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Item Attentional Disengagement and the Locus Coeruleus – Norepinephrine System in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder(Frontiers Media, 2021-08-31) Keehn, Brandon; Kadlaskar, Girija; Bergmann, Sophia; McNally Keehn, Rebecca; Francis, Alexander; Pediatrics, School of MedicineBackground: Differences in non-social attentional functions have been identified as among the earliest features that distinguish infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and may contribute to the emergence of core ASD symptoms. Specifically, slowed attentional disengagement and difficulty reorienting attention have been found across the lifespan in those at risk for, or diagnosed with, ASD. Additionally, the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system, which plays a critical role in arousal regulation and selective attention, has been shown to function atypically in ASD. While activity of the LC-NE system is associated with attentional disengagement and reorienting in typically developing (TD) individuals, it has not been determined whether atypical LC-NE activity relates to attentional disengagement impairments observed in ASD. Objective: To examine the relationship between resting pupil diameter (an indirect measure of tonic LC-NE activation) and attentional disengagement in children with ASD. Methods: Participants were 21 school-aged children with ASD and 20 age- and IQ-matched TD children. The study consisted of three separate experiments: a resting eye-tracking task and visual and auditory gap-overlap paradigms. For the resting eye-tracking task, pupil diameter was monitored while participants fixated a central crosshair. In the gap-overlap paradigms, participants were instructed to fixate on a central stimulus and then move their eyes to peripherally presented visual or auditory targets. Saccadic reaction times (SRT), percentage of no-shift trials, and disengagement efficiency were measured. Results: Children with ASD had significantly larger resting pupil size compared to their TD peers. The groups did not differ for overall SRT, nor were there differences in SRT for overlap and gap conditions between groups. However, the ASD group did evidence impairments in disengagement (larger step/gap effects, higher percentage of no-shift trials, and reduced disengagement efficiency) compared to their TD peers. Correlational analyses showed that slower, less efficient disengagement was associated with increased pupil diameter. Conclusion: Consistent with prior reports, children with ASD show significantly larger resting pupil diameter, indicative of atypically elevated tonic LC-NE activity. Associations between pupil size and measures of attentional disengagement suggest that atypically increased tonic activation of the LC-NE system may be associated with poorer attentional disengagement in children with ASD.Item The Demobilization of Protest Campaigns(Oxford University Press, 2017-06) Demirel-Pegg, TijenAll protest campaigns move through cycles of escalation and de-escalation and ultimately demobilize. Some campaigns demobilize quickly as protesters reach their goals. The 2011 Egyptian uprising, when protesters left the streets after they brought down the Mubarak regime, for example, is a case of rapid demobilization. Others, like the 2011 uprising in Bahrain, demobilize over a longer time span before protests come to a complete halt. In Bahrain, the government first cracked down on the opposition by bringing in foreign troops and then continued to repress protesters until the protesters ended the campaign in 2012. Regardless of the length of time it takes for protesters to leave the streets and stop the protests, demobilization is a complex process. Numerous factors, such as severe repression, government concessions, countermobilization of opposition groups, leadership changes, or even unexpected events, can all bring about demobilization. These factors and strategies may occur simultaneously or sequentially, but usually one or a combination of them lead to the demobilization of a protest campaign. Moreover, demobilization is a dynamic process, as it continues to evolve out of the endogenous interactions among governments, challengers, bystanders, and, in some cases, as in Bahrain, external third-party actors.Even though every protest campaign eventually demobilizes one way or another, the demobilization phase has generally attracted less scholarly attention than the onset and escalation of violent and nonviolent forms of collective action. For a long time, most scholars addressed demobilization indirectly within the context of the repression-dissent nexus as they explored why repression backfires and escalates dissent in some cases, while it succeeds in demobilizing the opposition in others. Nonetheless, factors besides state repression contribute to the demobilization of dissent. In other words, a state’s accommodative tactics, as well as individual, organizational, or even regional and systemic factors that interact with the state’s actions, have the potential to shape when and how political dissent demobilizes. More recently, scholars have begun to examine why and how protest campaigns demobilize by stepping out of the repression-dissent nexus and focusing on a variety of other factors related to organizational structures, regime types, individual-level constraints, and contingent events that affect the trajectory of campaigns. At the same time, recent studies on state repression have also begun to focus more heavily on the different causal mechanisms that explain how a state’s repressive tactics can lead to demobilization. While this new line of research has made significant contributions to our understanding of the demobilization of protests, we are still left with important questions about the demobilization process that have yet to be answered.