Digital Commons Network^™

Examining The Effects Of A Complexity-Based Treatment For One Child With Down Syndrome Using Single-Case Design, Markelle Luddington

Theses and Dissertations

Common language difficulties observed in English-speaking children with Down syndrome (DS) and developmental language disorder (DLD) include challenges with marking tense and agreement on verbs, particularly with BE verbs. In addition, difficulties with syntactic movement may further exacerbate these challenges, often resulting in increased omission errors. A complexity-based approach to treatment target selection has been suggested as one method to address these needs. Therefore, this single-case design study examined the effects of a complexity-based treatment approach for one participant with Down syndrome. Specifically, this study investigated the effects of targeting a more complex treated structure, auxiliary BE questions, and the …

A Unified Behavioral Core: How Cbt And Act Often Do The Same Thing, Davis M. Paxton

Student Works

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) have emerged from the shared heritage of behavioral therapy and learning theory. ACT and CBT are evidenced to be effective and complementary by shared clinical outcomes across various patient demographics. Both therapies share a therapeutic framework or a unified behavioral core, despite formal differences. This behavioral core utilizes functionally equivalent awareness-based and behavior-change processes to accomplish the shared goals of symptom reduction and patient well-being. Psychological flexibility as defined by Hayes can be understood as both an outcome and potentially a mechanism of change for both therapies. Techniques from CBT …

Sequencing Of Chenopodium A-Genome Diploids To Identify Potential Mechanisms Of Speciation: A Preliminary Study, Riley Roser

Theses and Dissertations

The genus Chenopodium is of increasing significance, mainly due to allotetraploid quinoa (C. quinoa Willd.,2x = 4x =36, AABB genome) becoming globally recognized for its high nutritional value and tolerance for stress. Diploid A-genome relatives of quinoa in the Western Hemisphere have shown speciation patterns congruent to adaptive radiation, particularly in the North American continent, where a number inhabit ecological niches while others form mixed populations where they are sympatric. Characterization of the genetic mechanism(s) underlying this rapid speciation, could clarify their potential usefulness for improving quinoa . Previous whole-genome assemblies of AA diploids C. watsonii A. Watson and C. …

Testing The Moderating Effect Of Self-Compassion On The Relationship Between Perfectionism-Related Discrepancy And Perceived Social Support From Family, Marinne Hammond

Theses and Dissertations

Perfectionism involves an insistence on outstanding performance on tasks to an extreme level. More specifically, perfectionism-related discrepancy is when one subjectively sees a gap between their performance and their expectations for how they should perform. Perfectionism may be linked to mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and social disconnection. The perfectionism social disconnection model asserts that perfectionism can also lead to social withdrawal. Self-compassion involves the acceptance of imperfection; it has been associated with higher perceived social support and has also been shown to attenuate the relationship between perfectionism and psychological distress. This study aimed to further …

A Qualitative Study Of People With Aphasia And Their Experiences With The Bible, Marin Li

Theses and Dissertations

This phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of 4 individuals with aphasia (1 female, 3 male; 3 Catholic, 1 Lutheran) regarding their relationship with and engagement with the Bible. Participants completed three remote sessions via Zoom. In Session 1, participants completed the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence, Fourth Edition, (TONI-4), and the remote Quick Aphasia Battery (QAB). In Session 2, participants engaged in a semi-structured interview led by the researcher. In Session 3, the researchers presented preliminary analysis to receive feedback from participants. Student researchers coded interview transcriptions to develop a structured codebook. Five primary themes describe the participants' experiences with …

Exploring The Impact Of Self-Compassion And Mindfulness Interventions On Teacher Stress, Feedback Delivery, And Student Behavior In Elementary Classrooms, Coral Lynn Koller

Theses and Dissertations

Teacher stress is a persistent challenge that negatively affects educator well-being, classroom climate, and student outcomes. Although the prevalence and impact of teacher stress are well-documented. This single-case multiple baseline study investigated the effects of a structured self-compassion and mindfulness intervention on teacher stress, delivery of positive feedback, and student on-task behavior in three general education elementary teachers. Over a 6- week period, participants engaged in mindfulness and self-compassion practices, tracked through a combination of self-report scales (Daily Stress Response Scale, Perceived Stress Scale, SelfCompassion Scale, and Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire) and pre- and post-classroom observations. Results indicated reductions in …

Wounded Domestic Ecologies: Ecofeminist Readings Of Gendered Trauma In Purple Hibiscus, Erere Victory Iwhi

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus through an ecofeminist and postcolonial ecocritical lens, developing the concept of "wounded domestic ecology" to analyze how gendered violence operates within domestic space. Drawing on trauma studies, particularly J. R. Kurtz and Rob Nixon's concept of slow violence, it argues that harm in the novel is accumulative, produced through repetition, surveillance, ritual, and spatial regulation. Eugene's household functions as an environment that disciplines bodies, governs language, and embeds fear into everyday life. In contrast, Aunt Ifeoma's home in Nsukka offers a counter-ecology structured by sound, shared labor, and dialogic authority, interrupting the …

Storytelling, Gender, And The Double-Empathy Problem, Annie Rogers

Theses and Dissertations

Storytelling has been proposed as a meaningful way to facilitate empathy and connection, particularly across neurotypes. The present study examined whether a live storytelling event influenced perceptions of the autism community, empathy, and interpersonal connection, while also exploring differences on biological sex and levels of autistic traits. Participants completed pre- and post-event measures assessing relationship perceptions and connection, along with standardized measures of empathy and autistic traits. Results showed a significant increase in positive perceptions of the autism community and perceived closeness to storytellers after the event. Engagement, emotional impact, openness, and motivation to support the autism community were all …

Dual Language Immersion In Utah Schools: Examining Experiences And Access To Improve Sustainability, Melissa Catherine Jensen Kimball

Theses and Dissertations

Dual language immersion (DLI) programs can impact students in many ways. Multiple researchers have studied the effects of these programs and have found numerous benefits. However, there is little published information on the actual experiences of individuals in schools with a DLI program, including those who are involved in the program and those who were a part of DLI school communities but not directly involved in the program. A. Hawks, J. Rowley, D. Stovall, and their respective thesis and dissertation committees created a survey to better understand the current perspectives of administrators, parents, teachers, and other school staff on these …

Effects Of Divided Attention On Linguistic Tasks And Speech In Healthy Young Adults, Allison Coca

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of divided attention on concurrent speech and linguistic tasks by investigating performance on three linguistic computer tasks (phonological, syntactic, and semantic) and speech kinematics. Thirty-seven healthy young adults (19 male, 18 female) ages 19-30 were recorded performing a sentence repetition task using electromagnetic articulography. Each participant completed the sentence repetition once in isolation and once concurrently with each of the three linguistic computer tasks. Participants also completed computer tasks in isolation. Significant dual-task effects were observed on total number of correct responses in the phonological and syntactic linguistic tasks. No …

Multilingual Assessment Practices In School-Based Speech Language Pathologists, Carolyn Alana Ferguson

Theses and Dissertations

Multilingual assessment is an area of growing relevance and importance in the field of speech language pathology. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the current assessment practices among school-based SLPs in relation to their language background status (e.g. monolingual, bilingual, multilingual) and their perceptions on issues related to multilingualism. A survey instrument was created, which asked SLPs to respond to questions on various topics, including demographics, caseload information, assessment practices, statements on multilingual perceptions, and clinical scenarios. There were 267 participants included in the study from across the country with varying ages and years of experience in the …

Harnessing Story To Overcome The Double Empathy Problem Between Autistic And Neurotypical People: Brain-Behavior Relationships, Kate Gifford

Theses and Dissertations

There is a dearth of information on the physical aspects of the Double Empathy Problem which is the bidirectional challenge of shared empathy and understanding between autistic and neurotypical individuals. Storytelling has been shown as means to facilitate empathy between storytellers and listeners in both neurotypical and autistic populations through behavioral research. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a neuroimaging technique used to evaluate the hemodynamic response in the cortex and can be used to compare hemodynamic responses across multiple individuals (i.e., hyperscanning). The purpose of this study was to examine activation in empathy-related brain regions and assess brain synchrony between …

Jo March And "Me": Self-Recognition And Enchantment In Greta Gerwig's Portrayal Of Literary Ambition In Little Women, Britney R. Wells

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Despite the cinematic success of Greta Gerwig’s 2019 Little Women, literary scholars have yet to compare Gerwig’s directorial moves to Louisa May Alcott’s nineteenth-century novel. Relying on reader-response theory and peer-reviewed literature relevant to Alcott’s text, I examine Gerwig’s statements in interviews following the production of her film, focusing on comments that speak to her subjective response as a reader of Alcott’s novel. Rather than apply reader-response theory to this discussion broadly, I concentrate on what reader-response theorists call self-recognition and enchantment within the context of Gerwig’s response to Alcott’s Little Women. Further acknowledging this paper’s limitations, I …

Spatiospectral Lobes And Radiation Modeling Of Partially Coherent Supersonic Jet Noise, Tyce Wayne Olaveson

Theses and Dissertations

Noise fields generated by high-performance military jets are known to contain acoustic structures that differ from their simulated and lab-scale counterparts. These differences may limit current noise control efforts, which are designed and tested at scale before being considered for full-scale aircraft. One such noise structure is the presence of spatiospectral lobes, which appear as multiple spectral peaks at single microphone locations and multiple radiation lobes in field reconstructions. This dissertation uses data collected from the T-7A jet noise measurement to characterize the spatial behavior of the spatiospectral lobes as well as their first time-domain description. A multiple wavepacket decomposition …

The Tyrannical Woman: The Collapse Of Idolized Feminine Sexuality In Blake’S Visions Of The Daughters Of Albion, Asha A. Lambson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

One year before the publication of William Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of modern Western feminism, published A Vindications of the Rights of Woman. In her influential essay, she describes the concept of the tyrannical woman: a woman who, oppressed by reductive and stereotypical views of femininity, especially within the Madonna-whore complex, turns to forms of cunning and trickery to gain power over her environment. This paper explores Oothoon’s character in Blake’s Visions and how, over the course of the poem, she becomes a tyrannical woman. Oothoon, often praised by critics of Blake as …

Brains And Hearts: Virginia Woolf’S Natural, Incomparable Care In Mrs. Dalloway, Olivia L. Landgraf

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This paper offers an ecofeminist reading of Mrs. Dalloway that centers vulnerability as a unifying ethical concept through which Virginia Woolf interrogates care, selfhood, and the human relationship to the natural world. While existing scholarship has examined Woolf’s use of nature in relation to aging, loss, trauma, and sexuality, I argue that these themes are bound together by a shared condition of ontological vulnerability. Drawing on ecofeminist theory and care ethics, the paper contends that Woolf challenges inherited Cartesian dualisms that separate rationality from nature and mind from body, revealing how such separations distort ethical perception and impede care.

Through …

Is Trimethylamine N-Oxide A Friend, Foe, Or Hormetic Agent In Patients With Parkinson’S Disease: A Focused Review Of One Microbial Metabolite, Abraham B. Alton

Student Works

This review synthesizes recent literature examining trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) synthesis and its potential role in Parkinson’s Disease (PD) pathology. An increase in TMAO plasma and CSF concentration is associated with PD progression and severity. TMAO biosynthesis is a two-step process. First, precursors including carnitine and choline are converted to trimethylamine (TMA) by gut microbes. Second, TMAO is oxidized to TMAO in the liver. Once absorbed into circulation TMAO crosses the blood brain barrier and may influence PD disease pathology by increasing neuroinflammation and astrocyte activation and damaging the cerebral lymphatic system. These mechanisms may contribute to the cognitive and motor …

Parent Perspectives On Primary And Secondary Online Learning, Barbara Tanner Sandberg

Theses and Dissertations

Given the growth of K-12 online learning and the expanded responsibilities parents often assume in this learning context, the purpose of this dissertation is to understand parents' perspectives on K-12 online learning. The first article reviews and synthesizes literature documenting parents' perspectives on how instructional modality affects parental support. Instructional modality affects parental support roles, parental perception of online school support, parents' lives outside the online course, and students' online learning support needs. Hence, parents expect modality decisions to account for modality affordances, student engagement, and personal circumstances. The second article examines parent perspectives on the decision to leave a …

Here-, There-, And Every Where-: Exploring The Role Of Pronominal Adverbs In Legal Language, David Chandler

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Legal language is distinctive and sometimes difficult to understand. One type of word that appears to be part of so-called ‘legalese’ is the pronominal adverb (PA). The purpose of this thesis is to examine the prevalence of PAs in legal registers compared to more general registers of contemporary American English to determine the extent to which these words are distinctly legal. The study will also explore why different types of PAs may be (in)frequent in specific legal registers to better understand their use. The frequency of PAs was extracted from corpora that are designed to represent six registers of English …

Effects Of A Complexity-Based Expressive Language Treatment On Comprehension In Children With Down Syndrome: A Preliminary Investigation, Aliese M. Pedro

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined whether a complexity-based expressive morphosyntactic intervention targeting auxiliary BE questions improves morphosyntactic, vocabulary, and narrative comprehension in adolescents with Down syndrome (DS). Two participants (ages 15;11 and 14;2) received intervention delivered over 15 and 12 sessions, respectively, using a structured narrative-based protocol. Comprehension was assessed pre- and post-intervention using the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fifth Edition (CELF-5) Following Directions subtest, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fifth Edition (PPVT-5), the Test of Narrative Language-Second Edition (TNL-2), and the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (TEGI) Grammaticality Judgment (GJ) task. Results indicate no reliable or clinically significant improvements in comprehension across …

An Exploration Of The Lived Experience Of Married Couples Impacted By Aphasia, Summer Ewell

Theses and Dissertations

People with aphasia and those closest to them experience changes in their lives and relationships due to aphasia. These changes may be particularly impactful for married couples. The aim of this study was to increase understanding of the dynamic and complex experiences of couples impacted by aphasia and to add personal perspectives to the creation of practical treatments and resources. Twenty-eight participants (14 married couples) participated in both individual and couples' semi-structured interviews, resulting in 42 total interviews for analysis. Participants answered open-ended questions about aphasia's influence on the couple's communication and relationship. Interviews were then transcribed orthographically and coded …

Unlocking The Colleague Next Door, Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Learning, Teaching, & Researching Optimization

The structural barriers that isolate faculty from one another—individualistic reward systems, professional identity protection, disciplinary silos, fragmented time—have been documented in detail elsewhere. This paper begins where that analysis ends. Its sole focus is solutions: what actually works, what you can do without waiting for your institution to change, and most importantly, what you can do today. It is organized in three movements: evidence-based institutional strategies, community-level structures any group of faculty can build, and a granular map of the smallest possible individual first steps—the ones that cost almost nothing and have an outsized probability of changing how you experience …

The Relationship Between Musical Ability And Perceptual Skills For Speech Motor Learning In Young Adults, Emily Catmull

Theses and Dissertations

Speech motor learning is the multimodal process of acquiring speech sounds. Speech motor learning is trained through speech-language pathologist intervention in individuals across the lifespan. Previous research has explored which factors can influence speech motor learning, such as musical experience or training, which is the subject of this study. Sixty young adult participants (four male, 56 female) were recruited as part of a larger study that examined four possibly influential factors: bilingualism, phonetic knowledge, perceptual skills, and musical experience. Since the adult population has already acquired all the speech sounds in English, learning was measured using nonnative consonant clusters. Participants …

An Informationally Novel Sense Of Triviality For Harman’S Clutter Principle, Joseph D. Rasmussen

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Gilbert Harman (1986) argues that we ought not believe some logical consequences of our beliefs. To do this, he uses the Clutter Principle—that we should not clutter our minds with trivialities—and claims that some logical consequences are in some sense trivial. I show that interpreting Harman’s argument using an interest-driven sense of triviality (e.g. what Friedman calls junk) conflicts with a plausible epistemic norm. In light of this, epistemologists have turned the Clutter Principle into a norm on inquiry. This, however, loses the strength of the Clutter Principle in Harman’s argument. In this paper, I provide an alternate sense of …

The Correlation Between Perceptual Abilities And The Acquisition Of Non-Native Consonant Clusters, Hope Emma Nielson

Theses and Dissertations

A common approach in the study of speech motor learning is to have speakers learn to produce clusters of consonants that do not occur in their native language. This study investigated the relationship between auditory or speech perceptual abilities and the initial acquisition of non-native stop-stop consonant clusters. Sixty young adult participants (56 female, four male) were administered a gap detection test and a speech-in-noise test to assess their innate perceptual skills. The participants then performed a nonsense-word repetition task featuring non-native consonant clusters in the initial position. The participants' spoken productions of the nonwords were recorded and analyzed acoustically …

Faculty Focused, Student Supported: Managing Faculty Research In Your Institutional Repository, Ellen Amatangelo, Kelsey Bradshaw, Jillian Peterson, Allejah Young

Faculty Publications

The focus of BYU Library’s Faculty CV Project is to provide a simplified avenue for faculty members to add their scholarly work to our institutional repository, thus making it more accessible to a broader audience. Our project highlights effective strategies for collaborative communication across campus units, along with the use of practical project management tools to track project status. In addition, the Scholarly Publishing Unit provides training and support for managing the increasing demand for scholarly research by utilizing student employees, as well as faculty research assistants. This further supports our institution's goal of providing more experiential learning opportunities.

The Effects Of Phonetic Knowledge And Bilingualism On The Acquisition Of Non-Native Consonant Clusters, Kylie Wakley

Theses and Dissertations

Speech motor learning involves the production of new sounds or sound sequences. This study investigated how explicit phonetic knowledge and bilingualism affect how individuals acquire sound sequences that do not occur in English, or non-native consonant clusters. Sixty adults with typical speech, aged between 18 and 27 years, participated in the experiment. The researcher recruited participants into four groups based on their phonetic background (experienced or not) and language background (monolingual, bilingual). The participants produced stop-stop and fricative-nasal clusters in the initial position of nonsense words across six practice blocks. The duration of each cluster was measured, which in English …

Unlocking The Colleague Next Door, Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Learning, Teaching, & Researching Optimization

The structural barriers that isolate faculty from one another—individualistic reward systems, professional identity protection, disciplinary silos, fragmented time—have been documented in detail elsewhere. This paper begins where that analysis ends. Its sole focus is solutions: what actually works, what you can do without waiting for your institution to change, and most importantly, what you can do today. It is organized in three movements: evidence-based institutional strategies, community-level structures any group of faculty can build, and a granular map of the smallest possible individual first steps—the ones that cost almost nothing and have an outsized probability of changing how you experience …

The Silent Silos Of Academia, Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Learning, Teaching, & Researching Optimization

We work in an environment rich with latent brilliance. Walk down any corridor of a modern university building, and you pass office after office housing world-class expertise, profound pedagogical insights, and raw intellectual power. In terms of human capital, academic faculty represent arguably the most concentrated pool of cognitive resources on the planet. Yet, a strange paradox haunts higher education: despite living and working in such proximity, university faculty remain profoundly isolated. We operate as solitary islands, locked within our own intellectual silos, rarely leveraging the immense potential of our peers.

This isolation is not a personal choice, nor is …

Does Relationship-Centered Communication Partner Training Improve Perceived Marital Attachment, Communication, And Psychosocial Well-Being In Couples Impacted By Aphasia?, Sarah Janalee Laws

Theses and Dissertations

This study explored whether Relationship-Centered Communication Partner Training (RC-CPT) improved perceived marital attachment, communication, and psychosocial well-being in couples impacted by aphasia. A quasi-experimental design was implemented to assess the impact of RC-CPT on various marital outcomes. Twelve married couples participated in the study, with each couple including one spouse with post-stroke aphasia. The Brief Accessibility, Responsiveness, and Engagement Scale (BARE) was used as the primary outcome for this study, assessing attachment behaviors within couples. Secondary outcome measures included the Loneliness Scale Questionnaire, the Relationship Questionnaire, the Conflict and Conflict Resolution Questionnaire, and the Kessler Psychological Distress Rating Scale. Pre-testing …