Fatima Burney, ‘10

Public officials - from the US, UK, and Pakistan - often claim that religious schools (madaris) in Pakistan promote the conviction that violence is necessary to address social or political injustices. This study, supported by the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation, aims to gauge whether students in different educational systems report different views about injustice and justifications for violence.
There are three educational systems in Pakistan each with its own exams and degrees: National, Cambridge-Oxford, and Darsi Nizam. While there is a clear distinction between these three curricula, there is no such distinction between government and non-government and religious and non-religious. That is, government schools provide Islamic education just as religious political parties run Cambridge-Oxford schools.
In the summer of 2005, 192 students in Karachi (Pakistan) took part in a survey designed and conducted by Professor Candland. The survey consisted of 80, largely open-ended questions about injustice and justification for violence. The bulk of work on this project is translation of answers from Urdu to English and categorization of these answers in ways that will be most meaningful for analysis.
Preliminary findings (the first 100 of 192 questionnaires) from our study indicate that students from governmental and non-governmental schools are as likely to advocate violence to address a perceived injustice as madaris students. As important, students from each of the three educational systems define and perceive injustice in markedly similar terms. Students from each of the educational systems define justice in right-based terms and focus on the lack of economic and social opportunities. Students do express anxieties and concerns about the intentions of the United States government toward Pakistan, but not with any greater frequency in any education system. These findings, if they hold up, are important for educational reform in Pakistan.

Advisor: Professor Christopher Candland, Political Science
Funded by the Office of the Dean of the College

ADOLESCENT RELATIONSHIPS AND SOCIALLY INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGIES

Kate Bachman, ‘08

Although romantic relationships play a central role in the social and emotional development of American adolescents (Connolly & Goldberg, 1999), these relationships remain understudied in Western culture (Brown, Feirin, & Furman, 1999). Within the last ten years, adolescents have started to employ various forms of Socially Interactive Technologies (SITs) to enhance communication among their friends and romantic partners (Grinter & Eldridge, 2001, 2003, in Bryant, Sanders-Jackson & Smallwood, 2006). The purpose of our research is to explore how adolescents use SITs to participate in romantic relationships. Ultimately, we are interested in knowing the extent to which the use of SITs is redefining how adolescents form, maintain, and repair (or exit from) their romantic relationships.

In the fall of 2007 we will be conducting a self-report survey at a local high school to further understand how adolescents typically use technology to communicate with their romantic partner and monitor the status of that relationship. In addition, we seek to understand how adolescents use SITs to portray an ideal image of their romantic relationship to others on websites such as Facebook or MySpace. A key task this summer has been to design the study questionnaire aiming to gather data on the psychological and relational characteristics of survey participants. The survey also contains an extensive assessment of each participant’s use of socially interactive technologies.

With this questionnaire we hope to answer questions pertaining to how adolescents use SITs to manage information about their romantic relationship to promote favorable impressions. We also hope to measure how adolescents communicate with their romantic partners using SITs and how often they do so. Finally, we will measure the relationship variables that correlate with high levels of SITs usage for both communication and relationship impression management.

Advisor: Professor Nancy Genero, Psychology
Funded by the Office of the Dean of the College

References:

Brown, B. B., Feiring, C., & Furman, W. (1999). Missing the love boat: Why researchers have shied away from adolescent romance. In Brown, B. B., Feiring, C., & Furman, W. (Eds.), The development of romantic relationships in adolescence (pp. 1-16). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bryant, J. A., Sanders-Jackson, A., & Smallwood, A. M. K. (2006). IMing, text messaging, and adolescent social networks. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), 10.

Connolly, J., & Goldberg, A. (1999). Romantic relationships in adolescence: The role of friends and peers in their emergence and development. In Brown, B. B., Feiring, C., & Furman, W. (Eds.), The development of romantic relationships in adolescence (pp. 1-16). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

WELLESLEY CLASS OF 2007: WORK AND FAMILY EXPECTATIONS

Shavanna Calder, ‘08

Wellesley Women: Women who will make a difference in the world. However, many of these women are wondering how they’ll be able to make a difference as they attempt to balance both their work and family lives. At the end of spring semester 2007 a survey was constructed in order to get a better understanding of how Wellesley women felt about these issues at the time of graduation. By mid-summer we were able to retrieve responses from a sample of 204 members from the class of 2007. When did they want to have their first child? Did they even want children? How did they feel about being a stay-at-home mom? What is their work/family balance ideal and what could possibly interfere with achieving this ideal? A follow up survey will be given right before the class of 2007’s fifth reunion in order to see how their expectations (if any) have materialized.

Advisor: Professor Rosanna Hertz, Women’s Studies and Sociology
Funded by the Office of the Dean of the College

THE PRESSURE TO CHOOSE:
INFORMAL MAJOR DECLARATION AND THE LIBERAL ARTS EXPERIENCE

Claire Droste, ‘10

Do first-year students feel pressure to choose a major early in their college careers, and to what extent do their high school experiences influence the possible majors they consider? Using data from a panel study of the Wellesley Class of 2010, I explored the process of how new students declare an academic major. Drawing on a web-survey administered to 36 Wellesley students from the Class of 2010 in August 2006 and on interviews with these students in September 2006 and February 2007, I arrived at four major conclusions. First, students feel a strong pressure to informally declare an academic major upon entrance to college. Second, the area in which these students choose to major is greatly influenced by their high school experiences. Third, the process of informal declaration in a certain discipline has a direct impact on college course selection, thereby reducing the extent of academic exploration. Finally, although many students lack the knowledge and experience to make important academic decisions, they seldom seek assistance from first-year advisors. Based on these conclusions, it seems a number of institutional practices surrounding the choice of an academic major should be addressed.

Advisor: Professor Lee Cuba, Sociology
Funded by the Office of the Dean of the College

DO CAMPAIGNS MATTER?:
CHANGES IN VOTER PERCEPTION IN THE 1996 GENERAL ELECTION.

Blair Edwards, ‘08

What effect do Presidential campaigns have on voter opinions? Do Americans come to feel more positively or more negatively toward the nominees over the course of the campaign? Do voters focus predominantly on issues or the candidates’ personal characteristics in forming their opinion? Does the constantly increasing media coverage make voters more secure in their support for a particular candidate as Election Day approaches, or does the campaign actually complicate this decision by providing such an abundance of (sometimes conflicting) information? Using the 1996 general election as a case study, this project analyzes voter responses (both qualitatively and quantitatively) to understand how the campaign affects voter perceptions and opinions, and how these notions change over time. The initial research and data compilation was conducted as part of a larger project, which occurred in 5 “waves” from June to October, 1996. A randomly-selected subset of the 740 respondents who participated in all 5 waves was further analyzed for this project so we could best track and analyze the changes over time. The results have implications and applicability to the ongoing 2008 campaign and the intersection of American politics and mass media more broadly.

Advisor: Professor Marion Just, Political Science
Funded by the Office of the Dean of the College

REPRESENTATIONS OF FATHERHOOD IN PARENTS MAGAZINE: 1929-2001

Sanja Jagesic, ‘08

The concept of fatherhood and the roles that society has associated with fathers have undergone considerable changes in the 20th century. Today, the popular notion is that fathers are increasingly more involved in child-rearing activities than they have been in the early- to mid-1900s. In this study, I collected 180 childrearing articles form Parents magazine (1929-2001) in order to investigate how the involvement of fathers has been described and depicted throughout the past eight decades. The content and picture analysis of these articles reveals that since the 1960s, the number of articles on fathers has steadily decreased. Furthermore, the depictions of men with children have also decreased when compared to the number of pictures showing women with children. Thus, men as “fathers” are in many ways disappearing from current child-rearing advice literature, despite the fact that the dominant notion is that men are more involved in child-rearing now than they have been in the past. These results raise some interesting questions about the current state of father’s involvement in child-rearing as well as the validity of the portrayal of family in Parents magazine.

Advisor: Professor Markella B. Rutherford, Sociology Department
Funded by the Office of the Dean of the College

SPATIAL LANGUAGE AND SPATIAL COGNITION IN LEARNERS OF EMERGING AND ESTABLISHED SIGN LANGUAGE

Annemarie Kocab, ‘10

Previous studies with children have demonstrated a relationship between children’s acquisition of spatial terms such as “left” and “right” and their developing spatial cognition. But the nature of this relationship remains unclear. Is language merely a facilitator of or is it a necessary prerequisite for adult-like spatial cognition? Learners of an emerging sign language in Nicaragua present a rare opportunity to study the nature of the relationship between language and cognition. In this unique linguistic community, children, not adults, are the ones contributing to the rapid change in the language. Importantly, the adults never acquire the new complexities of the language. Thus, the language of the younger signers (second cohort) is more complex and consistent than that of the older signers (first cohort). This creates a community where older signers have more world experience, but less language skills, than the younger members of the community. This provides a unique natural experiment to examine the nature of the relationship between spatial language and spatial cognition. Previous research has documented that the first cohort do not linguistically distinguish left from right, while the second cohort systematically mark left/right relationships. If spatial language is a necessary prerequisite for spatial cognition, then we may see delays in the first-cohort signers. Alternatively, if language just facilitates the early development of spatial cognition, we may find that the first cohort signers’ experiences in the world are sufficient for them to develop a mature understanding of space.

The purpose of this study was to see if the mental rotation skills of the Deaf Nicaraguan signers were affected by their language skills. We examined 7 first-cohort signers, 10 second-cohort signers, and a comparison group of 11 American Sign Language (ASL) signers. The results showed that the second-cohort outperformed the first cohort on a mental rotation task, and performance on this task was correlated with consistent use of spatial language. Further, the mental rotation skills of the second-cohort signers did not significantly differ from ASL signers. The results support the importance of language as a necessary prerequisite to mature spatial cognition.

Advisor: Professor Jennie E. Pyers, Psychology
Funded by the Office of the Dean of the College

References:
Kegl, J., Senghas, A., & Coppola, M. (1999). Creation through contact: Sign language emergence
and sign language change in Nicaragua. In M. DeGraff (ed), Language Creation and Language Change: Creolization, Diachrony, and Development. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 179-237.
Pyers, J., Shusterman, A., Senghas, A., Emmorey, K., & Spelke, E. (2007). Does spatial
language guide spatial representation? Evidence from Nicaraguan Sign Language. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Boston, MA.
Senghas, A., & Coppola, M. (2001). Children creating language: How Nicaraguan Sign Language
acquired a spatial grammar. Psychological Science, 12(4), 323-328.
Senghas, A., Kita, S., & Ozyurek, A. (2004). Children’s creation of core properties of language.
Science, 305, 1779-1782.
Senghas, A. (2001). The emergence of grammatical devices for indicating location and
orientation in Nicaraguan Sign Language. Delivered at the Twenty-sixth Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD26), November, 2001.
Shusterman, A. & Spelke, E. (2005). Language and the development of spatial reasoning. In P.
Carruthers, S. Laurence, and S. Stich (eds.), The Structure of the Innate Mind. Oxford University Press.

GAY AND LESBIAN HOUSEHOLDS:
THE FIRST LOOK AT THE HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHICS OF SAME-SEX COHABITATION, 1850-2000

Surita Patel, ‘09

The 1990 U.S. Census provided the first national estimates of same-sex households by including a question for unmarried partnership. Since then, numerous studies have used the 1990 and 2000 Census data to characterize the gay and lesbian coupled population, raising questions of how it developed with respect to economic and demographic forces. However, exploring the historical demography and growth of this group has been hindered by a lack of data. We construct a measure to identify two unrelated adult same-sex households in the 1850 through 2000 Censuses. To better characterize which of these households were most likely to be romantically linked, we compare demographic, economic and regional characteristics of these households with different-sex cohabiting, married, and all two-adult households. We find that same-sex households had wider age disparities between members than other households, were more likely to both be employed, and were most common in urban areas and the West. Overall, same-sex households were statistically most similar to different-sex cohabiters, a feature that holds in the present. This information will be used in future research to weight which same-sex households are most likely to be romantically tied, thus creating a more refined sample. We will use this sample to explore theories of the historical locations of same-sex populations, such as the growth in San Francisco and New York gay male populations due to these cities’ status as World War II veteran discharge ports.

Advisor: Professor Stacy E. Sneeringer, Economics
Funded by the Office of the Dean of the College

EXPECTATION AND REALITY IN THE FIRST YEAR OF COLLEGE

Johanna Peace, ‘09

What do incoming first-year students expect college to be like? Where do these expectations come from? Do the realities of college life align with students’ expectations? And how do met or unmet expectations affect a student’s adjustment to college? Using data from a multi-institutional, longitudinal study of student learning, adjustment, and decision-making during the first year of college and beyond, this study examined entering students’ academic, social, and personal expectations of college. The data for this study consisted of interview transcripts from a race-stratified sample of 36 students in the Wellesley College class of 2010. Transcripts were drawn from two rounds of interviews conducted in September 2006 (Round 1) and February 2007 (Round 2). Using qualitative data analysis software, the interviews were coded for expectations, expectation sources, and expectation fulfillment. Students experienced the most disappointment due to unmet expectations in the social sphere of college; however, academic and personal adjustment to college was generally less troublesome than students had feared. In addition, Round 1 interviews were markedly more optimistic than Round 2 interviews in nearly every expectation area, indicating that most students experience an intense period of adjustment to the realities of college life during the first semester.

Advisor: Professor Lee Cuba, Sociology
Funded by the Office of the Dean of the College

YOUTH LEADERSHIP TRAINING PROGRAMS

Shabnam Sharbatoghlie, ‘08

It is estimated that more than a half million high school students participate in youth leadership training programs each year, yet little is known about these programs or what they aim to accomplish. This study seeks to better understand how youth leadership training programs are developed and implemented. The study takes an in-depth look at 15 different youth leadership training programs from around the country in order to determine which definition of leadership these programs are employing, what the mission of these specific programs are, how their curriculums are structured, who these 15 programs are targeting, and what evidence exists to support that these programs are creating youth leaders.

Advisor: Professor Sumru Erkut, Wellesley Centers for Women
Funded by the Office of the Dean of the College

REINVENTING GOD AND CREATING CITIZENS:
RELIGION AND POLITICAL AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AMONG THE CHIDREN OF IMMIGRANTS IN THE UNITED STATES

Hannah Sholder, ‘09

America’s religious landscape has long been dominated by Protestant values and moralism. Since 1965, however, when changes in immigration laws increased dramatically the numbers of people arriving from Asia and Latin America, immigrants have begun to introduce new religions to the United States and reinvent old ones. It is the children of these immigrants who will ultimately determine the face of their religions in America. The second generation youth, born in America but raised in ethnic households, may change what it means to be a religious American, and how one should act on their faith.

This summer our research team has been developing and piloting an interview schedule and survey questionnaire designed to find out more about the religious and cultural experiences of the second generation, and how these experiences have shaped their religious, ethnic and national identities. We have conducted interviews with second generation Indian-Americans attending Boston-area universities, asking them questions about when they began exploring and forming their ethnic and/or religious identities, and how they balance these identities with their American identity. In addition, we are exploring the ways in which their different identities influence their political attitudes and engagement, social lives, academic work, and civic participation.

Advisors: Professor Peggy Levitt and Professor Joe Swingle, Sociology
Funded by the Office of the Dean of the College

BEHAVIORAL STUDIES OF THE PERCEPTION OF NON-NATIVE SPEECH SOUNDS

Emily Cibelli '09 and Hayley Sutherland '09

Click here for abstract in PDF format

AN fMRI STUDY OF THE PERCEPTION OF ZULU SPEECH SOUNDS BY ENGLISH SPEAKING LISTENERS

Hayley Sutherland '09 and Emily Cibelli '09

Click here for abstract in PDF format