Ph.D. Theses
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Item Details in hand :|how does gesturing relate to autobiographical thinking?(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2022., 2022.) Acar, Naziye Güneş.; Tekcan, Ali. İ.Gestures and speech have different expressive capabilities. When narrating an autobiographical memory, gesturing may reduce the cognitive load of verbal reporting, gestures may function as externalized cues activating episodic details of the memory representation, or gestures might help the construction of event scenes experienced during the original event. Thus, gestures might have a mnemonic role in the retrieval of episodically and phenomenologically rich memories and this potential role might change as a function of age, reflecting the developmental differences in gesturing, memory, and related cognitive systems. Additionally, the use of gestural and verbal modalities, either separately or simultaneously, might vary with age and the episodicity of the information recalled. Using the cue-word technique, 35 children and 46 adults were asked to recall and verbally report six memories, then they rated the recalled memories on three phenomenological properties: visual imagery, spatial imagery, and reliving. Episodic, visuo-motoric and nonepisodic details of autobiographical memories and representational gestures produced during memory narration were coded from video-records. In adult memories, representational gesture production was associated with the recall of more episodic as well as visuo-motoric details, but not with the recall of non-episodic details. However, gesturing did not relate to the phenomenological experience of autobiographical memories via the number of details remembered. When narrating autobiographical events, adults preferred to use gestural and verbal modalities together, whereas children exclusively used the verbal modality. The modality preference of each group was more pronounced when reporting episodic details.Item Interrelationships between autobiographical memory specificity, executive functions and rumination in depression(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2018., 2018.) Kızılöz, Burcu Kaya.; Tekcan, Ali İ.Depression is associated with reduced specificity of autobiographical memories (Williams & Broadbent, 1986), a phenomenon defined as overgeneral memory. It has been suggested that rumination, impairments in executive functions and functional avoidance underlie OGM (Williams et al., 2007). The present study has three main goals: 1) to examine whether different executive functions are affected by depression differently 2) to clarify the nature of the relationship between rumination and executive functioning deficits and 3) to examine the effects of cue type on memory specificity in depression. To reach these aims, participants were divided into two groups according to their Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) scores as high (n = 45) and low (n = 51) BDI participants. They then completed the Ruminative Responses Scale and EF tasks for shifting, updating and inhibition and reported important and word-cued ABMs. Results showed that word-cued memories resulted in more OGMs than important memories for all participants, regardless of BDI scores. Only shifting predicted specificity of autobiographical memories for word-cued memories but not for important memories. Consistent with earlier claims, certain EF deficits were related to OGM for word-cued memories, but no evidence of a link between rumination and OGMs was found.Item Vicarious traumatization: an investigation of the effects of trauma work on mental health professionals in Turkey(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2014., 2014.) Altekin, Serap.; Yeniçeri, L. Nur.The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of trauma work on mental health professionals working in the trauma field in Turkey, as well as to identify protective factors and risk factors which predict vicarious traumatization. It was aimed to explore the probable association of demographic variables, level of education and special training on trauma, level of exposure to trauma work in terms of workload, caseload and experience years in the trauma field as well as the level of burnout in terms of emotional exhaustion, ways of coping in terms of active and passive coping styles, perceived social support and presence of a personal trauma history in predicting vicarious traumatization. The study was composed of an integrative methodological design; the data of the quantitative part was based on a sample of 260 mental health professionals, including, psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists and psychological counselors who work with trauma in Turkey, while the data of the qualitative part was composed of in depth interviews with 7 psychologists who work in trauma field in Ġstanbul, Turkey. The results of thequantitative analyses indicated that education level, profession, active coping style and emotional burnout were found as statistically significant predictors of vicarious traumatization. Especially, emotional burnout was found to be the most effective predictor. Emotional burnout fully mediated the relationship between caseload and vicarious traumatization. It was also found that the association between emotional burnout and vicarious traumatization was moderated by the coping style of the professionals. The results of the qualitative analyses supported these results, specifically indicating that workload, caseload and burnout were identified as risk factors for vicarious traumatization while education, training, support, active coping style and self-care as protective factors against vicarious traumatization; additionally and surprisingly, vicarious posttraumatic growth was also reported by the professionals who got use of these protective factors.Item Exploring shame as a relationally-conscious emotion(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2014., 2014.) Çağın, Özlem.; Müderrisoğlu, Serra.This study aimed at exploring shame by conceptualizing it as a relationally-conscious emotion. In a pilot study, prevalent shame-triggering themes among Turkish young people were identified and by using these themes as situational antecedents, a new scenario-based shame measure was constructed for the purposes of the study. In the main study, shame was examined in relation to expected reactions of other people in the shame-triggering contexts and to other emotions that might accompany shame. Participants consisted of 501 undergraduate students. In addition to the Shame Measure constructed for the study, The Guilt-Shame Measure, Interpersonal Sensitivity Measure, Interpersonal Problem Solving Inventory and Positive and Negative Affects Schedule were given to the participants to examine if there were individual differences in the responses. The results revealed that anxiety, tension and sadness accompanied shame in all situations except sexuality. In addition to these reactions, guilt and regret accompanied shame in moral transgressions and anger was seen together with shame in embarrassing public situations. A more pure shame was seen only in contexts associated with sexuality. In addition, specific reactions of others (e.g. contempt, disappointment) predicted the shame response depending on the nature of the context. Gender differences were observed with regard to sexuality and in the individual characteristics that significantly predicted the mean shame response. Overall, findings of the present study supported the theoretical perspectives that conceptualized shame as a relationally-conscious complex phenomenon with varying situational, affective and behavioral correlates.Item The structure and organization of collective memory representations(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2018., 2017.) Mutlutürk, Aysu.; Boduroğlu, Ayşecan.This dissertation investigates the structure and organization of collective memories. In three studies, we specifically explored the semantic relationships between the public event representations. In the first study, participants were asked to rate the similarity of different pairs of 15 public events (Tekcan et al., 2017). They were also asked to report for which political party they had voted in the most recent election. In the second study, by employing the same methodology, we assessed whether the structure and organization of collective memory representations remained stable across three waves of data collection: May 2016, November 2016, and August 2017. Using Multidimensional Scaling (MDS), we consistently found that people represented public events by distinguishing the events’ political and nonpolitical characteristics, and clustering the political events according to their specific attributes. Findings also suggest that voting behavior influenced how people perceived and interpreted public events while linking them to each other. Finally, despite a substantial stability in the organization of collective memories across three time points, there were changes in a particular group those of which members were closer to the governing political party. These findings suggest that collective memories may be associatively organized and that political identity may impact the organization of collective memories. In the third study, performance in identifying a public event was not facilitated when preceded by a related public event rather than an unrelated public event. We discussed this finding in relation to lessons learned from this experiment and suggestions for the future studies of collective memory.Item The bidirectional relationship between L1 and L2: Effects on event conceptualization and narrative discourse(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2017., 2017.) Erciyes, Aslı Aktan.; Tekcan, Ali İ.; Aksu-Koç, Ayhan.The present study intended to answer two major research questions: 1) Whether intense exposure to a second language (L2) affects first language (L1) narrative skills of 5- and 7-year old children, and 2) whether learning a second language that is typologically different from the first affects their motion event conceptualization patterns? These questions were investigated by comparing bilingual children with their monolingual peers in terms of their narrative performance and motion event description patterns. In addition, children’s executive functioning and vocabulary performance were assessed. One-hundred and twelve 5- and 7-year- monolingual (L1, Turkish) (N=61) and bilingual (L1, Turkish; L2, English) (N=51) children participated in the study. Results showed that development of L1 narrative skills of the bilingual groups advanced at a slower pace compared to monolinguals and that there is a monolingual advantage in certain aspects including narrative quality and linguistic complexity. Motion event conceptualization patterns in both elicited L1 narratives and event descriptions showed that there is an influence of learning L2-English which is typologically different than L1-Turkish. Investigations of L2 narratives and motion event descriptions suggested a bidirectional relationship between L1 and L2. The study also confirmed bilingual advantage on inhibition and cognitive flexibility components of executive functioning. Results inform us about the early interactions between L1 and L2 for motion event conceptualization and narrative discourse.Item Affect with other: self- and affect-discrepancy in personal and impersonal contexts(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2014., 2014.) Namer, Yudit.; Köksal, Falih.The study aimed at investigating the effects of the discrepancy between different types of self and between different types of affect across various personal/interpersonal and impersonal contexts on psychological symptomatology. For the purposes of this study, personal contexts were interactions with father, with mother and with best friend, and impersonal contexts were activities during entertainment, during rest and at school. This study employed the psychoanalytic theories of self-with-other and familial self, the cross-cultural theories of affect valuation and context-sensitive self and the social psychological theory of selfdiscrepancy, and attempted to arrive at a more integrated conceptualization of self and affect, that is, affect-with-other. The data were collected from 375 mostly undergraduate students, who completed modified versions of the Selves Questionnaire and the Affect Valuation Index for the contexts of father, mother, best friend, entertainment, rest and school to assess self- and affect-discrepancy across different contexts. The participants also completed the Expanding Self Scale to assess self-construal and the Brief Symptom Inventory to assess psychological symptomatology. Overall, the results revealed that ideal/actual self-discrepancy indicated psychological symptomatology but ought/actual self-discrepancy did not for the current sample. Expanding self indicated higher ideal/actual and ought/actual discrepancy with father and lower ideal/actual and ought/actual discrepancy with mother. In terms of affect discrepancy, low ideal/actual high arousal negative affectdiscrepancy with father indicated higher symptomatology whereas high ideal/actual high arousal negative affect-discrepancy with best friend indicated higher symptomatology, suggesting that the relationship with best friend might serve a compensatory function. Findings regarding self- and affect-discrepancies at school suggested that for the current sample, school is a personal rather than impersonal context. Structural equation models for self-discrepancy and affect-discrepancy indicated that the proposed modes fit the current data, providing support for the conceptualizations of affect-discrepancy and affect-with-other.Item Contemporary conceptualizations of defense: a relational perspective(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2014., 2014.) Çavdar, Alev.; Müderrisoğlu, Serra.This study aimed at systematically studying defenses from a relational perspective. Recent advances in psychoanalytic theory emphasized the role of relationship in defining basic psychoanalytic concepts. The notion of defense has been conceptualized as an interpersonal process that is co-constructed in the relationship. Based on these theoretical suggestions, this study investigated the aspects of defense that could be re-defined as including the relationship, and the trigger and outcome of defensiveness within the relational context. The psychoanalyst-patient relationship was identified as the setting of observation in this study, since it is affectively intense, isolated and natural. Regarding the first aim of this study, which is to re-define defensiveness, it was expected that the defensive instances of the patient’s discourse and the processes by which the patient defended herself could be identified reliably. Further, it was proposed that these definitions would offer a wider conceptualization than the classical defense mechanisms. The second aim of the study that is the investigation of how defensiveness unfolds in the interaction, expected particular features of the analyst’s interventions and patient’s defensiveness to mutually influence each other. The data of the study was ten fully transcribed sessions from a psychoanalysis. The transcripts were evaluated by three raters on several aspects of defensiveness that were identified by two pilot studies: Here-and-Now Defensiveness, Affect/State that is defended against, Defensive Effort, Primary Aim, and Expected Relational Outcome for the patient; Type, Relational Quality and Linguistic features for the analyst’s interventions. Overall, the results indicated that for the patient in this study, the wider definition of the defense notion that emphasizes the defensive function and the Defensive Effort categorization offered a more reliable and extensive understanding, as compared to the classical mechanisms. The interactive regulatory purpose of the defensive effort was found to be a differentiating characteristic of defensive efforts. In addition, the examination of the interaction between the patient and the analyst in this data, revealed that the type, relational quality and word count of the interventions were associated with different aspects of defensiveness. The theoretical contributions of Relational/Intersubjective perspectives were supported.