Digital Commons Network^™

"Camouflaging" In Women With Autistic Traits: Measures, Mechanisms, And Mental Health Implications, Jonathan S. Beck

Theses and Dissertations

Autistic traits are associated with frequent psychological distress and everyday functional challenges. Some individuals with autistic traits “camouflage” these traits during social interactions by effortfully engaging in “typical” social behaviors. Camouflaging seems to be especially common in autistic girls and women. Emerging evidence proposes a role for camouflaging behaviors in poorer mental health and daily functioning. Furthermore, camouflaging efforts may delay receipt of a proper diagnosis and access to appropriate mental health care. Despite their clinical significance, camouflaging efforts remain difficult to quantify, and the mechanisms and impacts of camouflaging are poorly understood. This study aimed to compare multiple methods …

“Don’T Say Gay. We Say Dumb Or Stupid”: Queering Prospectivemathematics Teachers’ Discussions, Amy Saunders Ross

Theses and Dissertations

Many prospective teachers make assumptions about their students before they actually begin teaching. Many of these assumptions can be rooted specifically in students’ races, cultures, classes, religions, genders, and sexual orientations. In order for prospective mathematics teachers to challenge these biases, some mathematics teacher educators have provided tasks to support these prospective teachers in becoming aware of their own biases. I chose to analyze a group of five prospective mathematics teachers discussing topics of teaching for social justice to examine more closely the kinds of biases they carry, and more specifically, how those biases came about in their conversations. My …

So . . . We're Going For A Walk: A Placed-Based Outdoor Art Experiential Learning Experience, Priscilla Anne Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

Schools in the United States often emphasize making children competitive in a global economy while neglecting the importance of developing citizens who are ecologically responsible. Problems of climate change, loss of biodiversity, mass extinctions and degradation of the natural environment, are often ignored. Some researchers have suggested that children lack unstructured play time in nature, have an increased amount of screen time, lack mindfulness, and are insulated from the natural world. Many children rarely have significant experience with nature's wildness. It is common for people to experience a sense of placelessness in the hyper-mobility of present times where "globalizing" agendas …

Semantically Aligned Sentence-Level Embeddings For Agent Autonomy And Natural Language Understanding, Nancy Ellen Fulda

Theses and Dissertations

Many applications of neural linguistic models rely on their use as pre-trained features for downstream tasks such as dialog modeling, machine translation, and question answering. This work presents an alternate paradigm: Rather than treating linguistic embeddings as input features, we treat them as common sense knowledge repositories that can be queried using simple mathematical operations within the embedding space, without the need for additional training. Because current state-of-the-art embedding models were not optimized for this purpose, this work presents a novel embedding model designed and trained specifically for the purpose of "reasoning in the linguistic domain".Our model jointly represents single …

Para Comunicarnos Mejor: Respuestas A Cuestiones Lingüísticas, Orlando Alba

Books

No abstract provided.

The Perception Of Voice Onset Time By English-Speaking L2 Learners Of Spanish With An Extended Partial Immersion Experience, Jeremy Leigh Ingersoll

Theses and Dissertations

For adult learners of a second language, the similarities and differences in acoustic properties between their native language and the language they are learning can affect how they perceive the sounds of the new language. How learners perceive these acoustic properties will directly affect their ability to communicate. According to the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) (Best 1995), learners will perceive the sounds of a language that is new to them based on how similar or different the sounds are from the learner’s native language. Between the English and Spanish language, there are some sounds that share acoustic properties and others …

Migration And Mental Health In The Aftermath Of Disaster: Evidence From Mt. Merapi, Indonesia, Jonathan A. Muir, Michael R. Cope, Leslie R. Angeningsih, Jorden E. Jackson, Ralph B. Brown

Faculty Publications

Migration is a standard survival strategy in the context of disasters. While prior studies have examined factors associated with return migration following disasters, an area that remains relatively underexplored is whether moving home to one’s original community results in improved health and well-being compared to other options such as deciding to move on. In the present study, our objective is to explore whether return migration, compared to other migration options, results in superior improvements to mental health. We draw upon data from a cross-sectional pilot study conducted 16 months after a series of volcanic eruptions in Merapi, Indonesia. Using ordinal …

A Movement Theory Of Adjunct Control, Jeffrey Jack Green

Faculty Publications

It has recently been argued (Landau 2017) that control in temporal and rationale adjuncts may be either syntactic ‘Obligatory Control’ (OC) or non-syntactic ‘Non-Obligatory Control’ (NOC), in contrast to previous assumptions that adjunct control is strictly OC. Here I demonstrate that this OC/NOC duality does not extend to all adjuncts. I outline claims that Landau would have to make in order to accommodate the wider distribution of OC and NOC in adjuncts, but argue that the account still struggles. I offer an alternative within the Movement Theory of Control.

Reliability And Stability Of The Metrical Stress Effect On Segmental Production Accuracy In Persons With Apraxia Of Speech, Dallin J. Bailey, Lisa Bunker, Shannon Mauszycki, Julie L. Wambaugh

Faculty Publications

Background Acquired apraxia of speech (AOS) involves speech-production deficits on both the segmental and suprasegmental levels. Recent research has identified a non-linear interaction between the metrical structure of bisyllabic words and word-production accuracy in German speakers with AOS, with trochaic words (strong–weak stress) being resistant to errors compared with iambic words (weak–strong).

Aims To replicate previous findings in English speakers with AOS, to measure the test–retest reliability of the effect, and to examine the potential impact of different methods of word scoring.

Methods & Procedures Speech samples were collected from 27 speakers with AOS and aphasia. Participants were at least …

Intertextuality, Aesthetics, And The Digital: Rediscovering Chekhov In Early British Modernism, Sam Jacob

Modernist Short Story Project

Mark Halliday’s poem, “Chekhov,” published in 1992, raises a simple yet profound question regarding the Russian playwright and author, Anton Chekhov: What do we get from Chekhov? Considering the present article’s particular focus, Halliday’s query may be used to ask how Chekhov influenced early modernist writers (circa 1900-1930) from the British literary context. However, when considering the amount of scholarly work devoted to this question, the initial simplicity of Halliday’s inquiry evaporates, giving way to a breadth of complexity, nuance, and ambiguity. Such ambiguity has led scholars attempting to trace the intertextual convergence between Chekhov and the early modernist writers …

“As Far As It Is Translated Correctly”: Bible Translation And The Church, Daniel O. Mcclellan

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

The publication of Thomas A. Wayment’s The New Testament: A Translation for Latter-day Saintsis a significant event that occasions not only a close examination of his work but also a discussion of how it fits into the complex relationship The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long shared with Bible translation.1 If the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion, the King James Version of the Bible is certainly its linguistic cornerstone. The scripture and other revelations that flowed from the Prophet Joseph Smith and his successors in the early days of the Church were …

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Personality Inventory Dsm-5: A Spanish Translation For Hispanics In The United States, Jessica Abigail Carmona

Theses and Dissertations

The Personality Inventory DSM-5 (PID-5) was created to measure personality pathology and help in the development of a dimensional conceptualization of personality disorders (Krueger, Derringer, Markon, Watson, & Skodol, 2012). It measures five maladaptive personality traits: Negative Affect, Detachment, Antagonism, Disinhibition and Psychoticism. The PID-5 has also garnered significant support for its hierarchical structure, five-factor structure across samples and translations, and its ability to predict variance in internalizing and externalizing disorders (Krueger & Markon, 2014). The current study builds on this literature by translating the PID-5 into Spanish spoken in Latin America and testing the replicability of the five-factor structure, …

"General Conference Talk": Style Variation And The Styling Of Identity In Latter-Day Saint General Conference Oratory, Stephen Thomas Betts

Theses and Dissertations

Despite its exceptional importance as a cultural performance event in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, General Conference has received little attention in Mormon studies, to say nothing of sociolinguistics. Situated within the larger question of how the public language of Mormon authorities has changed over time, this thesis seeks to discover style features of what impressionistically appears to be a unitary General Conference style since 1960 (the era of church "Correlation"). Statistical analysis is then used to determine which of five sociolinguistic factors and three pairwise interactions between four of the five sociolinguistic factors most saliently conditions …

I See You, God, John S. Tanner

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Aloha! I am both honored and a bit daunted to be invited to speak to you about the reason for the hope that is in me. The topic seems to call for a talk in a personal vein. So I shall speak autobiographically about the reasons for the hope I felt as a young man preparing to go on a mission and for the hope I feel today. I also will touch upon larger epistemological questions about how I know. I have entitled my talk “I See You, God” for reasons that will become clear later.

End Matter

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of Esl Learner Preferences For Native Accent Retention And Reduction, K. James Hartshorn

Faculty Publications

Though most ESL learners desire a “native-like” pronunciation, researchers have observed that some may want to retain features of their L1accents as a means of maintaining identity. This raises important questions about the best ways to teach L2 pronunciation. Therefore, the aims of this study were to discover how pervasive a preference for accent retention may be and to identify possible reasons learners exhibit this preference. To accomplish this, a scale was designed to assess a preference for accent retention, and potential explanatory variables were identified. Analyses of 350 ESL learners identified varying levels of a preference for accent retention, …

Open-Source Consistency Evaluation For Chinese Word Segmentation, Blake Smith, Robert Reynolds

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Chinese in its written form, whether typed or penned, does not separate its characters by spaces. Imagine if this were the case with English, and a sign for a job fair were to display “opportunityisnowhere.” Regardless of the intent being to announce that “opportunity is now here,” the ambiguity caused by the lack of spacing also enables a negative reading. Figuring out where the spaces, or word boundaries, belong in Chinese can even be tricky on occasion even for native speakers. Imagine then how difficult this task is for computers. And so, machines need to be able to decipher word …

Morphological Parsing And Segmentation, Kyle Roth, Deryle Lonsdale

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Morphological parsing is a task where a computer recognizes the meaning that parts of a word contribute to its overall meaning and role in the sentence. Morphological segmentation simply means splitting words up into their component parts, and is simpler than parsing.

The result of my research is two-fold: I applied a VoCRF to morphologically parse a new Basque corpus, and demonstrated the e ectiveness of a paradigm-based approach to morphological segmentation. Initially, I set out to improve upon the VoCRF algorithm to account for previously-known information; unfortunately, the expected improvements to the VoCRF algorithm could not be made because …

Analyzing A Corpus Of President Trump’S Public Statements To Reveal Possible Media Bias, Kevin Zalewski, William Eggington

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In recent years, America has become extremely politically divided. As political polarization has increased, so has distrust of the media, especially during President Trump’s current term of office. The Media Insights Project reports that “just 17 percent of Americans give the news media high marks for being ‘very accurate.’” In this partisan political landscape, it can be difficult to know where to turn for unbiased, unspun news coverage. Where can a person learn what the president has said on a given topic without some type of filter coloring the information? This possible bias is a problem that corpus linguistics can …

A Regional Party In Yorkshire?: The Proof Is In The Pudding, Elizabeth Whatcott, Dr. Joel Selway

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Within the United Kingdom, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have all gained regional assemblies which manage local affairs including health care, economic growth, education, and other services. However, the Parliament in Westminster has devolved few responsibilities to local authorities in England. Under the Blair premiership, the government began a process of referendums that would introduce regional assemblies into the Northern regions, but after the North East referendum rejected the proposal in 2004, the devolution process sputtered to a halt. However, regionalism may be gaining new life in England. The Yorkshire Party, a regionalist party that explicitly seeks a regional assembly …

Acoustic Phonetic Analysis Of Tol, Micah Wood, Dr. Chris Rogers

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Tol is one of the languages belonging to the language family referred to as Jicaquean in the linguistic literature. It has roughly 200 speakers remaining in a single community in northern Honduras, called Montaña de la Flor. Some relatively recent grammatical descriptions of the language provide useful but incomplete information on the grammatical principles of Tol (Holt, 1999; Dennis, 1992; Dennis & Dennis, 1983), and they contradict each other. The need for a correct understanding of Tol is increased by the fact that Tol is an endangered language. Additionally, it is currently a language isolate and is not similar to …

Fmri And Qeeg Imaging Of Auditory Function And Source Localization, David L. Mcpherson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of the MEG was to mentor students into an active research environment where new neuroimaging techniques were being developed and utilized to describe the auditory system. Approximately 18 undergraduate and graduate students participated in the project. In addition, approximately an additional 38 students were trained, by students from this MEG proposal, in this technique from Physiology and Developmental Biology and Psychology. Results helped define the role of the right hemisphere in language plasticity. Likewise, further protocol development and adjustments to the current protocol have been implemented.

Impact Of Lexical Bundles On Chinese L2 Learners’ Oral Proficiency, Corey Ketring, Rachel Yu Liu

Journal of Undergraduate Research

This study examined the efficacy of formulaic language in improving the fluency of Chinese in second-language learners. Formulaic language refers to a group of words that is cognitively stored as one linguistic unit, rather than being analyzed by each indepdent part (Simon, 1974). For instance, if one were to witnessing something shocking exclaim, “oh my goodness!”, you are exhibiting formulaic language. Because we do not use typical rules of grammar to analyze formulaic language, it is likely that we can process it much more quickly (Wray, 2002). Wray et al also suggests that it is an important part of developing …

Linguistic Integration: A Comparison Of Spanish Speakers In Austria And Germany With Those In The U.S., Nicole Gomez Bravo, Laura Smith

Journal of Undergraduate Research

This study examined factors influencing the linguistic and cultural integration of Spanish-speaking immigrants into the local language and culture. Immigration and the integration of recent immigrants is an increasingly polarizing topic worldwide, with many citizens complaining that new immigrants fail to learn the target language of their new home and refuse to integrate into local culture. Consequently, immigrants from some cultures often face discrimination or poor treatment. In the United States, immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America are one such group encountering well-publicized difficulties. Spanish-speaking immigrants are also on the rise in German-speaking countries such as Germany and Austria, …

Dual Task Effects On Story Retell For Participants With Moderate, Mild, Or No Aphasia: Quantitative And Qualitative Findings, Tyson G. Harmon, Adam Jacks, Katarina L. Haley, Antoine Bailliard

Faculty Publications

Purpose: To determine dual task effects on content accuracy, delivery speed, and perceived effort during narrative discourse in people with moderate, mild, or no aphasia and to explore subjective reactions to retelling a story with a concurrent task.

Method: Two studies (one quantitative and one qualitative) were conducted. In study 1, participants with mild or moderate aphasia and neurotypical controls retold short stories in isolation and while simultaneously distinguishing between high and low tones. Story retell accuracy (speech productivity and efficiency), speed (speech rate, repetitions, and pauses), and perceived effort were measured and compared. In study 2, participants completed semi-structured …

The German/Russian 399r Internship Programs For Byu Online, Sean Worsley

Instructional Psychology and Technology Graduate Student Projects

The initial request of creating a BYU Online Canvas course for the GERM 399R and RUSS 399R internship course came from the German and Russian Departments on BYU campus. The client requested a course redesign based on student data from previous iterations of the internship course which indicated a decline in student satisfaction due to poor organization, difficult navigation, and the large quantity of homework.

The new product consisted of two courses (GERM 399R and RUSS 399R) housed within the Canvas learning management system (LMS) and was informed by a learner analysis, qualitative interviews, and iterative prototyping.

The improved internship …

Thalamic Morphology In Non-Semantic Primary Progressive Aphasia, Holly Rochelle Paxton

Theses and Dissertations

Background: Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a clinical dementia syndrome characterized by impairments in language. The presence of Alzheimer disease (AD) neuropathology has been observed in approximately 40% of PPA cases. Cross-sectional and longitudinal features of cortical atrophy in PPA are emerging but less is known about the integrity of subcortical structures, particularly the thalamus. As a major relay station in the brain, the thalamus is implicated in language functioning given its reciprocal connections with perisylvian regions in the cortex. High-dimensional brain mapping was used to characterize thalamic morphology in individuals with and without non-semantic PPA. Further, shape differences were …

Mismatch Negativity Event Related Potential Elicited By Speech Stimuli In Geriatric Patients, Dana Lynn Pierce

Theses and Dissertations

Hearing loss, as a result of old age, has been linked to a decline in speech perception despite the use of additional listening devices. Even though the relationship between hearing loss and decreased speech perception has been well established, research in this area has often focused on the behavioral aspects of language and not on the functionality of the brain itself. In the present study, the mismatch negativity, an event related potential, was examined in order to determine the differences in speech perception between young adult participants, geriatric normal hearing participants, and geriatric hearing-impaired participants. It was hypothesized that a …