Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Is Modernism Really Modern? Uncovering A Fallacy In Postmodernism, William D. Harpine

Faculty Publications

Some postmodernists criticize the view that the logics of Western thought can be employed universally. In doing so, they assume without adequate proof that different human societies have greatly different rationalities and employ completely different logics. This essay argues that, on the contrary, widely different cultures often share noteworthy similarities in rationality.

Growing Faithful Children In Media Cultures, Mary E. Hess

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Ethnic Question In Law And Development, Lan Cao

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Generalizing Disability, Michael Ashley Stein

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ending Social Work's Grudge Match: Problems Versus Strengths, J. Curtis Mcmillen, Lisa A. Morris Phd, Michael Sherraden

Faculty Publications

Some in social work have called for a paradigm shift away from a focus on problems to a focus on strengths, empowerment, and capacity building. This call sets up an unnatural dichotomy, asking social workers to identify with one side or another. In this article, we review social work history to argue that the best social work practice has always maintained a dual focus on both problems and capacity building. Throughout our history, those who championed a problem-oriented practice also emphasized strengths and growing client capacity, and today's strength-based, capacity-oriented practitioners typically advocate for the solving of consumer's presenting problems.

American Fatherhood Types: The Good, The Bad, And The Uninterested, Loren Marks, Rob Palkovitz

Faculty Publications

This paper presents four contemporary types of American manhood: (a) the new, involved father, (b) the good provider, (c) the deadbeat dad, and (d) the paternity-free man. These four types are compared, contrasted, and contextualized with related data from the classic Middletown studies of the 1920s and 1930s. The significance and implications of the trend toward paternity-free manhood are discussed, and directions for future research are suggested.

Expanding Tree Adjoining Grammar To Create Junction Grammar Trees, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Ronald Millett

Faculty Publications

Junction Grammar (JG) combines junction operators, multiple linked syntax/semantics trees, and flexible traversal algorithms. The multiple tree and flexible ordering characteristics of MC-TAG and other TAG extensions are somewhat analogous. This paper proposes that these similarities can be integrated to form a new approach, JG-TAG. Relevant aspects of both theories and the proposed new model are discussed in turn, and representative examples are sketched.

Taking Assessment On The Road: Utah Academic Librarians Focus On Distance Learners, Allyson Washburn, Rob Morrison

Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of focus groups conducted by Utah academic librarians at branch campuses in Utah. Librarians met with distance learners on-site to gain insights into their information-seeking behavior and to learn if they are using library services. Students rely heavily on the web for information and also utilize known resources in friends and family. Marketing and publicizing library services through classes and at the delivery sites is vital. Students appreciate the services libraries offer and strongly prefer face-face instruction and direct assistance from a librarian.

80 Miles From The Nearest Library, With A Research Paper Due Monday: Extending Library Services To Distance Learners, Allyson Washburn, Jessica Draper

Faculty Publications

This presentation reports the results of a project to extend the services and resources of Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library to distance-education students located in many areas of the world. Focusing on students enrolled in university-level English courses, the project team created a one-stop, integrated Web portal of library services and resources in Independent Study courses. This Library portal includes links to subscription databases, interlibrary loan, and personal reference services such as Ask a Librarian Live. The project team promoted faculty members' use of library research in the assignments for their Independent Study English courses. Finally, to ascertain …

Sleep Hygiene And Sleep Quality In Italian And American Adolescents, Monique K. Lebourgeois, Flavia Giannotti, Flavia Cortesi, Amy Wolfson, John R. Harsh

Faculty Publications

This study investigated cross-cultural differences in adolescent sleep hygiene and sleep quality. Participants were 1348 students (655 males; 693 females) aged 12-17 years from public school systems in Rome, Italy (n = 776) and Southern Mississippi (n = 572). Participants completed the Adolescent Sleep-Wake Scale and the Adolescent Sleep Hygiene Scale. Reported sleep hygiene and sleep quality were significantly better for Italian than American adolescents. A moderate linear relationship was observed between sleep hygiene and sleep quality in both samples (Italians: R =.40; Americans: R =.46). Separate hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that sleep hygiene accounted for significant variance in …

To Ghana: February-March 2004, Keith Clouten

Faculty Publications

The first indication that Ghana might be on my travel itinerary came during the ASDAL Conference 2000 held at Andrews University. Vida Mensah, who is library director at Valley View University in Ghana, was among several librarians who came to that conference from places worldwide. As the conference workshops drew to a close, Vida stopped by my office to talk about Valley View’s need for a new library, and to ask for my help in preparing specifications for a building. Nothing was promised, but there was an underlying assumption that I would come to Valley View University sometime soon to …

Preparation Of School Library Media Specialists In The United States, Donna M. Shannon

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

President's Page, Samantha K. Hastings

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Citizenship, Identity, And Transnational Migration: Arab Immigrants To The Us, Caroline R. Nagel, Lynn A. Staeheli

Faculty Publications

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the changing relationships between identities, citizenship and the state in the context of globalisation. We first examine the ways in which scholars discuss changes in the ways in which citizenship and political identity are expressed in the context of international migration. We argue that much of the discussion of transnationalism and diaspora cling to an assumption that citizenship remains an important—though not defining—element of identity. Our position, by contrast, is that migration is one of a number of processes that transform the relationship between citizenship and identity. More specifically, we argue that …

Integrating Perception, Language And Problem Solving In A Cognitive Agent For A Mobile Robot., Deryle W. Lonsdale, D. Paul Benjamin, Damian M. Lyons

Faculty Publications

We are implementing a unified cognitive architecture for a mobile robot. Our goal is to endow a robot agent with the full range of cognitive abilities, including perception, use of natural language, learning and the ability to solve complex problems. The perspective of this work is that an architecture based on a unified theory of robot cognition has the best chance of attaining human-level performance.

This agent architecture is an integration of three theories: a theory of cognition embodied in the Soar system, the RS formal model of sensorimotor activity and an algebraic theory of decomposition and reformulation.

These three …

Combining Learning Approaches For Incremental On-Line Parsing, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Michael B. Manookin

Faculty Publications

This paper discusses the integration of two different machine learning approaches to modeling language, NL-Soar and analogical modeling (AM). The resulting hybrid system is capable of functionality that is not possible when using only one of the systems in isolation. After a brief introduction of each system, an explanation is given of how AM is used to provide information useful to NL-Soar for two tasks. Examples are given, and related issues are outlined.

Adapt: A Cognitive Architecture For Robots, Deryle W. Lonsdale, D. Paul Benjamin, Damian M. Lyons

Faculty Publications

The goal of the ADAPT project is to create a robot that can model its environment accurately in real time, and use that model to perform tasks and interact with people using natural language.

Resolving Automatic Prepositional Phrase Attachments By Non-Statistical Means, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Michael B. Manookin

Faculty Publications

Prepositional-phrase attachment is a topic of active research in the field of computational linguistics. Properly attaching prepositional phrases to their pertinent constituent proves straightforward for humans, but inferring these attachments in a cognitive modeling system becomes difficult. For example, in the sentence, ‘Ralph threw the frisbee to John,’ the prepositional phrase ‘to John’ will attach to the verb phrase ‘threw’. In another example, ‘Joe saw the dog with fur,’ the prepositional phrase ‘with fur’ will attach directly to the noun phrase ‘the dog.’ Humans would have little difficulty resolving these examples, but for computers this would be difficult.

A Computational Approach To Resolving Certain Issues In Spanish Stress Placement, David Eddington

Faculty Publications

Previous research into Spanish stress assignment suggests that accentuation involves learning and storing individual word tokens along with their inherent stress patterns, and analogizing on stored words when the need arises to determine the stress pattern of an unknown or unavailable word. Exactly what variables are most relevant to stress assignment has been hotly debated. In the present study, a number of analogical simulations were carried out to determine whether elements of the CV tier, syllable weight, phonemic representation, or a combination of these, best accounts for accentuation in Spanish.

An Examination Of The Mechanisms Of Action In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy For Bulimia Nervosa, Scott A. Baldwin, Diane L. Spangler, W. Stewart Agras

Faculty Publications

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for bulimia nervosa (BN) has received consid- erable empirical support for its efficacy. However, few investigators have examined the mechanisms proposed to account for the reduction of BN symptoms during CBT. The current study examined the associations between therapist interventions, client mechanisms, and symptoms during treatment in a sample of 56 clients under- going CBT for BN. Results suggested that behavioral interventions were most asso- ciated with symptom change during treatment whereas relational interventions were most associated with change in client mechanisms such as client engagement. Addi- tionally, some changes in BN symptoms were mediated by changes …

Fathering In A Beijing, Chinese Sample: Associations With Boys' And Girls' Negative Emotionality And Aggression, Chongming Yang, Craig H. Hart, David A. Nelson, Christin L. Porter, Susanne F. Olsen, Clyde C. Robinson, Shenhua Jin

Faculty Publications

Whether specific patterns of parenting are similarly associated with child outcomes in diverse cultural contexts has been a topic of inquiry for the past several decades. Most recently, attention has focused on Asian parenting and the indigenous meanings of parental control among specific Asian groups as contrasted with Western cultures (Chao & Tseng, 2002). Recent debates in this literature center on whether coercive parenting has similar meanings for mainland Chinese and North American children and their parents (e.g., Grusec, 2002; Lau & Yeung, 1996). To further address the question of whether there is a universal nature to parenting and its …

Latter-Day Saint Returned Missionaries In The United States: A Survey On Religious Activity And Postmission Adjustment, Bruce A. Chadwick, Richard J. Mcclendon

Faculty Publications

Each year, approximately twenty to thirty thousand Latter-day Saint young adults leave to serve missions throughout the world. Once these young adults return home from their missionary service, most go on to further their education, begin a career, marry, and establish a family. Returned missionaries are a unique group in the Church and are often a point of interest. Parents, for example, note the challenges their missionary has as he or she makes the transition from the mission field to home. They sometimes observe their returned missionary confronting increased stress levels as he or she shifts from the singular focus …