Children's early self-regulation skills have long-term implications for a variety of academic, social, and health outcomes. Unfortunately, children facing multiple family risk factors (e.g., harsh parenting, economic disadvantage) are more likely to struggle with early self-regulation. Despite early disparities in self-regulation, promising intervention evidence suggests that high quality prekindergarten experiences...
Families and early care and education (ECE) programs are two important contexts in which young children develop (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). Nearly half of all preschoolers are cared for in nonrelative care (e.g. child care center, preschool, Head Start, teacher’s home; Laughlin, 2013), and ECE programs have the potential to...
Adult development and social experiences are intertwined, which has implications for social policy, health, and well-being across the lifespan. This dissertation explores the benefit and risk that close social partners bring to adults' lives, and the efficacy and consequences of engaging social resources to maintain well-being in the face of...
In the United States, children from underserved racial/ethnic backgrounds encounter greater environmental risk both in terms of the physical environment (e.g., housing quality, access to resources like health services and jobs, and exposure to environmental toxins) and the social environment (e.g., social support, neighborhood crime, racism, and discrimination), due to...
Algae can be used in a variety of wastewater systems to capture nutrients while fixing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. I conducted field trials at three locations in Oregon with both corn and potato crops to assess the agronomic value and environmental impact of using the resulting algal biomass as...
Drug courts are collaborative community programs that provide active oversight and compliance monitoring of individuals engaged in the criminal justice continuum. Adult drug court program requirements include alcohol and other drug treatment, community support services, and other ancillary services intended to promote life changes in participants and ultimately, prosocial behaviors....
The purpose of this study was to investigate the level of social interaction and social comfort among five undergraduate ethnic groups: African American, American Indian, Asian American, Caucasian American, and Hispanic American. Another purpose was to explore the correlation between the level of social contact and comfort among the five...
When observers monitor for infrequent signals for extended durations, they generally experience a decline in detections over time. This decline is termed the vigilance decrement. Current theories of vigilance attribute the decrement to three potential mechanisms: conservative shifts in response bias, losses of sensitivity, and an increased rate of attentional...
A continuous, low-velocity, nearly monochromatic atomic beam is created using
laser cooling and two-dimensional magneto-optic trapping. Rubidium atoms from an
effusive oven are slowed and cooled using Zeeman-tuned slowing. The scattering force
from a counter-propagating, frequency-stabilized diode laser beam is used to decelerate
the thermal beam of atoms to a...
This research investigates the role of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in the life experiences of University Student-Athletes. This qualitative study employs a naturalistic and grounded paradigm in an effort to capture the essence of these experiences. Participants are four student-athletes from Oregon State University who play intercollegiate athletics in the Pac-10...
