Digital Commons Network^™

Tspoons: Tracking Salience Profiles Of Online News Stories, Kimberly Laurel Paterson

Master's Theses

News space is a relatively nebulous term that describes the general discourse concerning events that affect the populace. Past research has focused on qualitatively analyzing news space in an attempt to answer big questions about how the populace relates to the news and how they respond to it. We want to ask when do stories begin? What stories stand out among the noise? In order to answer the big questions about news space, we need to track the course of individual stories in the news. By analyzing the specific articles that comprise stories, we can synthesize the information gained from …

Predicting Music Genre Preferences Based On Online Comments, Andrew J. Sinclair

Master's Theses

Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) states that individuals adapt to each other’s communicative behaviors. This adaptation is called “convergence.” In this work we explore the convergence of writing styles of users of the online music distribution plat- form SoundCloud.com. In order to evaluate our system we created a corpus of over 38,000 comments retrieved from SoundCloud in April 2014. The corpus represents comments from 8 distinct musical genres: Classical, Electronic, Hip Hop, Jazz, Country, Metal, Folk, and World. Our corpus contains: short comments, frequent misspellings, little sentence struc- ture, hashtags, emoticons, and URLs. We adapt techniques used by researchers analyzing other …

Matrilineal Asset Inheritance, Female Bargaining Power, And Household Welfare In Malawi, Nicholas T. Garcia

Master's Theses

Matrilineal inheritance practices in Malawi exogenously determine female land holdings at the time of marriage, allowing for the identification of the effect of increased female bargaining power on household consumption decisions. I use the matrilineal ethnicity of the head of household as an instrument for the share of total household land inherited by the female head or male head’s wife. I find that child’s height-for-age decreases with female assets, and evidence suggesting increased consumption from households’ own production. Since the food basket from own consumption is high in carbs but not nutritious, long-term child health suffers despite receiving more resources …

Attitudes And Beliefs Regarding The Collection Of Race, Ethnicity And Primary Language Information In Healthcare Settings, Roberto A. Henry

Master's Theses

Public health researchers, practitioners and policy makers are increasingly trying to uncover, quantify and address health disparities, which are differences in health outcomes among population subgroups (Nepaul et al., 2007). Health disparities are understood to be the consequences of differences in care, the health services infrastructure, and information systems available to persons by virtue of their gender, race, ethnicity, education level, etc. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2011; Institute of Medicine, 2009). In the United States, we commonly study health disparities occurring across racial and ethnic groups, requiring the collection of race, ethnicity and language data in order …

Infants May Be Sensitive To Asynchronous Audiovisual Speech, Kathleen E. Shaw

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Nine Exits: A Collection Of Short Stories, Tracie Renée Dawson

Master's Theses

Nine Exits is a collection of fiction and nonfiction written over the span of two years in workshops provided by the Center for Writers.

Uh, Um, And Autism: Filler Disfluencies In Children With Optimal Outcomes From Autism Spectrum Disorder, Christina Anne Irvine

Master's Theses

Spontaneous speech is marked by the presence of frequent disfluencies, including fillers like um and uh, which are thought to serve distinct social-communicative functions (Clark & Fox Tree, 2002). People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) struggle with social communication. The current study examines a) the production of fillers in spontaneous speech among children and adolescents with ASD as well as individuals who have achieved “optimal outcomes” (OO) from ASD, and b) the association between filler rate and autism symptom severity versus general cognitive factors, in order to illuminate the processes implicated in filler production. Speech samples from 64 individuals …

The Diagnostic Stability Of Developmental Delay And Developmental Language Disorder In Infants And Toddlers, Alexander J. Hinnebusch

Master's Theses

Numerous children are diagnosed with Developmental Delay (DD) and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) each year in the US. There are inconsistent diagnostic definitions for these disorders because individual states determine diagnostic criteria, complicating prevalence and diagnostic stability estimation. In the current study, 37 children received a diagnosis of DD and 21 received a diagnosis of DLD at an initial evaluation as part of participation in a study investigating the early detection of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs), and were seen for a follow-up evaluation. The DD group was significantly more likely to retain this diagnosis at follow-up than the DLD group. …

Roubaud's Circus: Playing With Words And Animals In Les Animaux De Tout Le Monde, Miranda R. Mueller

Master's Theses

It is commonly held that there is a solid, defined line existing between men and animals. This thesis explores the ideological boundary and, through a close examination of Jacques Roubaud’s collection of poetry Les animaux de tout le monde, imagines the line as a fluid structure that can be broken, approached, and multiplied.

In a circus theme following the playful style of Roubaud’s own verses, I include several close readings of poems as well as an analysis of Roubaud’s influence from Lewis Carroll’s nonsense genre, the Fables of Jean de la Fontaine, and Medieval bestiaries in order to create a …

Culture Wars: A Quest For Justice In Arizona, Crystal Lynne Pfeiffer

Master's Theses

The Southwest is the location of an ongoing culture clash between proponents of a unified "American" culture and Mexican-American culture. The significance of the debate is not just about Mexican-American studies; it reflects a broader debate about individual and collective identity in the United States. The two cultures have historically had a contentious relationship that is further intensified by their geographical proximity to one another. Some of the tensions have culminated in a conflict within the school system between supporters and opponents of Mexican-American studies. One side of the debate sees the program as a means to help students succeed …

Experiences Of Immigration Among Women From Taiwan, Robert Johnston

Master's Theses

This thesis explores the transformative effects of immigration from the 1960s through the 2010s among women from Taiwan living in the County of Santa Clara. The study focused on three substantive areas: (1) early life experiences and factors leading to immigration; (2) shifts in social identities after leaving Taiwan (e.g., political, national, and ethnic self-concepts in various contexts); and (3) practices of child-rearing. Several methodological tools were employed during the data collection phase of the research process, including interviews, surveys, and participant observations. The findings of this study suggested a dynamic process of change in which informants adapted to, were …

Constructive Feedback In L2 Writing With Chinese High School Students In Taiwan, Chiawei Diane Yang

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the lack of motivation in L2 writing of Chinese high school students in Taiwan. The subject of this study was to examine how age, culture, and the education system in Taiwan influenced students’ motivation in learning English writing. It provided insight about how academic environments influence students’ motivation in learning English, how teachers’ feedback shapes students’ learning attitudes, and effective ways to increase students’ motivation and self-esteem. The study utilized Krashen’s (1981) affective filter hypothesis and Dornyei’s (1994) three levels of motivation theory. Ten Taiwanese students participated in this study. All of …

Inside Jokes: English Language Humor From The Outside, Mieka D. Strawhorn

Master's Theses

Humor is a complex and dynamic mode of communication that serves a number of important social functions. While humor is found in all cultures, English language learners (ELLs) in the United States must learn to navigate American humor with all of its inherent cultural, social and linguistic particularities. The ability to appreciate, comprehend and produce humor is a critical and necessary skillset for full fluency in English. Research has been done on the subject of incorporating humor into the language classroom and the benefits of doing so are myriad (Bell, 2005; 2009). However, very little research has been done on …

Teaching English As A Second Language Through Rap Music: A Curriculum For Secondary School Students, Beth Segal

Master's Theses

This project provides a sample of the curriculum, Rapping English, which uses rap/hip-hop style music to teach ELLs vocabulary, grammar, discourse and prosody. The rationale for using musical instruction is based on Gardner’s (2006) multiple intelligence theory and Bloom’s (1978) learning domains. This curriculum instructs students through musical intelligence and the affective domain which are often neglected in traditional instruction. Furthermore, this project explores how musical curriculum can be used to lower the affective filter (Krashen, 1981) and provide emotionally appealing and memory stimulating instruction in line with the findings of current neuropsychology, specifically the work of R. Caine and …

An Investigation Of The Private Efl Sector In South Korea: Meeting Students’ And Parents’ Goals And Expectations, Stephen Ostermiller

Master's Theses

In South Korea, there is an abundance of expatriate educators working in the large, private English education industry. Many of these educators work for private language institutes known as hagwons, where they teach English as a foreign language (EFL) to preschool and primary school students. However, due to language barriers and other circumstances, these workers rarely communicate with the parents of their students. Couple this with a lack of knowledge about the history and current state of EFL education in Korea, and many of these educators are left unaware of the goals and expectations that these parents have for their …

Countering The Dreamer Narrative: Storytelling, Immigration Reform, And The Work Of 67 Sueños, Drew Schmenner

Master's Theses

Research question: How has the practice of storytelling been used in the current U.S. conflicts over immigration?

Telling an effective story is an essential part of a complex strategy to bring about social change, but storytelling as a part of collective action has not been extensively studied. For activists in the United States fighting for immigrant rights, especially the passage of the DREAM Act, storytelling has been an important tactic, but the nature of the narrative that was constructed has its drawbacks because it excluded some members of the immigrant community. In 2010, the Bay Area-based group 67 Sueños (“67 …

Effects Of Instruction And Parent-Child Conversation On Children's Stem Learning And Transfer, Maria Marcus

Master's Theses

This study examined the effects of direct instruction and parent-child conversation on children's STEM learning, transfer abilities, and remembering. A total of forty mothers and their 5- to 6-year-old children (M = 5.87) participated in this study. Mother-child dyads were randomly assigned to one of two conditions that differed in the amount of engineering information they received prior to engaging in a building activity in a museum exhibit. The provision of engineering information fostered dyads building activities and their long-term recall of the museum visit. Implications for museum research and practice are discussed.

Learning To Tell Coherent Personal Narratives: Linkages To Mother-Child Reminiscing Over Time, Philip C. Hoffman

Master's Theses

Longitudinal and concurrent predictors of children's narrative coherence are identified and used to model pathways to coherence. Narrative coherence in children's independent narratives was measured at 72-months using a multidimensional (context, chronology, and theme) coding system. Fifty-three potential predictors of children's narrative coherence were considered, including children's vocabulary scores, metamemory knowledge, and measures derived from observations of mothers' and children's talk during reminiscing conversations recorded when the children were 54 and 72 months old. Optimal Data Analysis was used to generate three classification tree models to identify variables associated with whether children were low or high on three dimensions of …

Domestic Violence And The Legal System: A Case Study Of 10 Mexican Women And The Process Of Seeking Legal Recourse, Martha Cecilia Espinosa

Master's Theses

This study explores the experiences of ten Mexican women currently receiving services with Safe Pathways, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing resources to survivors of domestic violence. In this study, I attend to how these women experience and negotiate gender, intimate relationships, and the legal system, and I explore the strategies that they develop to overcome gendered constraints associated with being undocumented and battered. I find that women's experiences with the legal system are shaped by a variety of factors outside of its auspices, including gendered norms and class constraints. Existing literature on Latinas and battered women in the legal …

The Influence Of Socioeconomic Factors On The Development Of Early Number Concepts, Brittany Meghan Caldwell

Master's Theses

Why are some children entering school unable to count, while others are able to

do simple addition? It may be that early experiences, like practice with numbers and extra resources to promote logical thinking, lay the foundation for how children and adults understand and use math in their everyday lives. The major objectives of this thesis are to explore the 1) link between children's intuitive number sense and their development of exact number concepts, 2) influence of language on early math achievement, and 3) influence of socioeconomic factors on various aspects of cognitive development. Participants included 133 preschool aged children …

Native American Response And Resistance To Spanish Conquest In The San Francisco Bay Area 1769-1846, Gustavo Adolfo Flores

Master's Theses

This study focuses on how secular, governmental, and ecclesiastical Hispanic Empire institutions influenced the response and resistance of San Francisco Native American groups from 1769 to 1846. This project draws on late 18th and early 19th century primary Spanish documents and secondary sources to help understand the context of indigenous people's adaptive and response behaviors during this period as well as the nuances of their perspective and experience. Using both electronic and physical documents from a number of archival databases, primary Spanish documents were translated and correlated with baptismal and death mission records. This allowed for formulating alternative perspectives and …

Mapping The Monster: Locating The Other In The Labyrinth Of Hybridity, Jill Kristine Harper

Master's Theses

By the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Great Britain led the European contest for imperial dominion and successfully extended its influence throughout Africa, the Americas, South East Asia, and the Pacific. National pride in the world's leading empire, however, was laced with an increasing anxiety regarding the unbridled frontier and the hybridization of Englishness and the socio-ethnic and cultural Other. H. Rider Haggard's She, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Richard Marsh's The Beetle, three Imperial Gothic novels, personify the monstrosity of hybridity in antagonists who embody multiple races and cultures. Moreover, as representatives of various ancient …

The Role Of Information And Communication Technology In The Acculturation Of Vietnamese Refugees, Khanh A. Tran

Master's Theses

One of the most significant refugee populations in the United States is the Vietnamese. This group initially fled their native country to escape political oppression at the conclusion of the Vietnam War in 1975 and continued to flee in a series of separate waves that continued for more than three decades. As a relatively new immigrant group in the U.S., the Vietnamese still face a variety of challenges as they try to reestablish their lives and adapt in a new cultural environment. Acculturation is a complex process that is influenced by a number of factors. Throughout history, U.S. immigration policy …

Friction Ridge Dysplasia And Its Preponderance In The Afghanistan Population, Chelsea Elyse Woullard

Master's Theses

Friction Ridge Dysplasia is a rare genetic disorder in which the friction skin ridge units do not fuse together to form continuously flowing friction ridges. The skin affected by Friction Ridge Dysplasia is generally localized to one area and gives a similar appearance of the pebbled state of skin on the snout of a dog. Many authors have briefly discussed Friction Ridge Dysplasia in their publications; however, in-depth reflection as to the cause and rate of occurrence of Friction Ridge Dysplasia has not been documented. The objective of this study is to determine whether or not Friction Ridge Dysplasia is …

Narratives By Six Year Old And Nine Year Old Boys: Brute: Institutional, And Non-Institutional Mental Facts, Adam Craig Whipple

Master's Theses

Brute facts, institutional facts, and non-institutional mental facts were studied. The philosophy of constructionism and the theory of intent provided a framework for this research. Intentionality provided the basis for social facts. Brute, institutional, and noninstitutional mental facts were operationally defined. This study analyzed the use of these facts in the narratives of 6-year-old boys and 9-year-old boys. There were a total of 19 participants in this research. This research established brute, institutional, and non-institutional mental facts as appropriate operational categories for studying children's narratives. The 6-year-old boys produced more brute facts than the 9-year-old boys. The 9-year-old boys produced …

Parsing Of Natural Language Requirements, Jamie L. Patterson

Master's Theses

The purpose of this thesis was to automate verification of the software requirements for an implantable cardioverter defibrillator with minimal manual rework. The requirements were written in plain English with only loose stylistic constraints. While full automation proved infeasible, many significant advances were made towards solving the problem, including a framework for storing requirements, a program which translates most of the natural language requirements into the framework, and a novel approach to parts of speech analysis.

Building Women’S Solidarity To Advance Women’S Rights In Bolivia, Luzdary Hammad

Master's Theses

This paper takes a historical look at the deep-seated ethnic and class divisions between women in Bolivia. It also examines the cultural challenges that help explain the status of women in Bolivia and the obstacles women face to become politically active. It provides the theories of decolonization and depatriachalization as practical ways Bolivia can move past their colonial and patriarchal history. It also looks into what feminism means overall in Latin America and what strategies Latin American women have used to make change for women. It then provides a political history of Bolivia from 1994 to the present giving the …

Dense Recordings Reveal Typical And Atypical Development Of Tense Productivity In A Child Previously Diagnosed With Asd, Iris Chin

Master's Theses

Research on tense development has found that typically developing (TD) children are productive with tense morphology starting between two to two-and-a-half years old. Research findings on children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), however, have been mixed. To better understand how tense development may differ between TD children and children with ASD, we examined the speech of two children, one TD [Cleo] and one that previously presented symptoms of ASD [Audrey]. This study is novel in its use of the Speechome Recorder, which collects dense audio-video recordings of children’s speech in home environments. We found that both children were productive with …

Modeling The Emergence Of Natural Language Lexicons, Russell Richie

Master's Theses

It is largely acknowledged that natural languages emerge from not just human brains, but also from rich communities of interacting human brains (de Boer, 2000; Galantucci et al., 2012; Senghas, 2005). Yet the precise role of such communities and such interaction on emergence of core properties of language has largely gone uninvestigated in naturally emerging systems, leaving the few existing computational investigations of this issue (de Boer, 2000, i.a.) somewhat ungrounded. Here we take a step towards investigating the precise role of community structure in the emergence of linguistic conventions with both naturalistic empirical data and computational modeling. We first …

Women And The Second Estate In 16th Century Zambezia: Gendered Powers, A 'Puppet' African Queen And Succession In Vakaranga Society, 1500–1700, George G. Levin

Master's Theses

Women in vaKaranga society of the 15th to 17th centuries have been portrayed as oppressed by an "extremely patriarchal" system, but the reality, while still fitting the simple classification of a 'patriarchal' monarchy, indicates quite a bit more negotiation of gendered powers than women, as a class, experienced in the Mediterranean or East Asia. The vaKaranga were the architects of Great Zimbabwe, the capital of a growing state, colonizing their cousins of the Zambezi river, which their Kusi-Mashariki Bantu forefathers had traversed southward a millennium before. Civil war had (apparently) split one nation into two states, Mutapa (Monomotapa) and Khami …