7482 research outputs found
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In Defense of Ecosystem Services
No full textarticle published in law reviewPrepared for the Pace’s 2014 Lloyd K. Garrison Lecture, this provides a brief overview of the history of the ecosystem services framework in law and policy, status report on where it is today, and assessment of critiques, closing with proposed principles for its responsible use
Effect of Discrete Emotions on Eyewitness Memory and Helping Behavior
No full textPSY-4999, Honors Thesis, Megan SaylorMany studies have shown that how we are feeling effects what we remember. However, few have addressed how specific, discrete emotions (happiness, fear, disgust, etc.) effect memory. This project examined the effect of discrete emotional states on memory of events, and the effect of discrete emotional states on helping behavior. One of five emotional states (happiness, amusement, fear, disgust, and sadness) was induced by watching a video. Participants were then tested with three questions on their memory of the video, to determine if one type of question had higher accuracy across emotion categories. Based on previous research, we predicted that memory for central details would be improved for negative affect conditions, whereas memory for the event overall would be best for the positive affect conditions. We also conducted exploratory analysis into how discrete emotions would effect this data. We did not find any significant effects of affect, of discrete emotion in this study, likely due to our small participant pool. Helping behavior was recorded as willingness to participate in a later experiment, and also did not yield any significant results between the emotion conditions.Vanderbilt UniversityPsychologyCollege of Arts and ScienceThesis completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Honors Program in Psychological Sciences... Under the Direction of Dr. Leslie Kirby and Craig Smith
A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Schizotypy and Social Trait Judgments
No full textThis submission is my honors thesis completed under the supervision of Dr. Sohee Park. It serves as the completion of my participation in the honors program from 2014 to 2016.Rapid and accurate judgments of social traits from faces are indispensable to successful interpersonal interactions. Anomalous trait judgment has been observed in the schizophrenia spectrum and may lead to delusion formation and reduced social functioning. Furthermore, individual differences in social trait judgments are likely to be influenced by culture and gender. The current study investigated the role of culture and schizotypal personality traits on rapid trait judgments from faces in age-matched college student samples from China and the US using a trait judgment task and a battery of self-report questionnaires. We found no relationship between schizotypy and trait judgments. However, positive schizotypy, disorganized schizotypy, cognitive empathy, and affective empathy were higher in Chinese students than in American students. We also found lower level of consummatory interpersonal pleasure among Chinese students. These findings indicated that individuals from Chinese and North American cultures differ in their tendency to make mental inferences during social interactions, as well as in how much they enjoy social interactions. These differences potentially pointed to the relative cultural specificity of the schizotypal personality construct, as well as the need for culturally specific symptom measures and diagnostic criteria.Vanderbilt UniversityPsychologyCollege of Arts and ScienceThesis completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Honors Program in Psychological Science
Persons and Potential: Education and Abolition in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain
No full textHistory Department Honors Thesis, (2016). Awarded Honors.This project analyzes late eighteenth-century education, family literature, and antislavery political tracts to demonstrate the intersection of education and family and abolitionist rhetoric in Britain. This examination pinpoints the cultural centrality of the family and the connection between a capacity for education and moral edification as crucial components of both the milieu that produced abolitionism on a grass-roots level and within the appeals of political leaders. Such rhetoric had implications for justifications of human personhood and for the language of “civilization” found throughout the abolition movement.Department of HistoryCollege of Arts and Scienc
Ellen Armour on Theology After Modernity
No full textIn this podcast, Chris Benda, theological librarian at the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, interviews Vanderbilt Professor Ellen Armour about her book Signs & Wonders: Theology After Modernity
Evaluation of a Measure of Parent Behavior: An Item Response Theory Approach to Dimensionality and Informant Agreement
No full textHonors thesis completed for PSY-PC 4999. Advisors: Megan Saylor, Judy Garber, Sun-Joo Cho.
The paper evaluates the dimensionality and group invariance (across mothers and children) of the Children's Report of Parental Behavior Inventory using item response theory.The Children's Report of Parental Behavior Inventory is a widely used three-dimensional psychometric measure to assess parenting behaviors as reported by children and parents. Parent-child dyads tend to report discrepant information about parenting, which has been of great interest to clinical and developmental psychologists, as well as psychometricians. Researchers agree that construct disagreement within families can be meaningful, though measurement error and interpretative limitations can obscure this information. Using item response theory (IRT), this paper produced a shortened two-dimensional version of the CPRBI for a study of parent-child disagreement, which then was analyzed for dimensionality and discrepant item functioning between children and parents in a sample of sixth graders and their mothers. Methods include exploratory factor analysis, principal components analysis, unidimensional and multidimensional item response modeling, and differential item functioning. The results propose that CRPBI is not group invariant across mothers and children and that the dimensionality of the CRPBI might vary across different populations.Vanderbilt UniversityPsychology and Human DevelopmentPeabody CollegeThesis completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Honors Program in Psychological Sciences
Twitter Fiction: A Shift in Author Function
No full textEnglish Department Honors Thesis.Twitter fiction, an example of twenty-first century digital narrative, allows authors to experiment with literary form, production, and dissemination as they engage readers through a communal network. Twitter offers creative space for both professionals and amateurs to publish fiction digitally, enabling greater collaboration among authors and readers. Examining Jennifer Egan's "Black Box" and selected Twitter stories from Junot Diaz, Teju Cole, and Elliott Holt, this thesis establishes two distinct types of Twitter fiction - one produced for the medium and one produced through it - to consider how Twitter's present feed and character limit fosters a uniquely interactive reading experience. As the conversational medium calls for present engagement with the text and with the author, Twitter promotes newly elastic relationships between author and reader that renegotiate the former boundaries between professionals and amateurs. This thesis thus considers how works of Twitter fiction transform the traditional author function and pose new questions regarding digital narrative's modes of existence, circulation, and appropriation. As digital narrative makes its way onto democratic forums, a shifted author function leaves us wondering what it means to be an author in the digital age.English DepartmentCollege of Arts and Scienc
Play as a Model for the Middle Grades
No full textTeaching and Learning Department capstone projectPlay in the lives of children of all ages is on the decline. This decline is even more dramatic in the middle grades, as in this context, play is almost non-existent and has been replaced with a rise in negative qualities such as anxiety, stress, and depression. This decline in play is surprising as researchers have continued to tell us of the many benefits of play for development and learning throughout the lifespan. In this paper, I examine the middle grades context and offer play as a model for meeting the needs of the middle grades learner. I then go on to give examples of how play has been incorporated in classrooms in the form of a continuum of play, showing how play might be applied on a classroom environment level, through games, in curriculum, and in the school system as a whole. By applying its characteristics to these areas, middle grades students might experience learning as joyful, happy, intrinsically motivating, and a way of experiencing flow.Department of Teaching and LearningPeabody College of Education and Human Developmen
Paul DeHart on Aquinas, Creation and the Eternal Ideas as Anti-Platonic Ontology
No full textIn this podcast, Chris Benda, Liaison Librarian for Religion and Theology at the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, interviews Paul DeHart, Professor of Theology in the Divinity School, about his article “Improvising the Paradigms: Aquinas, Creation and the Eternal Ideas as Anti-Platonic Ontology,” _Modern Theology_ 32, no.4 (October 2016): 594–621. Read the article at http://divinity.vanderbilt.edu/people/bio/paul-dehart
An Interview with Professor Michael Bess
No full textDr. Michael Bess, Chancellor's Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, is one of the leading scholars in his field. He is a specialist 20th- and 21st-century Europe, with a particular interest in the social and cultural impacts of technological change. His most recent book, Our Grandchildren Redesigned: Life in the Bioengineered Society of the Near Future, is a manifesto of biotechnology and its ability to create "superhuman" traits in future generations of human beings. The Editorial Board of the Vanderbilt Historical Review conducted an interview with Professor Bess to learn more about his research and teachings