Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, 2022, Music Education

Parents' musical parenting decisions are informed by their life experiences and have form the basis on young children's musical experiences. While there is ample research regarding mothers' musical parenting, fathers' musical parenting is less prevalent in the research literature. The purpose of this narrative inquiry was to provide a rich portrait of one father's experience of musical parenting. The following questions guided this study: (a) What values, beliefs, attitudes, and aspirations inform the participant's musical parenting? (b) How has the participant's musical background influenced his current experience of musical parenting? (c) How has participation in a Music Early Learning Program shape the participant's broader experience of musical parenting and parenting musically? I recount the participant's narrative and share implications for parents; Music Early Learning Program instructors and directors; and music education researchers.

Committee: Lisa Koops (Committee Chair); Matthew Garrett (Committee Member); Nathan Kruse (Committee Member) Subjects: Music Education

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2020, Speech-Language Science (Health Sciences and Professions)

Dysphagia during the toddler stage interrupts a child from learning normal feeding and swallowing skills and can lead to long-term medical complications such as malnutrition, recurrent pneumonia, and developmental delay of the brain and all body systems. Aspiration, which is defined as the entry of bolus below the true vocal folds, is a major concern for children with dysphagia because aspiration has been known as the primary etiology leading to recurrent wheezing, recurrent pneumonia, and severe impairment of lung function in pediatric populations. Temporal measurements from videofluoroscopic swallowing study (VFSS) provide numerical range of each swallowing physiological event to determine whether a swallow is normal or disordered. The swallowing mechanism and swallowing disorders of children may differ from those of adults because children experience dysphagia at the midpoint of anatomical and neurological development. However, the relationship of physiological events during oropharyngeal swallowing and aspiration has been poorly understood in pediatric populations using temporal measurements. The purpose of the current study was to understand temporal characteristics of oropharyngeal swallowing in toddlers with dysphagia. Specific aims of this study were (1) to examine the difference in each temporal measure between toddlers with aspiration and without aspiration, (2) to investigate the effect of bolus consistency on the temporal measures, and (3) to identify more effective temporal measures to distinguish between the aspirators and the non-aspirators. The results in this study showed that the aspirators had longer delayed pharyngeal swallow (DPS), pharyngeal transit time (PTT), and initiation of laryngeal closure (ILC) than the non-aspirators. The bolus consistency had no effect on the seven temporal measures. In addition, DPS, as a single variable, and subsets combining DPS with either PTT or ILC were the most useful temporal measures to distinguish the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Youngsun Kim (Advisor); John McCarthy (Committee Member); Fancois-Xavier Brajot (Committee Member); Rika Tanda (Committee Member) Subjects: Speech Therapy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Psychology

Individuals diagnosed with ASD often present with high rates of challenging behavior and comorbid psychiatric disorders. Challenging behavior, which can take the form of tantrums, aggression, or self-injury (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) can occur in as many as 75-93% of school-age children with autism spectrum disorders (Chandler et al., 2015; McTiernan, Leader & Mannion, 2011). Age at which children receive a diagnosis of ASD has steadily decreased. Research now supports that a reliable diagnosis can be made by the second year of life (Charman & Baird, 2002; Johnson et al., 2007; Chawarska, Klin, Paul, Macari & Volkmar, 2009; Worley, Matson, Mahan, Kozlowski, & Neal, 2011; Zwaigenbaum et al., 2005). Similar to school-aged children and adolescents, many of these early-identified children present with challenges such as emotional dysregulation and behavior problems (Zwaigenbaum et al., 2015). Co-occurring symptoms and behaviors have been shown to impede successful intervention and effective education (Rojahn, Wilkins, Matson & Boisjoli, 2010). While previous research has adeptly described the wide variety of challenging behaviors' potential occurrence in adults, adolescents and school-aged children, there is inadequate information available on infants and toddlers with ASD. Contributing to the difficulty of collecting reliable data on this population is the variability among instruments used to assess challenging behavior. This study examines the composition of challenging behaviors in infants and toddlers with ASD, predictors of challenging behaviors as well as novel psychometric elements of a commonly used measure of challenging behavior, the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Charts from four-hundred, ninety-six toddlers aged 18-48 months with and without a diagnosis of ASD were examined for information on challenging behavior, cognitive ability, expressive language, adaptive behavior and other demographic information. Results indicate that the CBCL is a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Andrea Witwer PhD (Advisor); Katherine Walton PhD (Committee Chair); Luc Lecavalier PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Behavioral Psychology; Developmental Psychology; Psychology

Master of Education, University of Toledo, 2018, Educational Research and Measurements

This evaluation examines parent/guardian satisfaction with services delivered through Lucas County's Early Head Start Program based on the assessment of parent/guardian satisfaction in the program's first operating year. A 44-item parent/guardian satisfaction survey (PGSS) was created and administered for the purpose of this evaluation. An exploratory psychometric analysis of the 26 responses (47% response rate) using WINSTEPS (Linacre, 2010), version 3.70.1.1, provided evidence of validity. Findings suggest the need for some minor modifications to improve the PGSS. Responses indicate that overall, families are very satisfied with the services and support that they have received from the Early Head Start program. The relatively low response rate limits the generalizability of the findings. Based on the results of this evaluation, it is recommended that the program continues current practices at this time. Also, the unique needs of this population should be further evaluated to ensure that the program is adequately locating and linking these families to the resources that they may need. Additional psychometric analyses of the PGSS should be conducted with higher response rates.

Committee: Noela Haughton Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Laurie Dinnebeil Ph.D. (Committee Member); Gregory Stone Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Early Childhood Education; Educational Tests and Measurements

PHD, Kent State University, 2018, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Lifespan Development and Educational Sciences

This paper aims to provide a position on the need for enhanced personnel preparation for special instruction in Early Intervention (EI). The need for specialized training is discussed, followed by the research, current issues, and needs. A framework for personnel preparation is provided: professional standards, competencies (knowledge, skills, and dispositions), six content areas, and program elements for instruction, which include coursework and field experiences. Specific emphasis is placed on structuring meaningful field experiences for learning, and a framework for the practicum is described. The practicum should be competency-based, provide multiple opportunities to practice skills, and supervision to support implementation and reflection. Recommendations for state EI systems and personnel preparation programs are provided. A case example illustrating one aspect of personnel preparation, in the form of an exploratory qualitative study, is presented. This study examined the process of how preservice professionals in an EI graduate personnel preparation program develop professional dispositions through their practicum experiences with families of infants and toddlers with developmental delays or disabilities. The author interviewed these practicum students to understand their views on the necessary dispositions for EI as well as to understand the experiences that influenced the formation of these dispositions within their practicum. Analysis of the interviews and participants' self-ratings provided a deeper understanding of their values, attitudes, and beliefs about EI and themselves, and of the specific practicum experiences that led to the development of dispositions. Implications for personnel preparation programs and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Committee: Sanna Harjusola-Webb PhD (Committee Chair) Subjects: Education; Special Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Educational Studies

This study investigated the use of a matrix training approach to program for the occurrence of generative receptive language in young children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and other language delays. Matrix training is a teaching procedure that can establish recombinative generalization, thus leading to generative language. A matrix of action/object instructions were designed for each of the four participants. They were systematically taught specific action/object instructions, as outlined in the matrix, and probes were conducted to determine if the other action/object instructions were occurring without any teaching. Although recombinative generalization was partial, approximately 30–50% of the learned action/object instructions occurred through direct teaching while the other 50–70% occurred without direct teaching. Matrix training provided a systematic teaching layout that programmed for the occurrence of generative language.

Committee: Diane Sainato PhD (Advisor); Ralph Gardner PhD (Committee Member); Sheila Alber-Morgan PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Early Childhood Education

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2015, Psychology

This study sought to determine if the experience of first-time motherhood is distinct from multiparous mothers and if this motivates overprotective parenting behaviors. Temperamental fearfulness, or inhibition, of the child was also investigated for its impact. Mothers and their 24-month-old toddlers participated in a variety of novelty tasks designed to elicit parenting behaviors and children's typical fear reactions. Mothers also completed a battery of questionnaires. Results suggest that first-time mothers experienced more anxiety and this was associated with increased overprotective parenting behaviors. First-time mothers also demonstrated greater physiological (i.e., cortisol) reactivity while watching their first-born children interact with novel stimuli. The role of increased cortisol secretion in relation to overprotective parenting behaviors was dependent on the child's level of inhibition. Together, this suggests that first-time motherhood is a unique experience that can result in distinctions in parenting and is influenced by multiple maternal factors and their first-born child's temperament.

Committee: Elizabeth Kiel Ph.D. (Advisor); Aaron Luebbe Ph.D. (Committee Member); Margaret O’Dougherty Wright Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Developmental Psychology; Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Human Ecology: Human Development and Family Science

Strong partnerships between home and school are essential for coordinating high quality care and education, and for supporting young children's development. This research sought to explore the multidimensional nature of parent-teacher, or cocaring, relationships, for families utilizing full-time, center-based childcare for their infants or toddlers. A model of coparenting, or how parents work together in their roles as parents, served as the main theoretical framework for this investigation. In the first phase of the study, 10 parent-teacher dyads participated in semi-structured interviews about a specific cocaring relationship. In this sample, all families were receiving subsidized childcare. Using an iterative, inductive analysis as well as a deductive analysis based on definitions of key coparenting dimensions, three main cocaring themes were identified: communication, support vs. undermining, and childrearing agreement vs. disagreement. In the second phase, 90 parents of infants and toddlers, about a fourth of whom were receiving subsidized childcare, completed questionnaires about a specific cocaring relationship, their parental involvement, the quality of their relationship with their child, and the child's social and emotional functioning. Exploratory factor analysis of the questionnaire developed to assess the cocaring relationship revealed a three factor structure: Support, Undermining, and Endorsement & Agreement. In regression analyses, after controlling for parents' education, parents' perceptions of cocaring support were positively related to all forms of parental involvement: home-based, school-based, and home-school connections. Parents' perceptions of undermining were also positively related to school-based involvement, whereas perceptions of endorsement & agreement were positively related to home-school connections. In addition, when parents characterized their cocaring relationships as more supportive, or higher in endorsement & agreeme (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan (Advisor); Amy Bonomi (Committee Member); Cynthia Buettner (Committee Member); Ann O'Connell (Committee Member) Subjects: Early Childhood Education; Families and Family Life

PHD, Kent State University, 2013, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Psychological Sciences

Literature and research with adult mothers indicate a transactional relation between maternal depressive symptoms and child behavior. Evidence also indicates that gender may moderate this relation, such that males may be more vulnerable to their mothers' depression early in life and may display higher levels of externalizing behavior than females. However, little research to date has investigated these relations in samples of adolescent mothers, specifically Latina adolescent mothers, and none, to the author's knowledge, have investigated the transactional nature of the relation. Latina adolescent mothers are important to study as they have the highest birthrate in the U. S. compared to other ethnic groups. Adolescent mothers also face negative risk factors that influence their own psychological adjustment; and their children already face high risk for negative outcomes. One potential protective factor for children of adolescent mothers is mothers' romantic partners whose involvement in child care has been shown to buffer children against the negative effects of maternal depressive symptoms and other maternal risk factors. Investigating these relations is imperative to inform intervention and prevention efforts for Latina adolescent mothers and their children. Using a sample of primarily Puerto Rican adolescent mothers and their toddlers for which data were collected at two time points, 6 months apart; the current study used a path analysis framework to test hypothesized models. First, the longitudinal, transactional relations between maternal depressive symptoms and two child behavior variables - internalizing and externalizing problems - were examined. Second, the current study examined the direct and moderating effects of gender in order to better understand the nature of the relation between maternal depressive symptoms and child behavior in our sample. Lastly, the potential protective effect of partner child care involvement was investigated to test whether (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Josefina Grau Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Beth Wildman Ph.D. (Committee Member); Kathryn Kerns Ph.D. (Committee Member); Karla Anhalt Ph.D. (Committee Member); Rhonda Richardson Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2012, Allied Health Sciences: Communication Sciences and Disorders

Purpose: Fricatives are a class of sounds that is considered difficult to produce, and are generally developed later than stops, nasals and glides in speech sound development. Current understanding of fricative development suggests that children who develop fricatives at an early age may have better expressive language skills than children who do not develop fricatives early. The purpose of this study was to investigate the changes in fricative production, overall consonant production, and vocabulary growth in a group of toddlers who participated in a short-term, intensive auditory-perceptual intervention program. Methods: The study sample consisted of eight typically developing 18-month-old toddlers with half (n=4) in the treatment group and half (n=4) on the control group. Each toddler in both groups was visited 3 days a week for a period of 3 weeks. During each visit, a 15-minute session with a book-reading activity with a specially designed book and a play activity using selected toys and a play-script was conducted. The treatment group toddlers participated in an auditory-perceptual intervention with the book and the script designed to provide stimulation for the sounds /s/ and /z/. The control group toddlers participated in similar activities, however with materials designed to avoid stimulation of /s/ and /z/ sounds. Children's performance was assessed with speech samples and the vocabulary scores obtained at pre-treatment, post-treatment, and when the child reached 20 months of age (follow-up). A speech sample was also collected from each child before every treatment session. The assessment data were statistically analyzed to look at the differences in speech sound production and vocabulary over time for both groups of toddlers. Results: The number of fricative /s/ and /z/ productions, number of fricatives, number of fricative types, percentage of fricative types and vocabulary raw scores significantly changed over time for toddlers of both groups combined (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Nancy Creaghead PhD (Committee Chair); Chung-Yiu Chiu PhD (Committee Member); Jean Neils PhD (Committee Member); Carolyn Sotto PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Speech Therapy

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2011, Communication Disorders/Speech-Language Pathology

The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of a novel parent language stimulation program for parents of toddlers living in low-income homes. This study was designed to address a gap in the research literature for interventions that target the unique needs of this population. This pilot study used an abbreviated version of a multiple baseline design with an embedded pretest-posttest design. This method was used to detail outcomes from the intervention that may suggest further research potential with the proposed intervention. Additionally, a qualitative review of the feasibility of the intervention and methods was conducted to determine specific barriers and benefits to the intervention as proposed. Previous research in child language development suggest that parent lexical diversity, parent responsivity to child communication attempts, parent promotion of language development in the home setting, and parent knowledge of child development are all negatively impacted by low-income status. Additionally, parents in low-income homes are more likely to demonstrate lower feelings of parenting self-efficacy and experience greater levels of parenting stress. In turn, these parent behaviors have been found to impact the types of learning experiences and communication that parents provide to young children throughout their day. The intervention program designed for this study, the Caregiver-Child Language Apprenticeship Program (CcLAP), was created to address these concerns. Results indicate that parent knowledge of development and parent promotions of development in the home setting, showed some signs of a positive increase after exposure to the intervention, but no other changes were noted in the other parent behaviors measured. Issues of feasibility with the proposed design were significant, with recruitment and retention of low-income participants emerging as a central barrier to research with this population. Limitations of the study and future directio (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Tim Brackenbury (Advisor); Lynne Hewitt (Committee Member); Lauren Katz (Committee Member); Mary Hare (Committee Member) Subjects: Early Childhood Education; Language; Speech Therapy

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2013, Arts and Sciences: Psychology

A rolling ball cannot pass through a wall, and it will not remain suspended mid-air without support. Studies that investigated children's knowledge about these principles (also referred to as the solidity and gravity principle, respectively) have yielded inconsistent results. Depending on the details of the task, young children sometimes show a certain degree of sensitivity to the principle, but other times fail to pay attention to it, confounding a core-knowledge account of children's performance. The current set of experiments was designed to investigate another possible explanation. Namely, that performance depends on the degree to which the immediate task context guides a child's attention to relevant information. By this attentional account, a moving object might create a temporarily narrowed field of attention- along its trajectory. As a result, information outside of that field becomes irrelevant. Experiment 1 focused solely on the principle of solidity and manipulated the degree to which relevant information was within the proposed field of attention. Children between 2 and 3 years old were presented with a movie that depicted a ball that rolled behind a screen containing four doors. Windows in the screen would open and close to allow a portion of a wall (intended to stop the ball) to be visible. The prediction was that when the wall was visible in the child's proposed field of attention, performance would be successful. Experiment 2 tested the extent to which discrepant performances between violation-of-expectation, search and prediction tasks could be explained under the common framework of attention allocation. Thus, in this experiment all children were asked to perform four tasks (violation-of-expectation, prediction-without-screen, prediction-with-screen and search) in each of two physics domains: Solidity and Gravity. Results from both experiments show a variety of learning effects and idiosyncratic differences in performance among tasks. They further (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Adelheid Kloos Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Chung-Yiu Chiu Ph.D. (Committee Member); Sarah Cummins-Sebree Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2013, Allied Health Sciences: Nutrition

Background: The first 2 years of life are important for growth and development of children, but there is not much food and nutrient intake data available for this population. The purpose of this study is to assess energy and nutrient intake from food only, including breast milk and formula, in infants through toddlerhood, and identify deficiencies and excesses of nutrients when compared to the Institute of Medicine's Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs). Methods: This longitudinal cohort study followed 60 infants over 18 months. Three-day food records were collected at six weeks, and six, 12, and 18 months of age and analyzed for energy and nutrient intakes. The mean, range of intake, and the percent of the recommendation met was calculated for both energy and macronutrients. The percentage of those who did not meet the Estimated Average Requirement (EAR) or Adequate Intake (AI) and the percentage with intakes above the Upper Intake Levels (UL), for specific vitamins and minerals, were also calculated. Results: Energy and macronutrient levels met or exceeded 100% of the recommendation at all time points with the exception of: carbohydrates at six weeks of age which met 91% and fiber at 18 months which met only 51% of the recommendation. More than 50% of the sample did not meet DRI recommendations for: magnesium, iron, zinc, vitamins D, E, C, and B6, thiamin and folate at six weeks; vitamin D at six months; vitamins D and E at 12 months and vitamins D, E, and K at 18 months. More than 50% of the sample exceeded UL recommendations for: zinc at six and 12 months; and phosphorus, magnesium, sodium, and niacin at 18 months. Conclusions and Implications: Healthcare professionals may want to monitor the diet of infants and toddlers more closely for nutritional adequacy.

Committee: Graciela Falciglia Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Seung-Yeon Lee Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Nutrition

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2013, Arts and Sciences: Sociology

Toddlers & Tiaras is a reality-based television show on cable, highlighting the methods, goals and socialization of gender roles in childhood beauty pageants. My study selected a portion of episodes to code on a scene-by-scene basis, utilizing a coding system created through literature and previous viewing of the show. Codes included: "Sexuality", "Presentation of Self", "Consumption", "Culture of Pageantry","Parenthood", "Achievement" and "Child Work". Of these codes, only "Presentation of Self", "Parenthood" and "Achievement" data was utilized for this research. With the goal of ";concerted cultivation" parents of the contestants put their children into pageantry for education, fun and bonding. However, what is produced is a high-anxiety, high-stress and high-pressure system focused on the contestant's presentation of self as a standardized and feminized woman. Through competition for total victory over all others, contestants must present themselves as the most beautiful of all, objectifying themselves and separating their appearance from their personality and individuality.

Committee: Erynn Casanova Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Annulla Linders Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Sociology

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2013, Psychology

Although developmental research continues to connect parenting behaviors with child outcomes, it is critical to examine how child behaviors influence parenting behaviors. Given the emotional, cognitive, and social costs of maladaptive parenting, it is vital to understand the factors that influence maternal socialization behaviors. The current study examines children's observed emotion regulatory behaviors as one influence. Mother-child dyads (n = 91) with toddlers around 24 months of age participated in novelty episodes from which toddler emotion regulation behaviors were coded, and mothers reported their use of emotion socialization strategies. The concurrent and predictive relation between emotion regulation and emotion socialization was examined in the context of several moderators. It was found that child gender, depressive, and worry symptoms individually moderated the relation between emotion regulation and emotion socialization. Results from the current study have the potential to inform the literature on when child-elicited effects are most salient in the parent-child relationship.

Committee: Elizabeth Kiel Ph.D. (Advisor); Aaron Luebbe Ph.D. (Committee Member); Vaishali Raval Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Clinical Psychology; Developmental Psychology