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Undergraduate & Graduate Research Council header

 

Paideia 2004

(last edited 7/15/04)

author list, sorted alphabetically by presenter

All events took place in Ratcliffe Hall on Friday 4/16/04 or Saturday 4/17/04.

OVERVIEW of schedule
  • registration Friday 2 PM -
  • I.  Friday 2:30 - 3:45 PM, two sessions (Peter Knipp, UGRC contact)
  • poster session, Friday 3:30 - 4:30 PM
  • break, with refreshments, Friday 3:45 - 4:20 PM
  • II.  Friday 4:20 - 5:35 PM, four sessions (Phillip Hamilton, UGRC contact)
  • registration Saturday 9 AM -
  • III.  Saturday 9:15 - 10:30 AM, three sessions (Kelly Cartwright, UGRC contact)
  • break, with refreshments, Saturday 10:30 - 10:45 AM
  • IV.  Saturday 10:45 AM - noon, four sessions (Tarek Abdel-Fattah, UGRC contact)
  • lunch (on your own)
  • V.  Saturday 1:15 - 2:55 PM, four sessions (Tarek Abdel-Fattah, UGRC contact)
Presenters, in alphabetical order: DETAILED SCHEDULE

  1.   Friday 2:30 - 3:45 PM (Peter Knipp, UGRC contact)

    1. Room 112, Kelly Cartwright presiding
      1. 2:30 Children and mutual exclusivity
         Amy Davis, Kelly Cartwright, CNU
              According to research done by Carey (1978), children learn an average of 13,000 words by their sixth birthday. The mutual exclusivity bias in children's word learning leads them to assume that new words do not refer to any object for which they already have a label . The mutual exclusivity bias also helps to explain how children can learn so many words at such a fast pace. Previous research has established the average age that children are able to use mutual exclusivity to increase language knowledge. Researchers have identified how children respond to both unfamiliar and familiar objects as well as unfamiliar and familiar words and how they connect the objects and words. Mutual exclusivity enables children to infer the meaning of unknown words with no information other than a photograph of an unknown object. Although the mutual exclusivity bias may sometimes lead to incorrect assumptions about word meaning, mutual exclusivity is beneficial to children because research has shown that children who are proficient in it have much larger vocabularies. Additionally, research has identified bilingual children as being more capable at using mutual exclusivity and thus more advanced in language development than monolingual children. This knowledge can be beneficial to parents and teachers to enable them to encourage language development to produce children with significant vocabularies. Also, this research can help explain to parents why their children may incorrectly identify novel objects. Possible further research should be done on children with special needs to help identify whether mutual exclusivity aids their language development. Additional research would be helpful to identify how children override mutual exclusivity and add hierarchies into their understanding of language.

      2. 2:55 The relation of personality and satisfaction with self-managed work teams
         Diane Cabiroy, Diane Catanzaro, CNU
              The personality characteristics of emotional stability, extroversion, and conscientiousness were evaluated to determine the relation of each to satisfaction in self-managed work teams. The participants were students in self-managed teams who attended a medium-sized public university in Virginia. The International Personality Item Pool (PIP) and the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) were administered to measure the Big Five personality characteristics and job satisfaction, respectively. Hypothesis 1 was that individuals with higher extroversion scores would derive more job satisfaction from working in self-managed teams compared to individuals with lower extroversion scores. Hypothesis 2 was that people who have a high level of emotional stability would derive more job satisfaction from working in self-managed teams compared to people with low levels of emotional stability. Hypothesis 3 was that conscientiousness and job satisfaction from working in self-managed teams would have a curvilinear correlation, with those high and low in conscientiousness less satisfied than those with moderate conscientiousness. Results suggested that individuals with higher extroversion, emotional stability, and conscientiousness are more satisfied in self-managed teams.

    2. Room 116, Lori Underwood presiding
      1. 2:30 The magic's in the makeup: deconstruction of western gender in Madame Butterfly
         Mark Pangilinan, Tracey Schwarze, CNU
              Spanning two decades of extramarital affair, espionage, and false identity, David Henry Hwang's Madame Butterfly presents its audience with the rise, and subsequent fall, of a man who lived and died for the lies that entertained both his Orientalist fantasies as well as his traditionally masculine ideals. In this 1988 reaction to Giaccomo Puccini's Madame Butterfly of 1904, Hwang uses an inverted structure of the earlier work to expose inherent flaws in the gender models presented in it. As a whole, through allusive structure, as well as multiple role-reversal, David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly serves to deconstruct the cultural gender constraints set forth by a heterosexual male-dominated western society. A thorough examination of Hwang's characters in relation to concepts of gender as defined by theorists Judith Butler and Teresa de Lauretis, as well as concepts of Western dominance presented by Edward Said, works to illuminate the inherent malleability present within traditional Western gender constraints, which in turn serves to contradict their very authority and validity. This deconstruction of Western gender as presented by a once beloved opera reveals that subscription to social constructs of value, stereotypical notions, and rough generalizations is not, in itself, a harmless act. Rather, subscription of this nature is dangerous, limiting, self-deluding and self-defeating -- on a personal as well as social scale.

      2. 2:55 Mass media and the new hysteria of the Information Age
        Beth Miller, Tracey Schwarze, CNU
              The impression of the madman has varied throughout history as society experienced, and in turn reacted to, individuals who did not fit into its symbolic social order. From the lepers who threatened disease to the paralyzed housewife "rebelling against her duties," an individual outside the cultural norm would be labeled "mad" or "hysterical." While doctors rarely use the term "hysteric" anymore, individuals are now compartmentalized into subgroups with specific labels such as dissociative personality disorder, depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder. This new categorical system is representative of a culture that not only embraces and heavily depends on technology, but also has its social orders governed through the realm of mass media, which is unprecedented to any other era. In his novel White Noise, Don DeLillo stereotypes, deconstructs and questions society as a byproduct of mass media. The Gladneys represent a family whose members are searching for their individual identities in the brightly wrapped packaging of supermarket goods. While pumped up on consumerism, they interact through layers of secret fears, misinformation and general anxiety shaped by the very thing that comforts them: television. By focusing on his characters' irrationalities, DeLillo accurately foreshadows our current sociological condition of fear-based dependency on technology, as exploited by mass media. This paper will examine the components of a hysteria centered on the mediation of false realities and the marketing of prototypes designed to encourage consumer dependency on pharmaceutical technology. It will explore the fear-based hysteria in individuals and groups generated by an overexposure to media's hype. And finally, through the irrational fears of Jack and Babette Gladney, it will reveal how the ever-present "white noise" of programming becomes a driving force in their actions and subsequently represents the new hysteria in the age of information.

      3. 3:20 Postmodernism and schizophrenia: the interpretive agency of The Life of Pi
         Michael Mullin, Tracey Schwarze, CNU
              The place of the schizophrenic within modern culture and literature is a tenuous one. Unable to perceive the world within the commonly accepted paradigm, the schizophrenic must take an active role in the shaping of his or her existence. The schizophrenic lives in a world of his or her own creation, one in which the “real world” is irrelevant, or at least an alternative reality. Because of this radical worldview, it remains difficult for the layperson and the schizophrenic to commune.
               It is proposed in this paper that the layperson can find within the context of postmodernist literature a situation analogous to that of the schizophrenic existence. Utilizing Yann Martel’s 2002 Booker Prize-winning novel The Life of Pi, it is suggested that postmodernist novels, with their paradigm of reflexivity and detachment, force the reader to take an active role in defining the “reality” within the novel.
               Martel’s book represents a work of literary schizophrenia in which multiple authorial viewpoints are utilized to mimic and mirror the schizophrenia of its main character, as well as comment upon the discordant nature of postmodern reality. There is a communion that occurs in The Life of Pi between the layperson and the schizophrenic because they find themselves in the same situation, forced to actively define all existence based only upon their own existence. Because of The Life of Pi’s multiplicity, both in character reality and textual reality, and its intense solipsism and inward focus, it offers a postmodern link between schizophrenia and the reader.


    break, with refreshments, Friday 3:45 - 4:20 PM

    Poster session, Friday 3:30 - 4:30 PM, in atrium
    1. The effect of religion on American political attitudes
       Mary Monett, Quentin Kidd, CNU
            A large body of research shows that religion plays a role in American politics. Studies examine religion in a variety of ways that reveal different things about the impact of religion on an individual's political attitudes. This study will compare a person's religious affiliation and the strength of their affiliation to their party identification, voting behavior, and liberal and conservative values. It will specifically relate current national data of all of these variables and reveal that there is a direct correlation between certain religions and certain political attitudes. By understanding the effects of religion, we can predict how it will impact this year's upcoming presidential election.

    2. The effects of race, income, education, and geography on life expectancy
       Gregory J. Cutler, Quentin Kidd, CNU
            Life expectancy is an issue that has become increasingly important as new research is being conducted. As breakthroughs in science and technology have characterized our evolving society, life expectancies have generally increased. However, as most fail to recognize, science and technology are not the two most significant components of an increased life expectancy. An in-depth examination into momentous factors such as race, income, education, and geography provide a solid research foundation from which further research can be conducted. Of the previously conducted research, most categorize race, income, education, and geography into one subheading: socioeconomic factors. However, a more profound examination is necessary.
             In this research presentation, the dependent variable is life expectancy, as it is measured on a scaled level. The independent variables of race, income, education, and geography are measured both nominally and on scaled levels. It is hypothesized that as the levels of income and education increase, so will life expectancy. In addition, it is hypothesized that an increased life expectancy will be associated with Caucasian males as opposed to African American males, and a rural geographical context as opposed to an urban geographical context. This study examines the potential causes for the manner in which the data is distributed. For example, with regards to race, cause-of-death factors contribute to the discrepancy in life expectancies among Caucasian and African-American adult males.

    3. The influence of social status on political participation
       Alan Moore, Quentin Kidd, CNU