Research master thesis | Asian Studies (research) (MA)
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This thesis analyses the development of Ryukyuan narratives of political legitimacy under the influence of the imperial Chinese tributary system. For centuries, the Ryukyu Kingdom, which was...Show moreThis thesis analyses the development of Ryukyuan narratives of political legitimacy under the influence of the imperial Chinese tributary system. For centuries, the Ryukyu Kingdom, which was annexed by Meiji Period Japan in 1879 and is today divided among Japan's Okinawa and Kagoshima Prefectures, formed an important linking bridge between China and Japan, East Asia's two dominant political entities. Based on a close reading and partial translation of relevant passages from several historical documents, most notably the kingdom's two official histories Chūzan Seikan and Chūzan Seifu, the thesis investigates the socio-political shift in succeeding conceptualisations of Ryukyuan kingship, the monarch's political legitimacy, and the country's state doctrine that occurred from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Show less
By addressing the theory associated with studying nationalism from below, and approaching the case study of the German occupation of the Netherlands during WWII, this thesis expands the...Show moreBy addressing the theory associated with studying nationalism from below, and approaching the case study of the German occupation of the Netherlands during WWII, this thesis expands the methodological toolbox with which to approach the evidence problem associated with historical research on nationalism from below. By taking the Stimmungsberichte (mood reports) written by the Wehrmacht, as ledgers of everyday actions performed by the silent majority of the Dutch population, this thesis assesses the fluctuation of nationalistic sentiment in terms of the commonly used repertoires of contention. This leads to a more dynamic perception of nationalism in the Netherlands during this unique time in the history of the nation-state.Show less
Research master thesis | Developmental Psychopathology in Education and Child Studies (research) (MSc)
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Individual differences in behavior are best explained through a multisystem approach by integrating neurobiological, neurocognitive, and social environmental factors. This longitudinal study...Show moreIndividual differences in behavior are best explained through a multisystem approach by integrating neurobiological, neurocognitive, and social environmental factors. This longitudinal study examined whether early physical aggression could be predicted by stress regulation, inhibitory control, risk background, and sex. In addition, this study is among the first to investigate whether the four stress response patterns of the Adaptive Calibration Model (Del Giudice et al., 2011) could be generalized to 12-month-old children by studying: autonomic nervous system (ANS), sympathetic nervous system (SNS), parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), and hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis. ANS was indexed by heart rate, SNS by salivary alpha-amylase and pre-ejection period, PNS by respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and HPA axis by salivary cortisol. The sample consisted of 214 mother-child dyads (116 boys) with an equal number of high- and low-risk backgrounds. Physical aggression was assessed through maternal reports at 12, 20, and 30 months of age. At 12 months, children performed an inhibitory control task and the fear task (robot paradigm) was used to measure baseline, response, and recovery levels of the stress systems. Latent profile analysis revealed three profiles: (1) ANS Responders, (2) Moderate Arousal, and (3) Hormonal Responders. No significant differences were found between the profiles with regard to inhibitory control, average age of mother and child, number of boys and girls, and number of high- and low-risk children. Results showed that higher physical aggression scores were associated at 12 months with ANS Responders and lower inhibitory control, at 20 months with Hormonal Responders, boys and high-risk, and at 30 months with boys and high-risk. In addition, an interaction effect was found at 20 months: higher inhibitory control in girls was associated with lower physical aggression scores, but not in the Hormonal Responders. The discussion highlights the importance of using a multisystem approach to explain individual differences in early physical aggression.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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This thesis explores how composting can be a fruitful practice and concept in contemporary art. Current artistic practices resonate with the planetary problems that arise when people tend to feel...Show moreThis thesis explores how composting can be a fruitful practice and concept in contemporary art. Current artistic practices resonate with the planetary problems that arise when people tend to feel disconnected from soil. There is an increasing awareness that soil is not merely dirt but is in fact essential for human and other life forms on Earth; still, the understanding of soil as a resource prevails. Composting is one way to counter soil-exhausting systems, such as industrial agriculture, and work towards a soil-nourishing approach since composting is the transformative decomposition of organic waste into nutrient-rich humus. Composting offers a means of caring for and relating to soil instead of disconnecting from it. Material and speculative facets of composting can be observed in art and enable to expand and review the agricultural practice and understanding of composting. The material and speculative qualities of artworks can urge a reconsideration of human relations with earth, soil and our planet, by making them sensible and imaginable. Therefore, the question that guides this thesis is as follows: how can we humans re-imagine our relationships with earth through material and speculative forms of composting in contemporary art? Composting entails a web of interdependent relations between humans and many non-human actors, such as microorganisms and the environment. In her book Staying with the Trouble (2016), the feminist biologist and philosopher Donna Haraway engages with this idea of composting in a metaphorical way to imagine the world as one big compost pile. Hence, it is in this composting world that humans must learn other ways to be part of planet Earth’s web of relations. The material aspects of composting in art are examined primarily on the basis of the exhibition M for Membrane (2020) by the artist TJ Shin at the Wave Hill Public Garden & Cultural Center in New York City. The speculative possibilities of composting are mainly investigated through the artwork Untilled (2012) by the artist Pierre Huyghe at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany. In dialogue with complementary theories, the analyses of contemporary artworks aim to develop ways to replenish Haraway’s concept of composting and substantiate the idea that art can be fertile soil for a flourishing world: art as humus.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Rules regulate society as they help to predict social interactions. Groups, however, do not always abide by rules. Instead, they break them when the conditions are right. Here we hypothesized that...Show moreRules regulate society as they help to predict social interactions. Groups, however, do not always abide by rules. Instead, they break them when the conditions are right. Here we hypothesized that rule abidance behavior is determined by a) an individual choosing another for mutual benefit based on their reputation and b) the social-environmental incentives like fairness and dishonesty. We had three participants building a reputation for their willingness to abide by or break rules. A fourth participant used that information to choose one to three participants, then played several rounds of a dictator game and a die-roll task. Participants were chosen more often when their reputation was in line with environmental incentives, where merely transitioning from one environment to another strengthened that effect. Regulators should therefore ensure the consistency and kinds of environmental incentives that individuals in power positions face across environments for controlling resulting rule abidance behavior.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Previous research investigating the factors that shape a person’s degree of intergroup prejudice has focused primarily on relatively high level ideological and personality traits. In a largely...Show morePrevious research investigating the factors that shape a person’s degree of intergroup prejudice has focused primarily on relatively high level ideological and personality traits. In a largely separate body of work, psychophysiological predispositions towards threat sensitivity have been linked to ideological constructs. The current work integrates these two bodies of work by introducing a novel approach to measure implicit threat sensitivity and (theoretically) linking it to intergroup prejudice. Specifically, it was investigated whether individual differences in cognitively assessed sensitivity to threatening information were associated with a greater degree of implicit bias and explicit prejudice towards a stereotypically threatening minority-group (i.e., Muslims). While results did not support a relationship between threat sensitivity and intergroup prejudice, exploratory data, as well as limitations and implications of the current work, encourage future research.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Background: Theoretical models propose that parenting practices play a role in the development and maintenance of child depression. However, previous meta-analytic findings indicated that parenting...Show moreBackground: Theoretical models propose that parenting practices play a role in the development and maintenance of child depression. However, previous meta-analytic findings indicated that parenting accounted for only 5-11% of the variance in childhood depression, with varying effects for different types of parenting behaviors. Research Question: The current study aimed to investigate the association between observed negative/positive parenting behavior, childhood depression, and child gender, while controlling for the confounding effects of type of informant and assessment approach for childhood depression. Method: Two meta-analysis were conducted for the negative parenting – childhood depression and positive parenting – childhood depression association, while including moderating and confounding variables. The current study included thirty articles in total, with nineteen examining negative parenting behaviors and twenty-three examining positive parenting behaviors. Results: Observed negative parenting behavior was positively and observed positive parenting behavior was negatively related to childhood depression, with overall small effect sizes. Type of parenting behavior, child gender, and assessment approach for childhood depression did not moderate the associations. Type of informant for childhood depression explained some variance in the positive parenting – childhood depression association. Conclusions: Parenting interventions for childhood depression might aim to improve a broader range of parental behaviors. Future research is advised to compare actual to perceived parenting behaviors and investigate the direction of the parenting – childhood depression association, while adopting a multiple levels of analysis perspective. This could possibly contribute towards developing most effective personalized interventions for childhood depression, while lowering the high burden of depression.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Having an extra sex chromosome is known as sex chromosome trisomy (SCT). This may result in 47,XXY, 47,XXX, or 47,XYY. Previous research suggested that social attention to the eyes is reduced in ...Show moreHaving an extra sex chromosome is known as sex chromosome trisomy (SCT). This may result in 47,XXY, 47,XXX, or 47,XYY. Previous research suggested that social attention to the eyes is reduced in (young) adults with SCT and that individuals with SCT have more autistic characteristics compared to typically developing (TD) controls. It was unknown whether the group differences were also present in early childhood. The current study aimed to explore social attention, autistic traits, and their relation in three subgroups of children with SCT (47,XXY, 47,XXX, and 47,XYY; N = 70), aged 3 to 7 years, in comparison to TD peers (N = 62). Social attention to the eyes was measured using three eye-tracking video paradigms: A single-face condition, a multiple-face condition and a social interaction condition. Autistic traits were measured using the Social Responsiveness Scale-Second Edition. Results showed a difference in social attention between children with SCT and TD children during the social interaction condition. There was no difference in social attention between the SCT subgroups. The SCT group showed more autistic traits than the TD group and the 47,XXX subgroup had more autistic traits than the 47,XXY subgroup. There was a significant relation between social attention during the single-face condition and autistic traits in the 47,XYY subgroup only. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the importance of monitoring socio-cognitive challenges related to SCT in early childhood.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Social anxiety in non-western children and adolescents has not been well studied in the Netherlands, so the purpose of this study was to investigate social anxiety in this group. This study tested...Show moreSocial anxiety in non-western children and adolescents has not been well studied in the Netherlands, so the purpose of this study was to investigate social anxiety in this group. This study tested whether a high score on perceived discrimination is associated with a high score on social anxiety, whether there are gender differences in the non-western group in social anxiety and whether loneliness strengthens the relationship between perceived discrimination and social anxiety. Three classes from three different schools participated, there was a total of 22 participants. To test the hypotheses, the Social Anxiety Scale for Children (SASC-A), Adolescent Discrimination Distress Index (ADDI) and the Asher Loneliness Scale (ALS) have been used as measurements. The results show that there was only a significant difference in gender in social anxiety, girls scored higher in social anxiety than boys. However, this should be interpreted carefully. The other hypotheses were all not significant. Due to the sample size the reliability and validity of this study was not great, so the results are not a good reflection. It is advised to perform this study in a bigger sample size since this is an important matter to the non-western community.Show less
Research master thesis | Latin American Studies (research) (MA)
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¿Los libros hacen los pueblos? Desde el principio del siglo XX, diversos autores mapuches han producido un levantamiento literario debido al hueco que existe entre la historia enseñada en la...Show more¿Los libros hacen los pueblos? Desde el principio del siglo XX, diversos autores mapuches han producido un levantamiento literario debido al hueco que existe entre la historia enseñada en la escuela sobre tal pueblo y la tradición oral producido en el entorno familiar mapuche. La relación conflictiva entre el estado chileno y los mapuches y la lógica eurocentrista dentro del cual está producido el entorno escolar en Chile han causado que el currículo nacional chileno refleja narrativas históricas hegemónicas. Incluso son identificados como una colonización interna. Como respuesta, hay escritores que han tomado la autonomía para reescribir el pasado desde la perspectiva del pueblo originario. Este estudio explora cómo influye la elaboración de una perspectiva propia de la historia en la construcción de la identidad mapuche en base de dos objetivos. Por un lado, analiza la evolución identitaria e histórica del pueblo mapuche en los manuales escolares de historia desde el inicio de la república al principio del siglo XIX hasta las últimas reformas educacionales en el año 2009. Por otro lado, pone en diálogo el currículo nacional con los libros de historia escritos por autores mapuches: Recado confidencial a los chilenos (1999) de Elicura Chihuailaf, ¡…Escucha Wink…! Cuatro ensayos sobre la Historia Nacional Mapuche y un Epílogo sobre el futuro (2007) de Pablo Marimán et al. y Historia Secreta Mapuche (2017) por Pedro Cayuqueo. De aquí se ha evaluado que estamos frente a una posible narrativa decolonial en cuanto a la historia mapuche, lo cual conlleva un nuevo discurso identitario para el pueblo mapuche.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
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In order to formally explain consonant-tone interactions in Element Theory, it has been assumed for many years that tone can be represented on the segmental tier with the elements |H| and |L|....Show moreIn order to formally explain consonant-tone interactions in Element Theory, it has been assumed for many years that tone can be represented on the segmental tier with the elements |H| and |L|. However, this assumption has never been fully developed within Element Theory. When one attempts to represent complex tonal inventories, it immediately becomes apparent that there are fundamental representational issues. For example, it is unclear how to generate more than two tonal contrasts or how to represent contour tones on short vowels. In this thesis, I consider how these issues could be solved while maintaining Element Theory’s central principles. The two most crucial ideas developed in this thesis are that tone needs to be represented by unheaded elements and that information on the tonal tier is visible during phonetic implementation. With these assumptions, |H| and |L| can freely appear within the same elemental expression and tones do not necessarily need to be specified at the segmental level. The result is a flexible representational system for tone with a restricted but sufficient generative capacity.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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2022-08-31T00:00:00Z
How can you conceptualise a multi-layered and chronologically dense case study in its entirety without losing focus on the parts, and vice versa? This methodological problem lies at the heart of...Show moreHow can you conceptualise a multi-layered and chronologically dense case study in its entirety without losing focus on the parts, and vice versa? This methodological problem lies at the heart of this thesis, in which the seventeenth-century Roman church of Domine Quo Vadis will be used as a case study. Using a palimpsestic framework, this thesis sets out to explore the historical and material dimensions of the Domine Quo Vadis while also acknowledging its status as a mediator of the divine.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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The optimal strategy in a semantic verbal fluency (SVF) task is to focus on one semantic subcategory at a time and adaptively switch from one subcategory to another. This task has therefore been...Show moreThe optimal strategy in a semantic verbal fluency (SVF) task is to focus on one semantic subcategory at a time and adaptively switch from one subcategory to another. This task has therefore been used as a measure of self-directed executive functioning. Previous studies have found that SVF performance improves through childhood and adolescence. This developmentalimprovement has been observed both in the total number of words produced during the task and in switching between subcategories. The present online study tested the hypothesis that the agerelated improvement in SVF performance is partly driven by an improved ability to select between competing word representations. The study included three age groups: 8–10-year-olds (n=26), 12–14-year-olds (n=17), and young adults (n=31). The semantic blocking effect in the blocked cycling naming task was used as a measure of selection abilities. Measures of vocabulary and general processing speed were included as control variables. Age-related differences in SVF performance were only partly replicated: there were signs of age-related differences in the total word count but not in switching. The semantic blocking effect was replicated across age groups. However, there were no signs of age-related differences in the magnitude of this effect, suggesting that word selection abilities did not differ between age groups. Moreover, the magnitude of the semantic blocking effect did not predict SVF performance. Thus, although further research is needed, the present study does not support the hypothesis that the age-related improvement in SVF would be driven by an improvement in selection abilities.Show less