This study was designed to assess the effect of Situational context on the playful behaviors of young preschool children ages 18 to 24 months. Playfulness was defined as a psychological construct involving the disposition of play (Rogers, Meeks, Impara, & Frary, 1987). Playful behaviors were observed and coded from videotapes of toddlers interacting with a teacher/experimenter in both assisted play and direct instruction conditions. The research question addressed was as follows: What is the effect of situational context (teacher interaction style) on the playful behaviors of toddlers as measured by the Playful Behaviors Observation Inventory (PBOI)? Data were analyzed using a 2 x 2 x 2 (Condition x Order x Gender) analysis of variance with repeated measures. In the direct instruction condition, children accomplished goals in more varied ways, invented more uses of objects, and attended longer than in the assisted play condition. Those who received the direct instruction condition first also persisted longer at goals than those who received the assisted play condition first. Although pretend play rarely occurred, the number of times children engaged in pretend play was also higher in the direct instruction condition than in the assisted play condition. Results of PBOI scales correlated with age showed an interesting pattern which was not significant but indicated a relationship between age and playfulness. Findings suggest that toddlers are more playful in direct instruction than in assisted play. However, it is difficult to determine from this study if direct instruction is developmentally appropriate for very young preschool children since the children in the late sensorimotor period are in a transitional period of development. It is possible that direct instruction was beneficial because of the age of the children in this study. Toddlers learn through repetition and imitation and need more direction. Results indicate that context has an important role and that imitation, not play, is characteristic of toddlers during the late sensorimotor period. / Ph. D.

With the onset of COVID-19 and the anti-Asian bias that has followed, there is growing importance in creating empirically valid measures of racial prejudice. In general, there has been limited research on workplace experiences for Asian Americans, despite this group being one of the fastest-growing racial minorities in the United States. Existing measures of prejudice can be susceptible to social desirability response biases, as they tend to focus on more cognitive and affective components of attitudes, rather than behavioral expectations. The goal of this study was to develop and provide initial validation for a behavior-based measure of racial prejudice called the East Asian American Situational Judgment Test (EAA-SJT). SJTs are designed to test behavioral judgments through context-based, realistic scenarios and close-ended plausible response options (Weekley & Ployhart, 2013; Whetzel et al., 2020). There has been some evidence that SJTs measuring latent constructs may produce stronger predictive accuracy of criteria compared to traditionally used, context-independent Likert scale measures (Peus et al., 2013; Teng et al., 2020). These traditional measures, often in the form of cognitive/affective survey questions around racial attitudes, can often lead to higher instances of social desirability response bias (Huddy & Feldman, 2009; Weber et al., 2014), in which participants may not answer questions truthfully due to social concerns. The themes for the EAA-SJT scenarios and response options were based on microaggression research on Asian Americans from Sue et al., (2007a), and the proposed factor structure was predicated on research from Hauenstein et al., (2014), who were the first to develop SJTs measuring latent prejudicial attitudes toward African Americans and women. To provide initial evidence for the validity of the EAA-SJT, 400 participants from a Qualtrics survey panel completed a 20-minute online survey consisting of demographics, the initial 35-item EAA-SJT, the Asian American Stereotypes scale to test for convergent validity, the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability scale to test for discriminant validity, and two locally developed criterion measures to test for criterion-related validity. Results from the exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) provided evidence for a three-factor solution of Challenging, Ambivalence, and Reinforcing microaggressions. There was promising initial validity evidence for the EAA-SJT and evidence towards the incremental validity of the EAA-SJT over existing cognitive/affective measures. Next steps include building off the EFA results from this study and conducting a confirmatory factor analysis to finalize the EAA-SJT. Overall, microaggressions and other forms of racial biases in the workplace can have implications on employee well-being, as well as mental and physical health outcomes. The availability of different types of measurement tools such as the EAA-SJT may allow researchers to better understand prejudicial attitudes towards Asian Americans. / M.S. / Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, there was a noted rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and instances of discrimination against Asian Americans (Jeung et al., 2021, Levin, 2021, Ruiz et al., 2020). This study aims to develop and provide initial validation for a measure of racial prejudice against East Asian Americans. This measure, the East Asian American Situational Judgement Test (EAA-SJT), provided scenarios of microaggressions against East Asian Americans along with four response options of behavioral expectations in reaction to those scenarios. The EAA-SJT can be taken by a member of any racial group and reframes the focus on the attitudes of those who potentially engage in microaggressions rather than only those who are affected by it. Preliminary evidence was found in support of the validity of the EAA-SJT.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of context-dependency of seductive details on recall and transfer in multimedia learning environments. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, the purpose was to identify context-dependent vs. context-independent seductive details in a lightning animation. Seductive details were considered as interesting yet irrelevant sentences in the narration of lightning animation. Sixty-seven undergraduate students participated in Experiment 1 and assigned interestingness scores to the 28 content irrelevant sentences. Participants were assigned to two different groups, context-dependent seductive details group (CDSD) and context-independent seductive details group (CISD). Participants in the CDSD group assigned interestingness scores after watching a lightning animation to be familiarized with the context of lightning formation. Participants in the CISD group watched a historical inquiry animation as a distraction task before assigning interestingness scores. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that 13 of 28 sentences in the lightning formation text were seductive details according to participants of the study. Ultimately, 6 of the 13 seductive details were determined to be context-dependent and 7 were determined to be seductive details were context-independent. The purpose of Experiment 2 was to investigate the effects of context-dependency of seductive details on recall and transfer in multimedia learning environments. Undergraduate students (n = 184) were randomly assigned into four groups. Participants in all groups watched a lightning animation, and performed a recall and a transfer task. The first group watched an animation that did not include any seductive details. The second group watched the animation with context-dependent seductive details only. The third group watched the animation with context-independent seductive details only. The last group watched the animation with both types of seductive details. A 2x2 ANOVA for both recall and transfer, and contrast analyses were conducted to determine the effects of context-dependency of seductive details on recall and transfer. The results indicated that there was no significant effect of context-dependency of seductive details on recall or transfer. The findings are discussed in the context of the related literature and directions for future research are suggested. / Ph. D.

The use of robotics in hazardous environments is becoming more common, where autonomy can handle the dull, dirty and dangerous jobs that humans have previously supported. This thesis focuses on the design of a helicopter deployable unmanned ground vehicle for use in hazardous environments, and presents the benefits of heterogeneous unmanned vehicle teams for operation in beyond line-of-site hazardous environments. The design of a ground robot that is capable of being flown on the undercarriage of a Yamaha RMAX unmanned air vehicle is presented. The robot is size, weight, and power limited and must be capable of traversing rough, unstructured terrain. The results of testing show that the design criteria for size, weight, and mobility are met. A path planning algorithm is developed using the A* search algorithm for the planning of optimal paths through rough terrain. The algorithm makes use of a vehicle/terrain interaction model to compute the cost of path traversal. In the CONOPS, the terrain model is generated real-time during a mission through the use of a stereovision system carried on the helicopter, which station-keeps above the ground robot. The algorithm simulates the robot on the terrain and presents the best feasible path to the operator to aid in teleoperated robot navigation. Simulations of the planning algorithm provided feasible paths over a rough terrain environment. A user study was conducted that evaluates the abilities of both mono- and stereo-vision systems in providing the teleoperator with adequate situational awareness with the intent of proving that stereovision data is more effective at aiding the user in making timely navigation decisions. The results of the study showed that the helicopter-mounted stereovision system was more efficient than the monovision system with respect to navigation time, the number of invalid moves, and total moves required for navigation of a simulated rough terrain environment. / Master of Science