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A significant, yet understudied issue that demands attention is the experience of peer victimization among adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Research indicates that youth with disabilities, including those with ASDs, are victimized more frequently as compared to their typically developing peers. However, little is known about the peer victimization experience for adolescents with ASDs beyond its frequency of occurrence. This study examined relations between peer victimization and individual, peer, and parent factors and outcomes including internalizing and externalizing symptoms among adolescents with ASDs. No significant indirect effects were found for peer victimization on relations between individual social-cognitive and emotion regulation factors and internalizing or externalizing symptoms. Moderating effects of peer (i.e., friendship companionship, closeness, and help) factors on relations between peer victimization and internalizing and externalizing symptoms were not supported. Significant direct effects were found as higher levels of friendship companionship and help were associated with lower levels of internalizing symptoms. Parental knowledge moderated the relations between both adolescent-reported and parent-reported peer victimization and internalizing but not externalizing symptoms. Study findings have implications for prevention and intervention efforts including adolescents with ASDs and directions for future research.

Thesis advisor: Andre Brouillette / Thesis advisor: Brian P. Dunkle / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Royce Yat-Pui Lee. / Includes questionnaire in Chinese. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 49-55).

This thesis is a response to the abstract phenomenon of bereavement as well as to the death of an actual beloved. It situates mourning as ethically and politically significant, reading it as an instance of crisis for the bereaved subject as well as for the culture in which she is located. Via theorists as diverse as Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Derrida, Dominick LaCapra and Donald Winnicott, the thesis considers the enabling potential that is implicated in this crisis. It suggests that mourning has the capacity to manifest productively as a form of localised intervention or "revolt" that simultaneously invigorates the inner life of the subject and subverts certain ideological aspects of contemporary, Western culture. In particular, the thesis suggests that the significance of productive mourning lies in its capacity to attenuate, via an anti-elegiac approach to narrative, the normative discourse of "identity", a crucial element of the discursive network that sustains a socio-political system mired in the "truth" of liberal individualism. Productive mourning facilitates an interrogation of the self-other/subject-object dialectic embedded in Western culture. This interrogation might be conceived as a deconstruction of the subject in its privileged status relative to alterity, the deconstruction of, in other words, "identity" and its processes. The thesis is informed by the author's experience of bereavement and mourning following suicide. Utilising a fictocritical approach, it performs a commentary in addition to an argument, evincing a unique approach to delineating the personal, cultural and ethical significance of loss.

Providing a new perspective on The Adventures of David Simple and its sequel David Simple: Volume the Last, this thesis reveals the utopian disillusion that causes the collapse of the ideal community in Sarah Fielding¡¦s novels. David Simple idealizes human relationships, but at a price of glossing the weakness in David and his family members that stains their ideal utopia. The problematic feminine utopia and the simulated intention of the utopian leader¡XDavid Simple¡Xgive rise to the ruin of this benevolent community. The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter attempts to interpret the novel by emphasizing what it glosses over rather than by celebrating the admirable virtues in the David family; such a skeptical frame of mind with respect to Sarah Fielding¡¦s David Simple is rarely seen. Chapter Two connects Utopianism further with Sarah Fielding¡¦s novels. Sarah Fielding adopts not only the traditions of the utopian genre but also innovates it in David Simple. Some features of it, however, develop utopian disillusions that can hardly be overcome. In the third chapter, we switch our focus to the feminine perspective, reading the novels as a feminine utopia. The ambiguities within their feminine utopia within the utopian community bring on its final failure. Chapter Four investigates the human relationships of the David family, exhibiting the unspoken intentions of the protagonist¡XDavid Simple. Both in The Adventures of David Simple and in Volume the Last, money is an essential instrument for plot movement; David wisely uses money to exchange it for friendship and a new-styled family. We are stunned to find that, what David searches for, however, is not true friendship. He attempts to reconstruct an ideal family by collecting friends. At the end of the novels, David successfully purchases a new family, but he disappoints the expectant readers who shared his adventure for more than nine years in searching for and believing in true friendship. The conclusion of this thesis indicates the need of a suspicious attitude in reading David Simple. Such an attitude does justice to the growing darkness in Fielding¡¦s own vision, and deepens her achievement as a writer.

Abstract This thesis proposes to scrutinize and analyze the contrasts that abound in Sarah Fielding¡¦s novel, The Adventures of David Simple. Contrasts pervade the novel because they exist in the themes, between the paired protagonists, and between part one and part two. The hero, David Simple, is characterized by his extreme benevolence that rarely exists among us. He seems uncommon by prioritizing friendship over anything else. He is an extremist in point of godliness, innocence, spirituality, sentimentality, and benevolence. With like-minded friends, David sets up a utopian community that grows from four to eleven members, but at last only two female members survive. The annihilation of David¡¦s secluded utopia brings about the enigma that good seems to go unrewarded. This thesis attempts to draw on feudalism and capitalism to explain the decline of David¡¦s utopia by analyzing the patron-client relationship that evolves between David Simple and Mr. Orgueil. Chapter one gives an overview of this novel, mentions the novel¡¦s reception by major critics, and introduces each chapter that follows. Chapter two delineates the thematic structure of the novel. Major themes are Christian spirit, friendship, and envy. Sub-themes are composed of thematic contrasts between innocence and sophistication, spirituality and materialism, sentimentality and rationality, and benevolence and malevolence. Chapter three analyzes parallels in the contrasts between Cynthia and Mrs. Orgueil in order to prove my hypothesis that Cynthia equals Mrs. Orgueil in temperament, in intelligence, and in persistence. Chapter four explores the contrasting notions of happiness between David and Mr. Orgueil. These contrasts are those between godliness and worldliness, innocence and sophistication, spirituality and materialism, sentimentality and rationality, and benevolence and malevolence. This analysis of contrasting notions of happiness will lead me to conclude that both David and Mr. Orgueil attain transient and earthly happiness when they are alive, but only David attains eternal and heavenly happiness at the end of the novel. To sum up, the threshold of heavenly happiness is death. The prerequisite for an approach to that threshold of permanent happiness is benevolence, which avails to transcend sublunary happiness.

The purpose of this study was to explore how having Mexican American friends influences a person?s perception to racial/ethnic (Mexican American) specific teasing. This study sought to extend the research on friendships and prejudice by investigating how friendship influences a person rating of ethnic specific teasing. This study is significant because promoting interracial friendships could be an avenue to alleviate some of the negative effects of racial teasing. Moreover, it may help facilitate and create a more comfortable social environment that might help ethnic minorities in school. Participants were asked to rate vignettes, including characters that were identified as Mexican American, which contained racial/ethnic specific teasing. They were asked to rate the vignettes according to adjectives that were either positive or negative, such as: humorous, friendly, mean, and cruel. Additionally, measures of empathy, social desirability, prejudice, and white racial consciousness were administered. Participants were asked to think of a Mexican American friend and complete a questionnaire, the Acquaintance Description Form F-2, as a way of measuring the intensity and closeness of this friendship. The major hypothesis was that participants who indicated a greater and more intense friendship with their Mexican American friend would rate the teasing as less positive and more disapproving. Analysis found that people have a more disapproving attitude toward teasing to the extent that they have, respectively, at least one Mexican American friend or a higher level of exposure to African Americans. Statuses of white racial consciousness were also found to be strong predictors for how participants rated vignettes. Findings somewhat supported both the Extended Contact Theory and the Intergroup Contact Theory, adding to the literature that finds when groups spend not only time together but quality time together benefits can be expected. Some of these benefits may help to reduce the positive perception of racial teasing and presumably less racial teasing. Future research should explore the relationship between white racial consciousness and attitudes and perceptions of racial specific teasing as a strong associate between the two emerged in this study. Additionally future research may explore whether less positive feelings of racial teasing is related to less racial teasing behaviors.

Thesis--Tubingen. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 216-222).