Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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- All Subjects: Developmental Psychology
- Creators: Lucca, Kelsey
Description
Parental depression is a risk factor for children’s healthy language development, however, the mechanisms of risk transmission are less understood. The present study aimed to examine aspects of parent-child interactions as mediators of the negative relations between mothers’ and fathers’ depression and children’s expressive language. Using longitudinal data from families in a large city of the Western United States (N = 497; child Mage = 5.83 months; 47% female), I examined these relations using mothers’ and fathers’ reports of depression, observations of mothers’ and fathers’ parent-child interactions, and observational indices of children’s expressive language in the home. Although results indicated no longitudinal relations between mothers’ or fathers’ depression and children’s expressive language, mothers’ depression was negatively related to mothers’ and fathers’ later parental supportiveness. Moreover, mothers’ acceptance and fathers’ supportiveness were positively related to children’s later expressive language. These findings shed light on family dynamics when mothers’ experience heightened levels of postpartum depression and how specific parent-child interactions support healthy language development.
ContributorsClifford, Brandon Neil (Author) / Eggum, Natalie (Thesis advisor) / Rainey, Vanessa (Committee member) / Lucca, Kelsey (Committee member) / Bradley, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
The purpose of this paper is to examine cross-cultural differences between the United States and Turkey by coding multiple dimensions, such as parental intrusiveness, child persistence, and various others. The main research questions of this paper were as follows: (1) How does parental intrusiveness vary by country? (2) How does child persistence vary by country? and (3) Are parental intrusiveness and child persistence correlated, and if so, what is the direction of the correlation? The hypotheses were that (1) Turkish parents would score higher on parental intrusiveness, (2) American children would show higher levels of persistence, and (3) Parental intrusiveness and child persistence are correlated, with higher levels of parental intrusiveness resulting in lower levels of child persistence. While all of the hypotheses were supported with statistically significant results, it was found that in the U.S., higher parental intrusiveness does result in lower levels of child persistence, but in Turkey, parental intrusiveness was not a predictor of child persistence. The findings are therefore able to support cross-cultural differences in the correlation between parental intrusiveness and child persistence.
ContributorsPatel, Sonia (Author) / Lucca, Kelsey (Thesis director) / Updegraff, Kimberly (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution & Social Change (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
Young children reared in a dual language environment typically experience and learn a heritage and societal language and culture from their caregivers. Given that culture and language use are strongly intertwined, recent research has begun to explore caregiver cultural orientation as a potential influence on children’s dual language development but currently disregards whether cultural orientation influences language development directly and indirectly through caregiver language input. This longitudinal study examines a sample of Mexican-American mothers and their children (N=299) from low-income households to examine 1) how maternal language input at child age 24 months and children’s dual language knowledge at 36 months are associated; and 2) whether maternal language input mediates the link between maternal cultural orientation at child age 9 months and children’s dual language knowledge. Results showed that mothers’ quantitative and qualitative language features were strongly correlated within a language and were positively linked with children’s knowledge in the corresponding language. The path analysis revealed that maternal Anglo cultural orientation indirectly predicted children’s English vocabulary scores mediated by maternal English language input, whereas Spanish language input did not mediate the link between mothers’ Mexican cultural orientation and children’s Spanish knowledge. This study provides novel insights into the cascading effects of infants’ early cultural and language environments on their emerging dual language skills.
ContributorsCastellana, Marissa (Author) / Benitez, Viridiana L (Thesis advisor) / Bradley, Robert (Committee member) / Grimm, Kevin (Committee member) / Lucca, Kelsey (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Although there is extensive research on temperament and its relation to psychopathology, most studies to date have used a dimensional approach to temperament, assessing one or two temperament traits at a time, which does not account for the interrelatedness between temperament dimensions. Recent studies have identified statistical methods that can capture these heterogenous relations that take a more typological approach. The current study used data from a racially/ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of twins to investigate whether using these different analytic methods together to capture temperament contribute to the conceptualization of phenotypic and genetic temperamental risk for later cross-reporter factors of anxiety, depression, externalizing, and ADHD. In breaking psychopathology down into its respective components, as measured by multiple reporters, I found that temperamental genetic risk for psychopathology differed depending on the psychopathology factors assessed. In using both dimensional and typological approaches to temperament, I found that high negative emotionality may only act as a risk factor for anxiety and ADHD when children also have low effortful control and high impulsivity. Results also showed an inconsistent role of genetics and the environment that explain the relation between temperament and psychopathology depending on the approach used. Examining typological and dimensional approaches together supported well-known findings and challenged others, highlighting importance of taking multiple approaches in investigating the phenotypic relation between temperament and psychopathology, and its etiology.
ContributorsMurillo, Alexys S. (Author) / Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn (Thesis advisor) / Lucca, Kelsey (Committee member) / West, Stephen G. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024