Digital Commons Network^™

Review: Terryl Givens With Brian M. Hauglid. The Pearl Of Greatest Price: Mormonism’S Most Controversial Scripture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019., Jeffrey (Kapali) Lyon

Mormon Studies Review

If you are looking for a quick takeaway from this review, here it is: I have never read a better book about Mormon scripture, and maybe not about any scripture from any religious tradition. The book is meticulously researched, both critical and sympathetic, but never apologetic nor debunking. The author aims to understand, laying out the origins and textual history of the Pearl of Great Price and its significance, both in the development of Mormon theology and as a tool for understanding Joseph Smith’s prophetic vocation.

No Queers Here, Kathryn Lofton

Mormon Studies Review

Taylor G. Petrey’s Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism uses a word that has an activist past and an electric capacity. This is a word also worn out by its bandying; it is a word perhaps nearing retirement. That word is queer. Tabernacles of Clay is not a book about queer life. It is not a book with any people who call themselves queer, or think within the traditions of queer political activism, or who articulate feelings of queer temporality, queer kinship, or queer emplacement. It is not a book written in a queer way or arguing …

Prophets, Pagans, And Papyri, Stephen O. Smoot, Kerry Muhlestein

BYU Studies

Egypt has a long history of exchange and contact with a variety of people. Ancient people of diverse ethnic backgrounds made their way into Egypt—whether as war captives, mercenaries, merchants, invading armies, members of diplomatic parties, refugees, or simple migrants—bringing with them their language and culture. One such group was the ancient Jews, whose enslavement at the hands of “a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph” (Ex. 1:8), and exodus under the prophetic leadership of Moses may be the best-remembered incident of a Hebrew presence in Egypt, but it was not the only one.

Constancy Amid Change, Michael Goodman, Daniel Frost

BYU Studies

Few issues are more sensitive and in need of serious study than gender and sexuality. Taylor Petrey’s book, Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Sexual Difference in Modern Mormonism, contributes much to that study. The book provides a nuanced view of Church leaders’ attempts to understand and teach the nature of gender and sexuality. Petrey shows that Latter-day Saint discourse on these issues has changed substantially, especially since World War II. Petrey has gathered a trove of material for scholars and others who seek to better understand how culture, tradition, and theology have shaped teachings about gender and sexuality. Though …

The Priesthood Ban And The Book Of Abraham, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson

BYU Studies

The Book of Abraham preserves an account of the founding of Egypt (Abr. 1:23–27) and mentions the origins of a “curse in the land” (v. 24) pertaining to the priesthood among the descendants of Ham. “The land of Egypt,” the text says, was “first discovered by a woman, who was the daughter of Ham, and the daughter of Egyptus” (v. 23). According to this account, “when this woman discovered the land it was under water, who afterward settled her sons in it; and thus, from Ham, sprang that race which preserved the curse in the land” (v. 24). Before the …

The Idolatrous Priest, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson

BYU Studies

The explanation accompanying figure 3 of Facsimile 1 of the Book of Abraham identifies it as “the idolatrous priest of Elkenah attempting to offer up Abraham as a sacrifice.” In order to gauge the validity of this interpretation from an Egyptological perspective, assuming this is the approach one wishes to take, a number of factors need to be considered.

Cynthia Lucy Stephens, The Borges Enigma: Mirrors, Doubles, And Intimate Puzzles, David Laraway

Faculty Publications

In one of his most celebrated texts, ‘Borges y yo’, Borges describes wandering the streets of Buenos Aires, pausing to take in an unanticipated architectural detail or anything else that happens to catch his attention. That spirit of flâneurie captures something of the experience of reading Cynthia Lucy Stephens’ The Borges Enigma. It is the work of a devoted reader of Borges who accompanies us on a tour of Borges’ texts, pointing out an abundance of unexpected details even as her path seems to be marked less by any strict agenda than by the simple pleasures of exploration. Whether it …

Researching The Missouri-Mormon Experience (1831-1839) And Its War Of 1838, David Laughlin

ScholarsArchive Data

A bibliography of the Missouri-Mormon Experience (1831-1839) and its War of 1838, including primary sources, online sources, books, articles and non-published materials.

Researching Mormons In Texas, 1830 - 1930: An Annotated Bibliography, David Laughlin

ScholarsArchive Data

Researching Mormons in Texas, 1830 - 1930: An Annotated Bibliography.

Annotated bibliographical entries including books, newspapers, articles, essays, published and non-published materials dealing with Mormons in 19^th century Texas from 1830-1930.

Passages From The Book Of Micah In The Book Of Mormon, Dana M. Pike

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Mazes In Spanish-English Dual Language Learners After Language Enrichment: A Case Study, Casey L. Taliancich-Klinger, Connie Summers, Kai J. Greene

Faculty Publications

ABSTRACTThe number of Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs) in the United States continues toincrease every year. In the absence of developmental language norms for DLLs it is importantto learn more about typical language production characteristics to distinguish typical fromatypical language characteristics. An area of language production with conflicting results inthe literature is the production of mazes. Mazes are interruptions in the forward flow oflanguage in the form of interjections, repairs or revisions of words and phrases. At elevatedrates, mazes may interrupt the communication process. A common practice in classroomsettings is to provide support for DLLs through small group activities such …

An Fmri Investigation Of The Neurocognitive Processing Of Measures And Strategic Objectives, Paul Black, C. Brock Kirwan, Thomas Meservy, William B. Tayler, Jeffrey O. Williams

Faculty Publications

A central feature of most organizations is the use of measures to represent key elements of performance across multiple strategic objectives. Prior research has demonstrated a tendency for individuals to treat these measures as though they are the higher-order strategic objectives the measures were intended to represent, as opposed to imperfect representations of those strategic objectives—a phenomenon labeled surrogation. We employ an experiment to further understand this phenomenon. In this study, we capture neural activation when processing measures and when processing strategic objectives. We find that differences in brain activity when processing measures and strategic objectives are similar to the …

Updated Perceptions Of Accounting Academics On The Review And Publication Process, F. Greg Burton, William G. Heninger, Scott L. Summers, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

We update the Wood (2016) survey that gathered perceptions of academics regarding the review and publication process at the top academic journals to measure changes in perceptions over the last five years. We find that accounting academics generally perceive the overall process has not improved at top journals or has become worse since 2015. More specifically, we find that respondents think acceptance rates in top journals should nearly double. Respondents believe that reviewers and editors underweight practice relevance. They also believe reviewers overweight the criteria of incremental contribution, method, and rigor. Respondents believe that their institutions focus too much on …

Perceptions Of Robotic Process Automation In Big 4 Public Accounting Firms: Do Firm Leaders And Lower-Level Employees Agree?, Lauren A. Cooper, D. Kip Holderness, Trevor L. Sorensen, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

The use of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a recent innovation in the public accounting industry, and the Big 4 firms are at the forefront of its implementation. This paper examines how the adoption and use of RPA is affecting the perceived work experience of firm leaders and lower-level employees at Big 4 accounting firms. We interview 14 RPA leaders, survey 139 lower-level employees, and compare and contrast their responses. We find that the two groups generally agree that RPA is having a positive influence on the profession. Both groups believe that RPA is positively changing the work employees perform …

The Influence Of Management’S Internal Audit Experience On Earnings Management, Matthew Ege, Timothy Seidel, Mikhail Sterin, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

We examine whether firms with managers that have prior internal audit experience are less likely to manage earnings. This examination is important because the internal audit function is uniquely positioned to provide experiences that could influence future managerial behavior, including limiting the potential negative repercussions of earnings management. We find that firms with managers that have internal audit experience are associated with lower real earnings management but not accruals-based earnings management. Effects are strongest when managers with internal audit experience have greater power or currently hold financial roles, or when there are a greater number of managers with internal audit …

The Status Of Robotic Process Automation, Steven A. Harrast, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Modern information technology (IT) has greatly expanded the capability of companies to coordinate activities and process large numbers of transactions. Unfortunately, large companies often support thousands of individual applications, and the data necessary for financial reporting is scattered across these applications. As applications and data proliferate, companies must link together the applications and systems, often using spreadsheets and expending significant amounts of time in manual data entry and manipulation. This manual work is slow, expensive, and error prone and lacks useful business insights. Also, the employees who must perform these tasks are often overwhelmed and unsatisfied with the mundane work. …

Double Trouble? Irs’S Attention To Financial Accounting Restatements, Zackery D. Fox, Ryan Wilson

Faculty Publications

We examine whether the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) uses public information to obtain qualitative signals regarding the quality of firms’ financial information or management integrity. Using the procurement of public information as a proxy for IRS attention, we test whether public signals of poor information quality (restatements) lead to an increase in IRS attention. To begin, we document that the IRS is both more likely and quicker to acquire public filings announcing a restatement than any other filing of the firm. Furthermore, we examine instances in which the IRS is more likely to learn of a restatement and find an …

Ecology Of Family Experiences: Contextualizing Family Leisure For Human Development & Family Relations, Camilla Hodge, Kelly D. Chandler, Karen K. Melton, Kelly L. Hoke, Jennifer Blodgett

Faculty Publications

Research on family communication in the leisure context has been limited to retrospective survey reconstructions of perceptions of communication patterns. This study examines the validity of sociometric badges for measuring family communication in real-time. Seven families (married, two-parent families with at least one child ages 4–17 years) wore sociometric badges during a 30-minute leisure activity in a lab setting. We compared mean badge estimates of family communication duration to mean coded video data from the same 30-minute sessions. Intraclass correlation coefficients indicated sociometric badges are not as reliable as video-coded estimates of speech; however, among parents, non-significant mean comparisons partially …

Optimal Illiquidity, John Beshears, James J. Choi, Christopher Clayton, Christopher Harris, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

We calculate the socially optimal level of illiquidity in an economy populated by households with taste shocks and present bias (Amador, Werning, and Angeletos 2006). The government chooses mandatory contributions to respective spending/ savings accounts, each with a different pre-retirement withdrawal penalty. Penalties collected by the government are redistributed through the tax system. When naive households have heterogeneous present bias, the social optimum is well approximated by a three-account system: (i) a completely liquid account, (ii) a completely illiquid account, and (iii) an account with an ≃ 10% early withdrawal penalty. In some ways this resembles the U.S. system, which …

Earnings Virality*, Brett Campbell, Michael S. Drake, Jacob Thornock, Brady Twedt

Faculty Publications

We examine the determinants and market consequences associated with earnings announcements going viral on social media, a phenomenon we label “earnings virality.” Using a comprehensive panel of historical Twitter data, we find that the typical earnings announcement receives relatively little social media coverage, but others go viral on social media, quickly reaching the feeds of millions of people. We find that viral earnings announcements generally have Twitter content that is more extreme in tone and contains less unique content. Further, earnings virality is positively associated with revenue surprises, investor recognition, retail investor ownership, and retail investor trading around the announcement. …

A General Coupling Methodology For Unsteady Aerostructural Optimization With Analytic Derivatives, Taylor Mcdonnell, Adam Cardoza, Denis-Gabriel Caprace, Andrew Ning

Faculty Publications

Multidisciplinary design optimization offers a comprehensive approach for designing complex aerostructural systems such as wind turbines. Gradient-based multidisciplinary design optimization can be used to optimize complex systems using large numbers of design variables. However, the convergence of gradient-based optimization methods to an optimal solution is highly dependent on the accuracy of the provided derivatives. In this paper, we propose a general method for creating unsteady coupled systems for steady-state, eigenvalue, and time-domain analyses. We then describe how highly accurate derivatives may be obtained from these analyses using a combination of automatic differentiation and analytic methods (including the unsteady adjoint). Finally, …

Mountain Men Reveal Yellowstone: Observations Of Daniel Potts, Warren Ferris, And Osborne Russell In The 1820s And 1830s, Jay H. Buckley, Nathan Benavidez

Faculty Publications

As Yellowstone National Park celebrates its 150th anniversary as the first such park in the world, it is fascinating to rediscover the records of mountain men and and that the same features that enthrall modern visitors captivated them as well. “Sonder” is the realization that other people with whom we share the mortal coil have lived lives just as complex and wonderous as our own. Americans can no better appreciate this than when they stand in Yellowstone National Park today and marvel at the same grandeur mountain men witnessed two hundred years ago.

Final Thoughts And Observations, James R. Allison, Heidi Roberts, Jerry D. Spangler

Faculty Publications

This chapter addresses three topics inspired by the discoveries made during Jackson Flat’s archaeological investigations. The first topic examines the implications of the discovery of early maize agriculture in the Far Western region. Our data suggest that the Far Western Basketmaker tradition developed on a trajectory separate from the Western Basketmaker groups associated with the White Dog Phase in the Four Corners region.

Personal Acts, Habit, And Embodied Agency In Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology Of Perception, Justin F. White

Faculty Publications

In Aspiration, Agnes Callard examines the phenomenon of aspiration, the process by which one acquires values and becomes a certain kind of person. Aspiring to become a certain type of person involves more than wanting to act in certain ways. We want to come to see the world in a certain way and to develop the dispositions, attributes, and skills that allow us to seamlessly and effectively respond to situations. The skilled athlete or musician, for example, has developed the muscle memory and the perceptual equivalent to naturally see what a situation requires and to respond well, whether playing a …

Two (Failed) Versions Of Hume’S Argument Against Miracles, Nathan Rockwood

Faculty Publications

Hume’s argument against believing the testimony of miracles is the most influential treatment of the topic, but there is not yet a consensus on how to interpret his argument. Two arguments are attributed to him. First, Hume seems to start with the infrequency of miracles and uses this to infer that the testimony of a miracle is exceedingly unlikely, and this then creates strong but defeasible evidence against the testimony of any miracle. Second, perhaps Hume takes the constancy of our experience of the laws of nature as decisive or indefeasible evidence against the testimony of any miracle. I explain …

Religiosity From Age 12 To 20: Stability, Change, And Bidirectional Effects Of Attendance, Prayer, And Salience, W. Justin Dyer, Sam A. Hardy, Michael Goodman

Faculty Publications

Religiosity is a protective factor for adolescents, though research has indicated religiosity declines across adolescence. However, little research has examined how various dimensions of religiosity may change across time. With yearly data from a sample of 489 participants, the current study examined rank-order and mean level changes in religiosity from early adolescence (12 years-old) into late adolescence/emerging adulthood (20 years-old). Three dimensions of religiosity were examined, public religious practices (religious service attendance), private religious practices (prayer), and religious salience. Using cross-lagged models, reciprocal relationships between these dimensions were examined. There was significant rank-order stability, though stability was highest for attendance. …

"The Working World Is A Minefield": Counterstories Of Job Loss, Rachel Collier Murdock, Matt Baker, Stacy Tye-Williams

Faculty Publications

This study examines narratives told by employees who experienced involuntary job loss. Results expand on previous narrative research investigating the American Dream master narrative and job loss as related to the neoliberal claim that those who work hard will be successful. The study investigated the master narrative’s implications for job loss that if someone loses their job, they must be either flawed or a bad worker. Contributions include a new redeemed-resolved identity construction by individuals who narrated job loss as an opportunity to correct some flaw in either their character or work life and to emerge a better, changed worker. …

The Effects Of A Second-Chance Exam Policy In A Large-Enrollment Introductory Accounting Course, Melissa Larson, William B. Tayler, Jared R. Stark

Faculty Publications

Using a quasi-experimental design, we compare two semesters of an introductory accounting course to evaluate the impact of a second-chance exam policy (SCEP) on student performance and anxiety, analyzing data from 1,986 students. The SCEP, allowing two additional attempts at exams capped at 80 percent credit, significantly improved academic outcomes and decreased perceived test anxiety. Specifically, students during the SCEP semester experienced an average increase of 4.46 percent in exam scores (p < 0.01), a 3.37 percent increase in course percentage points (p < 0.01), and a GPA increase of 0.21 (p < 0.01). Notably, women experienced greater improvements than men in measured academic outcomes. Our findings suggest that SCEPs can be an effective intervention to increase academic performance and reduce anxiety. We also examine an SCEP’s effect on preparation for exam first attempts and find that students perform better on a first attempt with an SCEP.

Cross-Modal Reorganization From Both Visual And Somatosensory Modalities In Cochlear Implanted Children And Its Relationship To Speech Perception, Garrett Cardon, Theresa Hennesy, Julia Campbell, Hannah Glick, Don Bell-Souder

Faculty Publications

Hypothesis: We hypothesized that children with cochlear implants (CIs) who demonstrate cross-modal reorganization by vision also demonstrate cross-modal reorganization by somatosensation and that these processes are interrelated and impact speech perception. Background: Cross-modal reorganization, which occurs when a deprived sensory modality's cortical resources are recruited by other intact modalities, has been proposed as a source of variability underlying speech perception in deaf children with CIs. Visual and somatosensory cross-modal reorganization of auditory cortex have been documented separately in CI children, but reorganization in these modalities has not been documented within the same subjects. Our goal was to examine the relationship …

Developing The Experience Impact Scale: A Qualitative Study Using A Study Abroad And International Internship Program, Neil Lundberg, Peter Ward, Grant Lundberg, Brian Hill, Jennifer Brown, Ramon Zabriskie, Mat Duerden, Heather Ashby

Faculty Publications

Recent work has identified different experience types, including experience classifications of ordinary, memorable, meaningful, and transformative. This study further clarifies the experience typology through qualitative data analysis of each experience type. Data analysis identified that within each extraordinary experience type, additional subtypes were present. Experience types and subtypes were organized according to the experience typology continuum into a 10-item Experience Impact Scale (EIS), as no instrument to measure experience types or experience impact was available. An expert panel was used to determine the representativeness of the items in the EIS and to provide content-related evidence of validity. Discussion of the …