http://etd.auburn.edu:80 The DSpace digital repository system captures, stores, indexes, preserves, and distributes digital research material. 2026-07-10T21:30:35Z https://etd.auburn.edu/handle/10415/10430 The Language of Leadership: A Narrative Study of Metaphors in School Leadership Thomas, Lavaris This narrative inquiry study explored how elementary school principals used metaphors to describe their leadership approaches and whether those metaphorical expressions reflected principles consistent with a living systems perspective. Guided by the biomimicry conceptual framework, the study examined the types of metaphors school leaders employed and the extent to which their language revealed orientations were more aligned with organic, adaptive leadership models than with traditional mechanistic or hierarchical structures. Biomimicry, rooted in the premise that nature's time-tested evolutionary strategies offer solutions. Six elementary school principals currently serving in urban, suburban, and rural school districts across Alabama participated in this qualitative study. Six prominent themes emerged from the analysis: people-centered leadership, continuous learning and adaptability, self-awareness and reflection, servant leadership, navigating complexity and uncertainty, and relational trust and transparency. Viewed through the biomimicry conceptual framework, these themes collectively suggested that participants conceptualized leadership as adaptive, relational, and interconnected rather than mechanistic or hierarchical. The findings support and extend existing theoretical frameworks including transformational leadership, culturally responsive school leadership, adaptive leadership, and servant leadership by situating them within a unified living systems perspective that emphasizes adaptability, relational trust, and human flourishing. The study contributes an important theoretical bridge between the natural sciences and educational leadership scholarship, suggesting that biomimicry offers not merely a metaphorical curiosity but a substantive and actionable framework for reimagining how schools are led. 2026-07-09T00:00:00Z https://etd.auburn.edu/handle/10415/10429 Age-Associated Mechanisms of Multisensory Interaction on Postural Dynamics Meyer Vega, Marina Postural control is a complex behavior that depends on the dynamic integration of visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive inputs, the allocation of attentional resources, and the coordination of neuromuscular responses. Postural control decline is a leading contributor to falls and a major cause of injury-related death and disability in aging and neurological populations. Despite this, postural control is still commonly assessed using subjective, performance-based clinical tools that measure only behavioral outcomes rather than the underlying mechanisms that produce them. The objective of this dissertation was to examine postural control across the lifespan and in neurological disorders, and to determine whether low-frequency oscillations in the center of pressure (COP) signal provide a more sensitive and mechanistic biomarker of fall risk than traditional measures alone. This dissertation comprises four studies. The first was a systematic review and meta-analysis evaluating the diagnostic accuracy of the two most commonly used clinical fall-risk assessments among stroke survivors. Following PRISMA guidelines, 13 studies (1,347 stroke survivors) were analyzed. We found that the Berg Balance Scale (BBS; OR = 5.13, 95% CI [3.27, 8.05]) and the Timed Up and Go (TUG; OR = 3.38, 95% CI [2.23, 5.14]) demonstrated significant discriminative ability to categorize fall risk in stroke survivors, with no superiority of one over the other. However, moderate heterogeneity across studies and the absence of standardized cut-off values and assessment approaches indicated that neither tool is sufficient as a standalone screening measure. The second and third studies were conducted in a sample of over 100 healthy younger and older adults. We examined how the underlying sensory reweighting mechanisms of postural control reorganize under dual-task conditions on a stable (Study 2) and an unstable (Study 3) surface. On both surfaces, older adults reduced postural sway under dual-task conditions but at the cost of cognitive accuracy, reflecting a reallocation of attentional resources toward postural control. Low-frequency oscillations of the COP signal revealed that sensory reweighting mechanisms were task- and direction-specific, and that age-associated differences became more pronounced on the unstable surface, where older adults relied more heavily on visual and vestibular inputs to compensate for challenged proprioception. The fourth study examined whether fat mass index (FMI), fat-free mass index (FFMI), and the FM/FFM ratio predict COP sway and low-frequency oscillations in community-dwelling older and younger adults. We found that fat mass indices (FMI and the FM/FFM ratio) were significantly associated with postural sway and low-frequency oscillations exclusively in older adults, despite no significant differences in body composition between groups. Whereas FFMI showed no significant association in either group. This established adiposity as an independent, age-associated contributor to postural instability. Collectively, this dissertation demonstrates that fall risk cannot be fully explained by behavioral outcomes alone. Across neurological disorders such as stroke, healthy aging, and body composition, low-frequency oscillations of the COP signal are able to capture the underlying sensory reweighting mechanisms of postural control. By distinguishing the quantity of postural sway from its quality, this work provides a mechanistic framework for understanding why individuals fall and supports the integration of objective, instrumented assessments into fall risk evaluation across aging and neurological populations. 2026-07-09T00:00:00Z https://etd.auburn.edu/handle/10415/10428 Examination of Acute Stress on a Neurophysiological Indicator of Incentive Salience in Cannabis Users Preston, Thomas Cannabis is one of the most widely used illicit substances in the United States, in part due to recently increased accessibility and inaccurate perceptions regarding negative health effects associated with use. Rates of Cannabis Use Disorder are expected to increase, lending to more research determining markers of disordered use, which may be targeted for intervention. Broadly, chronic substance use is associated with neurophysiological alterations in reward processing, such that the relative motivational value of stimuli indicative of substance use is greater than benign or even naturally-rewarding cues. Further, repeated substance use is known to alter how the body responds to stress, impacting attentional engagement towards substance relevant and irrelevant cues, as well as substance-related craving. Despite a breadth of literature spanning this topic, there remains a dearth of research examining how acute stress impacts neurophysiological reward processing in people with Cannabis Use Disorder. The current study sought to address this gap by measuring a neurophysiological marker of early attentional engagement, the P300, to cannabis, naturally-rewarding, and neutral pictures after an acute lab-induced stressor. Results were partially consistent with models of addiction, whereby acute stress diminished P300 amplitude to neutral and naturally-rewarding images but did not affect P300 amplitude to cannabis images. These novel findings offer insight into how those with Cannabis Use Disorder react to various cues during acute stress induction and provide future avenues of potential intervention. 2026-07-09T00:00:00Z https://etd.auburn.edu/handle/10415/10427 Optimizing sampling effort and timing to improve inference of small mammal diversity in southeastern US forests Gans, Darcey A. Wildlife managers and researchers frequently utilize the number of species present in a given area as a metric to evaluate ecological function as well as progress of and impact of conservation actions. Small mammals serve vital roles as seed and fungal dispersers, regulating plant and insect populations, and the primary prey item of many species. Their ecological importance, coupled with their ubiquity across terrestrial ecosystems and the rapid response of small mammal populations to ecological changes makes live capture box trap surveys of small mammal communities a common tool to evaluate ecological health. Despite the extensive use of small mammal diversity surveys in research and management, few empirical guidelines exist on fundamental aspects of box trap surveys like duration and time of year, particularly in southeastern US forests. To address this, we evaluated bi-monthly box trap surveys of small mammals that were conducted between March 1997–September 2006 at the Savannah River Site, South Carolina for the impact of season and survey length on the number of species detected. Using a 10-year dataset from 12 long-term trapping grids in upland loblolly and longleaf pine forest, we first quantified how sampling duration and season influence species richness estimation by modeling species accumulation and time to achieve near-complete community characterization. The probability of detecting new species declined rapidly after approximately 7–8 days of sampling but achieving ≥90% of estimated richness required substantially longer effort (17–26 days), particularly in winter. We then expanded this analysis to evaluate species-specific detection probabilities in relation to seasonal conditions and short-term weather variation (precipitation and temperature) to identify mechanisms driving observed patterns and determine how survey efforts could be improved. Detection probability varied consistently across seasons and in response to weather, demonstrating that variation in capture rates reflects not only differences in community composition but also dynamic changes in species’ activity and availability for detection. These results indicate that commonly used short-duration surveys likely underestimate community composition and that sampling efficiency is strongly mediated by seasonal and environmental conditions. By linking species accumulation dynamics with species-specific detection processes, this study provides empirically grounded recommendations for optimizing trapping design in southeastern forests and highlights the importance of aligning sampling effort with study objectives when using small mammals as indicators of ecosystem condition. 2026-07-02T00:00:00Z