Digital Commons Network^™

Adolescent's Perceptions Of The Parent's Marital Relationship And The Impact On Their Suicide Risk, Savannah Heaton Hurt

Theses and Dissertations

Suicide risk is rapidly increasing in children and adolescents. It is vital that research explores the causes in child and adolescent suicide risk. Research has failed to identify if the marital relationship may be correlated with this increase in suicide ideation in children. This study set out to determine if a child's perception of their parents' marital conflict impacts the child's suicidal risk. Using the Family Foundations of Youth Development project this study analyzed 1,692 parent and child participants to test if the child's perceptions of the marital conflict impacted their suicide risk and if the parent's own report of …

Social Media's Impact On The Puerto Rican Diaspora After Hurricane Maria, Heidi Lynn Steidel Ii Camacho

Theses and Dissertations

Puerto Rico has belonged to the United States for more than a century. In 1898, more than two decades after the Spanish American War, Spain formally ceded the island to the United States. Just over 20 years later, islanders officially became American citizens. Since then, the 100-mile-long by 35-mile-wide island has experienced economic and political crises, the COVID-19 pandemic, and life-threatening natural disasters. These events provoked a vast fluctuation in its population. After Hurricane Maria unfolded in September 2017, more than 200,000 Puerto Ricans moved to the continental United States to start new lives (Schwartz, 2018). This qualitative study sheds …

Spanish Heritage Bilingual Perception Of English-Specific Vowel Contrasts, John B. Nielsen

Theses and Dissertations

Theories of lexical storage differ in how entries are encoded in the lexicon. Exemplar-based accounts posit that lexical items are stored with detailed acoustic information, while abstract accounts argue that fine acoustic detail is removed and an item is stored in more basic phonological units. These separate accounts make distinct predictions about cross-linguistic and bilingual perception. Studies asking participants to compare non-native vowels have shown that people tend to associate multiple non-native phonemes to a single L1 phoneme when the contrast between the two does not exist in the L1. However, several studies have shown that the ability to discriminate …

The Ontology Of Immanence: Arriving At Being In Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain, Rachel R. Gilman

Theses and Dissertations

In response to the economic and political upheaval of World War I, Scottish Modernism explored the cultural and linguistic changes of a nation trying to identify itself amidst a world-wide conflict. Scholars and critics have considered Nan Shepherd's fiction in this context—focusing on issues of gender, female identity, language, and land—but have yet to look seriously at her work The Living Mountain and its contributions to the Modernist movement. More recently, critics like Louisa Gairn and Robert MacFarlane have called attention to Shepherd's small but powerful text in an ecocritical and philosophical light, reframing her contribution to issues of Scottish …

Using Perceptually Grounded Semantic Models To Autonomously Convey Meaning Through Visual Art, Derrall L. Heath

Theses and Dissertations

Developing advanced semantic models is important in building computational systems that can not only understand language but also convey ideas and concepts to others. Semantic models can allow a creative image-producing-agent to autonomously produce artifacts that communicate an intended meaning. This notion of communicating meaning through art is often considered a necessary part of eliciting an aesthetic experience in the viewer and can thus enhance the (perceived) creativity of the agent. Computational creativity, a subfield of artificial intelligence, deals with designing computational systems and algorithms that either automatically create original and functional products, or that augment the ability of humans …

Pherc. 698 Cr. 3-4: A New Edition, Justin Asay Barney

Theses and Dissertations

The following is a new edition of PHerc. 698 cr. 3-4, including an introduction, English translation and commentary. An in-line reprint of PHerc. 19, including a new English translation, is also included for continuity of thought and language.

Pixel Based Note Taking Through Perceptual Structure Inference, Mitchell Kent Harris

Theses and Dissertations

Knowledge workers need effective annotation tools to assimilate information. Unfortunately many digital annotators are limited in the range of document that they accept. Those that do accept many different documents do so by converting documents to images, thus losing any awareness about the original content of the document. We introduce a digital note taker that is both universal and content aware. By constructing a hierarchical context tree of document images, the structure of a document is inferred from the image. This hierarchical context tree is shown to be useful by demonstrating how it facilitates selection of document elements, reflowing documents …

Adolescents' Perceptions Of Bullying Involving Male Relational Aggression: Implications For Prevention And Intervention, Brian C. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

Recent bullying research contradicts the stereotypes that only females use relational bullying and confirms that males use this type of bullying equally or more than females. No existing research could be found which examined differences in how each gender interprets relational bullying. Using a survey adapted from research on the rape myth and four video clips, researchers sought to examine gendered difference in the perception of relational bullying by males among adolescents. Two video clips depict scenes of cross-gender bullying and two clips depict scenes of male to male bullying. In total, 314 students in grades 8-12 participated in the …

Planning Policy And Public Perception In Small-Town Utah, Greg M. Platt

Theses and Dissertations

City growth policies codify community values and serve as the basis for enforcement of community standards. If these policies do not match resident preferences for growth, potential exists for communities to grow in ways which make the community undesirable. This thesis examines whether adopted city growth policies match resident preferences in small towns in Utah. Findings include a strong relationship between resident preferences and city leader preferences for growth. Also, city staffs are poor readers of public sentiment relative to growth and growth management. Some cities are more effective in enacting city policies to match resident attitudes towards growth than …

The Effect Of First Language Dialect Vowel Mergers On Second Language Perception And Production, Christine Elaine Gardner

Theses and Dissertations

Previous second language (L2) acquisition research has assumed that L2 learners from a common first language (L1) have the same problems in an L2, ignoring the potential impact of a speaker's L1 dialect on L2 acquisition. This study examines the effects of L1 dialect on the acquisition of L2 German vowels. In particular, this thesis investigates two questions: 1) Do speakers from L1 dialects with vowel mergers perceive or produce vowel contrasts in the L1 and/or L2 differently than speakers from dialect areas without the same mergers? and 2) Are subjects' patterns of L1 perception or production paralleled in the …

Lantern's Diary, Wei Zhong Tan

Theses and Dissertations

My MFA project titled, “Lantern's Diary” is a synergy of colors, tactile experiences, and reflections on change. The artwork is based on cultural influences. The physical form of the lantern is a metaphor of culture identity—in Eastern culture, paper has been used in architecture, furniture, clothing, funerals, writing materials, and lanterns. Its function as a material is to fulfill the necessity of daily life and ceremonial rituals. Hence, paper plays an important role in the Eastern society. The color spectrum representing “Change” corresponds with the western system of color organization. The gallery space plays a spatial aesthetic role in …

An Investigation Of Middle School Student Interest, Perception, And Attitude Toward Technology And Engineering, Kari Marie Cook

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate middle school student perception and attitude toward technology and engineering and to better understand how the gender of the teacher, gender of the student, and information provided in technology classes affected their perception and attitude. To accomplish this, the Technology Attitude Scale, and the Pupil's Attitudes Toward Technology—United States assessment instruments were used to form the basis of a new survey instrument focused on technology and engineering perception, use, and interest. The new survey instrument is called the Technology and Engineering Attitude Scale (TEAS) survey. Multiple 7th grade technology engineering classes from …

A Perceptual Evaluation Of The Effect Of A Pseudopalate On Voiceless Obstruent Production And Motor Adaptation, Megan Ann Cannon Williams

Theses and Dissertations

Electropalatography (EPG) has proven to be a useful clinical and research tool for measuring tongue-to-palate contact. Research has shown sensorimotor adaptation to an EPG device may be possible following a short period of speech practice. This study was developed in order to better understand how a listeners' perception of speech clarity is effected by the presence of a relatively thin artificial pseudopalate in the speakers' oral cavity. Twenty listeners rated 220 speech stimuli on a visual analog scale ranging from normal to very distorted speech clarity. The stimuli included two different American English sentences. Speech clarity ratings were looked at …

The Influence Of Production Accuracy On Suprasegmental Listening Comprehension, Adriana Romanini

Theses and Dissertations

One of the major questions in second language (L2) phonological learning is whether perception precedes (and therefore guides) production. This question is important for knowing what types of training most benefit L2 learners. While most theories assume that perception always precedes production (e.g., Best, 1995; Flege, 1995), several recent studies have found that production may precede perception (e.g., Baker & Trofimovich, 2006; Beach, Brunham, & Kitamura, 2001; Goto, 1971; Sheldon & Strange, 1982; Underbakke, 1993), demonstrating that this complex relationship may differ depending on how and when the L2 is learned. The current study seeks to further explore this relationship …

The Effects Of Experience On The Perception Of German Rounded Vowels By Native Speakers Of American English, Bradley J. York

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the effects of experience in German on the categorical perception of German rounded vowels, namely /uː/, /ʊ/, /oː/, /ɔ/, /yː/, /ʏ/, /øː/, and /œ/, by native speakers of American English (AE). Of special interest is whether more experience in German leads to more accurate perception of German front rounded vowels, namely /yː/, /ʏ/, /øː/, and /œ/, which do not have correlates in American English and are well known to cause perceptual problems for native AE speakers (Strange, Bohn, Trent, & Nishi, 2004). Subjects in this study were students at Brigham Young University that were divided into 4 …

Towards A New Currency Of Economic Criticism, Jason G. Douglas

Theses and Dissertations

“The Purloined Letter,” Edgar Allan Poe's third and final tale featuring the detective Dupin, has evoked a long history of critical response. Criticism has tended to read the text for its role in the development of detective fiction and as illustrative of various theoretical positions. However, the implications of the “The Purloined Letter,” as a tale of ratiocination, has largely been left unexplored. “The Purloined Letter” explores logical processes of value and exchange, particularly economic exchange, in a manner very similar to what Charles Sanders Peirce will call pragmatism several decades later. Dupin's deductive methods and Peirce's abductive logic express …

Hearing The Difference: A Computer-Based Speech-Perception Diagnostic Tool For Non-Native Speakers Of English, Justin Reed Shewell

Theses and Dissertations

This project was completed to fill a need in the field of pronunciation teaching and learning by providing a computer-based, speech-perception diagnostic tool that helps determine learners' problem areas in the perception of English speech. Current diagnostic tools are few and very limited in their scope and application in the language classroom. The Perception of Spoken English Test diagnoses learners' specific speech perception problems, alerting teachers to areas that require special attention in a particular course or lesson. This project involved the development, production, piloting, evaluation, and revision of a computer-based instrument in an intensive English program. The data collected …

The Perception And Production Of Portuguese Mid-Vowels By Native Speakers Of American English, Richard Ryan Kendall

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the difficulties that beginning and advanced American learners of Portuguese have correctly perceiving and producing the Portuguese mid-vowels {o} and {e}. The beginning learners were enrolled in their second semester of Portuguese and had rudimentary knowledge of Portuguese. The advanced learners had all lived in Brazil for nearly two years and were enrolled in a more advanced Portuguese course.

To test for production, informants were asked to read a group of sentences that contained one hundred occurrences of the Portuguese mid-vowels. Each production occurrence was evaluated as being correct or incorrect by linguistically trained native Brazilians. To …