Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item THE EMBODIED EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES OF BLACK MEN PARTICIPATING IN A HOSPITAL-BASED VIOLENCE INTERVENTION PROGRAM(2024) Wical, William Grant; Richardson, Joseph; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Gun violence is a public health and racial justice issue which requires significant societal change to effectively decrease its impact on the lives of Black men and their communities. While hospital-based violence intervention programs have been identified as a promising mode of prevention, they have largely overlooked the ways Black men who survive gunshot wounds feel, determine what constitutes effective violence prevention, and subjectively experience trauma. This dissertation explores how those who received psychosocial support from an intervention program interpret their emotional experiences related to trauma, healing, and loss to make claims about society, themselves, and justice. Their affective experiences contrast significantly with dominant discourses of violence, race, and emotionality. Attention to these emotional experiences can provide a foundation for a fundamentally different ethics of caring. This redefinition of what it means to provide care challenges the current usage of trauma as the primary analytic to evaluate Black men’s experiences related to violence and underscores the need to shift prevention efforts away from individualistic models toward those geared at creating structural change.Item Points of Learning Instead of States of Being: Reimagining the Role of Emotions in Teacher Development through Compassionate and Developmental Supports(2020) Stump , Megan; Madigan Peercy, Megan; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The existing research on second-language (L2) teacher emotion presents emotional experiences as largely descriptive: we know what emotions L2 teachers feel, and how emotions impact L2 teachers and their pedagogy. However, current framing of emotion in L2 teaching does little to examine how L2 teachers navigate emotional experiences and how emotions factor into their learning and development process. I fill this gap in the literature by studying how L2 teacher preparation programs can support pre-service L2 teachers’ (L2 PSTs) expressed emotions and how this emotional support may impact L2 PSTs’ conceptions of their teaching and themselves as teachers. I approach this study from a sociocultural perspective which posits that the cognitive and emotional minds function as a dialectical unity and therefore, positions cognition and emotion as central to teacher development. Central to the findings for this study is a better understanding of how teacher educators support L2 PST emotion and what this support does for L2 PSTs. Specifically, I highlight two types of emotional support that teacher educators may provide to L2 PSTs: Compassionate Emotional Support (CES) and Developmental Emotional Support (DES). CES focuses specifically on emotions by encouraging L2 PSTs in successful and challenging times, normalizing their emotions, and providing multiple opportunities for them to share their emotions. Conversely, DES focuses on cognitive aspects of emotions by exploring alternative ways of thinking, doing, perceiving, and understanding L2 PSTs’ teaching. When L2 PSTs have a greater cognitive pool of options from which to orient themselves toward their teaching, they appear to be able to change their thinking, feelings, and activity related to their teaching. Essentially, L2 PSTs transform as a result of DES. My findings clearly indicate that emotions signify areas of significance to L2 PSTs and thus, are rich areas for exploration for learning. Teacher educators should focus on supporting cognitive understandings connected to expressed emotions to help foster L2 PST growth and development. When teacher educators approach emotions as being rooted in cognition, they are able to reimagine emotions as points of learning instead of states of being.Item THE INFLUENCE OF MOTIVATION ON EMOTION REGULATION AND MOTOR PERFORMANCE: EXAMINATION OF A NEURO-AFFECTIVE MODEL(2016) Tan, Ying; Hatfield, Bradley D; Neuroscience and Cognitive Science; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Mental stress is known to disrupt the execution of motor performance and can lead to decrements in the quality of performance, however, individuals have shown significant differences regarding how fast and well they can perform a skilled task according to how well they can manage stress and emotion. The purpose of this study was to advance our understanding of how the brain modulates emotional reactivity under different motivational states to achieve differential performance in a target shooting task that requires precision visuomotor coordination. In order to study the interactions in emotion regulatory brain areas (i.e. the ventral striatum, amygdala, prefrontal cortex) and the autonomic nervous system, reward and punishment interventions were employed and the resulting behavioral and physiological responses contrasted to observe the changes in shooting performance (i.e. shooting accuracy and stability of aim) and neuro-cognitive processes (i.e. cognitive load and reserve) during the shooting task. Thirty-five participants, aged 18 to 38 years, from the Reserve Officers’ Training Corp (ROTC) at the University of Maryland were recruited to take 30 shots at a bullseye target in three different experimental conditions. In the reward condition, $1 was added to their total balance for every 10-point shot. In the punishment condition, $1 was deducted from their total balance if they did not hit the 10-point area. In the neutral condition, no money was added or deducted from their total balance. When in the reward condition, which was reportedly most enjoyable and least stressful of the conditions, heart rate variability was found to be positively related to shooting scores, inversely related to variability in shooting performance and positively related to alpha power (i.e. less activation) in the left temporal region. In the punishment (and most stressful) condition, an increase in sympathetic response (i.e. increased LF/HF ratio) was positively related to jerking movements as well as variability of placement (on the target) in the shots taken. This, coupled with error monitoring activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, suggests evaluation of self-efficacy might be driving arousal regulation, thus affecting shooting performance. Better performers showed variable, increasing high-alpha power in the temporal region during the aiming period towards taking the shot which could indicate an adaptive strategy of engagement. They also showed lower coherence during hit shots than missed shots which was coupled with reduced jerking movements and better precision and accuracy. Frontal asymmetry measures revealed possible influence of the prefrontal lobe in driving this effect in reward and neutral conditions. The possible interactions, reasons behind these findings and implications are discussed.Item The Issue with Issues Management: An Engagement Approach to Integrate Gender and Emotion into Issues Management(2016) Madden, Stephanie; Sommerfeldt, Erich; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Using sexual assault on college campuses as a context for interrogating issues management, this study offers a normative model for inclusive issues management through an engagement approach that can better account for the gendered and emotional dimensions of issues. Because public relations literature and research have offered little theoretical or practical guidance for how issues managers can most effectively deal with issues such as sexual assault, this study represents a promising step forward. Results for this study were obtained through 32 in-depth interviews with university issues managers, six focus groups with student populations, and approximately 92 hours of participant observation. By focusing on inclusion, this revised model works to have utility for an array of issues that have previously fallen outside of the dominant masculine and rationale spheres that have worked to silence marginalized publics’ experiences. Through adapting previous issues management models to focus on inclusion at the heart of a strategic process, and engagement as the strategy for achieving this, this study offers a framework for ensuring more voices are heard—which enables organizations to more effectively communicate with their publics. Additionally, findings from this research may also help practitioners at different types of organizations develop better, and proactive, communication strategies for handling emotional and gendered issues as to avoid negative media attention and work to change organizational culture.Item Neural Bases of Emotional Language Processing in Individuals with and without Autism(2015) Sand, Lesley Ann; Bolger, Donald J.; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A fundamental aspect of successful social interactions is the ability to accurately infer others’ verbal communication, often including information related to the speaker’s feelings. Autism spectrum disorder is characterized by language and social-affective impairments, and also aberrant functional neural responses to socially-relevant stimuli. The main objective of the current research was to examine the behavioral and neural effects of making affective inferences from language lacking overt prosody or explicit emotional words in individuals with and without autism. In neurotypical individuals, the current data are consistent with previous studies showing that verbal emotional stimuli enhances activation of brain regions generally responsive to discourse, and also “social-affective” brain regions, specifically medial/orbital frontal regions, bilateral middle temporal areas, temporal parietal junction/superior temporal gyri and pCC/PC. Moreover, these regions respond differentially to positive and negative valence, most clearly in the medial frontal area. Further, results suggest that mentalizing alone does not account for the differences between emotional and neutral stories, as all of our stories required similar inferencing of the feelings of the protagonist. In autism, there is general agreement that the neurodevelopmental disorder is marked by impairments in pragmatic language understandings, emotional processes, and the ability to “mentalize,” others’ thoughts, intentions and beliefs. However, findings are mixed regarding the precise nature of emotional language understandings. Results of the present study suggest that autistic individuals are able to make language-based emotional inferences, and that like neurotypical controls, social-affective brain regions show task-related facilitation effects for emotional compared to neutral valence. However, the neural activations in the autism group were generally greater than controls, especially in response to emotion. Additionally, results showed greater difficulty with incongruent judgments in participants with autism. Together, these findings represent a first step toward revealing social-affective abilities in the language context in autism, despite irregular brain response. Such understandings are critical to generating effective intervention strategies and therapeutic practices for autistic individuals and their families. For remediation to be most beneficial, one must understand and utilize areas of skill, and leverage those to positively impact deficits.Item THE NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL BASIS FOR EMOTIONAL MAINTENANCE AND REDUCED GOAL-DIRECTED BEHAVIOR IN SCHIZOPHRENIA(2014) Llerena, Katiah; Blanchard, Jack J; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The current study investigated the neurophysiological underpinnings of emotional maintenance in schizophrenia (SCZ) and whether aberrant neural responses predicted deficits in affective decision making and real-world motivated behavior. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 27 SCZ outpatients and 23 healthy controls (CN) during an emotional maintenance task in which participants were presented an initial image for 3 seconds and then required to maintain a mental representation of the intensity that image over a delay period of varying lengths and determine whether the initial image was more or less intense than the second image. The Late Positive Potential (LPP) was used as a neurophysiological marker of emotional maintenance during the delay period. SCZ showed normal in-the-moment emotion experience to positive stimuli; however, SCZ rated negative and neutral pictures as more intense than CN. SCZ also displayed deficits in emotional maintenance accuracy. Furthermore, ERP data indicated reduced LPP amplitude during picture viewing for SCZ compared to CN, and only CN showed persistence of the LPP for positive stimuli into the offset delay period for approximately 1 second and this was significantly associated with behavioral emotional maintenance performance. Behavioral emotional maintenance performance also significantly predicted clinically rated negative symptoms (motivation and pleasure) and poor functional outcome. Thus, impairments in emotional maintenance may offer a promising new theory as to why people with SCZ fail to pursue goal-directed activities.Item "You've Really Got a Hold on Me": The Power and Emotion in Women's Correspondence in Fifteenth-Century Italy(2012) McLean, Nicole Lynn; Bianchini, Janna; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis examines the lives of Alessandra Strozzi and Lucrezia de'Medici of Florence. The fifteenth-century in Italy saw women's power declining, and patrician women used letter writing to enter the public sphere and exert power. This study analyzes socially constructed emotional themes in women's correspondence which is in concert with scholars like Barbara Rosenwein in that it seeks to instead situate emotions in specific historical contexts. For Alessandra, we see how she successfully employs the emotions of guilt and shame to manipulate her sons into behaving properly, as these emotions were closely connected to Italian culture. Second, in the patronage letters written to Lucrezia by potential clients, we see the use of motherly emotions by clients in hopes that Lucrezia will essentially fill a mother's role, helping them with their hardships. Even though client's letters represent a "fictive" mother/child relationship, they are a testament to Lucrezia's power as a mother.Item THE EFFECTS OF VALENCE AND AROUSAL ON ITEM AND SOURCE MEMORY IN CHILDHOOD(2011) Graham, Meghan; Riggins, Tracy L.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Emotion can be characterized in terms of valence and arousal. Both of these dimensions enhance memory in adults by specifically enhancing a form of memory called recollection. Recollection is required for memory of source or encoding context, and shows prolonged development throughout childhood. The specific effects of valence and arousal on memory, and specifically on recollection, have thus far not been studied developmentally. The current study examined how valence and arousal affect memory in 8-year-olds, using a source memory paradigm that allowed for the examination of emotion effects on recollection. Results showed that, after statistically controlling for effects of age, valence enhanced memory for items, but not source, and that there were gender differences in the effects of arousal on source memory, with girls showing better performance in the high-arousal condition and boys showing better performance in the low-arousal condition.Item Frame Problems, Fodor's Challenge, and Practical Reason(2008) Deise, Erich Christopher; Carruthers, Peter; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)By bringing the frame problem to bear on psychology, Fodor argues that the interesting activities of mind are not amenable to computational modeling. Following exegesis of the frame problem and Fodor's claims, I argue that underlying Fodor's argument is an unsatisfiable normative principle of rationality that in turn commits him to a particular descriptive claim about the nature of our minds. I argue that the descriptive claim is false and that we should reject the normative principle in favor of one that is at least in principle satisfiable. From this it follows, I argue, that we have no reason for thinking the activities of our minds to be, as a matter of principle, unmodelable. Drawing upon Baars' Global Workspace theory, I next outline an alternative framework that provides a means by which the set of engineering challenges raised by Fodor might be met. Having sketched this alternative, I turn next to consider some of the frame problems arising in practical reason and decision-making. Following discussion of the nature of emotion and its influence on practical reason and decision-making, I argue that consideration of emotion provides one means by which we might contend with some of the frame problem instances that arise in that domain.Item A Roles Approach to Conflict Strategies: Modeling the Effects of Self- and Other-Role Enactment on Conflict Strategies Through Goals and Emotion(2008) Xie, Xiaoying; Cai, Deborah A.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation addresses how, in a conflict situation, individuals enact different roles and how their responses to the other party's role enactment affect the strategies they choose to handle the conflict. A model is proposed to delineate the cognitive and emotional process through which the focal individual and the other party's role enactment affect the focal individual's conflict strategies. The model was first examined using the data based on participants' recall of a past conflict and their answers to questions that assessed behaviors (N = 265). Next, a laboratory experiment was used to test a model in which a conflict was induced and each participant interacted with a confederate to complete a decision making task (N = 261). The focal person's obligation to his or her general role and the other party's expectation violations were manipulated. Participants' embracement of their situated roles, perceived goal importance, emotion, and the use of four types of conflict strategies were measured. Results indicated that obligation predicted the use of relational-protective strategies through the mediating effect of relational goal importance. Embracement of the situated role was found to directly predict the use of a relational-protective confronting strategy but indirectly predict the use of a relational-disruptive confronting strategy through situated goal importance. The other's expectation violation changed the perceived goal importance and the emotion of the focal individual, which predicted the use of relational-disruptive strategies. However, the main reason for the effect of expectation violation on relational-disruptive strategies was individuals' direct reaction to the other's behavior rather than anger. Interpretations and implications of the results, the limitations of the study, theoretical and methodological contributions of the study, and future directions were discussed.