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abstract: Examining processes that characterize the ebb and flow of emotions offers insight into how infants modulate their own emotional experience as well as how both mothers and infants jointly regulate their emotional states. Drawing from polyvagal theory, which posits that vagal tone supports the capacity to quickly, flexibly, and adaptively respond to contextual demands (Porges, 2003, 2007), I hypothesized that infants with greater vagal tone (indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) would show stronger evidence of emotion regulation and coregulation processes during free play and a frustrating task at 24 weeks child age. To evaluate these hypotheses, I used dynamic structural equation modeling (DSEM; Asparouhov, Hamaker, & Muthén, 2018) to examine biologically-based differences in second-by-second infant emotion regulation (equilibria, volatility, carryover, and feedback loops in positive and negative affect engagement) and mother- and infant-driven coregulation processes, among a sample of 210 low-income, Mexican-origin mother-infant dyads. Results offered evidence of both mother-driven and infant-driven emotion coregulatory processes during free play, which did not differ based on infant RSA. Results offered limited support for RSA-based differences in infant self-regulation processes during the teaching task, such that infants with below average RSA tended to respond to increased negative affect with subsequent increases in positive affect engagement. Prenatal maternal depressive symptoms also accounted for greater infant emotional volatility and weaker mother-driven emotion coregulation. Results highlight the unique roles mothers and infants play in achieving emotion regulation, as well as between-dyad differences in these processes, suggesting multiple pathways towards resilience among low-income, Mexican-origin families. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2021

In recent years, leadership training programs have addressed various needs at the executive level. In such programs, facilitators teach with the expectation that participants will adopt a transformational leadership (TL) mindset and enact commensurate behaviours within the home organizational environment. This is a short-term solution when addressing leadership needs. Instead, a deep understanding of one's personal level of development is necessary to unlock potential TL abilities. The purpose of this case study was to explore the relationship between TL and stages of ego development. The TL framework and constructivist developmental theory were used to explore this relationship. Accordingly, the primary research question posed was what relationship exists between a leader's TL ability and his or her stage of ego development? Four secondary research questions were also posed, relating the “4 I's” of the TL theory (e.g., intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, inspirational motivation, and idealized influence) to stages of ego development. This exploratory case study was conducted within a non-profit sport organization in the Northeast US. Four leaders and their direct reports (n = 20) comprised the purposive sample. A mixed methods case study design was implemented whereby the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (SCT) provided quantitative data, and in-depth interviews provided a rich trove of qualitative data. As the results yielded significantly different “snapshots” of leadership behaviours, it was found that a wide variety of relationships exist between TL ability and these leaders' respective stage of ego development. While the results were mixed, conceptual, quantitative, and qualitative relationships established helped provide a platform from which to further explore the complexities of TL theory. These findings lend a beginning understanding to how one's TL effectiveness may or may not be related to one's stage of ego development. Moreover, a deeper understanding is reached of why various TL behaviours may exist and/or why others may be compromised when connected to manifest behaviours of one's stage of ego development. As the sole empirically based study exploring such a relationship, these findings help address the theoretical gap existing in the management literature. Future research initiatives, limitations, delimitations are presented herein.

Theories of language learning postulate a relatively simple, innate link between verb meaning and sentence structure. Syntactic bootstrapping predicts the use of known structure to help discover a novel word's meaning. Sentences containing tensed complements were postulated to be especially useful, since their relationship with belief, communication and perception meanings is strong. The current goal was to test this relationship in a verb learning paradigm. In Experiment 1, three- to five-year-old children received a battery of tasks to assess their command of different complement structures and their ability to use them to fast map novel verbs from limited exposure in story contexts. In the fast mapping task, ambiguous story contexts introduced a novel verb with either an tensed or an infinitival complement, e.g. (1) Who daxed that the raccoon ate the corn? (2) Who daxed the raccoon to eat the corn? Five-year-old children succeeded at using the infinitival complement to narrow the meaning of the novel verb. In the case of the tensed complement, Five-year-old children do poorly, although this construction typically comes in a year earlier. For these children, complement structure does not directly predict verb meaning. In fact, the contrast between belief and desire complements is not carried by the structure alone. Unlike English, German desire verbs can also take tensed complements. A combination of understanding of sequence of tense in the complement verb, and the relationship between specific mental verbs and their complement verbs has not yet been acquired by five year old children. In Experiment 2, only one story was used in the Fast Mapping task, unlike the three in Experiment l, to see if the number of presentations affected children's learning of novel verbs in the tensed complement condition. However, the results were inconclusive. The pattern of results from all tasks suggests that the syntactic structure of complementation is not a straightforward predictor of verb meaning. Children do indeed use syntactic information from sentential complements when learning new, abstract verbs. However, the subtleties of the complements must be learned, as well as the relationship between these structures and the verbs that appear in them.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is characterized by inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. ADHD children are at significant risk for cognitive deficits and academic underachievement, as well other comorbid psychiatric disorders. A number of studies have examined differences among subtypes of school-aged ADHD children on a variety of cognitive measures. The results from these studies have been largely inconsistent. Although traditionally not diagnosed until school age, preschool children often develop significant externalizing symptoms including those related to ADHD and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). Few studies have examined the cognitive abilities of preschoolers with externalizing problems. The present study examined cognitive differences among 206 children with different level of externalizing and attentional problems, and compared those children to an additional 56 comparison, "non-problem" children. This study focused on the following areas: Verbal ability, Performance/nonverbal reasoning ability, motor ability, pre-academic achievement, and early language skills. The results suggested that hyperactivity/impulsivity in children was specifically linked to greater cognitive and academic problems, children with comorbid hyperactive and aggressive symptoms were at risk for greater impairment than children with hyperactive/impulsive symptoms alone, and that attention problems was associated with greater motor impairment.

Previous studies have found that preschoolers appear confused about some of the properties of televised images, indicating that the televised image shares some of the same properties of the object it is representing. For example, 3.5-year-olds claim that a televised object will spill if the television is turned upside down and 3.5- and 4.5-year-olds claim that a character appearing on television can see and hear them. Little is known, however, about the reasoning behind these confusions regarding televised images and whether children will act on these beliefs. In this project, two novel tasks were created. One of these tasks looked at whether children's behavioral responses about a televised person matched their verbal beliefs. Three-and-one-half- to 5.5-year-olds were introduced to a live person and a televised person who provided information about the location of a hidden sticker(Study 1a and 1b). All three age groups said that the televised individual could see the hiding event and acted on this claim by searching for the sticker in the location suggested by the televised individual about as often as the information suggested by the live individual. The second task examined the rationale behind childrens' confusion about the properties of televised images by creating a task in which children made comparisons between an item presented in three different modalities (as a televised object, as a physical object, and as a photo of the object). When given this comparison task (study 2), 3.5- and 4.5- year-olds claimed that the televised objects no longer shared the properties of real objects (e.g., said that the televised object would not spill if the television was turned upside down). Having the televised object next to the real object or a photo of the object seemed to help direct children's attention to the fact that the question was being asked about the televised object itself and not the real object it was representing. Preschoolers may understand the properties of televised objects much earlier than previously believed; however, understanding the properties of televised people may be more difficult.

In recent years, the American Academy of Pediatrics (1999) has urged parents to avoid exposure to screen media for children under 2 years of age. Despite this recommendation, producers of children's videos have begun to target younger audiences than ever before. One way that media may have a positive impact on very young children is by demonstrating and encouraging the types of parent-child interaction known to be beneficial to healthy cognitive, social, and emotional growth. The research described here examines the effectiveness of videos from two series for infants and toddlers, both claiming to promote parent-child interaction. In this study, parents and children were asked to watch two videos either from the Baby Einstein video series or the Sesame Beginnings video series for two weeks at home prior to visiting the laboratory. Home viewing was followed by two laboratory sessions, separated by approximately one week. Session 1 was 30 minutes with the television off, while Session 2 consisted of a 30-minute segment of video viewing followed by a 15-minute segment with the television off. Quality and type of parent-child interaction were assessed for both sessions. Results revealed that active involvement with the child was relatively high when the television was off. Only for the Sesame Beginnings group, however, did coviewing at home predict high-quality parent-child interaction in the laboratory. This suggests that familiarity with videos that specifically model appropriate parent-child interactions may improve the overall nature of such interactions. During video viewing, there was a decrease in amount of active parent-child engagement regardless of video condition. However, the amount of high-quality parent-child interaction during video viewing was substantial, with active involvement occurring almost half of the time the video was on. Thus, at least in a laboratory setting, video viewing was generally not used as a replacement for involvement with the child. In all, this study indicates that parents can capitalize on the opportunities that baby videos provide and use them as a basis for parent-child interaction. With repeated exposure, some content may even have a more general positive impact on the quality of interaction with the child.

The literature on age-related cognitive changes suggests that some older adults may begin to experience cognitive declines resulting in difficulty engaging in adaptive behavior necessary for functional independent living. Understanding the relationship between these cognitive and functional changes will be important for guiding researchers and clinicians in addressing this issue. Many theories regarding the underlying causes of cognitive aging have been proposed. Most causes appear to be related to changes in the efficiency and accuracy with which information is processed. Two current, competing hypotheses of cognitive aging include the processing speed theory of aging and the frontal lobe theory of aging; however, these theories propose two different mechanisms of cognitive change. Processing speed theory suggests that cognitive aging is a bottom-up process in which diffuse declines in a foundational cognitive process impact higher order cognitive functions. In contrast, frontal lobe theory suggests a top down process in that frontal lobe functions decline first and influence other processes in the brain. The current project examined data collected from a large multi-site sample during the Staying Keen in Later Life (SKILL) study. Specifically, the current study investigated both processing speed and frontal lobe theories of aging in an effort to determine which hypothesis best fit the data. It was observed that each model fit the data equally well, thus suggesting that both processes play a critical role in daily functioning. Additionally, the constructs overlapped substantially suggesting that the cognitive constructs may not be as separable as traditionally thought. Finally, the model was invariant across age groups and no differences were observed between young-old, middle-old, and old-old groups.

The following study explores the factors associated with security of romantic attachment in Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOAs). ACOAs are more vulnerable to inconsistent parenting and consequently are more likely to develop negative internal models of self, a stable construct that affects romantic attachments (Bowlby, 1982; Ainsworth et al, 1989; Bartholomew, 1990). This study examined associations between parent, and peer relationships as possible resiliencies. It was hypothesized that ACOAs will report less secure attachments with their parents (as measured by the IPPA), less romantic attachment anxiety and avoidance (as measured by the ECR-R), and no significant difference in peer attachment (as measured by the IPPA) when compared to ACONAs. It was also hypothesized that there will be an association between peer attachments and romantic attachments for ACOAs and not for the ACONAS. One hundred forty-three undergraduate students participated in the study. An independent T-test showed no significance for the initial hypothesis. The second hypothesis was partially supported, an independent T-test showed significant findings unique to ACOAs. ACOAs with more positive peer attachments had more positive romantic attachments.