Digital Commons Network^™

The Value Of The Spi In Forecasting Chronic Stuttering, Dena Diane Stork

Dissertations and Theses

Speech-language pathologists are in need of useful assessment instruments which differentiate early stuttering behaviors and will enable them to identify preschool children who need immediate intervention for stuttering. Furthermore, useful assessment tools are needed especially due to the variability across studies of normal disfluency and lack of reliability information on more formal measures of differential evaluation of normal disfluency and incipient stuttering.

Uncertainty Analysis Of Runoff Estimates From Runoff-Depth Contour Maps Produced By Five Automated Procedures For The Northeastern United States, Gary D. Bishop

Dissertations and Theses

Maps of runoff-depth have been found to be useful tools in a variety of water resource applications. Producing such maps can be a challenging and expensive task. One of the standard methods of producing these maps is to use a manual procedure based on gaged runoff data, topographic and past runoff-depth maps, and the expert opinion of hydrologists.

This thesis examined five new automated procedures for producing runoff-depth contour maps to see if the maps produced by these procedures had similar accuracy and characteristics when compared to the manual procedure. An uncertainty analysis was used to determine the accuracy of …

Modification Of The Ca²⁺ Release Channel From Sarcoplasmic Reticulum Of Skeletal Muscle, Hui Xiong

Dissertations and Theses

Muscle contraction and relaxation are controlled by the intracellular free Ca²⁺ concentration. The sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) is an intracellular membrane system which regulates this internal free Ca²⁺ concentration. Responding to an electrical excitation of the cell surface membrane, the SR releases Ca²⁺ through a specific Ca²⁺ release channel, thus elevating the Ca²⁺ concentration inside muscle cell and causing the muscle to contract. Subsequent sequestration of Ca²⁺ by the SR Ca²⁺ pumps restores the resting state of the muscle cell. This research focuses on the Ca²⁺ release channel from skeletal muscle SR. The planar lipid bilayer technique was used to study …

A Structural Analysis Of Corporate Political Activity: An Application Of Euclidean Modeling To The Study Of Intercorporate Relations, Colleen Bridget Mullery

Dissertations and Theses

During the past two decades business has become increasingly active in the political process, and scholars continue to debate the extent to which this activity is organized. This fundamental issue is addressed by examining corporate political activity within the context of resource dependence and class cohesion theories. Political action committee (PAC) campaign contributions, this study's measure for corporate political activity, are structurally analyzed to determine if either resource dependence or class cohesion theory explains the forces which drive business participation in the U.S. public policy process. The rationale which forty-two diverse corporate PACs exercise when selecting which congressional campaigns to …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet December 1990, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The December 1990 Monthly packet includes the December agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held November 1990.

Comparison Of The Modal Frequency Levels Of Nonsmoking And Cigarette Smoking White Females Between The Ages Of Forty And Fifty Years, Janis Mae Kaufman

Dissertations and Theses

Acoustical analyses have been utilized to ascertain the functional status of the laryngeal mechanism for clinical management of communication disorders. In particular, the modal frequency level (MFL), defined as the fundamental frequency most often used by an individual in the act of spontaneous speech, is one measurement used to determine if a person's pitch level is adequate. Two other pitch measurements used in the voice assessment are the maximum frequency range (MFR) and the optimum pitch level (OPL). Information is needed to provide guidelines for pitch levels as part of the voice evaluation for adult females of different ages. It …

Conformity, Attitude Toward Authority, And Social Class, Alison Carol Welter

Dissertations and Theses

This study examined the relationship between attitudes toward authority, identification with authority and conformity in relation to authority in American undergraduate college students. The study consisted of two parts. The first part examined correlates of attitudes toward authority according to social class. Undergraduate college students attending Portland State University comprised the samples in which two groups, a middle-class group and a working-class group of equal sizes (n=63), were formed. A relatively new, standardized measure of attitudes toward institutional authority, the GAIAS (Rigby, 1982), was used to measure orientation toward authority by social class. No significant differences in attitudes toward authority …

High Frequency Acoustic Reflexes In Cochlea-Impaired And Normal Ears, Karen Elizabeth Jones

Dissertations and Theses

The acoustic reflex refers to the contraction of a middle ear muscle in response to sound. The contraction causes a stiffening of the middle ear system and, consequently, the flow of acoustic energy to the cochlea is impeded. By measuring the change in admittance in the auditory system during sound stimulation it is possible to indirectly monitor the middle ear muscle contractions. Such measurements provide useful information regarding the integrity of the auditory system and the location of the auditory pathology.

In subjects with normal hearing sensitivity, the acoustic reflex is typically elicited at a sensation level of between 85 …

Comparison Of Two Behavioral Models In Obesity Treatment, Nina Lucille Dominy

Dissertations and Theses

This study compared the results of two methods of behavioral treatment in combination with a very-low-calorie-diet in the treatment of obesity. Subjects were 28 male and 106 female patients admitted to the medically supervised fasting program at Risk Factor Clinic in Portland, Oregon. Subjects were matched by gender, percent over ideal body weight, and age. Subject group I received a smorgasbord of behavioral techniques from various group leaders in a 60-minute weekly session. Presentation was didactic and theoretical and subjects were accountable to themselves for utilization of the techniques. Subject group II participated in 90-minute weekly sessions with a primary …

Macroinvertebrate Drift Abundance Below Bonneville Dam And Its Relation To Juvenile Salmonid Food Habits, William Douglas Muir

Dissertations and Theses

There is a paucity of information concerning the invertebrate food resources available to juvenile salmonids in the Columbia River as they migrate seaward. Construction of mainstream dams has altered the temperature cycle, flow regime, and substrate which indigenous invertebrates were adapted to. Studies on how the macroinvertebrate community has adapted to these alterations have been neglected. This study was undertaken to help fill this void.

Macroinvertebrate drift samples were collected over a three year period in the Columbia River downstream from Bonneville Dam. Samples were collected with a D-ring plankton net fished on the bottom for one-half hour. Two sites …

Decomposition Of Measured Contours Into Geometric Features For Dimensional Inspection, Devaraj Rajkumar

Dissertations and Theses

Image processing systems used in Vision Assisted Dimensional Inspection usually output a set of boundary pixels representing the part edges. This boundary information must be divided into several subsets representing the various edges of the actual object, so that comparisons with the nominal part can be made.

The purpose of this project is to devise a method to divide the set of pixels obtained from the image processing system into subsets of pixels. Each of these subsets represent an edge in the contour of the actual object. This method must also detect transition points between the adjacent features. This project …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet November 1990, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The November 1990 Monthly packet includes the November agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held October 1990.

A Comparison Of Two Vocabulary Tests Used With Normal And Delayed Preschool Children, Lynn Safadi

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine if a difference exists between mean standard scores of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - Revised (PPVT-R) (Dunn and Dunn, 1981) and the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (EOWPVT) (Gardner, 1979) for children in several diagnostic categories. The subjects used in this study were 45 preschool children ranging in age from 36 to 47 months. These subjects were divided into groups of normal, expressively language-delayed (ELD) and normal children with a history of expressive language delay (HELD).

Communication Stressors And Coping Strategies Among Chinese Students In The United States, Qiu Lu Liang

Dissertations and Theses

Following China's open door policy in the late 70's and early 80's, there has been a significant increase in the number of Chinese students and scholars attending academic institutions in the U.S. As sojourners in a foreign culture, Chinese students inevitably experience difficulties in their daily life and academic endeavors. The purpose of the thesis is to examine what are the specific situations that are perceived by Chinese students as stressful, how they cope with the situations, and whether there are correlations between the perceived stressors, coping strategies, and the academic, performance of the Chinese students.

Intelligibility Of Spondees Via Bone Conduction At Elevated Presentation Levels, Pamela S. Ritchie

Dissertations and Theses

Speech reception threshold testing by bone conduction is very useful in diagnostic audiometry. However, there are little data regarding the CID W-1 spondee word lists used with the Radioear B-71 and B-72 and Pracitronic KH 70 bone conduction vibrators at higher presentation levels for testing hearing impaired clients. Data are needed in order that results of speech reception thresholds using the CID W-1 word lists via these three bone conduction vibrators at higher intensity levels can be used confidently in the clinic. More data are available for speech reception thresholds using the CID W-1 word lists via earphones.

This study …

Developmental Sentence Scoring Sample Size Comparison, Peggy Ann Callan

Dissertations and Theses

In 1971, Lee and Canter developed a systematic tool for assessing children's expressive language: Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS). It provides normative data against which a child's delayed or disordered language development can be compared with the normal language of children the same age. A specific scoring system is used to analyze children's use of standard English grammatical rules from a tape-recorded sample of their spontaneous speech during conversation with a clinician.

The corpus of sentences for the DSS is obtained from a sample of 50 complete, different, consecutive, intelligible, non-echolalic sentences elicited from a child in conversation with an …

Otitis Media And Language Development In Late Talkers, Timothy Forest Lynn

Dissertations and Theses

While there is agreement in the literature that otitis media is an extremely prevalent disorder among young children, there is disagreement as to the effect that otitis media has on language development. The lack of definitive research attests to the complexity of the issue and to the need for continued research.

This study examined the relationship between an early history of otitis media and the language development of a group of "late talkers". The 28 toddlers in this group, while otherwise normal, were late to begin to speak. Each of the subjects was placed into one of two subgroups, depending …

A Comparison Of Circadian Rhythms In Day And Night Shift Workers, Mary Lee Blood

Dissertations and Theses

The present study examined whether and to what extent physiological rhythms of long-term night workers become adapted to their unconventionally scheduled hours of work and sleep and how the degree of adaptation would be reflected in ratings of sleep quality, mood, anxiety, energy and satisfaction.

The Transformation Of Urban Form: A Study Of The Interaction Among Policy, Urban Form, And Change In A Small City, Elton Herbert Schatz

Dissertations and Theses

The central theme of this Case Study is that social policy is changed by its interaction with the changing non-physical (socioeconomic) and physical (infrastructure) urban form of the city within which it is formulated, implemented, and evaluated.

The primary hypothesis of this Case Study is that the policy represented by the Main Street Program changes and is changed during its implementation in the changing non-physical (socioeconomic) and physical (infrastructure) urban form of the small city of Centralia, Washington.

The primary purpose of the Centralia Main Street Program is to involve Centralia in a community development process directed to changing the …

Hearing Aid Satisfaction And Rate Of Return For Repairs: A Comparison Of Two Kaiser Dispensing Programs, Lynn L. Behrendsen

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the hypothesis that a dispensing program utilizing rehabilitative follow-up in the form of a post-fitting check appointment would show: (1) less return for repairs for hearing aids; (2) higher patient satisfaction with the aid; and (3) higher patient satisfaction with the service received during the hearing aid dispense than would a clinic with no follow-up. Data for comparison between the two clinics were drawn from medical chart review, frequency of hearing aid repairs, and from a questionnaire which assessed satisfaction levels. Patients were also asked to estimate the amount of use with …

Politics And Education: The Nicaraguan Literacy Crusade, Teresa Squires Osborne

Dissertations and Theses

The Nicaraguan Literacy Crusade of 1980, carried out in the aftermath,of a long and destructive revolution, was able, in five months time, to decrease the nation's illiteracy rate from 50 percent to 13 percent. The newly fonned Nicaraguan government, recognizing the political nature of education, viewed its Literacy Crusade as a major step· in the development of a "new", post-revolutionary Nicaragua.

As a means of comparison, two other literacy campaigns are also examined: the Cuban campaign of 1961, and the UNESCO-sponsored Experimental World Literacy Programme, in place from 1965-1973.

The Cuban campaign served as a precursor to the Nicaraguan effort. …

Finite Element Analysis Of Thermal Stresses In Semiconductor Devices, Joachim Karl Wilhelm Duerr

Dissertations and Theses

The failure of integrated circuit due to Silicon fracture is one of the problems associated with the production of a semiconductor device. The thermal stresses, which result in die cracking, are for the most part induced during the cooling process after attaching the die with Gold-Silicon solder. Major factors for stress generation in material systems are commonly large temperature gradients and substantial difference in coefficients of thermal expansion.

This research covers the thermal stresses introduced upon cooling a composite Silicon device. A transient thermal analysis has been performed to determine the temperature gradients. The stress distribution has been investigated. For …

Portland State Magazine, Portland State University. Office Of University Communications

Portland State Magazine

PSU’s alumni magazine, published quarterly. In this issue: with the parting of the Iron Curtain, PSU is creating new ties to the Soviet Union and East Europe; Professor Gertrude Rempfer’s groundbreaking work in electron microscopy is bringing her national recognition; a proposed joint graduate-level engineering school for Oregon could have a major impact on higher education in Portland; and more.

Density Currents In Circular Wastewater Treatment Tanks, David M. Laliberte

Dissertations and Theses

Deviations from ideal flow and settling occur in circular wastewater treatment tanks because of tank geometry, flow conditions, and density currents caused by variations in suspended solids concentration and temperature distributions. Thermally induced density currents were investigated in this study. Under winter, low flow conditions, measurements were made of vertical and radial temperature distributions in the circular chlorination tank at Lake Oswego, Or., and in the circular primary and secondary clarifiers at Bend, Or. Thermistor arrays were used to collect the data which exhibited both vertically well-mixed and a two-layer flow regime. Inlet geometry and suspended solids in the secondary …

Gis Address-Matching And Transportation Analysis, James D. Orrell

Dissertations and Theses

Geographic Information System (GIS) address-matching combined with other GIS processing offers new analytical opportunities in the area of transportation planning and analysis. Address-matching, an automated method for generating geographically-referenced (geocoded) point locations on a map from common tabular databases, can facilitate transportation analysis by providing a planning tool based on individual rather than aggregated spatial distributions more common to transportation issues.

This thesis presents a case study in which GIS address-matching was I applied to a transportation problem at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) in Portland, Oregon. The transportation problem at OHSU is common to major employment centers in urban …

The Assessment Of Phonological Processes : A Comparison Of Connected-Speech Samples And Single-Word Production Tests, Susan A. Pinkerton

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine if single-word elicitation procedures used in the assessment of phonological processes would have highly similar results to those obtained through connected speech. Connected speech sampling provides a medium for natural production with coarticulatory influence, but can be time-consuming and impractical for clinicians maintaining heavy caseloads or working with highly unintelligible children. Elicitation through single words requires less time than a connected-speech sample and may be more effective with highly unintelligible children because the context is known, but it lacks the influence of surrounding words. Given the inherent differences between these two methods …

Biogeography And Species Density Distributions Of Tasmanian Mammals, Jerry E. Bevers

Dissertations and Theses

Separated from mainland Australia by the Bass Strait, Tasmania has acted as an island preserve maintaining large populations of many mammalian species presently uncommon, rare, or extinct on mainland Australia.

There are few studies of Tasmanian mammal distributions. Recent distributional maps, based on information from surveys and mammal specimens, allowed for an investigation of the species density distributions of the terrestrial mammals of Tasmania. Compilation of species' distributional information into species density distributions provides an overview as to which areas may provide the most significant habitat for the greatest number of species; what geographic variations may influence species distributions; and …

A Confirmatory Factor Analysis Of Two Competing Social Power Measurement Systems, Joseph E. Criqui

Dissertations and Theses

The main purpose of this study is to analyze a measurement instrument developed by Frost & Stahelski (1988) to measure French & Raven's (1959) bases of social power. The measurement instrument of a competing typology of social influence tactics (Kipnis, Schmidt, & Wilkinson, 1980) was also administered to the same managerial population (N=108). Confirmatory factor analyses using LISREL (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1986) were performed on each scale. Possible relationships between the two typologies were explored. Results include confirming a modified Frost & Stahelski scale and no confirmation of the Kipnis et al. scale. Canonical correlation yielded two dimensions where Coercive …

Distribution Of Sand Within Selected Littoral Cells Of The Pacific Northwest, Don Joseph Pettit

Dissertations and Theses

Beach sand acts as a buffer to wave energy, protecting the shoreline from erosion. Estimates of the quantity and distribution of beach sand in littoral cells of the PNW are critical to the understanding and prediction of shoreline erosion or accretion. This study was initiated in order to: 1) document the distribution of sand in littoral cells of the Pacific Northwest; 2) determine the factors which have brought about these present distributions; and 3) address the relationship of beach sand distribution to shoreline stability.

Walter Kempowski's Familienchronik: History And The Role Of Erziehung, Carla Ann Damiano

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis attempts to prove that Walter Kempowski writes historical fiction. For this reason he should be considered an important 20th century German author. This contention is based on the presence of historical references regarding the topic of Erziehung in the Kempowski Familienchronik.

The Familienchronik is a series of six novels which follow the historical development of the Kempowski family in Germany beginning from the year 1900 and continuing through 1963. Unique to the novels is that they represent thoughts and actions of the German middle-class spanning these years. The author does not attempt to use hindsight as a …