http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13013/123 2026-03-09T19:12:54Z http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13013/3703 The Effects of Verbal Stimuli on Behavior Regulation during Response Deficit: An Exploration into Augmenting Heutlinger, Adam Language plays a pivotal role in governing human behavior through rules, influencing both adaptive and maladaptive behaviors. Research has shown that rule-governed behavior often becomes rigid, leading to insensitivity to changing contingencies and contributing to psychological distress. While traditional models of rule-governance provide valuable insights, they fail to explain how verbal stimuli specify contingencies. Relational Frame Theory (RFT) addresses this limitation by explaining rule-governance through contextual cues and derived stimulus relations. Within this framework, augmentals are said to modify the value of events and are categorized as either formative or motivative. While formative augmentals establish given consequences as reinforcers or punishers through trained stimulus relations, motivative augmentals temporarily alter the extent to which previously established consequences function as reinforcers or punishers. Limited research has explored the effects of motivative augmentals within the RFT framework. The study investigated the effects of motivative augmentals on behavior during response deficit condition, employing the disequilibrium model to assess changes in instrumental (advertisement watching) and contingent (video watching) activities. Results showed that the presentation of candidate augmentative verbal stimuli—during a response deficit contingency—lead to reductions in both instrumental and contingent activities compared to that of deficit alone conditions for 7/8 particiapnts. The findings of the study could suggest that motivative augmentals temporarily alter the perceived value of events, and therefore, the regulation of behavior during deficit. 2025-05-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13013/3699 "Veil Walking": Assertions of Bodily Autonomy and Black Mothering as Forms of Agency in Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing Shrayer, Stefany Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing addresses the legacy of colonialism by outlining the race-based discrimination embedded in ideological, legal, economic, and social structures for both Ghana and the US. In this thesis, I explore the ways in which characters reclaim agency despite these oppressive structures through bodily autonomy, sexual freedom, Black mothering, and othermothering. Rather than focusing on the victimization of the Black community, my thesis focuses on collective resistance against injustice that results in improved conditions. 2025-08-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13013/3698 Multi-Lingual and Multi-Identity: Writing in School as a 7th Grade Intermediate English Learner Wan, Pauline This article discusses a qualitative study centering the writing practices of seventh grade multilingual students in a small, urban city in Massachusetts. Analysis of participants' narrative and nonfiction writing reveal that emergent multilingual students inherently express multiple, sometimes contradictory identities due to their development as language learners and adolescents. Students achieved this by weaving through various languages (including different Englishes) and drawing on their lived experiences and observations. In doing so, multilingual young people disrupt unequal voices and language hierarchies by transgressing standard ideologies in academic writing. To affirm and promote the validity of translingual, heteroglossic writing, educators should consider multilingual texts as legitimate exemplars and develop heteroglossic literacy practices that support students to refine their pre-existing language use in service of their authorial intentions. 2024-05-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13013/3697 Three Language Schools, Same Mission, One NNEST: Native-Speakerism in the Discourses of Three Private Language Schools Sarica, Omer This qualitative study examines how private language schools reproduce or resist native-speakerism through public-facing discourses of three language schools where I also worked: British Town (Turkey), Canadian College (Colombia), and Approach International Student Center (Boston). Using multimodal critical discourse analysis, I analyzed websites and job advertisements through an integrated framework: Selvi's job-ad coding of discriminatory language, Fairclough's three-dimensional CDA, and Kress & van Leeuwen's visual grammar. Data consisted of public facing school discourses and screenshots of institutional pages and recruitment posts; analysis combined deductive codes (e.g., nativeness requirements, citizenship/passport filters, credential talk) with inductive themes in text-image pairings. The findings indicate that Turkey and Colombia explicitly and implicitly convey preference for native or foreign speakers by implementing British, US, and Canadian symbols; images of international (white) teachers; and different tiers of language course packages that indicate access to native or bicultural educators is superior and more valuable. By contrast, the Boston site centers qualifications, mentoring, and mission fit; job language avoids "native" requirements, and the staff page displays significant diversity. The patterns across cases hint at how market branding, rules, and school goals all work together. This research introduces a single, integrated coding model for websites and ads. Limitations include three cases and public texts only; future work should connect discourse to HR records and pay scales across sites and over time. 2025-08-01T00:00:00Z