Digital Commons Network^™

Receptive Language And Cognitive Skills In Preschool-Aged Children With Cerebral Palsy, Susan Elizabeth Panton

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between receptive language skills and nonverbal cognitive skills in preschool children with cerebral palsy and a mild to severe motor speech impairment. In addition, the relationship between the severity of motor impairment and receptive communication and nonverbal cognitive skills was also examined. Fifteen subjects, 10 males and 5 females, were included in this study. The subjects are part of a larger longitudinal study being completed within Portland State University's Speech and Hearing Sciences Program. All of the subjects participated in two in-home assessment sessions, which were approximately 2 hours long. …

Expected And Existing Competencies Of External Industry Trainers In The Human Resource Development Field, Julia M. Zachmann

Dissertations and Theses

In the field of Human Resource Development, high standards of professionalism are needed to increase the commitment to training, especially from the side of management. This study focused on external training deliverers, and investigated different perspectives concerning their competencies. The expectations (E) of core competencies of excellent external trainers had been identified and were compared to the actual performance (P) of external trainers in a specific company. Ratings were gathered from four different perspectives, the trainees and clients (supervisors of trainees) of recent training events (consumers) and HRD managers and external trainers (marketers).

The rationale for the study was a …

Erp Analysis Using Matched Filtering, Correlation Coefficient And Mann-Whitney Test, Yun Yan

Dissertations and Theses

Event related potentials (ERPs) carry very important information that relate to the performance of the brain functions of a human being. Further studies have identified that the late positive complex (LPC) are affected by the memory process.

The matched filter method is used to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of signal ERPs. We use the output of the matched filter to distinguish the difference of the waveforms. In our study, we found that the peak values of the matched filter output differed among normal subjects and memory-impaired subjects.

The correlation coefficient is a statistical value that can be applied to find …

Korean-American Elders In Independent Living Arrangements, Shinok Lee

Dissertations and Theses

Many Korean-American elders in America are new immigrants who are faced with cultural change and adjustment problems. In recent years, these Korean-American elders have been undergoing a change in their living situation by moving away from their adult children into independent living arrangements. This study draws on a sample of 50 Korean-American elders in subsidized housing who are over the age of sixty and live in the Portland, Oregon Metropolitan area to investigate factors involved in their choice of and their well-being in independent living arrangements. Through interviews, the study specifically gives attention to why the elders moved, whether they …

Pregnancy Outcomes: A Study Testing A Model For Predicting Health Outcomes In Pregnancy, Tamera Ann Hart-Johnson

Dissertations and Theses

There is a persistent relationship between socioeconomic status and physical health outcomes found in the literature; however the variables mediating this relationship are many, and ways that they interact with each other are complex. The goal of understanding this relationship is to decrease the disparity in health by socioeconomic status.

This study tested a biopsychosocial model proposed by David Williams (1990) to explain the relationship between socioeconomic status and physical health outcomes. The model included the following latent factors: demographics, socioeconomic status, biomedical risk, medical care, psychosocial variables, and health outcomes. The model was tested through a secondary data analysis. …

Predictions Of Intentions Of College Students To Take An Hiv Antibody Test And Their Preferences For A Testing Procedure, Hitoshi Ishimaru

Dissertations and Theses

Intentions to prevent HIV infections are an essential part of HIV prevention. Social science researchers and HIV educators have investigated the roles of intentions to prevent HIV infections mainly in the context of safer sex behaviors. Surprisingly, however, HIV testing intentions have not been extensively studied in light of various forms of HIV tests that are likely soon to be approved for widespread use . The present study evaluated the utility of Ajzen and Fishbein' s (1980) Theory of Reasoned Action in predicting college students' intentions to take an HIV test. Attitudes toward HIV testing and their perceptions of social …

Images Of Women In Abdelhak Serhane's Le Soliel Des Obscurs, Wendy Grace Cook

Dissertations and Theses

Current trends in North African francophone literature include a movement towards the exploration of alienation and exile, most often in the form of novels written about Maghrebian immigrants in Europe. Yet this alienation exists within the North African context as well, and it is possible to feel alienated and exiled, as well as marginalized, within one's homeland. This question is explored by Moroccan francophone author Abdelhak Serhane in his novel, Le Soleil des obscurs, which is the focus of this study.

The purpose of the research is to examine the four principle female characters in the novel and relate …

Enter-Action, Pencils, Nandei Mcanally

Dissertations and Theses

Enter-Action: Pencils is a site-specific sculptural installation m Gallery 299, Neuberger Hall, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon April 8 through April 30, 1997. This installation continues the theme of a larger body of work concerned with audience participation in art. All are concerned with the psychology of sentimentality, notions of memory and the spatial qualities of multiple objects.

The Emergence Of An Icon: The Frida Kahlo Cult, Teresa Neva Tate

Dissertations and Theses

At her death in 1954, Frida Kahlo was known as little more than the wife of muralist Diego Rivera. Since then her art and personae have taken on a cult-like following and she has become an icon of popular culture. Thus far Frida's repute has stretched across three decades, from the 1970s, 1980s, and into the 1990s. Frida's popularity is viewed as primarily emerging from the Women's Movement of the 1970s. However, interest from many other groups have carried her image into the 1980s and 1990s. Aside from the Women’s Movement, Frida's popularity reflects a growing interest in Mexico, specifically …

Focal Point, Volume 11 Number 01, Portland State University. Regional Research Institute

Research and Training Center - Focal Point

In the discussion on the issues of juvenile crime, the nation has ignored the prevalence of mental disorders among youth who commit crimes, and it has failed to provide policy directives on how state systems should respond. With the nation’s attention riveted on youth violence, the issue of prevalence has began to emerge, with the realization that many of the violent acts are committed by a small percentage of young people. Policymakers are beginning to ask questions about the conditions that contribute to a young person’s tendency toward delinquency acts.

The Effects Of Position Power And Personal Power On The Incidence Of Sexual Harassment In The Workplace, Eva Marie Labonte

Dissertations and Theses

Sexual harassment is an important issue in today's workplace. Employees who have been sexually harassed may experience stress and a hostile, unpleasant work environment. Researchers have suggested that a person's level of power may affect the occurrence of sexual harassment.

The purpose of the present study was to partially test a theoretical model relating power and sexual harassment in order to determine if there is a connection between a victim's level of position and personal power and the incidence of sexual harassment in the workplace. The study attempted to answer the following questions: 1) Do men hold more power than …

Peer Context Influences On School Motivation: A Naturalistic Observation Of Peer And Teacher Contingencies Following On-And Off-Task Behavior In A Fifth Grade Classroom, Nicole Ann Sage

Dissertations and Theses

With regard to school motivation and performance, two questions have been central for both educational and developmental psychologists; Why do some students do well in school whereas others do not and why is it that over time, those students who do well, continue to do well, while those who don't, often get worse? Findings with regard to the first question are conclusive; many factors are associated with doing well in school. With regard to the second question however, the findings are less conclusive.

Parents, teachers and peers have been regarded as contexts in which socialization occurs. However, much of the …

The Importance Of Time For Processing In Second Language Comprehension And Acquisition, Jennifer Lee Watson

Dissertations and Theses

Research findings on the positive impact of interaction on comprehension have led to questions regarding both the connection between comprehension and acquisition and the qualities of interaction which facilitate understanding (Ellis et al. 1994). Ellis et al. found that a high degree of comprehension on an activity which contained unknown words correlated with a high rate of vocabulary acquisition. The present study replicates the activity and testing procedures used by Ellis et al. The main focus of the Ellis et al. study was the connection between second language comprehension and acquisition. This study differs from Ellis et al. in that …

"Sin Decidirlo Me Volví Distinta": Gender, Deception And Development In Angeles Mastretta's ArráNcame La Vida, Luisa Samaniego

Dissertations and Theses

With this research I locate Angeles Mastretta's novel Arráncame la vida in the Bildungsroman genre, examine the particular forces influencing the protagonist's development and gain insight into her process of identity formation. This modern Bildungsroman portrays the fate of a woman in the male dominated world of post-revolutionary Mexico. I analyze how class, gender, historical moment, psychological and cultural influences are woven into the intriguing formation of the heroine, Catalina, variously constraining or propelling her forward in her quest for development.

I argue that the heroine transcends the limiting factors in her patriarchal environment, struggling against culturally sanctioned deception, confining …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet February 1997, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The February 1997 Monthly packet includes the February agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held January 1997.

Annual Faculty Senate Minutes October 1997 - June 1998, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Annual Compilations of the Faculty Senate Minutes (Minutes Only)

Minutes of the Faculty Senate for October 1997 to June 1998.

Bulletin: General Catalog Issue 1997-1998, Portland State University

Bulletin & Curriculum Change Documents

No abstract provided.

Public Transportation For The Elderly: A Neighborhood-Area Fixed-Route Alternative, Richard James Burke

Dissertations and Theses

As the elderly population of the United States grows in coming decades, providing personal mobility will be increasingly challenging. The dispersed suburban residential pattern of most metropolitan areas ensures that the personal automobile will continue to be the dominant mode of transportation. Those who voluntarily or involuntarily stop driving will encounter serious constraints in meeting their transportation needs.

Conventional public transit in most cities is tailored to the needs of urban commuters, and is, at best, barely adequate for elderly riders. Supplemental demand-response or subscription "special-needs" services are often inconvenient, sometimes unreliable, and inefficient. Eligibility criteria restrict many non-disabled elderly …

An Ethnographic Study Of Chinese Adolescent Identity In Taipei, Taiwan : Franchise Hangouts, Jui-Fang Ruby Chen

Dissertations and Theses

One of the discriminating changes that Taiwan is experiencing is a shift in young people's view of "self," manifested in and through their daily activities within its cultural context (Yang, 1981). The question arises, how do Taiwan's adolescents shape their view of "self' within this contemporary context at the intersection of Eastern and Western cultures? This thesis examined on how Chinese adolescent identity was constituted symbolically in and through their speech practices within a public social context, a typical Westernized dining place--McDonald's, a U.S. fast food restaurant, and how such a locale both served and made sense by these urban …

Patient Behaviors And Beliefs : Are Standardized Patients Different?, Colleen Shannon Lewy

Dissertations and Theses

Standardized patients (SP's) are lay people who are trained to evaluate and train clinical skills for medical personnel. It was hypothesized that since SP's have had practice and experience interacting with medical personnel that they would exhibit higher levels of patient interaction with their own health care providers. Surveys were sent to SP's affiliated with two medical schools in the Northwest as well as a control group from a local university. Surveys consisted of the Thompson Decisional Involvement scale, the Ende Autonomy Preference Index, the Krantz Health Opinion Survey: Information Seeking subscale, a Satisfaction Criteria scale, and an Expectations survey. …

Virtue, Liberty, And The Good : A Critical Analysis Of Civic Republicanism, Nathan Douglas Austin

Dissertations and Theses

Dissatisfaction with liberalism is nothing new. As the longstanding dominant force in Western political thought, it has been subject to unending hostile critiques from a variety of sources. Of the criticisms of liberalism advanced in recent years, some of the most persistent and scathing have been levied by scholars identified with civic republicanism. Civic republicanism has adopted the pose of a counter philosophy to liberalism. Civic republicans, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, and Cass Sunstein, argue that liberalism is an impoverished political conception that is unable to provide or sustain the moral energies necessary for a vital democratic life. …

"Blame It On Intake” : A Critical Ethnography Of The Negotiation Of Access To Shelter Services In A Shelter For Homeless And Battered Women, Kathleen Marie Drew

Dissertations and Theses

Even though the number of homeless women has increased among a population viewed as typically male (Merves 1992), there is still little research focused on women. This study investigated the communicative practices in and through which gendered identity was constructed, negotiated and performed at a point of rupture when the norms for judging a "good woman:"--that is woman as wife, as mother, and as homemaker appear to have been violated. The negotiation of access into an urban shelter for homeless and/or battered women provided a rich site for the study. The research was grounded in the assumptions of symbolic interaction …

Sexual Intercourse : A Feminist Reading Of Strip Joint Discourse, Regina Marie Howard Yaroch

Dissertations and Theses

The discursively-constructed stereotype of stripper plays an important role in the ideology that sustains our system of sexual relations. This construction also interacts with and constrains the lived reality of actual women who earn their living in the stripping industry. This research attempts to examine this interaction by exploring the discourse that is generated by stripping industry participants. A long interview transcript is analyzed as a text to develop a feminist reading that focuses on the socio-cultural forces that make a particular story possible as well as necessary to tell. This story emerges, through the first-person account of a dancer-informant, …

A Survey Of Swallowing Symptoms Associated With The Premenstrual Cycle, Jill Gigi Calcagno

Dissertations and Theses

Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) has been associated with a vast number of physical, emotional, social, and behavioral symptomatology. Laryngeal disturbances invoked by hormonal imbalance may affect swallowing as a component of PMS. Previous studies regarding swallowing ability during the premenstrual cycle were nonexistent.

This study examined the relationship between PMS and swallowing disorders. One hundred thirty-seven females completed a written survey that elicited information regarding biographical data, presence and severity of cyclically recurring symptoms associated with PMS, and perceived presence and severity of dysphagia during premenstruum.

Spearman Rank (Rho) correlation coefficients were computed to determine the extent of the relationship between …

A Comparison Of Two Second Language Acquisition Models For Culturally And Linguistically Different Students, Karen Dorothy Kuhn

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this thesis research was to determine if there were significant educational advantages in terms of sociocultural development for culturally and linguistically different students enrolled in a two-way bilingual education program as compared to those directly mainstreamed. Eighteen third-grade students were selected from two schools in the same school district. Half of the subjects spent their third grade year in a two-way bilingual educational program while the other half were mainstreamed into a submersion education program. Each subject was culturally (Hispanic) and linguistically (Spanish was the dominant language) different from mainstream students. A qualitative summary and statistical analyses …

Video Self-Monitoring As An Alternative To Traditional Methods Of Pronunciation Instruction, P. C. Noble

Dissertations and Theses

Japanese students of English have difficulty pronouncing /f/, Ir/, /1/, /v/ and "th", sounds that are either not present in their language, or as in the case of /r/, articulated in Japanese more like an English /di. Their difficulty with these sounds seems to affect their comprehensibility in English to native-speakers of English.

The purpose of this partial replication of a 1994 study by MacDonald, Yule and Powers was to test three different methods of pronunciation instruction ( and a control) to determine which promoted the greatest improvement in the pronunciation of the five target sounds among Japanese speakers. The …

The Relationship Between Self-Monitoring And Organizational Training Effectiveness And Satisfaction, Joanna Wulbert

Dissertations and Theses

The present research explored the relationship between self-monitoring and training. It was hypothesized that high self-monitors' sens ivity to social cues would improve training satisfaction and learning. This study was divided into 2 parts; a field and a laboratory study. Nine trainees and 8 peer trainers participated in the field study and 75 undergraduate psychology students participated in the laboratory study. Due to the extremely small sample size of the field study, the results were not conclusive. In the laboratory study, trainers' that were categorized as high self-monitors were associated with higher satisfaction levels among trainees. However, self-monitoring was not …

Conflict Is Optional, Difference Is Not : Toward A Difference-Based Approach To Interpersonal Communication, James Arthur Gieseking Jr

Dissertations and Theses

An examination of the discussion of conflict in general, interpersonal and small group communication texts indicates that the conceptualization of conflict theory in the U.S. is increasingly dependent upon three theoretical pillars: the qualities of ubiquity, utility and necessity. A critical, deconstructive analysis of these operational characteristics in relation to the actual human experience of conflict reveals that they are more appropriately associated with the essential condition of difference, rather than conflict, and the concepts of conflict and difference are generally conflated in U.S. communication texts. The synergistic interaction of a variety of specific cultural constructs can be seen as …

The Effects Of Parental Involvement, Structure, And Autonomy Support On Children’S Help-Seeking And Problem-Solving Coping In School, Ronald Wayne Yoder

Dissertations and Theses

The effect of parenting on children's coping in school was investigated. Sixhundred and twelve children in grades three to five provided self-reports on four ways of coping, including help-seeking, concealment, strategizing and confusion, and the parenting dimensions of involvement, structure, and autonomy support. Psychometric analyses conducted on each dimension of parenting, resulted in reducing the number of parenting variables to two: involvement and structure/autonomy support. Correlational analyses found the predicted relations between children's experiences of parenting and their ways of coping in school. Multiple regressions indicated that only unique (positive) predictor of the two positive ways of coping (help-seeking and …

Drug Testing And Oregon Workers : Is Perceived Fairness Of Corporate Drug Testing Moderated By Drug Use?, Leslie James Normandy

Dissertations and Theses

This study proposed that two predictors of perceived fairness of organizational drug testing would be moderated by drug use. These two predictors, outcome of a positive drug test and whether respondents were ever previously tested for drug use, had been found to be predictors of perceived fairness of drug testing. It was expected that the theories of organizational justice and cognitive dissonance would explain these relationships. Additionally, it was proposed that drug users would perceive drug testing as less fair than would non-drug users.

Participants were 191 adults randomly selected throughout the state of Oregon. The survey items measuring the …