addiction-related behaviors and the role of GABA in addiction. Furthermore, our findings suggest GABAA receptors may serve as viable targets for pharmacotherapeutic approaches to treat addiction.

Addiction has been a problem over the years, with opiate use on the rise. The cycle of using and relapse includes negative emotions and cravings, which are associated with physiological responses and self-efficacy with respect to drinking and drug-taking refusal skills. Interrupting this cycle could help an individual with problematic substance use behavior. The purpose of this research was to study the efficacy of an intervention that could interrupt this cycle. A review of the models of emotional regulation (ER), as well as the complexities identified the need for a tool to support an individual in an acute interaction on multiple levels of his/her experience. This study provided a consolidated conceptual model of process, system, and technology in addressing emotional regulation. The studied intervention has three stages: communicate alternatively (CA), release endorphins (RE), and self-soothe (SS) (CARESS). The purpose of the study was to investigate the acute effects for cravings management and negative affect in a one-time treatment session using CARESS for those with problematic substance use behaviors in comparison to a control group with a treatment as usual intervention. This study was run at a local outpatient hospital, as a randomized control trial with 96 participants. Measures to reflect physiological responses, cravings, drinking and drug-taking refusal skills, and negative affect were used in a pre/post/follow up test implementation. A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) showed there was no statistically significant difference on the combined post-test scores between the experimental and control groups. The hypothesis was not supported. Further analysis demonstrated effect sizes in the changes in the pre post-test scores in individual measures were different, with each intervention having a greater effect size on two of the measures. Due to the lack of variance between the outcomes, it was concluded that CARESS as good as Isometric as a change agent for this population. Opportunities for future studies were identified.

Poor interview performance may be one factor contributing to the unemployment and underemployment of recent college graduates, and content and fluency of interview answers seem to be especially important. Although decades of research have shown improvements in interview skills using instructions, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback, researchers have noted that the duration of training could limit the practicality of using these procedures in college classrooms or career centers. Additional time could be saved if teaching one skill led to collateral changes in another. Although previous research reported collateral changes in speech disfluencies after targeting elements of answer content (Hollandsworth et al., 1978), this study examined the reliability, validity, and generality of these findings. Training effects were evaluated using simulated interviews with the experimenter acting as the interviewer. To evaluate the durability of changes in answer content and fluency, students participated in simulated interviews one week after completing training (maintenance) and with an individual who frequently conducts interviews before and after training (generality). Answer content improved for all 3 participants after only 2 training sessions, and these improvements maintained after a week and during generality probes. However, there were no collateral improvements in speech disfluencies.