An Inclusive Future:

Creating Interest, Diversity and Inclusion in Archaeology through Children’s Literature

In the wake of major social justice movements such as the Dakota Access Pipeline, LGBTQ rights and the Black Lives Matter movement, the topics of inequality and diversity have become major talking points across the globe. In response, universities and colleges have made a call for representation by black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) faculty, staff and students. In the field of anthropology and archaeology the need is obvious. Sara Gonzalez, Curator of Archaeology at the Burke Museum explains, “…in educating the next generation we have an opportunity to create a new future for ourselves.”

How do we garner interest within these fields and, create new futures while creating a landscape of inclusion for BIPOC students? A passion for learning and engaging with cultures at a young age is not only beneficial for learning in general but it also allows children to dream of their futures and, explore their own potential. Finding commonality with the subject is vital for this connection to occur. For many, the term archaeology stirs images of Indiana Jones, King Tut, and Mayan temples, but for those in the BIPOC community there is little connection aside from grave robbing and historic erasure, making it difficult for them to participate in the profession.

Approaching the topic at an early age by introducing children to basic anthropological vocabulary, theory, and methods as through the lens of a BIPOC professional could become a means of connection for future archaeologists and anthropologists. By allowing children to discover and explore this field through literature and media, could potentially cultivate new professionals and scholars as well as extend an invitation to those not represented in mainstream media as archaeologists and anthropologists.

The goal of this project is to create a children’s book of archaeology and anthropology. The book will be written from the focal point of a BIPOC professional exploring cultures and engaging with the people in the culture. The aim is to incorporate basic concepts of culture, kinship, ethnicity, and society through both written word and artwork. Both the BIPOC anthropologist and the cultural group of focus will engage in dialogue to seek out commonality, understanding, and inclusion.

Culpability for one’s actions arguably hinges on their intentions: A negative outcome is judged more harshly when done purposely versus accidentally (Zelazo, Helwig, & Lau, 1996). However, do children similarly apply this rule to a robot? And is this affected by their propensity to anthropomorphize? To investigate these questions, we tested 3- and 5-year-olds’ inferences of intentions and culpability of two agents (human and robot) and whether their judgments were influenced by their general tendency to anthropomorphize.

Participants (current N=63; 46% female) in two age groups (3 years: n=32, M=3.60 years, SD=.58; 5 years: n=31, M=5.55 years, SD=.33) were randomly assigned to condition: human, robot (socially contingent or non-contingent), or control. In the Dumbbell Task (Meltzoff, 1995), participants observed a video of either a human or robot (socially-contingent or non-contingent) attempting to pull apart a wooden dumbbell (i.e., intended-but-failed action). The participant was then given the dumbbell. If children understood the agent as intentional (i.e., the agent was trying to pull the dumbbell apart), they should complete the intended-but-failed action (pull dumbbell apart). Children who observed the robot or human agent’s intended-but-failed action were significantly more likely to pull the dumbbell apart than controls who did not observe the intended-but-failed action (psp=.55), gender (p=.83), or robot or human conditions (ps>.86).

In the Tower Task, participants viewed a video of the human or robot observing a person building a block tower, after which the human or robot agent knocked over the tower in a manner that could be construed as accidental or intentional. Participants judged the agent’s action in terms of acceptability, punishment, and intentionality (‘on accident’ or ‘on purpose’). ‘Culpability scores’ were calculated as the difference between acceptability and punishment judgments (higher culpability scores indicated lower acceptability and deserving greater punishment). Children who thought the agent intentionally (versus accidentally) knocked over the tower viewed the act as less acceptable (M=1.36 vs. M=1.86, t(59)=2.13, p=.04), more deserving of punishment (M=3.28 vs. M=2.51, t(59)=-2.40, p=.02), and had higher culpability scores (M=1.88 vs. M=0.66, t(57)=2.61, p=.01). Children viewed the human as more culpable than the robot, as evidenced by higher culpability scores (p=.04).

Finally, participants were administered the Individual Differences in Anthropomorphism Questionnaire-Child Form (Severson & Lemm, 2016). Children who scored higher on anthropomorphism viewed the robot, but not human, as more deserving of punishment (r=.51, p=.01) and more culpable (r=.39, p=.01). Anthropomorphism was not linked to inferences of intentionality on the Dumbbell Task.

Taken together, children inferred a robot has intentions to the same degree as a human, and interpretations of intentionality were linked to moral culpability. Yet, children viewed the robot as less culpable than a human. Importantly, children with greater tendencies to anthropomorphize were more likely to view the robot as morally culpable for its actions. These results provide converging evidence that children ascribe mental states to robots, consistent with previous research. In addition, the results provide evidence on how children’s tendencies to anthropomorphize contributes to their judgments about robots’ moral responsibility.

Objective: The rate of cognitive decline is not equivalent for all AD patients, as some are able to remain functionally independent longer than others despite similar levels of neuropathology. Cognitive reserve theory (CR) posits that some people maintain cognitive functioning due to the presence of protective factors, such as educational and occupational attainment. The present study sought to investigate relations between cognitive functioning and education within an AD sample. Additionally, the current study examined if the impact of education was influenced by participant age and sex, as previous research has noted higher rates of AD in women than men.

Participants and Methods: 251 AD patients (Male = 102, Female = 149; M age = 76.68, SD = 8.11) completed the Wechsler Memory Scale-IV, Trail Making A and B, and Animal Fluency tests. Individual univariate ANOVAs using a Bonferroni adjustment (p = .007) were conducted to examine whether neuropsychological test performance was related to education, age, and sex, and their interactions.

Results: No statistically significant results were found between level of education and delayed memory (p = .63), executive functioning (p = .06), or verbal fluency (p = .06). Analyses revealed a statistically significant performance difference on the Animal Fluency test between men (M = 11.30, SD = 5.00) and women (M = 9.56, SD = 4.13; F = 9.06, ��2 = 0.04, p = .003). As anticipated, analyses revealed a statistically significant difference on the Animal Fluency test as a function of age (F = 3.96, p = .004, ��2 = .06), with participants between the ages of 70-79 having higher scores (M = 11.25, SD = 4.70, n = 107) than participants between the ages of 80-89 (M = 8.92, SD = 4.03, n = 87). Similarly, a statistically significant difference emerged between age groups’ scores on Trail Making Test B, with the 80-89 age group averaging the highest number of errors (M = 4.01, SD = 3.00, n = 81; F = 3.71, ��2 = 0.06, p = .006). Analyses of interaction effects did not reach statistical significance.

Conclusions: We did not observe the classic effect of education among AD patients. This is somewhat surprising but may be related to the homogeneity of our sample, as 48.2% of participants had received some level of college education. Our finding that men outperformed women on a verbal fluency task is congruent with past literature noting men perform significantly better than women on verbal fluency tests in an AD population even when controlling for age, education, and duration of disease. This finding supports that women with AD exhibit greater cognitive impairment than men with AD. Our finding that verbal fluency impairment increased with age is consistent with past research. Nonsignificant results regarding differences in cognitive functioning stemming from educational attainment may denote the need for future research using a more diverse sample, as our sample was primarily White, educated, and from the same geographical region. No variance was found in the effects of CR indicators based on sex in our study.

ABSTRACT FOR MASTER’S THESIS

By Lisa Hunt

Devastation and Displacement: The Destruction of Native Communities as a Result of Specifically the Garrison Dam on the Missouri River in North Dakota and the Dalles Dams on the Columbia River in Oregon

The building of the Dalles Dam along the Columbia river, separating Oregon and Washington, inflicted severe losses over sovereignty rights for the surrounding Native communities. Long-lasting negative effects have occurred towards their means of support and led to the declining quality of life. The drowning of Celilo Falls by the building of the Dalles dam is a heartbreaking tale of loss of culture, land, economic resources, and a sacred way of life for Native people. They had depended on the generous number of salmon provided from this area along the Columbia River for thousands of years. That day in March of 1957, six hours after the floodgates of the dam at the Dalles were opened, the place, the lifeblood, the economic livelihood, and religious significance for generations of people lost in an instant. The struggle to uphold the treaty of 1855, signed by the Umatilla, Walla Walla, Yakama, and Nez Perce tribes signed, the protest process leading up to the building of these dams, and the attempt to preserve livelihood is a traumatic tale with dramatic results. After the drowning of Celilo Falls, resources for the Native people who were dependent on its bounty would become inadequate, and assistance that was promised either never came or took many, many years to acquire.

The creation of the Garrison Dam that flooded the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota, home of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara people, caused irreparable destruction, flooding 221,000 acres, and harmfully affected them at that time, not to mention the devastation that has occurred since their displacement. Their reservation land had been previously protected under the Treaty of Horse Creek in 1851 Garrison Dam ultimately buried 9 reservation communities into what is now known as Lake Sakakawea. The land that was flooded provided all of their necessities. They farmed the rich bottomlands, hunted game, and gathered food that grew wild in the hills and along the river. After the relocation, The Three Affiliated Tribes were finding it impossible to grow their own food, wild game had vanished, the wells were contaminated to drink nor enough water to grow crops that had flourished before the building of the dam.

My thesis will focus on the bounty of sustenance that had existed for these communities for thousands of years before these dams were built. It will also discuss the violations of the treaties and sovereignty rights. This thesis will provide details leading up to the building of the dams that desecrated their lifestyle, culture, health, and well-being. It is a comparison of negative effects of these two dams towards the Native People, as well as a contrast in the uniqueness of their cultural heritage, and the uniqueness within these communities and the various tribal communities impacted.

Stigma acts as a barrier to receiving treatment for mental health concerns. Label avoidance, one of several different aspects that compose the overarching concept of stigma, captures the stigma involved when individuals avoid social institutions that might confer a psychiatric diagnostic label and would mark them as an individual with a mental health problem. Label avoidance has been described as a key stigma construct in the literature but has been sparsely studied. Answering a call in the field for new, psychometrically sound stigma measures, we created a new measure of label avoidance and acquired initial validity and reliability evidence supporting its use among an adult population.

Preliminary item development for the Label Avoidance Measure (LAM) was performed using a rational scale construction approach, allowing us to generate items based on our conceptual understanding of label avoidance and stigma theory. Then, 41 undergraduates (93% female, 70% white) provided insight on the preliminary measure, prompting discussion and alteration of the scale from a sample of the target population.

Once the preliminary scale items were finalized, data were collected in two phases. At time one, 232 adults (53% female; 76% white) recruited from the crowdsourcing technique Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) completed multiple stigma measures, a measure of social desirability, a measure of hope, and the preliminary Label Avoidance Measure. An exploratory components factor analysis of the LAM indicated a one-factor solution, rather than suggesting the LAM should be split into multiple subscales. Three items were eliminated because they did not meaningfully load onto the factor (criterion level < .4). Internal consistency analysis indicated that the items on the LAM are strongly related (α = .976).

Additionally, preliminary convergent and discriminant validity evidence was gathered to compare the LAM to existing measures. The LAM was significantly and strongly correlated with the Self-Stigma of Seeking Help Scale (r = .744, pr = .619, pr = -.243, pr = -.309, p<.01).

In order to measure test-retest reliability, the same participants were contacted two weeks later to complete the LAM a second time. Respondents included 89 participants (56% female; 79% white). The LAM demonstrated good test-retest reliability (r = .810, p<.01).

Though further research is needed, this preliminary evidence indicates that the LAM is internally consistent and demonstrates acceptable convergent and discriminant validity evidence. In addition, the measure appears to be temporally stable, with good reliability over a two week interval. This measure has good potential for use to identify individuals who may benefit from treatment for a mental health problem but are hesitant to receive help due to the possibility of being labeled as part of a stigmatized group. Limitations and clinical implications will be discussed.