CONTESTING LIMINALITY: A COUNTER ORAL HISTORY OF ASIAN AMERICAN ADOPTED PEOPLE

ABSTRACTAndrew J. Garbisch: CONTESTING LIMINALITY:A COUNTER ORAL HISTORY OF ASIAN AMERICAN ADOPTED PEOPLE(Under the direction of Xue Lan Rong) Asian American transracial adoption is a phenomenon where an Asian child is adopted by non-Asian parents. There are an estimated five million adopted people in the United States affecting one out of every 25 U.S. families (Adoption Network, 2022). Nearly 60% of internationally adopted children were adopted from Asia and 95% of parents were White (Donaldson Adoption Institute, 2002; Park, 2012). Additionally, Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group rising to 22.4 million in 2019 and projected to surpass 46 million by 2060 (Budiman & Ruiz, 2021). Existing research on Asian American adopted people (AAAP) is largely outcome-based focusing almost exclusively on adoptive parents and adopted children (Raible, 2006). The problem is outcome-based studies fail to account for the lifelong negotiation of racial identity development in a historically racialized society. The purpose of this project is to explore the experiences of two Asian American adopted people in relation to their racialized sociohistorical context and examine the ways in which the participants’ build culture by contesting, interrogating, and undermining their liminal social locations. To accomplish this, I conducted oral history interviews. From these case studies, I constructed counter narratives underpinned by Critical Race Theory and Asian Critical Theory (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002). The findings indicate participant’s unique experiences are sites of knowledge that when analyzed through frameworks that decenter Whiteness can go beyond the limits of a White and Asian binary and reframe the exploration of social location to in between historically racialized norms and liberal notions of the U.S. democratic promise. This study has important implications for policy makers, teacher educators, and curriculum specialists on the necessity of contesting liminality for AAAPs and the frameworks that may best create new ways to accomplish it. Keywords: liminality, contesting, Asian American adopted person, social locationDoctor of Philosoph

Steps into a Small World: First glimpses on everyday moment-to-moment decision making in an ecologically meaningful multi-choice system for assessing animal preferences

The behaviour shown by an animal at any one time is the consolidated output of its behavioural control mechanism. Moreover, what animals “want” is viewed as (the most) important component for individual welfare. Accordingly, studying the motivation of animals helps understanding basic mechanisms and welfare related needs. However, studying wants of animals is notoriously difficult and many previous studies on the preferences of animals have been restricted in the sense that only two choice options were presented in an artificial test environment. Here, an extended approach, the “Small World” is presented, in which the choices of animals between eight ecologically relevant resources can be observed in a long-term test to reach conclusions with respect to everyday moment-to-moment decisions. In this sense, the system offers a quasi-natural environment. The approach was tested in three experiments with observations of individual female rats, small groups of female rats (Long Evans, Rattus norvegicus) and small groups of female chickens (Lohmann Brown, Gallus gallus domesticus). The animals oriented themselves quickly in the system and it was possible to collect multifaceted data on the use of the resources. These data included the faecal and urinary markings in the Small World cages, the daily frequency and duration of visits to these cages, the sequential analyses of the choices for and decisions among the resources, and the synchrony of the animals in the groups. Given the richness of these data and the lack of a stress response in the tested animals, the use of the Small World approach seems to be highly promising as an extension to previously used procedures. To further improve the approach and more directly reflect the subjective value of the different resources from the animals' point of view, the distances between the resources in a quasi-natural landscape shall be manipulated in future studies

Validation of an open source, remote web‐based eye‐tracking method (WebGazer) for research in early childhood

Measuring eye movements remotely via the participant's webcam promises to be an attractive methodological addition to in-person eye-tracking in the lab. However, there is a lack of systematic research comparing remote web-based eye-tracking with in-lab eye-tracking in young children. We report a multi-lab study that compared these two measures in an anticipatory looking task with toddlers using WebGazer.js and jsPsych. Results of our remotely tested sample of 18-27-month-old toddlers (N = 125) revealed that web-based eye-tracking successfully captured goal-based action predictions, although the proportion of the goal-directed anticipatory looking was lower compared to the in-lab sample (N = 70). As expected, attrition rate was substantially higher in the web-based (42%) than the in-lab sample (10%). Excluding trials based on visual inspection of the match of time-locked gaze coordinates and the participant's webcam video overlayed on the stimuli was an important preprocessing step to reduce noise in the data. We discuss the use of this remote web-based method in comparison with other current methodological innovations. Our study demonstrates that remote web-based eye-tracking can be a useful tool for testing toddlers, facilitating recruitment of larger and more diverse samples; a caveat to consider is the larger drop-out rate

Action anticipation based on an agent's epistemic state in toddlers and adults

Do toddlers and adults engage in spontaneous Theory of Mind (ToM)? Evidence from anticipatory looking (AL) studies suggests that they do. But a growing body of failed replication studies raised questions about the paradigm’s suitability. In this multi-lab collaboration, we test the robustness of spontaneous ToM measures. We examine whether 18- to 27-month-olds’ and adults’ anticipatory looks distinguish between two basic forms of an agent’s epistemic states: knowledge and ignorance. In toddlers [ANTICIPATED n = 520 50% FEMALE] and adults [ANTICIPATED n = 408, 50% FEMALE] from diverse ethnic backgrounds, we found [SUPPORT/NO SUPPORT] for epistemic state-based action anticipation. Future research can probe whether this conclusion extends to more complex kinds of epistemic states, such as true and false beliefs

Structural variants exhibit widespread allelic heterogeneity and shape variation in complex traits

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.It has been hypothesized that individually-rare hidden structural variants (SVs) could account for a significant fraction of variation in complex traits. Here we identified more than 20,000 euchromatic SVs from 14 Drosophila melanogaster genome assemblies, of which ~40% are invisible to high specificity short-read genotyping approaches. SVs are common, with 31.5% of diploid individuals harboring a SV in genes larger than 5kb, and 24% harboring multiple SVs in genes larger than 10kb. SV minor allele frequencies are rarer than amino acid polymorphisms, suggesting that SVs are more deleterious. We show that a number of functionally important genes harbor previously hidden structural variants likely to affect complex phenotypes. Furthermore, SVs are overrepresented in candidate genes associated with quantitative trait loci mapped using the Drosophila Synthetic Population Resource. We conclude that SVs are ubiquitous, frequently constitute a heterogeneous allelic series, and can act as rare alleles of large effect

The Cedar Point Experience, 40 years of field based, experiential learning

The Cedar Point Experience was born in the summer of 1975. At the urging of several biology faculty UNL leased the Goodall Cedar Point Girlscout Camp and offered a broad range of field based courses exploiting the local environment as their classroom. These instructors also had a strong interest in the area as a base for their own research. Today the UNL Cedar Point Biological Station with a few additional buildings can support around 100 people with full service dining, housing, classroom and lab space. The instructional model has remained unchanged for the past 40 years. Field based or place based courses offered as a focused block, residential learning experience. A traditional semesters worth of material covered in only a few weeks with the focus on learning through collecting and manipulating materials that are in their natural context. Limited lecture time and maximum field and lab time. CPBS has a solid tradition of making you tired, cold or very sweaty, wet and muddy. The separation of human from the natural environment is kept to a minimum and personal interaction with fellow students and the instructors and the resident research community is maximized. The Cedar Point Experience creates life long personal bonds and personal shifts in world view. The ecologists who have taught at CPBS the past 40 years pretty much take the Cedar Point Experience as a normal field station effect; “this is why we teach courses in the field.” What they have not typically done is formally assess the experience relative to the traditional lecture based courses on main campus. We do have a collection of statements from decades of student surveys: …the best class I took in college! Getting your hands dirty and actually doing biology is much more educational than lecture classes. It was one of the top 3 life experiences I’ve had. Great classes and instructors. On a scale from 1‐10, I rate it a 100. I liked the field experience where you can see, touch, breathe, and live the organisms, their ecology, etc. I liked the hands‐on work and the close interactions we were able to have with the instructors. I took 16 credit hours, best portion of my undergraduate education. I really enjoyed this experience (one of my best college experiences). I liked the closeness of students and faculty. The experience is great. You get to know faculty and students on a personal basis & you really learn the material well. CPBS was awesome The best teacher that I\u27ve had all throughout college. This 3‐week course was a great biological experience. It was fun! Cedar point = great experience I enjoyed everything about Cedar Point. It is a great place to make friends and learn. I had a really good time and am glad I chose to come here. I loved Cedar Point! Currently, several courses are taught at both CPBS and the UNL Campus; such as LIFE 121, BIOS 207 (Evolution and Ecology), NRES 433, NRES 220, BIOS 475 and there is an opportunity here to go beyond anecdotal student and instructor statements. To ask if students really do retain 2 or 3 times the knowledge in a field based course. Many students say they learned a lot more than they usually expect to. Is there a world view shift from the educational experience? There are also 40 years of alumni to interview. You can ask what did you learn in this course not 3 months after the final but 5, 10 or 20 years later. The CPBS alumni always have a lot to say about their Cedar Point Experience. Students who took Limnology or Ornithology in 1975 can easily list many of their fellow undergraduates and much of the course content as if it were just last month

Marsh establishment on dredged materials in Oregon estuaries

39 pages. Report to the Portland District Corps of Engineers. By E.W. Garbisch, Jr. Environmental Concern Inc., PO Box P, St. Michaels, Maryland 21663. Under contract no. DACW 57-77-C-015