Reading comprehension is crucial for academic achievement. While word-level reading and oral language comprehension skills are well-established predictors of reading comprehension, emerging research has been investigating the role of executive function (EF) processes in reading comprehension. The role of shifting – one of the core EF processes – still is underexplored. The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between reading comprehension, shifting, and well-established components of reading comprehension in grade 3 students, across three different shifting tasks. Thirty-six children, ages 8 to 9 years, completed a collection of word-level reading, reading comprehension, receptive vocabulary and EF tasks (working memory and shifting). Results indicated that reading comprehension was significantly and moderately associated with all shifting tasks, word-level reading skills, and receptive vocabulary, but not with WM. In addition, each shifting task explained unique variance in reading comprehension after accounting for word-level reading skills. When receptive vocabulary was added to the regression analyses, shifting tasks did not explain significant variance in reading comprehension performance. Results of this study are discussed in relation to existing models of reading comprehension. / Graduate

This ethnographic exploration tackles meanings of childhood in Qondwa village, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa, by illustrating how childhood is constantly shifted, negotiated and contested. These attempted definitions of childhood defy the Western constructs of childhood, regarding the ethnography here is undertaken in African context. I dedicated six months carrying out qualitative research on these meanings. For purposes of my research, I adopt the local term, rather than recorded Western definition of a 'child' in Qondwa which is expressed as any boy or girl who is financially dependent on parents or guardians, regardless of age. Furthermore, a boy only transitions into a man, as a girl into a woman, when financially independent of their parents/guardians, regardless of age. I hereby argue that there is no universal meaning of childhood and provide comparative ethnographies of childhood to cement this argument. I adopt Karp's theory of personhood to further argue that personhood of children determines how children experience realities. I go further to discuss childhood in the context of parents/guardians, childhood in the context of defined socio-geographic spaces, childhood in the context of traditional cultural events which show that there is no universal meaning of childhood, even within a culture displaying the complexities of such definitions. / Dissertation (MSocSci)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Anthropology and Archaeology / MSocSci / Unrestricted

Government mandates are often used to promote equality in the workplace, often imposing additional costs upon employers. Economic theory suggest that these additional costs will be shifted onto the employees through a reduction in wages. However, when wage shifting is not an option due to anti-discrimination laws, how will employers respond to the additional costs imposed? Gruber (1994) found that wage shifting occurs when the groups benefiting from a government mandate are easily identifiable to the employer, despite the existence of anti-discrimination laws. This study seeks to further the work of Gruber (1994) and examine wage shifting at an industry level. We look at industries that have a large percentage of workers who are benefited by a government mandate to see if the wage shifting in these industries was more significant. This study finds that, as the percentage of workforce receiving benefits increases, the amount of wage shifting grows.

Mindfulness practice is associated with reduced anxiety, enhanced tolerance of negative affect, lower stress reactivity, improved task concentration, increased cognitive flexibility, and enhanced neurological functioning. However, mindfulness-based treatments are highly varied in duration, type and extent or training provided, and treatment focus. Studies of mindfulness interventions also often fail to operationally define mindfulness, which poses a challenging for understanding the mechanism(s) of change involved in its anxiolytic effects. In the current study, attentional control was examined as a possible mechanism of change, as it is largely deficient in individuals with anxiety yet necessary for extinction learning in treatment. In theory, mindfulness interventions can facilitate increased attentional control during exposure tasks, thereby enhancing new learning and eventually improving treatment outcomes. Using a randomized controlled design, the current study aimed to investigate the effects of mindfulness on attentional control for anxious individuals, with a specific examination of two types of mindfulness exercises: mindful physiological awareness and mindful acceptance. 142 participants were recruited from undergraduate psychology classes at Southern Illinois University, of which 63 had moderate-high trait anxiety and 79 had low trait anxiety (per STAI-Trait score). All participants completed baseline self-report questionnaires, after which they completed a mixed saccade task followed by listening to a 15-minute audio-recorded intervention based on group assignment. Finally, they completed a post-test mixed saccade task and post-test self-report questionnaires. It was hypothesized that both mindfulness groups would demonstrate significantly improved inhibition and shifting processing efficiencies compared to a mind wandering control, and that the mindful acceptance group would demonstrate significantly greater gains than the mindful physiological awareness group. Minimal differences in performance effectiveness were expected among all groups. Contrary to hypotheses, results indicated no significant effects of group on inhibition and shifting processing efficiencies or performance effectiveness in the anxious subsample. However, in the non-anxious subsample, the mindful acceptance group had shorter reaction times than the other two groups and the mindful physiological awareness group had higher accuracy rates than the control group. Findings suggest anxious individuals may need more extensive mindfulness practice to improve attentional control, as they tend to display greater attention deficits than non-anxious individuals. However, the study was limited in sample size and further research and study replication is needed prior to making conclusions about whether attentional control is a true mechanism of change. Study limitations, strengths, and future directions for study are also discussed.

This Thesis consists of mostly single page stories.

Yes / Phencyclidine (PCP), used to mimic certain aspects of schizophrenia, induces sexually dimorphic, cognitive deficits in rats. In this study, the effects of sub-chronic PCP on expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a neurotrophic factor implicated in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia, have been evaluated in male and female rats. Male and female hooded-Lister rats received vehicle or PCP (n = 8 per group; 2 mg/kg i.p. twice daily for 7 days) and were tested in the attentional set shifting task prior to being sacrificed (6 weeks post-treatment). Levels of BDNF mRNA were measured in specific brain regions using in situ hybridisation. Male rats were less sensitive to PCP-induced deficits in the extra-dimensional shift stage of the attentional set shifting task compared to female rats. Quantitative analysis of brain regions demonstrated reduced BDNF levels in the medial prefrontal cortex (p < 0.05), motor cortex (p < 0.01), orbital cortex (p < 0.01), olfactory bulb (p < 0.05), retrosplenial cortex (p < 0.001), frontal cortex (p < 0.01), parietal cortex (p < 0.01), CA1 (p < 0.05) and polymorphic layer of dentate gyrus (p < 0.05) of the hippocampus and the central (p < 0.01), lateral (p < 0.05) and basolateral (p < 0.05) regions of the amygdaloid nucleus in female PCP-treated rats compared with controls. In contrast, BDNF was significantly reduced only in the orbital cortex and central amygdaloid region of male rats (p < 0.05). Results suggest that blockade of NMDA receptors by sub-chronic PCP administration has a long-lasting down-regulatory effect on BDNF mRNA expression in the female rat brain which may underlie some of the behavioural deficits observed post PCP administration.

No description available.

No description available.

The increasing use of litigation as a tool to influence land management decisions has been documented within the Forest Service. The Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), which allows successful litigants to recover attorney fees and other legal expenses from the federal government, has come under much scrutiny in discussions surrounding Forest Service litigation. In spite of increasing interest surrounding the relationship between litigation directed at land management agencies and the EAJA, no empirical research had ever attempted to examine this issue. This two part exploratory study used records obtained from land management agencies through the Freedom of Information Act and publicly available tax return records to examine several aspects of the Equal Access to Justice Act's role in land management litigation. According to agency records, the Forest Service paid out over $6 million in EAJA awards from 1999 through 2005. Agency records also showed that the Bureau of Land Management paid over $2.5 million dollars in EAJA awards from 1991 through 2005. The National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were unable to provide usable records regarding the amount of fees paid by each respective agency. The study also found that the entities receiving the largest number of EAJA awards were all tax-exempt environmental organizations. Interestingly, ten of the fourteen organizations that were examined for having received multiple EAJA awards also appear on Gambino et al.'s (under review) list of frequent Forest Service litigators. While this finding suggests that the EAJA may be providing a monetary incentive for these organizations to institute litigation against land management agencies, further research is needed to understand the degree to which this is happening. / Master of Science

O presente estudo buscou identificar indícios da prática de income shifting por meio da manipulação dos preços de transferência por empresas abertas brasileiras, antes e após as alterações nas normas fiscais instituídas pela Lei nº 12.715/12 e pela IN RFB nº 1.312/12. A teoria econômica infere que as firmas multinacionais possuem incentivos a manipular os preços nas transações com suas partes relacionadas, de modo a transferir resultados a localidades com menores cargas fiscais, com o objetivo final de reduzir a carga tributária sobre o lucro total do grupo econômico. Com base na análise de dados em painel de 52 empresas abertas brasileiras que realizaram transações internacionais com partes relacionadas no período de 2010 a 2013, os resultados revelam que as empresas analisadas cujas controladas têm maior volume de transações com partes relacionadas internacionais apresentam menor tributação no grupo consolidado, e que firmas com maiores incentivos ao income shifting possuem maiores indicativos de transferência de resultados entre a controladora e o grupo total. Os resultados indicam que tais relações não sofreram modificações no período de vigência das novas normas tributárias no Brasil. As constatações levantadas representam robustos indícios de que as empresas brasileiras utilizam os preços de transferência para o alcance do income shifting, e que as alterações na legislação fiscal não foram capazes de coibir essa prática no seu primeiro ano em vigor. Os resultados representam uma contribuição importante para a literatura atual, porque trazem evidências inéditas obtidas em empresas sujeitas a regras tributárias domésticas, as quais não foram objeto de estudo empírico até então. / This study investigated evidences of income shifting practice via transfer prices manipulation by Brazilian listed companies, before and after the new fiscal rules promoted by Law nº 12.715/12 and Normative Instruction RFB nº 1.312/12. The economic theory infers that multinational firms have incentives to manipulate prices on intra-group transactions, in order to transfer profits to low-tax locations, aiming to reduce the global tax burden. Based on panel data analysis of 52 Brazilian listed companies with international transactions with related parties in the period from 2010 to 2013, the results reveal that companies whose controlling company has higher volume of transactions with related parties have lower global income tax burden in the consolidated group, and that companies with greater income shifting incentives have greater signs of profit transfers between the controlling company and the consolidated group. Results indicate that there were no changes in these relations in the period when the new tax rules became valid in Brazil. The outcomes represent robust evidences that Brazilian companies make use of transfer prices with aims to achieve income shifting, and the tax rules modifications were not capable to restrain this practice in the first valid year. The results represent a relevant contribution to the current literature, because they bear original and unknown evidences obtained by the exam of firms subjected to domestic tax rules not empirically studied up to now.