The Role of Choice and Control in Women’s Childbirth Experiences

The current study seeks to understand the role of choice and control in both planning and giving birth. This study explores three research questions: 1) What are the key influences on women’s birth plan decisions? 2) How do changes to a woman’s initial birth plan impact her overall birth experience? 3) What is the role of choice and control in women’s childbirth experiences? Narrative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of 16 women who had given birth in Waterloo Region within the two years preceding data collection. The findings of this study cover five categories. The first category is the influences on women’s planning process (e.g. family, care provider, books, prenatal classes). The second category is the impact that changes to a woman’s initial birth plan have on her birth experience and this includes a discussion of transfers of care, pain management and medical intervention, and hospital stays. The third category is the role of choice and control in women’s childbirth experiences and in this section the topics discussed include pain management techniques and care provider support. Following this, there is a summary of women’s overall satisfaction with their experience. Finally, the fifth category of findings describes women’s experiences with breastfeeding support after the birth of their children. A conceptual framework of the role of choice and control in women’s birth experiences is proposed that contains three aspects: informed choice, flexibility and support

Why are social interactions found quickly in visual search tasks?

When asked to find a target dyad amongst non-interacting individuals, participants respond faster when the individuals in the target dyad are shown face-to-face (suggestive of a social interaction), than when they are presented back-to-back. Face-to-face dyads may be found faster because social interactions recruit specialized processing. However, human faces and bodies are salient directional cues that exert a strong influence on how observers distribute their attention. Here we report that a similar search advantage exists for ‘point-to-point’ and ‘point-to-face’ target arrangements constructed using arrows – a non-social directional cue. These findings indicate that the search advantage seen for face-to-face dyads is a product of the directional cues present within arrangements, not the fact that they are processed as social interactions, per se. One possibility is that, when arranged in the face-to-face or point-to-point configuration, pairs of directional cues (faces, bodies, arrows) create an attentional ‘hot-spot’ – a region of space in between the elements to which attention is directed by multiple cues. Due to the presence of this hot-spot, observers' attention may be drawn to the target location earlier in a serial visual search

“Are you the real police?” “No. We’re the campus police.” An examination of the way Ontario Special Constables govern risk on post-secondary campuses

This dissertation examines the role of special constables on Ontario post-secondary campuses and where they are positioned in relation to the broad range of state and non-state law enforcement entities in Canada. Through in-depth qualitative interviews with department heads, alongside a detailed survey and focus groups with Ontario campus special constables, my research examines the everyday work and perspectives of a highly understudied group. Under neoliberal governance, there has been a growing reliance on non-state law enforcement entities to adopt roles that have traditionally been filled by police. Alongside this, we have witnessed an increasing demand for risk management due to growing private property ownership. As a result, studies that investigate the work of these groups offer important insight into their experiences and what is needed to ensure they can effectively manage risk in place of the police. Despite this, research examining the perspectives of non-state law enforcement is limited. Furthermore, there are even fewer studies on campus law enforcement and essentially no scholarly attention has been paid to those who work in this role on Canadian post-secondary campuses. This study addresses this gap by offering insight into the background, daily work, and experiences of Ontario campus special constables through a mixed methods design which allows for the production of information on a number of relevant topics from a broad range of participants. Based on my findings, I argue that much like other private policing entities, neoliberal processes have contributed to the role of special constables increasingly overlapping with that of the public police and, as a result, they play an important part in keeping campuses safe. At the same time, my study shows that this development has occurred to an even greater extent with special constables as a result of the general shift toward the professionalization of campus law enforcement, as well as the growing need to manage various risks on campus, particularly in light of increased media portrayal of serious crimes at universities and colleges. Moreover, despite the police-like work special constables are expected to perform on campus, my research indicates that, in line with the experiences of other non-state law enforcement, legitimacy challenges remain an issue. Although these issues appear to occur less often with special constables, students, staff, faculty, and other members of law enforcement are often unaware of the authority granted to special constables and in some cases, this situation has resulted in negative and escalated interactions between parties. Thus, this study contributes to this field of research by offering an explanation and potential solutions to address legitimacy challenges among private law enforcement. Consequently, I argue that institutions should increase awareness surrounding the role and authorities of special constables and that policymakers should take steps to enhance their standardization and training to improve the perception of this group as legitimate members of law enforcement. Additionally, given their ability to fully engage in the community policing model and offer institution-specific support at a lower cost (compared with municipal police), the work of special constables could be used by all post-secondary institutions across Canada to protect the campus community and ensure that all students, regardless of location, background, or school, are afforded the same level of security. This dissertation highlights the way special constables have the ability to manage both actual and perceived risk through the use of community-based policing on campus and therefore are valuable assets to the institutions that employ them. These findings have implications beyond post-secondary campuses in Ontario. They reinforce the importance of effective private law enforcement entities in a time of reduced state involvement under neoliberal governance and high demand for risk management among members of the public as well as the need for further research to ensure optimal performance and public acceptance of them

Feeling Fat: Theorizing Intergenerational Body Narratives Through Affect

This study set out to understand the intergenerational movement and impact of obesity epidemic and anti-fat narratives that emerged after the 1950s in North America. Embedded in an Anglo-Western, neoliberal context, the current study sought to understand the impact of weight-based messaging on the embodied experiences of parents and their now-adult children. Working within a critical-transformative paradigm and drawing on post-humanism and new materialism, I conducted 19 narrative interviews with individuals born between 1955 and 1990, six of whom were mother-daughter dyads, as well as a body mapping workshop with five self-selecting participants over the course of three sessions. I combined qualitative approaches of thematic and visual analysis with the post-qualitative approaches of “plugging in” or “thinking with theory” as a way of putting participants’ accounts directly into conversation with post humanist and neomaterialist understandings to theorize key findings. I pulled together these disparate and entangled methodological approaches to account for both the discursive and affective realities of embodied fat experiences under biopedagogical forces that stipulate how (and how not) to have a body. Findings from this study highlight how affect is mobilized in the conveyance of biopedagogical messages about fatness intergenerationally. Lessons about fat bodies are situated within and bolstered by an assemblage of forces, both social and material, including structural racism and sexism, diet culture and its artifacts (diet books, healthy weight programs, magazines, etc.), medical weight bias, technologies of weight measurement and loss (Body Mass Index, weight cycling programs, weight loss surgeries, etc.), public education, and wider family dynamics. Through its integration of feminist affect theory alongside the novel use of arts-based body mapping with fat participants, the Feeling Fat study offers significant opportunities for the advancement of fat liberation

Robust associations between the 20-item prosopagnosia index and the Cambridge face memory test in the general population

Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is a neurodevelopmental condition, characterised by lifelong face recognition deficits. Leading research groups diagnose the condition using complementary computer-based tasks and self-report measures. In an attempt to standardise the reporting of self-report evidence, we recently developed the 20-Item Prosopagnosia Index (PI20), a short questionnaire measure of prosopagnosic traits suitable for screening adult samples for DP. Strong correlations between scores on the PI20 and performance on the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) appeared to confirm that individuals possess sufficient insight into their face recognition ability to complete a self-report measure of prosopagnosic traits. However, the extent to which people have insight into their face recognition abilities remains contentious. A lingering concern is that feedback from formal testing, received prior to administration of the PI20, may have augmented the self-insight of some respondents in the original validation study. To determine whether the significant correlation with the CFMT was an artefact of previously delivered feedback, we sought to replicate the validation study in individuals with no history of formal testing. We report highly significant correlations in two independent samples drawn from the general population, confirming i) that a significant relationship exists between PI20 scores and performance on the CFMT, and ii) that this is not dependent on the inclusion of individuals who have previously received feedback. These findings support the view that people have sufficient insight into their face recognition abilities to complete a self-report measure of prosopagnosic traits

Quantifying multi-taxon functional change on tropicalising reefs for conservation

Coral reef ecosystems are undergoing community reassembly due to climate-induced range shifts, thermal stress events and localised disturbances such as coastal development, threatening reefs worldwide. The ecological processes that drive species and community shifts, and the functioning of resultant ecosystems is poorly understood, presenting a challenge for climate-resilient conservation management strategies. Here, I take a functional trait-based approach to understand and quantify functional change on Japanese coral reef ecosystems to inform conservation plans. Urban reefs experience elevated levels of anthropogenic stressors, resulting in turbid, marginal conditions. It is unclear how urban reef ecosystems are structured at the community and functional level, and how they will respond to future disturbance events. Chapter two of this thesis quantifies how the functioning of a tropical urbanised reef has changed between 1975 and 2018 in Nakagusuku Bay, Okinawa, Japan. I identified widespread reef fish and coral genera community turnover, but functional space was maintained, suggesting the communities had retained ecosystem function. Japan’s coastal marine ecosystems form a tropical to temperate transition zone, where many high latitude reefs have undergone tropicalisation, with phase shifts from temperate to tropical species. Determining the winners and losers under further environmental change, and how to incorporate this into management is a key conservation priority. In Chapters three-five, I address this by classifying species into trait-based groups to understand and manage functioning. Chapter three explores how fish functional groups represent the within-group species. Species were found to have similar environmental drivers to that of their respective functional group, suggesting traits determine how species respond to the environment. It is important to consider multiple taxa to understand how range shifts will affect the functioning of the whole ecosystem. Chapter four models the spatial distributions of fish, coral, echinoderm, mollusc and algae functional groups for now, and 2050 with climate change. Groups were found to have distinct tropical and sub-tropical distributions. Future predictions showed mixed responses to environmental change, with some tropical groups shifting poleward, some subtropical groups reducing in abundance, but also subtropical groups that remained stable, resulting in high latitude novel functional communities with enhanced functions. Reserve networks based on current distributions may not remain effective in the future. In Chapter five, I outline a climate resilient framework for prioritising reefs for static and dynamic conservation management I use the predicted multi-taxon group distributions form Chapter four, to identify areas for protection that would maximise ecosystem function, whilst considering range shifts. Overall, this thesis provides an enhanced understanding of the functioning and protection of coastal reefs under ongoing climate change. Methods in this thesis could be applied to other localities along marine biogeographic transition zones, and be adapted for terrestrial ecosystems with latitudinal and altitudinal range shifts, improving evidence-based conservation action in a changing world

Senior Recital: Katherine Johnston, clarinet

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Music Education. Ms. Johnston studies clarinet with John Warren.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1295/thumbnail.jp

An experimental test of deviant modeling

Objectives: Test the effect of deviant peer modeling on theft as conditioned by verbal support for theft and number of deviant models. Methods: Two related randomized experiments in which participants were given a chance to steal a gift card (ostensibly worth $15) from the table in front of them. Each experiment had a control group, a verbal prompting group in which confederate(s) endorsed stealing, a behavioral modeling group in which confederate(s) committed theft, and a verbal prompting plus behavioral modeling group in which confederate(s) did both. The first experiment used one confederate; the second experiment used two. The pooled sample consisted of 335 undergraduate students. Results: Participants in the verbal prompting plus behavioral modeling group were most likely to steal followed by the behavioral modeling group. Interestingly, behavioral modeling was only influential when two confederates were present. There were no thefts in either the control or verbal prompting groups regardless of the number of confederates. Conclusions: Behavioral modeling appears to be the key mechanism, though verbal support can strengthen the effect of behavioral modeling.UW/SSHRC Seed Gran