Browsing by Subject "Developmental psychology"
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Item Genetic influences on social life : evidence, pathways, and implications for sociological inquiry(2008-08) Bradshaw, John Mattison; Ellison, Christopher G., 1960-; Hayward, Mark D.Scholars in diverse disciplines are currently engaged in debates concerning the causes and consequences of human social interaction in areas including personality development, interpersonal characteristics, social attachments and support, family life, religious involvement, civic engagement, socioeconomic attainment, and health and wellbeing, among others. Unfortunately, researchers in these areas are compartmentalized into two, largely isolated, camps: (1) social scientists who base their research on the assumption that social outcomes are primarily, if not exclusively, the products of social-environmental influences; and (2) biologists, geneticists, psychiatrists, and some psychologists, all of whom assume that genetic factors are important as well. The purpose of this dissertation, therefore, is to begin integrating sociological and biomedical research on social life. To facilitate this task, four specific research questions are addressed: Do genetic and environmental factors both influence social life, and if so, what is the relative contribution of each? Why and how do genetic factors influence social life, and what are the pathways by which they operate? Are genetic and environmental influences on social life correlated (i.e., non-additive), and do genetic factors bias social scientific studies that do not take them into consideration? Do genetic and environmental factors interact to produce social outcomes? To answer these questions, twin sibling data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) is analyzed. In response to the first question, results reveal that both genetic and environmental factors are indeed important predictors of individual-level variation on several different aspects of social life, including religious involvement, civic engagement, personality and interpersonal characteristics, family relations, socioeconomic status, community attachment, neighborhood quality, and psychological distress. Further, genetic effects on several of these outcomes (e.g., civic engagement, psychological distress) are mediated by personality, interpersonal characteristics, and social relationships, which provides insight into the second and third research questions. With respect to the final question, the findings presented here suggest that genetic and environmental influences on at least one social outcome--health and well-being--function in both a correlated and interactive manner. Overall, the theoretical and empirical research provided in this dissertation highlights a growing need for research that integrates sociological and biological approaches to the study of social life.Item Speaker reliability in verb acquisition(2009-12) Colbert, Dorian Darnell; Echols, Catharine H.; Bigler, Rebecca; Woolley, JacquiThis study explored infants’ sensitivity to speaker reliability in verb labeling. Past research has focused primarily on nouns (Koenig & Echols, 2003). The participants in this study were 32 24-month-old infants. Visual stimuli included a group of intransitive verbs that should be familiar to 24-month-olds such as jumping, turning, and waving. These stimuli were shown on a television display. Half of the participants were in a True Labeling Condition, in which they heard labels that correctly matched the familiar actions. The other half of the participants were in a False Labeling Condition, in which they heard familiar labels that did not correspond with the familiar actions they saw. The amounts of time that infants looked at action, labeler, and parent were compared across true and false conditions using t-tests. I expected to find that infants have similar expectations about how labels map to referents for verbs and for nouns, such that they expect speakers to apply consistent labels to both. As a result, infants were expected to look longer to the “false” than “true” labeler. Contrary to predictions, infants failed to look longer at the action in the true condition than the false, or to the speaker in the false condition as compared to the true. The comprehensive results for the studies did not indicate that infants expect accurate labels for actions from humans who are intending to refer, as did previous research with objects.