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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Impact of Family Support on Early Childhood Dysregulation in the Context of Maternal Depression

Description
The ability to regulate emotions, attention, and behavior develops early in life and impacts future academic success, social competency, behavioral problems, and psychopathology. An impairment in regulation is known as dysregulation. Past research shows that children of mothers with postpartum depression are more likely to show impairment in regulatory abilities.…

The ability to regulate emotions, attention, and behavior develops early in life and impacts future academic success, social competency, behavioral problems, and psychopathology. An impairment in regulation is known as dysregulation. Past research shows that children of mothers with postpartum depression are more likely to show impairment in regulatory abilities. There is an established link in the literature between family support and maternal depression, which in turn can impact child behavior. However, further research is needed to explore the impact of family support on early childhood dysregulation in the context of maternal depression. Using a sample of 322 Mexican-American, mother-child dyads, two models were examined. Model one hypothesized family support would buffer the effects of maternal depression on child dysregulation at 24 months. Model 2 hypothesized that family support is related to child dysregulation through its effect on maternal depression. Results showed that increased family support was related to more child dysregulation when there were high levels of maternal depression. There was no evidence to support the hypothesis that maternal depression mediated the relationship between family support and child dysregulation.
ContributorsRodrigues, Samantha Jean (Author) / Luecken, Linda (Thesis director) / Benitez, Viridiana (Committee member) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
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Extending the Wham-Womb Effect: Mapping Vowel Phonemes onto the Emotional Dimension of Arousal Using Cartoon Illustrations

Description

Recent studies indicate that words containing /ӕ/ and /u/ vowel phonemes can be mapped onto the emotional dimension of arousal. Specifically, the wham-womb effect describes the inclination to associate words with /ӕ/ vowel-sounds (as in “wham”) with high-arousal emotions and words with /u/ vowel-sounds (as in “womb”) with low-arousal emotions.…

Recent studies indicate that words containing /ӕ/ and /u/ vowel phonemes can be mapped onto the emotional dimension of arousal. Specifically, the wham-womb effect describes the inclination to associate words with /ӕ/ vowel-sounds (as in “wham”) with high-arousal emotions and words with /u/ vowel-sounds (as in “womb”) with low-arousal emotions. The objective of this study was to replicate the wham-womb effect using nonsense pseudowords and to test if findings extend with use of a novel methodology that includes verbal auditory and visual pictorial stimuli, which can eventually be used to test young children. We collected data from 99 undergraduate participants through an online survey. Participants heard pre-recorded pairs of monosyllabic pseudowords containing /ӕ/ or /u/ vowel phonemes and then matched individual pseudowords to illustrations portraying high or low arousal emotions. Two t-tests were conducted to analyze the size of the wham-womb effect across pseudowords and across participants, specifically the likelihood that /ӕ/ sounds are paired with high arousal images and /u/ sounds with low arousal images. Our findings robustly confirmed the wham-womb effect. Participants paired /ӕ/ words with high arousal emotion pictures and /u/ words with low arousal ones at a 73.2% rate with a large effect size. The wham-womb effect supports the idea that verbal acoustic signals tend to be tied to embodied facial musculature that is related to human emotions, which supports the adaptive value of sound symbolism in language evolution and development.
ContributorsZapp, Tatum (Author) / McBeath, Michael (Thesis director) / Benitez, Viridiana (Committee member) / Corbin, William (Committee member) / Yu, Shin-Phing (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2021-12
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Effects of Phonotactic Probability during Early Novel Word Recognition

Description
The goal of this study was to examine whether there is any effect of phonotactic probability during the early phases of novel word recognition. In order to determine this, I performed two experiments. In Experiment 1, 33 adult monolingual English speakers learned 24 novel word-object pairings, half of which were…

The goal of this study was to examine whether there is any effect of phonotactic probability during the early phases of novel word recognition. In order to determine this, I performed two experiments. In Experiment 1, 33 adult monolingual English speakers learned 24 novel word-object pairings, half of which were high English phonotactic probability words and the other half were low English phonotactic probability words. I additionally included three conditions that varied the amount of exposures to each novel word-object pairing (i.e. One Exposure Condition, Two Exposures Conditions, and Five Exposures Condition). Experiment 2 was designed to clarify results found in Experiment 1, with improved randomization and fewer conditions (i.e. One Exposure Condition and Five Exposures Condition). The findings from both experiments were statistically significant in accuracy for Training condition, but not statistically significant for phonotactic probability nor for an interaction between phonotactic probability and Training condition. Although participants demonstrated learning across conditions there is no indication of a relationship between high and low phonotactic probability and novel word recognition. Collectively, these findings suggest that future studies will be necessary to determine if there is indeed an effect of phonotactic probability on early novel word recognition.
ContributorsQuinones, Sara Cristina (Co-author) / Quiñones, Sara (Co-author) / Benitez, Viridiana (Thesis director) / Tecedor Cabrero, Marta (Committee member) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05

Exploring the Effects of a Two-to-One Mapping Structure on Cross-Situational Word Learning in Children

Description
In cross-situational word learning, individuals associate words with their meanings by observing their use across multiple encounters. This is considered to be a crucial mechanism involved in early childhood language acquisition. However, whether learners can track multiple words for referents cross-situationally, such as when learning synonyms, remains poorly understood. The…

In cross-situational word learning, individuals associate words with their meanings by observing their use across multiple encounters. This is considered to be a crucial mechanism involved in early childhood language acquisition. However, whether learners can track multiple words for referents cross-situationally, such as when learning synonyms, remains poorly understood. The present study investigated the effects of age on children’s cross-situational word learning (CSWL) from a two-to-one structure, where objects are given two names. Younger (4 to 5.4 years, N = 29) and older (5.5 to 7.9 years, N = 48) children completed a cross-situational word learning task in which, during the first half of training, objects were labeled with one label (First words) and in the second half of training, objects were given a new second label (Second words). Results showed that age interacted with learning: younger children learned second labels but not first labels, whereas older children learned first labels but not second labels. These findings indicate the limitations of children’s capacity to learn complex word-referent mappings in CSWL.
ContributorsRandall, Jada (Author) / Benitez, Viridiana (Thesis director) / Corbin, William (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Music, Dance and Theatre (Contributor)
Created2023-12