VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Investigating the Development of Kinship Detection in Early Childhood

Effectively navigating our social worlds requires an understanding of the rules and behaviors that govern our own and others’ social interactions. Although previous studies have illustrated that the ability to understand social affiliation is present early in development, the majority of research to date has focused on how children come to identify the presence of third-party social affiliations, as opposed to particular types of social relationships. Being able to identify specific types of third-party social affiliations, such as third-party parent-child relationships, is an especially important skill for children to master, given that correct inferences about the nature of social relationships is central to successful social functioning. Given that parent-child relationships are characterized by parental investment (i.e., parents invest their time, effort, energy, and/or resources towards their child), we investigated whether children use two key markers of parental investment – altruism and partiality towards one’s own child – to identify and understand parent-child relationships in third-party contexts. Two sets of experiments were conducted in which participants between the ages of 3 to 7 were presented with hypothetical vignettes depicting interactions between an adult and child character. The relationship-type and presence/absence of parental investment was manipulated across contexts, and participants were asked questions regarding their social inferences and evaluations of the scenarios. Across both sets of studies, children as young as 3 used cues indicative of parental investment to guide their social evaluations, with the ability to use these cues to guide their social inferences reliably appearing by the age of 5. These findings suggest that there might be a mechanism sensitive to detecting third-party social affiliation in the preschool period that uses subtle social cues, such as the observation of parental investment, to identify and understand third-party parent-child relationships. Together, these findings speak to the sophistication of such abilities and highlight the need to examine social cues in the social contexts in which they occur.

Keywords: Altruism
Kinship
Parent-Child Relationships
Parental Investment
Partiality
Social Affiliation
Advisor: Sommerville, Jessica A
Schmuckler, Mark A
How do I Show Gratitude to God? Paying it Back versus Paying it Forward

Religion has a long history of inspiring gratitude in its adherents. Despite the consistent link between religion and gratitude, only a few studies have begun to provide a deeper understanding of gratitude specifically toward God. Using qualitative (Study 1), cross-sectional (Study 2), daily experience (Study 3), and experimental data (Study 4), I sought to close the gap by (a) attaining a better sense of the general importance of gratitude to God among those are religiously affiliated, (b) psychologically disentangling motivation to pay gratitude back versus forward, and (c) evaluating how people show gratitude to God, (d) all in comparison to interhuman gratitude. I found several consistent findings across studies. Those with a religious affiliation consistently reported high endorsement of gratitude to God. They strongly endorsed statements about being motivated to pay gratitude to God back and forward, and the motivation to pay gratitude to God forward was consistently higher than motivation to pay gratitude forward from any other interhuman target (e.g., close other, authority figure). Gratitude to God consistently predicted engagement in specific religious behaviors, but also more general character development and prosocial behavior. The motivation to pay gratitude to God forward more consistently mediated these effects than the motivation to pay gratitude to God back. In most cases, gratitude to God predicted these outcomes above and beyond interhuman gratitude. These results highlight the importance of gratitude to God in the lives of those with a religious affiliation, the differences between gratitude experienced toward God in comparison to interhuman gratitude, and the potential for gratitude to God to motivate religious behavior, character development, and prosocial behavior.

Keywords: Character Development
God
Gratitude
Prosocial Behavior
Reciprocity
Religion
Advisor: Impett, Emily A.
Exploring the Role of Attentional Bias in Tobacco Dependence

Attentional bias to smoking-related stimuli is an important behavioural feature of tobacco dependence. The overall aim for this thesis is to investigate if attentional bias can serve as a potential phenotypic biomarker to assist in understanding treatment effectiveness, as well as predicting treatment response.First, a comprehensive systematic review was conducted to examine the association between attentional bias to smoking-related cues using eye-tracking indices in smokers and to identify gaps in the literature. Following a thorough literature search, 18 unique articles were identified. It was determined that smokers have increased attentional bias to smoking-related cues in comparison to non-smokers. Second, we aimed to investigate differences in attentional bias to smoking, affective, and sensation-seeking cues in smokers and non-smokers using novel, free-viewing, eye- tracking technology. Smokers (n=50) spent over 2 times longer looking at smoking-related images than non-smokers (n=50; F=25.50, p<0.001). As well, greater impulsivity was significantly associated with increased attentional bias to sensation-seeking cues (R2=0.059, F=2.98, p=0.04) in smokers but not non-smokers. Finally, we investigated whether smoking cessation treatment combining varenicline and transcranial direct current stimulation applied on the left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex altered attentional bias to smoking cues, and whether eye-tracking can serve as a proxy measure for changes in neural responses. Preliminary findings show a decrease (coeff=-0.007, p=0.004) in attentional bias to smoking-related cues from baseline to end of treatment across treatment conditions. A positive correlation was found between attentional bias to smoking cues outside the scanner and BOLD signal during smoking cue presentation in the anterior cingulate cortex (rs=0.36, p=0.03) at baseline. This finding was reduced to a trend when number of cigarettes smoked per day was accounted for in the model. No significant stimulation type-by-time or quit status-by-time interaction effects were found. Findings of this thesis suggest that smoking-related attentional bias is an important characteristic of tobacco dependence and can reflect treatment-related changes. As well, findings support the use of eye-tracking as a non-invasive and affordable proxy for assessing brain reactivity to drug-related cues. Findings offer insights on underlying mechanisms influencing treatment-related changes and has the potential to inform new and effective cessation interventions.

Keywords: Addiction
Attentional Bias
Imaging
Smoking Cessation
Tobacco Use Disorder
Advisor: Zawertailo, Laurie
Metaphysics in Context

This thesis is about meta-metaphysics, which is the study of the nature of metaphysics. In this thesis, I show why two alternative approaches to the nature of metaphysics, one of which treats metaphysical views as competing theories and the other of which treats metaphysicians as engaged in merely verbal disputes, are both incorrect. In their place, I develop a picture of metaphysics in which it is a rational and substantive area of philosophical investigation that is characterized by a novel form of pluralism.I do this first by demonstrating the importance of the fact that metaphysical investigation is conducted in the medium of language; despite this, metaphysics seeks answers to questions that concern non-linguistic reality rather than language itself. Since metaphysics occurs via the medium of language, metaphysical discourse must respect the fact that a constitutive aim of language use is communication. The choices of which terms we add to or subtract from our language must be guided by this aim as well. This has consequences for which sorts of objects we are committed to saying exist. Despite occurring via the medium of language, metaphysics seeks to obtain greater understanding of (non-linguistic) reality. Metaphysics seeks to make reality intelligible by providing multiple illuminating descriptions of the phenomena. On my account, competing metaphysical views are distinct "explanatory frameworks," which are compatible with each other although there is a sense in which they are in tension. I outline a semantic framework that elucidates the nature of the complex relationship between metaphysical views. I call my approach to metaphysics "contemplative metaphysics" because it allows one to see the ultimate compatibility of metaphysical theses characterized using different frameworks. Finally, I explore whether changing one’s beliefs in the way required by contemplative metaphysics can be rational. This requires showing that several common assumptions about rational belief must be rejected. By adopting some aspects of permissivism about rational belief we can justify rejecting those assumptions and thereby defuse certain threats to the rationality of contemplative metaphysics.

Advisor: Rattan, Gurpreet
Keeping Countries Safe from Refugees – How the Canadian Courts Interpret International Law to Place Sovereign Rights Above Individual Rights

This thesis examines the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States, and the ongoing litigation contesting its compliance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Drawing from the work of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholars, the thesis traces the development and creation of racially motivated but facially neutral laws and procedures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to present-day immigration control measures. The thesis argues that the architecture of international law elevates sovereign rights over those of the individual, and this structural imbalance has encouraged and facilitated the widespread diffusion of “safe country” agreements between states. Building upon the work of private international law scholars, the thesis contends that the Canadian Supreme Court has interpreted the concept of comity to require an unnecessarily deferential posture to the interests of foreign sovereigns.

Keywords: externalization
immigration
Refugee Convention
sovereignty
STCA
TWAIL
Advisor: Macklin, Audrey
Latent Structure Estimation for Panel Data and Theoretical Guarantees for Stochastic Optimization

The past two decades have witnessed a dramatic growth of research interest in statistics, optimization, and machine learning. Despite the widespread use of machine learning techniques and optimization algorithms, many of these surprisingly lack fundamental theoretical grounding. The central theme of this work is adopting tools from statistics to bridge the gap between theory and application in machine learning and optimization. In this thesis, we investigate several fundamental problems arising from machine learning and optimization under modern regimes, and we develop theoretical guarantees that align closely with practical experience in these fields. The first contribution of this thesis is developing efficient unsupervised learning paradigms with the guarantees of quality and correctness for the estimation of patterns from panel data. The remaining part of this work focuses on understanding the foundations of stochastic optimization from both statistical and computational aspects. Our work capitalizes on the cross-fertilization among statistics, machine learning, and optimization, thereby further improves our theoretical understanding of machine learning techniques and optimization algorithms under the statistical setting.

Advisor: Volgushev, Stanislav
Erdogdu, Murat
Structural Characterization of Novel Microbial Rhodopsins by X-ray Crystallography

X-ray crystallography has revolutionized science by unveiling the atomic structures of thousands of molecules, ultimately exposing how the building blocks of the universe fit together. However, there are millions of undetermined chemical and biological structures that would expand our understanding of nature and medicine. One such group of biomolecules with hundreds of undetermined structures comprise microbial rhodopsins, whose numbers are rapidly increasing with the yearly discovery of new members with different functions. Microbial rhodopsins are membrane proteins that convert light into chemical energy to drive a range of functions from ion pumps, ion channels, sensors, and enzymes. Despite recycling a similar architecture of seven-transmembrane alpha-helices bundled around a light-harvesting retinal chromophore, microbial rhodopsins perform vastly different functions by fine-tuning their structures including side chains, loops, internal water, and ions. This necessitates the acquisition of high-resolution structures to understand their complex structure-function relationships. This thesis employed X-ray crystallography to expand the structural database of the family of microbial rhodopsins, whose biomolecular structures provide valuable insight into their functional diversity and can potentially be applied in optogenetics to modulate brain neurons with light. To begin, I present the crystal structure of Mastigocladopsis repens rhodopsin (MastR), a representative of a new clade of cyanobacterial chloride ion pumps that was discovered in 2016. I further solved the structure of the MastR-T74D mutant, to provide a structural rationale explaining how a single threonine (‘T’)-to-aspartate (‘D’) mutation in a conserved motif can convert the natively inward chloride pump into an outward proton pump. Secondly, I present a high-resolution structure of Thermoplasmatales archaeon SG8-52-1 heliorhodopsin (TaHeR). Discovered in 2018, the functions of heliorhodopsins are largely unknown. However, this low pH TaHeR structure helped elucidate a chloride binding site and a putative intramolecular signaling pathway. Finally, I reveal the structure of Antarctic Rhodopsin (AntR), a member of the Schizorhodopsins class discovered in 2019. AntR pumps protons inward, in stark contrast to previously discovered outward proton-pumping rhodopsins. The structure of AntR helped illuminate the mechanism of inverted proton transport and revealed a unique, elongated bent helix at the C-terminus that is required for efficient proton transport.

Keywords: Crystallography
Membrane protein
Microbial rhodopsin
Retinal-binding protein
Structural biology
X-ray diffraction
Advisor: Miller, R. J. Dwayne
Ernst, Oliver P
Three Essays in the Economics of Education

A recently emerging literature in public economics uses structural models to inform the design of public policies. In these papers, credible identification of structural parameters can be challenging as they mainly utilize observational administrative data. In contrast, structural parameters are credibly identified using experimental data in the growing behaviouraleconomics literature. Although the scope for policy design is more limited in these papers as the experiments are typically conducted under ideal settings in a laboratory. The three chapters in this thesis integrates methodologies from both the public economics and behavioural economics literatures, by using evidence from field experiments and estimable models of student effort choice to design policies for improving students' academic outcomes in higher education. Chapter 1 credibly estimates the cumulative learning technology in a foundational STEM course. To do so, I carry out a field experiment which generates period-by-period exogenous variation in effort allocation, enabling me to identify dynamic interactions across effort inputs in the learning technology. I find evidence of dynamic learning complementarities as the marginal benefit to studying in each learning period is increasing in prior knowledge accumulated. Chapter 2 examines how students in STEM can be guided to learn effectively through the design of the course grading scheme. I first develop and estimate a multi-stage behavioural model of student effort supply. The estimated model allows me to explore the efficacy of changing assignment grading weights to improve student learning. I find that the simulated weights that maximize learning are decreasing across assignments, serving to increase effort by myopic students early in the course when they acquire foundational skills. Finally, Chapter 3 studies the provision of online public goods in the context of voluntary online student discussion boards – a prominent feature of distance education used to support learning at scale. I conduct two randomized informational interventions, successfully nudging students to sign-up and then contribute further to the discussion board. I find that having access to and participating in discussion board significantly improves students’ learning outcomes. Additionally, I find that free-riding behaviour can be mitigated by offering students appropriate bonus credit for writing valuable content that is endorsed by the instructor.

Advisor: McMillan, Robert RM
Understanding Rural-urban Disparities in Alcohol-related Health Service Use in Ontario, Canada

Introduction: Rural, relative to urban, communities in Ontario, Canada experience disproportionately high rates of alcohol-related emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations; however, we have a limited understanding of why this disparity exists. The purpose of this thesis was to better understand rural-urban disparities in alcohol-related health service use to inform the development of evidence-based public health strategies that address high rates of alcohol-related harm in rural Ontario. Methods: This thesis was composed of three separate but related projects. The first was a scoping review of the international literature on rural-urban disparities in hazardous alcohol use and alcohol-related harm. The second was a geospatial analysis of regional rates of alcohol-related ED visits and hospitalizations across rural and urban Ontario health regions. The third was a retrospective cohort study evaluating rural-urban differences in clinical outcomes following alcohol-related hospitalizations. The latter two projects made use of Ontario health administrative data. Results: All three projects demonstrated that increasing rurality is associated with higher rates of alcohol-related harm. The retrospective cohort study also indicated that limited access to mental health and addiction services partially mediates the increased risk of alcohol-related harm in rural Ontario. Despite this general trend, each study also revealed important complexities to this association that merit consideration in future policy development. For example, the scoping review found that rural-urban disparities in alcohol-related harm vary based on the type of harm being evaluated and the sociodemographic characteristics of the study population. The spatial analysis found that the association between rurality and alcohol-related health service use differed between Northern and Southern Ontario. Finally, the retrospective cohort study indicated that the associations between rurality and clinical outcomes following alcohol-related hospitalizations are non-linear and vary substantially between outcome types. Conclusions: The results of thesis corroborate previous evidence that rural, relative to urban, communities in Ontario experience higher rates of alcohol-related harm but indicate that this association is not simple or linear. Rural communities should be prioritized for public health interventions aimed at reducing alcohol-related harm; however, more research is required to understand how these policies can be tailored to meet regional needs in an evidence-based manner.

Keywords: Alcohol use
Alcohol use disorder
Health geography
Mental health
Public health
Advisor: Kurdyak, Paul
Medicine at the Bar: Medical Experts, Lawyers, and the Making of Malpractice in the Courtroom

This dissertation shows, via a detailed analysis of trial proceedings, how medical malpractice is made in the courtroom. To show this I build on insights from work in the fields of philosophy, history, and sociology of medicine and science. I draw these insights together into a general, rhetorical perspective on the evidentiary process that takes place at trial. This perspective is then deployed in a case study of a single trial. Throughout the dissertation I focus on knowledge of the medical standard of care: the norm against which the conduct of physician–defendants is compared to determine whether or not malpractice occurred. Knowledge of the standard is of a particular kind. In many cases, this knowledge cannot be separated from the argumentative work that takes place during the trial. Furthermore, knowledge of the past events themselves—i.e. physician–defendants’ past actions in the situations in which they found themselves—cannot be separated from said argumentative work. The purview of this argumentative work is extensive, since it also includes authorizing certain people—medical expert witnesses—to opine regarding the events. The case study allows me to underscore the extent to which the trial is not only an argumentative practice, but also a highly disciplined and particularized inquiry into past events. Thus the standard of care is a product of the trial qua argumentative, disciplined, and particularized inquiry. This challenges prevailing conceptions of the standard of care in the doctrine and jurisprudence. Following these, the standard of care is akin to a fact that exists independently of the trial, and the trial is merely a means to make this fact accessible to the judge or jury with the least amount of distortion. I argue, contra these conceptions, that the trial has value in itself because it yields knowledge that cannot be gained any other way. In the case of the medical standard of care, it is knowledge made up of heterogeneous considerations—technical, scientific, moral, and legal—brought to bear on specific actions in specific situations.

Keywords: Evidence
Expert witnesses
Medical malpractice
Science studies
Tort
Trial practice
Advisor: Lemmens, Trudo