<p> This dissertation examined the reward system in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). I empirically tested the social motivation hypothesis as a potential explanation for social impairments in ASD. </p><p> Chapter 1 investigated typically developing (TD) children's electrophysiological responses to rewards accompanied by incidental social versus nonsocial stimuli. This chapter introduced a paradigm that allows reward anticipation to be measured while controlling for both reward and stimulus properties. TD children had increased activation while anticipating rewards accompanied by social versus nonsocial stimuli, suggesting that TD children find social stimuli more rewarding than nonsocial stimuli. </p><p> Chapter 2 investigated how children with ASD compare to TD children on reward anticipation and processing using the paradigm described in Chapter 1. TD children had larger reward anticipation for social versus nonsocial stimuli, while children with ASD did not. Children with ASD also processed social versus nonsocial stimuli differently than their TD peers. These results suggest that children with ASD have selective deficits in anticipation and processing of social rewards. </p><p> Chapter 3 examined whether familiarity might normalize social reward anticipation for children with ASD. Neither children with nor without ASD had different magnitudes of reward anticipation for familiar versus unfamiliar faces, or scrambled versions of those pictures. However, when collapsing across familiarity, results from Chapter 2 were replicated&mdash;TD children had larger reward anticipation for social versus nonsocial stimuli, while children with ASD did not. Chapter 3 also found evidence for an Nc-like component that occurred prior to social stimuli. This component was larger for TD children versus those with ASD. </p><p> To explore possible mechanisms for these differences in social reward processing, Chapter 4 proposes oxytocin as a potential neuropeptide involved in social motivation. Chapter 4 reviews research on oxytocin's effect on social behavior in individuals with and without ASD, as well as implications for treatment of joint attention deficits in ASD. This chapter makes suggestions for future research that combine pharmacological and behavioral interventions in order to optimize outcomes. </p><p> Collectively, this dissertation provides evidence in favor of the social motivation hypothesis, and important information about the nature of the reward system in children with ASD.|</p>

<p> Honor killings are perpetrated for a wide range of offenses in several parts of the world, including marital infidelity, pre-marital sex, flirting, and divorce. This study investigated the opinions of 18 to 22 Muslim American women, born in the United States, aged 25 to 40, of South Asian nationality, regarding their perspectives on honor killing within their religious and cultural communities. Through the use of autoethnography, my study additionally created a personal narrative through having read research, listened to recordings, as well as engagement in interactive interviews on the topic of honor killings. The intent of autoethnography was to acknowledge the inextricable link between the personal and the cultural and to make room for nontraditional forms of inquiry and expression (Wall, 2006). As a first generation Muslim American woman, I explored how personal cultural experiences may have impacted views and reactions to the subject of honor killings. Through structured interviews as well as self-reflective, interactive research process, I aimed to investigate Muslim American women's attitudes and beliefs surrounding this highly sensitive practice of killing women and girls in order to regain family honor. </p><p> In order to better understand attitudes and beliefs surrounding honor killings among Muslim women in the United States, this study utilized the methods of structured qualitative interviews with Muslim Americans, as well as an autoethnography portion to help understand and explain my own attitudes and cultural influences regarding this topic. Through the structured interviews, participants answered questions about demographics and discussed their opinions about honor killings.</p>

<p> Previous scholars have found that organizational members use various tactics to encourage their peer coworkers to voluntarily exit their organizations. These tactics are known as peer-influence exit tactics. What has been missing from the literature is clarity about the factors that influence organizational members' use of peer-influence exit tactics. This dissertation explored the construct of peer-influenced exit to develop greater clarity about the motives for encouraging peer coworkers to leave, the characteristics of the peer-influence exit tactic source and receiver, and the organizational influences on peer-influenced exit. Study 1 used an open-ended survey design to explore the motives, process, and means through which peer-influenced exit occurs and the success of using peer-influence exit tactics. Results indicated that organizational members use eight peer-influence exit tactics and have four overarching motives for using them. Organizational members also reported that they consciously planned their tactics and the tactics were used with some success. Study 2 used an experimental design to explore how certain tactic source and receiver characteristics and organizational characteristics affect the use of peer-influence exit tactics. Results of an exploratory factor analysis revealed that organizational members use affirmation, unprofessional, depersonalization, and professional peer-influence exit tactics. Results of the experiment indicated that organizational members use affirmation, unprofessional, depersonalization tactics more frequently with low performing peer coworkers than with high performing peer coworkers. No differences emerged regarding the use of peer-influence exit tactics based on the cohesiveness of the organizational culture. The results also revealed relationships between competitiveness, agreeableness, and self-esteem of the source and peer-influence exit tactics. Study 3 incorporated a correlational design in which working adults were surveyed about their personal experiences with peer-influenced exit. Results revealed that personal gain, altruistic, organizational enhancement, and climate improvement motives predicted the use of peer-influence exit tactics, as did the competitiveness, agreeableness, and self-esteem of the source, perceived similarity, work performance, liking, and organizational influence of the target, and the organizational climate, supervisor complicity, and coworker regard. The results provide greater insight into the antecedents and outcomes of organizational exit that are valuable for both organizational communication scholars and organizational practitioners. </p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of social dominance orientation (SDO) and right wing authoritarianism (RWA) on discrimination in the face of a threat to either resources or in-group identity. SDO can be viewed as the attitudinal manifestation of realistic conflict theory (RTC) while RWA can be viewed as that of social identity theory (SIT). An online survey was administered to 631 college students assessing prejudice, SDO, and RWA. Emails were sent from a fictitious campus organization to 503 participants who agreed to be contacted for a subsequent study. The emails manipulated either a threat to resources by offering a scholarship or a threat to in-group identity by offering an invitation to join a culturally based campus club and were incorrectly addressed to a male target with either a Muslim or European-American name. It was made clear that if the email had been sent in error, it was necessary to return it to the source or the recipient would lose his chance to receive these opportunities. Return rates were recorded as a behavioral measure of discrimination. Overall, it was expected that more emails addressed to the European American target would be returned than emails addressed to the Muslim target (H1). Based on RCT, it was also expected that in the face of a threat to resources (scholarship offer) participants high in SDO would be less likely to return emails addressed to the Muslim target than participants high in RWA (H2). Finally, based on SIT, it was expected that in the face of a threat to in-group identity (membership invitation), participants high in RWA would be less likely to return emails addressed to the Muslim target than participants high in SDO (H3). In both instances interactions were anticipated between the target and the attitudinal measure (SDO or RWA). Although the results were not statistically significant for the hypotheses, marginally significant results were observed and some interesting trends were noted. Additionally, prejudice against Muslims was found to have significant effects on email return rates.</p>

<p> This dissertation is a phenomenological analysis of the lived experiences of adult daughters who perceive their mothers to have struggled with a mental illness throughout their childhood, adolescence, or even into adulthood. An extensive review of the literature showed a noticeable dearth in the existing literature regarding the lived experiences of adult daughters who experienced maternal mental illness first-hand. Qualitative face-to-face interviews were conducted with eight female participants in an effort to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of their retrospective account of living with a mother who is mentally ill. Of particular interest was creating a space for the women to re-tell their stories and to identify ways in which their own relationship with their mothers has had a trans-generational effect on the relationship and parenting styles with their own children. Several thematic patterns were obtained from the interviews including parentification (mothering the mother), minimization of the mother's mental illness, and feelings of anger, sadness, embarrassment that came up as the daughters dealt with the impact of maternal psychopathology. The stories told by these women will hopefully contribute to the existing literature on attachment, maternal mental illness, and the subsequent impact on parenting practices.</p>

<p> Human beings organize and navigate their experience of everyday life and their interactions with others through the creation, presentation, and representation of myths. This dissertation expands the definition of myth beyond stories of gods and humans to include social narratives used by groups and individuals to contextualize and define everyday situations. As such, they perform vital social functions. These include providing common narratives that have the power to bind otherwise independent beings into more or less coherent collectives capable of joint actions, as well as reducing feelings of individual isolation and existential anxiety by narratively making sense out of the violence, unpredictability, and discontinuity that accompany life. Myths are constructed narratives that masquerade as common sense; they appear to have a supernatural or supra-human basis or origin. Their created nature is collectively, and often unconsciously, denied by those who adhere to them. </p><p> This dissertation outlines an approach to mythology grounded in sociological principles as an alternative to the more familiar approaches of the humanities, religious studies, or psychology. Synthesizing principles drawn from the sociological schools of social constructionism and symbolic interactionism, this dissertation proposes that humans, as users of complex, symbolic language, necessarily experience the world through a matrix of narratives both written and unwritten. But this approach is not simply social constructionism or symbolic interactionism with a mythological gloss. Instead, it serves as a bridge between the macro view of social constructionism and the micro view of symbolic interactionism. </p><p> This dissertation treats myths not as currencies of belief, but rather as currencies of behavior and consequence. For illustration, three examples from the modern world are presented: 1) How same-sex inclusion challenges traditionalist myths of marriage; 2) How myths of divine providence and expansionism have influenced American domestic and foreign policy from the nation's inception to the present; and 3) The role that the propagandizing of engrained cultural myths and stereotypes played during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Ethical and moral implications of human-constructed myths are also considered.</p>

<p> For global companies to continue to grow, members must work and/or lead virtually. The purpose of my research was based on a two-dimensional model for measuring successful projects among virtual team members: effective communication and cultural intelligence (CQ) for team members working in a global pharmaceutical company. The main focus was on project management team members who work on global virtual teams and their team managers who lead global virtual teams. Currently, there is very limited empirical research that focuses on the relationship between cultural intelligence, effective communication within virtual teams, and successful projects. The researcher used triangulation mixed methods to explore the interrelationship among all three elements. It was hypothesized that all three elements are interrelated. Surveys on all three elements were used to assess both global leaders and project management team members who manage and lead projects virtually, working in collaboration with their global counterparts. Based on both the quantitative and qualitative results of the data, as well as the result of this interrelationship, further training on openness and global identity, adjustment to the current strategy, and education of all project management team members could then be recommended. If no difference in the collaboration level is found based on a high level of CQ, then additional opportunities for CQ would be recommended to the organization leadership. </p>

<p> As new employees come into their new workplaces, they engage in behaviors that make it easy for them to fit in with the already-established environment. Spanning across various industries, both Federal and private sector, 10 participants indicated that they believed their childhood experiences were the source of their socialization process development. Despite previous research, this research concluded that organizational socialization tactics had no real bearing on whether or not a newcomer perceived themselves to be successful in their socialization process. Results indicated that the two most important factors of a successful socialization was that the newcomers understood their jobs, were able to reduce their level of uncertainty through asking questions and seeking feedback, and establishing relationships with their co-workers.</p>

<p> Cleveland has experienced population loss in the past decade because of the economic and foreclosure crisis, which caused many of the residents to move away, creating an increase in vacant homes and lots. Urban community gardens are a form of greenspace that repurposes vacant homes and lots that would otherwise be potential sites for debris, dumping, arson, squatters, and crime. Other forms of greenspace have been shown to positively increase feelings of community, ties to place, and create feelings of safety while offering social space and recreation areas in urban environments. I conducted a survey at three urban community gardens in different Cleveland neighborhoods to determine who was using the gardens, how they were using them and if garden participation increased feelings of community, community strength, and improved how the participants felt about their neighbors and neighborhood. Non-gardeners were also surveyed for comparison. Survey results indicate that the gardens are similar to other forms of urban greenspace in that they serve to increase feelings of community, create ties to place by creating neighborhood satisfaction, and increasing feelings of safety. This research suggests that urban gardens are a positive way to repurpose vacant land in residential neighborhoods by offering greenspace and strengthening the community.</p>

<p> Obesity is a chronic and debilitating medical condition that results from a complex mix of genetic, physiological, psychological, and social factors. Despite a recognized consensus regarding the complexity of obesity, little is known about how various demographic, medical, and cognitive performance variables interact in this population, especially in relation to factors which may contribute to the maintenance of obesity over time. Research has supported that one key aspect of this process is eating in response to psychological rather than physiological cues. Given the increased prevalence of psychopathology, particularly mood disorders, in obese individuals, the question arises as to whether there exists an underlying impairment in emotion recognition. </p><p> The current study sought to examine the associations among demographic and medical variables as well as performance on cognitive tests of memory, attention, executive function, sensory-motor, and verbal skills. Contrary to the hypothesis that BMI would be inversely related to performance on tests of emotion recognition, results indicated that as BMI increases, reaction time to complete these tasks decreases. This finding was noted even after the effects of age, gender, estimated pre-morbid IQ, pre-existing medical conditions, and performance in all neurocognitive domains was removed. In addition, when examined across BMI categories, it was observed that participants with BMIs greater than 40 kg/m2 showed the fastest reaction times. Overall, these findings provide support for contemporary theories of emotion which generally agree that emotions evolved to facilitate adaptation to environmental threat.</p>