Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Let’S Talk: The Dual Process Model Of Supportive Communication In Peers, Erica Marie Szkody

Theses and Dissertations

Supportive messages occur within most relationships. Researchers have found strong relationships between social support and various physical and psychological health outcomes, but the specific mechanisms at work have yet to be fully explored. Many factors contribute to whether a supportive interaction is processed as helpful or supportive by the recipient including relational factors, message content, past experiences, etc. For peer dyads, the context and supportive messages individuals provide their peer may inhibit or contribute to their perception of their peer’s supportive behavior. The current study examined the impact of contextual factors (such as family communication patterns and relationship quality) on …

Lexical And Syntactic Priming In Dialogue, Sarah Campbell Wilson

Theses and Dissertations

Speakers engaged in dialogue align with one another across multiple linguistic levels to ensure effective communication. The Interactive Alignment Model (Pickering & Garrod, 2004) suggests speakers align due to automatic priming mechanisms at individual linguistic levels. Syntactic priming is the tendency to repeat a syntactic structure that has been recently comprehended or produced. Although syntactic priming is regarded as an automatic, abstract structural phenomenon, other linguistic factors can influence a syntactic structure’s priming strength. Lexical repetition between structures has been shown to enhance syntactic priming, an effect termed “lexical boost” (Branigan et al., 2000; Healey, Purvery, & Howes., 2014). Another …

Perception Training Of Thai Learners: American English Consonants And Vowels, Siriporn Lerdpaisalwong

Theses and Dissertations

ABTRACT

PERCEPTION TRAINING OF THAI LEARNERS:

AMERICAN ENGLISH CONSONANTS AND VOWELS

by

Siriporn Lerdpaisalwong

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2015

Under the Supervision of Professor Hanyong Park

Many studies have revealed that ESL and EFL Thai leaners have difficulty producing and perceiving certain English consonants and vowels. The difficult consonants are /b d g v θ ð z tʃ ɹ l/ (Burkardt, 2005; Francis & McDavid, 1958; Jotikasathira, 1999; Lerdpaisalwong & Park, 2012, 2013; Richards, 1968; Wei & Zhou, 2002). The difficult vowels are /ɪ i ʊ u/ (Richards, 1968; Tsukada, 2009; Varasarin, 2007). Previous studies have showed that laboratory perceptual …

Nouns And Verbs In The Tagalog Mental Lexicon, Linda Walton

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to study grammatical categories in the Tagalog mental lexicon using lexical decision tasks. Some linguists question whether words in Tagalog can be classified as nouns and verbs (Foley, 1998; Kaufman, 2011) because most root words can be inflected for any grammatical function and because verbs cannot be used in their uninflected form. Previous studies with English and German (Kauschke and Stenneken 2008) have shown that participants respond differently to nouns and verbs in lexical decision tasks. These studies have also shown that participants respond differently to transitive and intransitive verbs in lexical decision tasks. …

The Instant Habit Of Thought: Perceptual Priming In Slogans, Ann Marie Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

Benjamin Whorf proposed a relationship between habitual language use and automatic behavior. His work has since led to a great deal of linguistic research, but the field thus far has neglected to explore the relationship between individual lexical items and their connotational effects. This work explores the relationship between exposure to altruism-related words and the subsequent lexical accessibility of aggressive words, then applies that research to real-life situations by exploring the consumer entitlement paradigm with the manipulation of slogans. I found that in a response time study, priming with altruistic items facilitated the lexical accessibility of aggressive items; however, in …

The Effects Of Second Language Status On The Comprehension And Perception Of Direct And Indirect Speech In Written Teacher Feedback, Rachel E. Hansen

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores how native and nonnative English speakers understand and perceive directness types in written teacher feedback (WTF). Currently research suggests that indirect speech in WTF will encourage students to think and maintain politeness between teacher and student (Benkendorf, 2001; Riley, 2003; Thonus, 1999; Vassileva, 2000). However, research also indicates that indirect speech may be more difficult to interpret than direct speech (Champagne, 2001; Holtgraves, 1999), which suggests that indirect speech used in WTF may be difficult for students to interpret and use to improve their compositions (Ferris, 2007; Hyland & Hyland, 2001). This difficulty may be even more …

A Formal Semantic Analysis Of Autistic Language: The Quantification Hypothesis, Michael B. Manookin

Theses and Dissertations

Autism is characterized by language dysfunction ranging from mild and peculiar language usage to a total lack of expressive language function. These language oddities are manifest in the form of phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic/behavioral dysfunction. Research suggests that the autistic language deficit is focal—dealing with a specific area of language processing; however, previous research has failed to identify this language enigma. This thesis demonstrates a novel approach to the problem, showing that the autistic language deficit is tied to a particular aspect of language processing—quantification. Quantification is defined and explained in the context of autistic language and behavior.