VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Developmental Measures of Morphosytactic Acquisition in Monolingual 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old Spanish-speaking Children

This research investigated aspects of the morphosyntactic language development of 115 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old monolingual Spanish-speaking preschool children who resided in Cali, Colombia. Two general language measures were collected from the children: a standardized receptive vocabulary measure (Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes, TVIP), and a parental report of speech and language problems. In addition, morphosyntactic measures of language development were obtained using both a story retelling and an elicitation task. Developmental language measures such as number of T-units (NU-TU), mean length of T-units (MLTU), subordination index (SUB-I), and grammatical errors per T-unit (GRE-TU) were derived from the narratives. Percentages of correct use of direct and indirect object pronouns, reflexive pronouns, definite articles, indefinite articles, plurals and adjectives were obtained from an elicitation task that was specifically designed for this study. Counts of use of these grammatical structures were also calculated from the narratives. There were no statistically significant differences between the three age groups on standard scores for the TVIP or scores for the parent questionnaires, indicating that the three age groups were comparable. For the developmental language measures there was an increasing developmental pattern for NU-TU, MLTU and SUB-I, but no changes were found for GRE-TU. Statistically significant changes for the productive use of the grammatical structures of interest to this study were almost always seen between 3 and 4 years of age. Adult use of these grammatical structures was always statistically significantly more correct than child productions. This investigation provides novel normative data for NU-TU, MLTU, SUB-I and GRE-TU for preschool children. This investigation also offers original data on the productive use of object pronouns, articles, adjectives and plurals across the preschool years. The language battery used in this investigation proved to be sensitive to developmental changes between 3 and 4-5 year olds and has the potential to be used as an eventual diagnostic tool for the identification of children with language disorders. Speech-language pathologists who work with Spanish-speaking children will be able to use this normative information to conduct more objective language assessments.

Keywords: Spanish
Language Acquisition
Advisor: Eriks-Brophy, Alice
Karel Capek's Travels: Adventures of a New Vision

This dissertation examines the theme of travel in the work of Karel Čapek (1890-1938), both in his travelogues and fiction. Instead of assuming travel as a conventional departure to another destination, journey and return home, Čapek experimented with the topic, popular in interwar literatures and arts, as an example of the avant-garde interconnectedness between different genres and arts. Čapek used three approaches to express his experiences of traveling. First, he founded his own aesthetics of the so called “marginal forms” or “low-brow genres” which he simultaneously interpolated in his prose. Their use, which greatly changes the perspective on travel writing, is visible in comparison between Čapek’s and previous travelogues (chapter 1). Secondly, he introduced skaz as stylized spoken language to Czech literature, and changed the traditional roles of the narrator and his addressees in travelogues (chapter 2). Thirdly, he used visual elements of language, combined verbal and visual arts (illustrations and drawings) in the narrative (chapter 3). Finally, all these elements he interpolated to his prose (chapter 4) through the intertextual links with travelogues. On the example of the theme of travel in Karel Čapek’s work, my dissertation revisits some current definitions of the historical avant-garde. It shows that the recent theories, predominantly developed on the examples from Western European and Russian arts, cannot be fully applied to local artistic movements. First, it shows that the notion of the avant-garde cannot be just confined to the writers who called themselves “avant-garde” (such as Karel Teige or Vladislav Vančura). Instead, it should be also expanded to other writers, such as Karel Čapek, marginal to the avant-garde mainstream. Second, the analysis of the theme of travel in Karel Čapek’s opus shows that the Czech avant-garde was not destructive towards its literary heritage. Instead, it offered an alternative reading of tradition through artistic experiments. In extension, it also provided a new understanding of the cultural and literary identity.

Keywords: Czech literature
Karel Capek
travel writing
travel and cultural identity
intermediality and narratology
Advisor: Ambros, Veronika
A White Wedding? The Racial Politics of Same-sex Marriage in Canada

In A White Wedding? The Racial Politics of Same-Sex Marriage, I examine the inter-locking relations of power that constitute the lesbian/gay subject recognized by the Canadian nation-state as deserving of access to civil marriage. Through analysis of legal documents, Parliamentary and Senate debates, and interviews with lawyers, I argue that this lesbian/gay subject achieves intelligibility in the law by trading in on and shoring up the terms of racialized neo-liberal citizenship. I also argue that the victory of same-sex marriage is implicated in reproducing and securing a racialized Canadian national identity as well as a racialized civilizational logic, where “gay rights” are the newest manifestation of the modernity of the “West” in a post-9/11 historical context. By centring a critical race/queer conceptual framework, this research project follows the discursive practices of respectability, freedom and civility that circulate both widely and deeply in this legal struggle. I contend that in order to successfully shed its historical markers of degeneracy, the lesbian/gay subject must be constituted not as a sexed citizen but rather as a neoliberal citizen, one who is intimately tied to notions of privacy, property, autonomy and freedom of choice, and hence one who is racialized as white. The critical race/queer analytic also attends to the temporal and spatial registers framing this legal struggle that re-install various troubling racial hierarchies in a “gay rights” project often lauded as progressive. This analysis of the discursive terrain of same-sex marriage reveals the race shadow that lies at the heart of this equality-rights struggle. The conclusion of this thesis provides reflections for developing an ethics of activism that dislodges and resists the (re)production of racialized relations of power in lesbian and gay equality rights activism. In so doing, I seek to provoke, question and re-draw the landscape of our thinking, not only about same-sex marriage but also about the terms with which we conceive, articulate and practice racial and sexual justice.

Keywords: Lesbian and Gay
Legal
Critical Race
Advisor: Razack, Sherene
Green Ethics and Green 'Faith': An Exploration of Environmental Ethics and Spirituality in a Technological Age

The main concern of this dissertation is exploring and elucidating the nature and the relationship of religion/spirituality and ethics in the context of environmentalism, within the larger arena of liberal, technological society. It is driven foremost by a need for clear understanding of not only what these terms mean and what they represent, but also what it all means for where we stand today as ethical and spiritual beings. For in pursuing this topic, one must necessarily ask larger questions, namely: What does it mean to be ethical in technological society? What does it mean to be ‘spiritual’ in a ‘secular’ society? Are either of these things even possible? These questions form the backdrop of my particular focus on environmentalism. Through analysis of my own ethnographic research with members of the Sierra Club of Canada, and through use of the theoretical frameworks provided by four primary thinkers (Juan Luis Segundo, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor and Jacques Ellul), I conclude that environmentalism, though far from problem-free, represents a ‘healthy’ form of ethical and spiritual expression in modern technological society. Part of this conclusion is the position that we are still very much ethical beings in technological society, and very much spiritual beings in secular society (though the latter is far more dependent on individual definitions of this term), and that in fact these two things relate directly.

Keywords: religion
environment
ethics
Advisor: Schmidt, Lawrence
Scharper, Stephen
Novel Self-categorization Overrides Racial Bias: A Multi-level Approach to Intergroup Perception and Evaluation

People engage in a constant and reflexive process of categorizing others according to their race, gender, age or other salient social category. Decades of research have shown that social categorization often elicits stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. Social perception is complicated by the fact that people have multiple social identities and self-categorization with these identities can shift from one situation to another, coloring perceptions and evaluations of the self and others. This dissertation provides evidence that self-categorization with a novel group can override ostensible stable and pervasive racial biases in memory and evaluation and examines the neural substrates that mediate these processes. Experiment 1 shows that self-categorization with a novel mixed-race group elicited liking for ingroup members, regardless of race. This preference for ingroup members was mediated by the orbitofrontal cortex – a region of the brain linked to subjective valuation. Participants in novel groups also had greater fusiform and amygdala activity to novel ingroup members, suggesting that these regions are sensitive to the current self-categorization rather than features associated with race. Experiment 2 shows that preferences for ingroup members are evoked rapidly and spontaneously, regardless of race, indicating that ingroup bias can override automatic racial bias. Experiment 3 provides evidence that preferences for ingroup members are driven by ingroup bias rather than outgroup derogation. Experiment 4 shows that self-categorization increases memory for ingroup members eliminating the own-race memory bias. Experiment 5 provides direct evidence that fusiform activity to ingroup members is associated with superior memory for ingroup members. This study also shows greater amygdala activity to Black than White faces who are unaffiliated with either the ingroup or outgroup, suggesting that social categorization is flexible, shifting from group membership to race within a given social context. These five experiments illustrate that social perception and evaluation are sensitive to the current self-categorization – however minimal – and characterized by ingroup bias. This research also offers a relatively simple approach for erasing several pervasive racial biases. This multi-level approach extends several theories of intergroup perception and evaluation by making explicit links between self-categorization, neural processes, and social perception and evaluation.

Keywords: social cognitive neuroscience
self-categorization
social identity
prejudice
Advisor: Cunningham, William
Morphine-induced Locomotion and Dopamine Efflux in Mice: Role of M5 Muscarinic Receptors and Cholinergic Inputs to the Ventral Tegmental Area

M5 muscarinic receptors are associated with dopamine neurons of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and substantia nigra, and provide an important excitatory input to the mesolimbic dopamine system. Here, I studied locomotion induced by systemic morphine (3, 10, 30 mg/kg, i.p.) in M5 knockout mice of the C57Bl/6 (B6) and CD1 x 129SvJ (129) background strains. M5 knockout mice of both strains showed reduced locomotion in response to 30 mg/kg morphine, while only B6 M5 knockout mice showed reduced locomotion in response to 10 mg/kg morphine. In B6 wild-type mice VTA pre-treatment with the non subtype-selective muscarinic receptor antagonist atropine (3 mg per side), but not the non subtype-selective nicotinic receptor antagonist mecamylamine (5 mg per side), reduced locomotion in response to 30 mg/kg (i.p.) morphine to a similar extent as systemic M5 knockout, suggesting that the reduced morphine-induced locomotion in M5 knockout mice was due to the loss of M5 receptors on VTA dopamine neurons. By contrast, in M5 knockout mice, either intra-VTA atropine or mecamylamine alone increased locomotion by almost 3 times relative to saline, and potentiated morphine-induced locomotion. Therefore, in M5 knockout mice, more clearly than in wild-type mice, blockade of either VTA muscarinic or nicotinic receptors activated locomotion. Infusions of morphine (50 ng) into the VTA increased nucleus accumbens dopamine efflux in urethane-anesthetized wild-type mice. Either M5 knockout or pre-treatment with VTA scopolamine (50 ug) in wild-type mice blocked accumbal dopamine efflux in response to VTA morphine. Therefore, M5 receptors are critical for excitation of dopamine neurons by intra-VTA morphine, suggesting that the reduced locomotion produced by systemic morphine in M5 knockout mice was, in part, due to loss of M5-mediated excitation of VTA dopamine neurons by opiates. The locomotion data also show that in the absence of M5 receptors, cholinergic afferents to mesolimbic dopamine neurons are inhibitory. This supports and extends the conclusions from many studies that non-M5 muscarinic receptors inhibit, and M5 receptors excite, dopamine neurons. Loss of M5-mediated excitation results in reduced acute effects of opiates.

Keywords: acetylcholine
mesolimbic dopamine
opiates
nicotinic
exploration
electrochemistry
Advisor: Yeomans, John S.
Manipulation of Afferent Feedback from Extraocular Muscles via Jendrassik Maneuver in Binocularly Intact Observers and Deafferented Patients: Effects on Vergence, Version and Higher Order Perceptual Judgements

The central nervous system can use two extraretinal sources to stay informed about the position of the eyes in the orbit: outflow (efference copy) and inflow (afference). Palisade endings (PE), found at the myotendinous junction of the multiply innervated fibers of the global layer of extraocular muscles (EOM), are the putative receptors supplying the inflow eye position signal. Seminal neuroanatomical tracing studies identified a distinct set of non-twitch (NT) motoneurons whose activity does not add to the force used to move the eyes. It has been suggested that NT motoneurons could be involved in modulating the gain of sensory feedback from EOM analogous to the gamma-efferent fibres which control the sensitivity of muscle spindles in skeletal muscles. The goal of this thesis was to test the above hypothesis in humans using behavioural and psychophysical approaches. Jendrassik Maneuver (JM), which is a forceful muscle contraction that facilitates the amplitude of all spinal and brainstem reflexes, was used to manipulate afferent feedback. The facilitation is most likely due to a general up-regulation of the gamma system. It was hypothesized that if NT motoneurons are analogous to gamma motoneurons, the JM should also increase the activity of NT neurons and alter the afferent feedback from PE. As hypothesized, the JM perturbation altered registered vergence eye position when binocularly intact observers localized targets in depth but did not affect localization in the frontal plane associated with saccades. Patients with congenital strabismus who have had surgeries on their EOM were not affected by the JM perturbation. In contrast to the hypotheses, the JM did not affect higher order perceptual judgments (size and depth constancies). Overall, these studies provide insight into the putative mechanism involved in the control of sensory feedback from EOM. In particular, the NT motoneurons might be involved in parametric adjustment of the proprioceptive feedback loops to match the demands of different types of eye movements. Understanding the role of proprioceptive feedback loops could have important clinical implications for surgical treatment of strabismus.

Keywords: rehabilitation
Advisor: Steinbach, M. J.
Verrier, Molly
Maternal Responses to Anticipated Children's Negative Emotions and Social Adjustment in Early Childhood

The goals of the present study were: 1) to describe and provide initial support for the validity of the Future Scenarios Questionnaire (FSQ), a new self-report questionnaire designed to measure parental responding to anticipated children’s negative emotions; and 2) to examine how maternal responses on the FSQ related to young children’s aggressive, asocial, and prosocial behaviors with peers. Further, this study examined whether the temperamental trait of negative affect moderated the relation between maternal responses on the FSQ and children’s social adjustment outcomes. Participants were 92 mothers of preschool-age children (43 boys and 49 girls; M age 61.5 months). Mothers provided ratings on the FSQ and child temperament ratings on the Child Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart, Ahadi, & Hershey, 1994). They also completed a range of measures which were included to assess the construct validity of the FSQ. These included measures of attachment representations, maternal mind-mindedness, perceived control, and alexithymia. Sixty-nine teachers provided ratings on the Child Behavior Scale (CBS; Ladd & Profilet, 1996) for children’s aggressive, asocial, and prosocial behaviors in the peer context. Factor analysis of the FSQ revealed two subscales: Encourage Emotion Expression (EEE) and Discourage Emotion Expression (DEE). Patterns of correlations among these subscales and the additional mother measures suggested that the FSQ demonstrates some construct validity. Further, the results of the moderation analyses showed that maternal responding on the FSQ interacts with negative affect in the prediction of child behaviors, however not in the hypothesized ways. In particular, encouraging emotion expression significantly predicted more asocial behavior and less prosocial behavior (approached significance), but only for children rated high in negative affect. Similarly, discouraging emotion expression significantly predicted less aggressive behavior only for high negative affect children. None of these relations was significant for children rated low in negative affect. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the importance of considering child temperament in emotion socialization processes.

Keywords: parenting
social adjustment
preschool-aged
negative emotions
socialization of emotion
mothers
emotion expression
Advisor: Grusec, Joan
Lipid Rafts in Pancreatic Beta- and Alpha-cell Stimulus-secretion Coupling

Type 2 diabetes is hallmarked by insufficient beta-cell insulin secretion and inappropriate alpha-cell glucagon secretion concomitant to peripheral insulin resistance. However, the mechanisms underlying dysregulation of pancreatic beta- and alpha-cells in type 2 diabetes require further investigation. Whereas triglycerides and saturated free fatty acids have been well recognized to cause beta-cell dysfunction, the physiological and/or pathological role of cholesterol on beta- and alpha-cells is less well examined. Cholesterol is the major component of membrane microdomains, termed lipid rafts. Numerous signaling and transport proteins have been found to be targeted to lipid raft microdomains, where the function of the associated membrane proteins could be distinctly regulated. I have identified the expression of lipid raft constituent proteins, caveolin-1/2 in pancreatic beta-cells; and caveolin-2 in alpha-cells. A variety of membrane proteins (ion channels and SNARE proteins) critical for beta- and alpha-cell stimulus-secretion coupling were found to be associated with cholesterol-rich lipid raft microdomians, and the properties of those ion channels (Kv2.1, Kv4.1/4.3, and Cav1.2 channels) and SNARE proteins were closely regulated by cholesterol-rich lipid rafts. Acute depletion of cholesterol from the plasma membrane with methyl-beta-cyclodextrin caused an elevated basal hormone secretion from both beta- and alpha-cells and a loss of glucose-stimulated insulin secretion, implicating that cholesterol-rich lipid rafts play an important role in regulating exocytosis of these two types of islet cells. Chronic pharmacological inhibition of beta-cell endogenous cholesterol biosynthesis with squalene epoxidase inhibitor caused an impairment of both Cav channels and SNARE protein exocytotic machinery, indicating that intracellular cholesterol and its homeostasis are critical for maintaining normal beta-cell function. The work presented in this thesis provided clear evidence that cholesterol-rich lipid rafts play a critical role in maintaining the normal function of pancreatic ion channels and SNARE proteins to regulate pancreatic beta- and alpha-cells stimulus-secretion coupling. Manipulation of cholesterol level of beta- and alpha-cells could be a potential target for a therapeutic intervention in the treatment of type 2 diabetes.

Keywords: Physiology
Advisor: Tsushima, Robert G.
Role of Frequenin1 and Frequenin2 in Regulating Neurotransmitter Release and Nerve Terminal Growth at the Drosophila Neuromuscular Junction

Frequenin (Frq) and its mammalian homologue, Neuronal Calcium Sensor 1 (NCS-1), are calcium-binding proteins, which regulate neurotransmitter release. However, reports are contradictory, and little is known about Frq's cellular mechanisms. The Drosophila nervous system can be used to gain a better understanding of the function of Frq. There are two Frq-encoding genes in Drosophila. The temporal and spatial expression patterns of the two genes are very similar, and the proteins they encode, Frq1 and Frq2, are 95% identical in amino acid sequence. Loss-of-function phenotypes were studied using three different procedures: creating a deletion designed to remove the entire frq1 gene and part of the frq2 gene; using an interfering C-terminal peptide to prevent Frq binding to its intracellular targets; and using RNAi to reduce frq1 and frq2 transcript levels. Deletion of the entire frq1 gene and part of the frq2 gene resulted in impaired neurotransmitter release and enhanced nerve terminal growth. To discriminate chronic from acute loss-of-function effects, the effects of transgenic expression and forward-filling an interfering C-terminal peptide into presynaptic terminals were compared. In both cases, a reduction in quantal content per bouton occurred, demonstrating that this trait does not result from homeostatic adaptations during development. The chronic treatment also enhanced nerve terminal growth. Conversely, gain-of-function conditions yielded an increase in quantal content and a reduction in nerve terminal growth. Frqs' effects on transmitter output were not due to changes in the number of active zones, nor were they due to changes in the size of the readily releasable pool of vesicles. Oregon Green 488 BAPTA-1 conjugated to 10 kDa Dextran was forward-filled into presynaptic boutons to detect changes in presynaptic Ca2+ signals. Ca2+ responses to presynaptic nerve impulses demonstrated that Frq modulates neurotransmitter release by regulating Ca2+ entry. Gain-of-function phenotypes remained present in a PI4KB null background, demonstrating that Frq's effects were not due to an interaction with PI4KB. All effects seen for all studies were identical for both Frqs, indicating that the two Frq proteins are likely functionally redundant. Overall, Frqs have two distinct functions: one on neurotransmission, primarily by regulating Ca2+ entry, and another on axonal growth and synaptic bouton formation.

Keywords: Frequenin
Drosophila
presynaptic
Neuronal Calcium Sensor
synapse
synaptic transmission
Advisor: Atwood, Harold
Charlton, Milton