Digital Commons Network^™

Association Between Toxoplasma Gondii Seropositivity And Serointensity And Brain Volume In Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study, Bruce L. Brown, Lance D. Erickson, Shawn D. Gale, Dawson W. Hedges

Faculty Publications

The intracellular protozoal parasite Toxoplasma gondii has been associated with worsened cognitive function in animal models and in humans. Despite these associations, the mechanisms by which Toxoplasma gondii might affect cognitive function remain unknown, although Toxoplasma gondii does produce physiologically active intraneuronal cysts and appears to affect dopamine synthesis. Using data from the UK Biobank, we sought to determine whether Toxoplasma gondii is associated with decreased prefrontal, hippocampal, and thalamic gray-matter volumes and with decreased total gray-matter and total white-matter volumes in an adult community-based sample. The results from adjusted multivariable regression modelling showed no associations between Toxoplasma gondii and …

Back Vowel Dynamics And Distinctions In Southern American English, Joseph A. Stanley, Margaret E. L. Renwick, Katherine Ireland Kuiper, Rachel M. Olen

Faculty Publications

Southern American English is spoken in a large geographic region in the United States. Its characteristics include back-vowel fronting (e.g., in goose, foot, and goat), which has been ongoing since the mid-nineteenth century; meanwhile, the low back vowels (in lot and thought) have recently merged in some areas. We investigate these five vowels in the Digital Archive of Southern Speech, a legacy corpus of linguistic interviews with sixty-four speakers born 1886-1956. We extracted 89,367 vowel tokens and used generalized additive mixed-effects models to test for socially-driven changes to both their relative phonetic placements and the shapes of their formant trajectories. …

The Effects Of Metacognitive Listening Strategy Instruction On Esl Learners’ Listening Motivation, Grant Eckstein, Corbin Kalanikiakahi Rivera, Benjamin L. Mcmurry, David Eddington

Faculty Publications

Prior studies examining the effects of listening strategy instruction on motivation have shown a positive correlation between the two. However, the participants of these studies all shared a first language (L1) and were not enrolled in an intensive English program (IEP). This study aims to investigate the correlation between listening strategy instruction and listening motivation in an IEP classroom for students from different L1s. Listening motivation was recorded utilizing the English Listening Comprehension Motivation Scale (ELCMS), and strategy use was tracked with the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ). Pre- and post-test scores of 56 participants (control group, n=30; experiment group, …

Inter-Generational Family Reconstitution With Enriched Ontologies, Deryle W. Lonsdale, David W. Embley, Stephen W. Liddle, Scott N. Woodfield

Faculty Publications

Enriching ontologies can measurably enhance research in digital humanities. Support for this claim is shown by using an enriched ontology to attack a well known and challenging problem: record linkage of historical records for inter-generational family reconstitution. An enriched ontology enables extraction of birth, death, and marriage records via linguistic grounding, curation of record-comprising information with pragmatic constraints and cultural normatives, and record linkage by evidential reasoning. The result is a fully automatic reconstruction of family trees. Using three historical record books containing a total of 29,229 extracted records, the enriched ontology links records with high accuracy: F-scores in the …

Repeated Word Production Is Inconsistent In Both Aphasia And Apraxia Of Speech, Tyson G. Harmon, Katarina L. Haley, Kevin T. Cunningham, Adam Jacks, Jessica D. Richardson, Peter E. Turkeltaub

Faculty Publications

Purpose: There is persistent uncertainty about whether sound error consistency is a valid criterion for differentiating between apraxia of speech (AOS) and aphasia with phonemic paraphasia. The purpose of this study was to determine whether speakers with a profile of aphasia and AOS differ in error consistency from speakers with aphasia who do not have AOS. By accounting for differences in overall severity and using a sample size well over three times that of the largest study on the topic to date, our ambition was to resolve the existing controversy.

Method: We analyzed speech samples from 171 speakers …

Spoken Discourse Assessment And Analysis In Aphasia: An International Survey Of Current Practices, Tyson G. Harmon, Brielle C. Stark, Manaswita Dutta, Laura L. Murray, Davida Fromm, Lucy Bryant

Faculty Publications

Purpose

Spoken discourse analysis is commonly employed in the assessment and treatment of people living with aphasia, yet there is no standardization in assessment, analysis, or reporting procedures, thereby precluding comparison/meta-analyses of data and hindering replication of findings. An important first step is to identify current practices in collecting and analyzing spoken discourse in aphasia. Thus, this study surveyed current practices, with the goal of working toward standardizing spoken discourse assessment first in research settings with subsequent implementation into clinical settings.

Method

A mixed-methods (quantitative and qualitative) survey was publicized to researchers and clinicians around the globe who have collected …

Kinematic And Acoustic Changes To Vowels And Diphthongs In Bite Block Speech, Christopher Dromey, Michelle Richins, Tanner Low

Faculty Publications

Purpose: We examined the effect of bite block insertion (BBI) on lingual movements and formant frequencies in corner vowel and diphthong production in a sentence context. Method: Twenty young adults produced the corner vowels (/u/, /ɑ/, /æ/, /i/) and the diphthong /ɑɪ/ in sentence contexts before and after BBI. An electromagnetic articulograph measured the movements of the tongue back, middle, and front. Results: There were significant decreases in the acoustic vowel articulation index and vowel space area following BBI. The kinematic vowel articulation index decreased significantly for the back and middle of the tongue but not for the front. There …

A Longitudinal Study Of Interprofessional Education In Graduate Students From Rehabilitation Sciences, Sarah Elkington, Connie Summers, Celia Pechak, Patricia Lara, Francesca Hernandez

Faculty Publications

• Date Presented Accepted for AOTA INSPIRE 2021 but unable to be presented due to online event limitations. A longitudinal study evaluated the effects of interprofessional education (IPE) experiences on 71 rehabilitation science graduate students' perceptions of interprofessional collaboration (IPC). Physical therapy, OT, and speech-language pathology students rated their perceptions of IPC and their knowledge of other disciplines' roles across their first year of graduate school. IPE experiences are an important aspect of professional preparation. Primary Author and Speaker: Sarah Elkington Contributing Authors: Connie Summers, Celia Pechak, Patricia Lara, and Francesca Hernandez

A Megastudy Of Text-Based Nudges Encouraging Patients To Get Vaccinated At An Upcoming Doctor’S Appointment, Katherine L. Milkman, Mitesh S. Patel, Linnea Gandhi, Heather N. Graci, Dena M. Gromet, Hung Ho, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

Many Americans fail to get life-saving vaccines each year, and the availability of a vaccine for COVID-19 makes the challenge of encouraging vaccination more urgent than ever. We present a large field experiment (N = 47,306) testing 19 nudges delivered to patients via text message and designed to boost adoption of the influenza vaccine. Our findings suggest that text messages sent prior to a primary care visit can boost vaccination rates by an average of 5%. Overall, interventions performed better when they were 1) framed as reminders to get flu shots that were already reserved for the patient and 2) …

Personal Bankruptcy And The Accumulation Of Shadow Debt, Bronson Argyle, Benjamin Iverson, Taylor Nadauld, Christopher Palmer

Faculty Publications

Compiling new liability-level data from the balance sheets of personal bankruptcy filers, we document that a sizable share of reported liabilities are “shadow debt,” debt not reported to credit bureaus that often arises from the non-payment of goods and services. We use this new data to evaluate how debtor cash flows affect when consumers file for bankruptcy and how much debt they have at bankruptcy. We find that filers respond to a quasi-exogenous $100 increase in monthly cash flows by delaying filing by an average of one month and by increasing unsecured indebtedness by $4,000 in the months preceding filing. …

An Empirical Analysis Of Video Games And Social Media On Learning In An Information Systems University Class, Heber C. Brau, James C. Brau, James Gaskin

Faculty Publications

Prior research by Brau, et al. (2016, 2017) identifies factors that correlate with university student course grades. We employ the same research structure as the Brau, et al. papers with the innovation of adding dozens of questions that deal with video game and social media usage. Extant research argues that time spent on video gaming and using social media can: 1) hurt student grades, 2) help student grades, or 3) have no impact on student grades. We test the video game and social media impact hypotheses using a survey of over 500 college students in an Introduction to Information Systems …

Soft Information And The Underpricing Of Reit Seasoned Equity Offerings, James C. Brau, J. Troy Carpenter, James E. Cicon, Shelly Howton

Faculty Publications

Using a sample of 1,429 seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) by real estate investment trusts (REITs), we use content analysis to test whether the soft information in a company’s offering prospectus influences SEO underpricing. After controlling for relevant variables, we find that companies that use more positive (negative) words in their filings are negatively (positively) related to SEO underpricing. We posit that in REIT SEOs more positive and fewer negative words decrease investor pricing uncertainty (fear) of the offer and as a result experience less underpricing.

Market Predators, Lauren Cohen, Karl B. Diether, Christopher Malloy

Faculty Publications

We find evidence of predatory trading in the corporate bond market. Exploiting novel data on the short selling behavior of institutional investors, we demonstrate that short sellers target those bonds likely to experience the largest negative events in the future: bonds about to be downgraded to junk status, and specifically those held by insurance companies and other institutions that are required to liquidate when bonds fall to junk status. We show that shorting in these bonds predicts large negative returns, which largely reverse over the next year. Short sellers’ trading activity is premeditated: they build up large short positions in …

Models Behaving Badly: The Limits Of Data-Driven Lending, Itzhak Ben-David, Mark J. Johnson, René M. Stulz

Faculty Publications

Data-driven lending relies on the calibration of models using training periods. We find that this type of lending is not resilient in the presence of economic conditions that are materially different from those experienced during the training period. Using data from a small business fintech lending platform, we document that the small business credit supply collapsed during the COVID-19 crisis of March 2020 even though the demand for loans doubled relative to pre-pandemic levels. As the month progressed, most lenders significantly reduced or halted their lending activities, likely due to the heightened risk of model miscalibration under the new economic …

Are Monthly Market Returns Predictable?, Jussi Keppo, Tyler Shumway, Daniel Weagley

Faculty Publications

We document significant persistence in the market timing performance of active individual investors, suggesting that some investors are skilled at timing. Using data on all trades by active Finnish individual investors over almost 15 years, we also show that the net purchases of skilled versus unskilled investors predict monthly market returns. Our results lend credibility to the view that market returns are predictable, without having to specify which variables active investors use to successfully time the market.

Experiential Learning Through A Week-Long Information Systems Case Study, Madison Corbin, Cherileigh Leavitt, Degan Kettles, Greg Anderson

Faculty Publications

An experiential learning model known as INTEX (INTegrative EXercise) was implemented by the Information Systems Department at Brigham Young University. The purpose was to facilitate a team-based holistic learning experience in both content and application to supply a means of measuring student performance and further program development. In this paper, we explain how INTEX presents an adoptable experiential learning model, how INTEX is administered, and the extent to which INTEX fulfills each of its seven objectives based on student, alumni, and faculty feedback. Our main findings are: INTEX provides a compelling real-world case simulation, gives students an invaluable teamwork experience, …

The Effect Of Help Seeking On Creative Self- Efficacy Of Is Students, Cherileigh Leavitt, Madison Corbin, Mark J. Keith, Ryan M. Schuetzler, Degan Kettles, Greg Anderson

Faculty Publications

Research has demonstrated that student help-seeking behaviors have a variety of positive influences in the classroom. However, the primary outcome of these studies is typically student grades and general self-efficacy. To make a contribution to the IS discipline, we expand this research with a more targeted and specific measure of self-efficacy that was created for IS students: creative self-efficacy (CreaSE) in the IS discipline. This allows us to relate specific help-seeking behaviors to CreaSE sub-constructs which, in turn, allows us to make more targeted recommendations to instructors in IS programs who want to improve the quality and retention of their …

Team Building Through Team Video Games: Randomized Controlled Trial, Mark J. Keith, Douglas L. Dean, James Gaskin, Greg Anderson

Faculty Publications

Background: Organizations of all types require the use of teams. Poor team member engagement costs billions of US dollars annually.

Objective: This study aimed to explain how team building can be accomplished with team video gaming based on a team cohesion model enhanced by team flow theory.

Methods: In this controlled experiment, teams were randomly assigned to a team video gaming treatment or a control treatment. Team productivity was measured during both pretreatment and posttreatment team tasks. After the pretest, teams who were involved in the team video gaming treatment competed against other teams by playing the Halo or Rock …

K-12 Blended Teaching Skills And Abilities: An Analysis Of Blended Teaching Artifacts, Cecil R. Short, Charles R. Graham, Emily Sabey

Faculty Publications

Several professional organizations, non-profit groups, and researchers have provided K–12 blended teaching (BT) competencies; however, few of these have connected competencies to concrete practices. This analysis used a set of research-based BT dispositions, technology skills, and competencies (i.e., proficiencies) to analyze a representative sample of 959 artifacts focused on BT practices to uncover the proficiencies important to K–12 BT. The dispositions recognized for BT appeared in 87.9% of the artifacts, personalization competencies in 58.3%, technology skills in 54.0%, data practices in 46.0%, implementation competencies in 37.1%, online integration competencies in 30.4%, and online interaction competencies in 5.6%. Each of these …

How Do Team Workloads And Team Staffing Affect The Audit? Archival Evidence From U.S. Audits, Brant E. Christensen, Nathan J. Newton, Michael S. Wilkins

Faculty Publications

We use U.S. data from a global accounting firm to investigate how two key elements of audit teams eworkloads and staffing continuity e affect the audit. We find that heavier team workloads are associated with lower audit quality, particularly when team members have lower performance ratings or have total workloads that exceed 60 h per week. In addition to finding evidence of employee burnout, we also document an incremental distraction effect. Specifically, we find that audit quality on the primary client suffers when team members spend more time during busy season on other concurrent clients. Regarding continuity, we find that …

Implicit Attitudes And U.S. Tax Professionals’ Reliance On Offshore Tax Professionals’ Recommendations, Brian C. Spilker, Bryan W. Stewart, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Large accounting firms offshore a significant amount of tax work to professionals in India. Prior research suggests that individuals can have negative implicit attitudes toward people from different nationalities and that negative implicit attitudes can have undesired consequences. In this study, we measure a sample of U.S. tax professionals’ implicit attitudes toward Indian persons using an implicit association test (IAT) and assess whether the U.S. tax professionals respond differently to work produced by Indian versus U.S. tax professionals and whether implicit attitudes affect the U.S. professionals’ assessments of Indian tax professionals’ work product. We document that participants in our study …

Are Internal Audits Associated With Reductions In Perceived Risk?, Joseph V. Carcello, Marc Eulerich, Adi Masli, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

We examine whether internal auditing provides value to organizations by reducing risk. We compare the changes in risks between audited business units and matched non-audited units within the same company. This design allows us to isolate the importance of an internal audit while holding constant changes in risk due to the organization and time period. Based on ratings from the heads of audited and non-audited units, we find that managers of audited units perceive a greater decline in risk as well as a greater increase in performance compared to managers of non-audited units. We also find that companies that have …

Blockchain Technology: A Survey Of Croatian Business Leaders, Dražen Zec, William G. Heninger

Faculty Publications

Blockchain or distributed ledger technology emerged over ten years ago as the underlying technology of bitcoin. Blockchain is a special kind of database with individual records or blocks linked together in a sequential list called chain of blocks. These records are validated by multiple nodes in peer-to-peer networks and they are immutable. It is a decentralized system, with no need for intermediaries where all decisions are made using different consensus mechanisms. High expectations from blockchain technology, combined with a lack of deeper knowledge about the technology are expressed in the results from the survey conducted on a sample of Croatian …

How Has The Change In The Way Auditors Determine The Audit Report Date Changed The Meaning Of The Audit Report Date? Implications For Academic Research, Steven M. Glover, James C. Hansen, Timothy Seidel

Faculty Publications

Archival research in accounting often relies on the audit report date to capture the constructs of audit efficiency, audit timeliness, audit effort, or audit completion. Auditors’ view of what constitutes sufficient appropriate evidence to support the audit opinion, and consequently the date of the audit report, previously coincided with the substantial completion of audit fieldwork, which would be days or weeks before a 10-K filing. However, this view has shifted to coincide with the timing of the public issuance of clients’ financial statements (i.e., the 10-K filing date) following several regulatory actions, audit practice changes, and professional standard setting changes …

Prior Audit Experience And Cfo Financial Reporting Aggressiveness, Eric R. Condie, Kara M. Obermire, Timothy Seidel, Michael S. Wilkins

Faculty Publications

In this study, we investigate the financial reporting behavior of chief financial officers (CFOs) with significant prior audit experience. Our tests indicate that, on average, CFOs who were former audit managers or partners report less aggressively than CFOs without prior audit experience. Thus, the mindset that auditors develop during their time in public accounting – which should value objective, transparent, and conservative financial reporting – appears to persist when auditors take high-level positions in industry. However, we also find that the reporting behavior of prior-auditor CFOs becomes more aggressive over time as the salience of their audit experience decays. Further, …

Sibling Relationship Quality In The Context Of Digital Leisure And Geographic Distance For College-Attending Emerging Adults, Eric K. Layland, Jerrica O. Peets, Camilla Hodge, Mikala Glasa

Faculty Publications

During the transition to adulthood, emerging adults may experience new geographic distance separating them from their siblings. Digital leisure is common among emerging adults and may serve as a tool for maintaining relationship quality across geographic distance. Using qualitative data, we created individual digital leisure diversity scores for four categories of digital leisure identified from a constructed taxonomy. The sample included 185 college-attending emerging adults (Mage ¼ 20.1, 64.3% male). Analysis of variance indicated dyadic gender differences in social media and gaming. Digital leisure diversity was associated with greater levels of affective and cognitive sibling relationship quality, regardless of sibling …

Increasing Cybersecurity Career Interest Through Playable Case Studies, Justin Scott Giboney, Jason K. Mcdonald, Jonathan Balzotti, Derek L. Hansen, Desiree M. Winters, Elizabeth Bonsignore

Faculty Publications

In this paper we introduce an approach to cybersecurity education and helping students develop professional understanding in the form of a Playable Case Study (PCS), a form of educational simulation that draws on affordances of the broader educational simulation genre, case study instruction, and educational Alternate Reality Games (or ARGs). A PCS is an interactive simulation that allows students to “play” through an authentic scenario (case study) as a member of a professional team. We report our findings over a multi-year study of a PCS called Cybermatics, with data from 111 students from two different U.S. universities who interacted with …

What’S The Church’S Official Position On Official Positions?: Grappling With “Truth” And “Authority”, Trevan Hatch

Faculty Publications

In the previous essay, Dr. Rabbi Peter Haas considered how some of our Jewish friends have approached the issue of authority in their search for truth. During my engagement with such approaches as a student at Baltimore Hebrew University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago, I have wondered how this approach might inform my own quest for truth within the context of my faith tradition. As a Latter-day Saint, what authorities should I consult? Where do I turn for truth? How can I know whether a certain claim is an “official position” of …

Mitigating The Security Intention-Behavior Gap: The Moderating Role Of Required Effort On The Intention-Behavior Relationship, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Alexandra Durcikova, Jay F. Nunamaker Jr.

Faculty Publications

Although users often express strong positive intentions to follow security policies, these positive intentions fail to consistently translate to behavior. In a security setting, the inconsistency between intentions and behavior—termed the intention-behavior gap—is particularly troublesome, as a single failure to enact positive security intentions may make a system vulnerable. We address a need in security compliance literature to better understand the intention-behavior gap by explaining how an omnipresent competing intention—the user’s desire to minimize required effort—negatively moderates the relationship between positive intentions and actual security behavior. Moreover, we posit that this moderating effect is not accounted for in extant theories …

Detecting Noncompliant Behavior In Organizations: How Online Survey Responses And Behaviors Reveal Risk, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Jospeh S. Valacich, Aaron F. Zimbelman, Mark F. Zimbelman

Faculty Publications

Ensuring organizational regulatory and legal compliance is a challenging, high-stakes management task. Overlooking or underestimating noncompliance in organizations can result in substantial fines, damage to a company’s reputation, and, ultimately, loss of business. To help alleviate this risk, we explore whether organizations can assess noncompliance by monitoring users’ answers and related mouse cursor movements in an intelligent online questionnaire. Namely, we propose that noncompliant (compared with compliant) individuals will experience more cognitive dissonance on questions about (1) what constitutes noncompliance behavior and (2) what consequences for noncompliance are appropriate. We predict that increased cognitive dissonance in noncompliant individuals will influence …