Digital Commons Network^™

Reviewers' Comments On The Bibliography

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

''Your great bibliographical project ... will greatly enhance the quality of discussion in the field." Joseph Needham, history of Asian science, Cambridge University.

New Publication Asks: "Was Columbus The First Across The Ocean?"

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

More than three years of research will culminate this month with the appearance of Pre-Columbian Contacts with the Americas across the Oceans: An Annotated Bibliography, by John L. Sorenson and Martin H. Raish. Prominent scholars are enthusiastic about this 1250-page, 2-volume set (see sidebar).

Dispensing With Humans In Human-Computer Interaction Research, Courtni L. Byun

Theses and Dissertations

Machine Learning models have become more advanced than could have been supposed even a few years ago, often surpassing human performance on many tasks. Large language models (LLM) can produce text indistinguishable from human-produced text. This begs the question, how necessary are humans - even for tasks where humans appear indispensable? Qualitative Analysis (QA) is integral to human-computer interaction research, requiring both human-produced data and human analysis of that data to illuminate human opinions about and experiences with technology. We use GPT-3 and ChatGPT to replace human analysis and then to dispense with human-produced text altogether. We find GPT-3 is …

Feasibility Of An Abstract Verb Naming Treatment For Aphasia, Dallin J. Bailey, Lisa Bunker, Julie L. Wambaugh

Faculty Publications

Purpose

Verb production impairments in aphasia have important implications for sentence production and communication in general. Verbs with low concreteness may be especially important for certain functional uses, and yet limited data regarding their response to treatment are available. This study was designed to examine a novel behavioral treatment approach to improve low concreteness verb naming in persons with aphasia.

Method

Three persons with nonfluent aphasia participated in a single-subject experimental design research study examining the feasibility of the novel treatment. The treatment was based on approaches that target the verb as the central node of meaning during sentence construction. …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Exciting Research In An Easily Readable Form

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Every student should have a copy of the newly completed Rediscovering the Book of Mormon. It is the kind of book that F.A.R.M.S. subscribers have been asking for: exciting new discoveries about the Book of Mormon made by LDS scholars, presented in a form accessible to all readers. No special background is required to appreciate these twenty-three brief essays-just a desire to rediscover the value of the Book of Mormon by learning new things about it.

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

New Bibliographies Help Answer Questions About Animals And Metals In The Book Of Mormon

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The Book of Mormon mentions animals and metals that do not seem to fit into the conventional scholarly view of animals and metals in the New World. Two new study aids prepared by John L. Sorenson and available through F.A.R.M.S. provide information that will help students of the Book of Mormon examine and perhaps resolve these problems.

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Farms Brown Bag Seminar Presents On-Going Research

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Approximately twice each month during the Fall and Winter Semesters at BYU, the Foundation sponsors informal brown bag lectures in which BYU faculty and others discuss their research on topics related to the Book of Mormon. All members of the BYU community and other interested persons are invited to attend, free of charge.

Review Does It Again--Offers Careful Analyses, And Pulls No Punches

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

F.A.RMS. has published the fourth volume of its annual Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, edited by Daniel C. Peterson.

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Challenging Conventional Views Of Metal Use In Mesoamerica, John L. Sorenson

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Orthodox archaeologists have for many years supposed that metals were not used in Mesoamerica, the probable area where Book of Mormon events took place, until nearly 500 years after the scripture says the Nephites were destroyed. Of course the Book of Mormon briefly mentions the use of metal among the Nephites (although by the time of its last mention, in Mosiah 11:8, it was "precious"). Previous attempts to refute the prevailing view have had little effect. Renewed research by John Sorenson has revealed a substantial body of data on the subject that was previously ignored.

Telling Stories In Noise: The Impact Of Background Noises On Spoken Language For People With Aphasia, Tyson G. Harmon, Brenna Scadden Nelson, Christopher Dromey, Kirsten Dixon Clawson

Faculty Publications

Purpose: Determine how different background noise conditions affect the spoken language of participants with aphasia during a story retell task.

Method: Participants included 11 adults with mild to moderate aphasia and 11 age- and gender-matched controls. Participants retold stories in a silent baseline and five background noise conditions (conversation, monologue, phone call, cocktail, pink noise). Dependent measures of speech acoustics (fundamental frequency, mean intensity), speech fluency (speech rate, disfluent words), and language production (correct information units, lexical errors, lexical diversity, and cohesive utterances) were compared between groups and across conditions.

Results: Background noise resulted in higher fundamental frequency (F_{0 …}

Physiological Arousal, Attentiveness, Emotion, And Word Retrieval In Aphasia: Effects And Relationships, Tyson G. Harmon, Angela Johnson, Vivian Ward, Shawn Nissen

Faculty Publications

Purpose: To (a) compare physiological arousal and attentiveness during a confrontational naming task between participants with aphasia and a control group across four conditions that varied according to emotionality of presented stimuli and (b) explore relationships among physiological arousal, attentiveness, perceived arousal, and naming performance. We hypothesized that participants with aphasia would show lower levels of arousal and attentiveness than control participants and that emotional conditions would lead to increased physiological arousal and attentiveness.

Method: Eight participants with aphasia and 15 control participants completed a confrontational naming task under positive, negative, and neutral conditions and rated their perceived arousal after …

A Grounded Theory Of Relational Masculinity In Brazil, Douglas M. Wendt

Theses and Dissertations

Many societal problems in Brazil, including sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and fatherlessness, are said to be related to hegemonic masculine development, commonly known as toxic masculinity. Very little research has been conducted in Marriage and Family Therapy and related fields that explores masculinity in the context of family systems and within relational frameworks. Current research in this area focuses largely on the negative aspects of traditional masculinity that reinforce narrow stereotypes rather than highlight possibilities of relationally healthy masculine development. The aim of this study was to develop a constructivist grounded theory of relational masculinity in Brazil by interviewing …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tours Planned On Lehi's Arabian Trail

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Bountiful Tours of Australia is preparing the first ever tours on the trail that Lehi likely took from Jerusalem to Bountiful. Warren Aston will lead 22-day tours along this trail, limited to 15 participants for each tour, departing Sept. 7, Sept. 28, Nov. 2, and Nov. 23, 1992. As Lehi's journey is followed from Jerusalem to Bountiful, events and places described in the Book of Mormon will take on new relevance and meaning.

Study Aid Again Available

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The "Wide Margin Edition" of the Book of Mormon, prepared by Eldin Ricks, is available through F.A.R.M.S. This edition has wide margins and is printed in 29 separate 30-page booklets (in a 3-ring binder), making it convenient for students and teachers to take small sections of the Book of Mormon to Gospel Doctrine class for teaching or making notes.

Paper Studies Characteristics Of Oral Culture In The Book Of Mormon

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

A recent fascinating study by William Eggington of the BYU English Department suggests that, by and large, Book of Mormon peoples functioned as an oral culture. Although the Lehite community had access to print as a technology, Eggington believes that they wrote only to accomplish narrow (i.e., religious) goals and that their writings retained many features of a nonprint culture. His evidence comes from certain indicators and memory-aiding devices within the text of the Book of Mormon, including repetitious patterns, balanced patterns, formulaic expressions, and parallelisms.

Nibley Considers The Temple In The Cosmos

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Hugh Nibley's long-awaited treatment of the temple, which is volume 12 of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, will be released early in April by F.A.R.M.S. and Deseret Book.

A Decade Of Research Explored And Documented

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

This month, F.A.R.M.S. and Deseret Book will release their newest book, Reexploring the Book of Mormon. This volume reports the highlights of F.A.R.M.S. research over the last ten years. It is designed to appeal to a very wide audience.

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reprints & Preliminary Reports

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

F.A.R.M.S. is pleased to announce the addition of the following articles as Reprints and Preliminary Reports now available. One of the Foundation's main functions is to make research about the Book of Mormon easily accessible to general readers. The demand for these papers continues to be very strong and responses have been enthusiastic.

Project Updates

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Brian Stubbs has completed and submitted to F.A.R.M.S. his 93 page report entitled "Observations in Uto-Aztecan.'' Stubbs has been assisted by a research grant from the Foundation. His report concludes that there exists a possibility that ''something Semitic'' exists as a ''substantial element of a proto Uto-Aztecan creole.'' (A creole is a mixture of two languages, for example, using the grammar of one and the vocabulary of another.)

El Español En La Repúblida Dominicana, Orlando Alba

Faculty Publications

Este capítulo presenta un panorama general del español en la República Dominicana desde dos perspectivas: la percepción y la actuación de los hablantes. Desde la perspectiva subjetiva, se examina la inseguridad lingüística que exhibe gran parte de la población, que piensa que su español es inferior al de otros lugares. Por otra parte, se analizan los rasgos objetivos que caracterizan el dialecto. Se describen los procesos fonéticos de la variación consonántica, subrayando el avanzado estado del proceso de reducción de la /s/, la variación de las líquidas /r, l/ y de la /d/ intervocálica. En el terreno sintáctico, se discuten …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Follow Indian Example, Nibley Urges

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

"It would be hard to imagine two cultures more opposed than our own and that of the Indians." These words summarize a central argument of a new paper by Hugh Nibley. In October 1992 Nibley gave a challenging and insightful address at the Bill of Rights Symposium sponsored by the J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU. It has been published as "Promised Lands" in the Clark Memorandum by the Law School and is available as a reprint from F.A.R.M.S.

Firesides Planned

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

In addition to speaking at firesides periodically in the Salt Lake and Provo areas (call for details), scholars associated with F.A.R.M.S. are sometimes invited to travel to more distant locations to conduct firesides for interested friends of the Foundation. In October, Truman Madsen spoke at a successful F.A.R.M.S.-sponsored fireside in San Diego, on which we will report in the future. In the coming weeks, F.A.R.M.S. will sponsor the following firesides.