Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: In recent decades, the dominant species in many ecosystems are novel (non-native) taxa. Conservation biologists have typically viewed novel species as destabilizing elements that give rise to unsustainable food webs. However, there is increasing anecdotal evidence to suggest that some ecosystems incorporate novel species into novel food webs that are sustainable. Here, we evaluate the hypothesis that the invasions of the novel round goby and zebra mussel into Lake Ontario have produced a new food web which incorporates novel species. Stomachs from predacious adult salmonid were collected in the near-shore of Lake Ontario during spring 2007 and 2008 and analyzed for prey-species composition. Our results show a radical shift in the diet of these salmonid predators from the historical native prey species, to the novel alewife, to one now dominated by the novel round goby. The round goby itself preys heavily on the novel zebra mussel. Accordingly, these results lend support to the concept that ecosystems such as Lake Ontario may incorporate novel species into their food webs. As such, it may be necessary to re-evaluate the role of novel species to the future sustainability of ecosystems.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: I believe that political scientists can improve student learning by teaching across the discipline and adopting a “novel approach” to political science, especially in introductory level courses. While not specifically challenging the role of the traditional textbook, at the very least, I believe that traditional approaches can be supplemented by the introduction of literature in general and novels in particular. By focusing on three novels, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), and Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano (1980), I would like to demonstrate how political scientists can improve student learning and engagement in introductory courses (Introduction to Political Science, Public Administration, Comparative Government, Political Philosophy), by teaching across the discipline.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Sociological conversations about cultural products like books have a long history, to which this paper contributes. In addition, sociologists have long been interested in questions about how social norms and ideas are sometimes reproduced and sometimes resisted. This paper is rooted in a tradition of sociologists who study the novel as a source of data. Like these sociologists, I look to the American novel for information about social ideologies and structured representations; like them, I look to the history of American book publishing for information about how texts come to exist and circulate. Unlike them, though, I focus on the cultural content and publishing history of American children’s novels, and on each text’s willingness to resist the reproduction of dominant social arrangements which are based upon inequality.
Further, literary scholars argue that modern feminist fiction emerged during the 1970s, as a component of second wave feminist political activity. This sociological study also critiques and transforms definitions of ‘the feminist novel,’ and suggests that feminist, or subversive, children’s novels existed well before the late-twentieth-century eruption of second wave feminism. By using a less-individualistic theory of social stratification and resistance than previous research, the paper uncovers a range of narrative strategies that explicate and resist overlapping forms of oppression. This paper conceptualizes children’s novels as (potentially) containing narratives of resistance, which permits a connection to feminist theories of narratives, since they offer the best models for these types of questions and goals.

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background and Aims: Generic language is an important mechanism for efficiently learning about novel kinds. Yet, no research to date has investigated younger children’s ability to effectively make inductive inferences based on hearing generic language. We examined whether generic language would guide 30-month-old infants’ inferences about the properties of novel kinds.

Methods: 30-month-olds were administered an inductive inference task. During the baseline phase, infants were presented with two novel exemplars and an accompanied prop (e.g., blue blick, orange blick, and toy cup). Infants were allowed to explore the objects. During the demonstration phase, the experimenter demonstrated a target action three times with a model exemplar (e.g., blue blick, drinking motion with the cup). The target action modeled was accompanied by either a generic phrase (e.g. “blicks drink milk”) or a non-generic phrase (“this blick drinks milk”). During the generalization phase, the experimenter re-introduced the two exemplars (model match: blue blick; model mismatch: orange blick) and the prop (e.g., cup). The experimenter encouraged the infant to imitate the target action by saying a generic phrase (e.g., “can you show me: blicks drink milk?”) or a non-generic phrase (e.g., “can you show me: this blick drinks milk”).

Key Results: At baseline, in both the generic (model match: M = 1.21; model mismatch: M = 1.50) and non-generic groups (model match: M = 2.75; model mismatch: M = 2.58), infants performed an equivalent amount of target actions with each exemplar. At generalization, infants in the non-generic group performed significantly more target actions with the model match (M = 5.79) compared to the model mismatch (M = 3.79), t = 2.42, p < .05. However, infants in the generic group performed an equivalent amount of target actions with the model match (M = 4.50) compared to the model mismatch (M = 4.54).

Conclusions: Infants were more likely to restrict their target action imitation to the model match exemplar after hearing a non-generic phrase. That is, infants effectively interpreted the non-generic sentence as implying a property that was attributed to the one category member, and was not generalizable to the category as a whole. In contrast, upon hearing a generic phrase, infants interpreted this sentence as indicating that the property was generalizable to the category and thus, performed similar numbers of actions on both test exemplars. This research is first to document two-year-olds’ ability to interpret generics for aiding in the acquisition of novel categories.

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background and Aims: In order to identify words, infants must discriminate fine-grained differences in speech sounds. Research has demonstrated that normal hearing infants are able to discriminate numerous phonetic contrasts. However, there is no published data indicating that infants are able to discriminate the fricatives /s/ and /∫/. In fact, Nittrouer (2001) found that infants who were able to discriminate vowels failed to consistently discriminate between /sa/ and /∫a/. The goals of the current study are two-fold: 1) to determine if infants could discriminate /sa/ from /∫a/ using a novel version of the Visual Habituation (VH) procedure that incorporates ideas from the classic oddity paradigm and the Stimulus Alternation Preference Procedure (Best & Jones, 1998); 2) to assess the test-retest reliability of this novel VH procedure.

Methods: 34 NH infants aged 6 to 12 months completed testing. Infants were seated on their caregivers’ lap in front of a TV monitor. Each trial consisted of an auditory stimulus accompanied by a checkerboard visual display. Infants were either habituated with repetitions of /sa/ or with repetitions of /∫a/. After looking times decreased to reach a habituation criterion, infants were presented with pseudo-randomized ordering of 10 trials of the old stimulus (either /sa/ or /∫a/) and 4 trials of a novel alternating stimulus (/∫a/-/sa/ or /sa/-/∫a/). Infants were then retested using the same procedure 1 to 10 days later, with either the same habituation and testing stimuli on both days or with one set on Day 1 (e.g. /sa/ & /∫a/-/sa/) and the other set on Day 2 (e.g., /∫a/ and /sa/-/∫a/)

Key Results: On the first day of testing, infants showed a statistically significant preference for the novel alternating stimulus over the old stimulus, t(33)= 2.212, p= 0.034. On Day 2, infants continued to prefer the novel stimulus if the same habituation and novelty stimuli were used, t(14)= 1.45, NS. Surprisingly, if the other set of stimuli were presented instead on the second day of testing, a significant reversal in preference was found with infants favoring the habituation stimulus over the novel stimulus, t(18)= -2.767, p= 0.013.

Conclusions: Results from this study provide evidence that infants are able to discriminate between /sa/ and /∫a/ using the novel VH paradigm. However, the inconsistency of these findings upon repeat testing warrants further investigation to determine possible effects of interval length, testing duration and memory on the test-retest reliability of this paradigm.