Digital Commons Network^™

The Effects Of Word Frequency And Language Proficiency On Repetition Priming And Picture Naming, Renee Michelle Penalver

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Frequency is known to modulate outcomes on tasks like picture naming. According to the frequency lag hypoThesis there is a common mechanism for the effects of word frequency, language dominance and bilingual and monolingual differences in picture naming (Gollan, Montoya, Cera, & Sandoval, 2008; Gollan, Slattery, Goldenberg, Van Assche, Duyck, & Rayner, 2011). English monolinguals and English-Spanish bilinguals were tested on a picture naming task with pictures that had high and low frequency names. Response times, priming scores, and error rates were assessed. Response times indicated that monolinguals, and bilinguals were slower to respond to for low frequency picture names …

El Erotismo En La Obra De Rebeca Uribe (1934-1941), Leonor Alejandra Silva Lomelí

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

La poesía de la escritora Rebeca Uribe (1911-1949) pertenece a un corpus literario que requiere ser atendido por la crítica. La presente investigación tiene como objetivos dar a conocer las composiciones eróticas de esta autora mediante el análisis crítico y metodológico, así como brindar un primer acercamiento que fomente estudios posteriores. En esta investigación se propone que los poemas eróticos de Rebeca Uribe presentan una voz lírica que se entrega totalmente al ser amado con la finalidad de ser correspondida con la misma intensidad, y practica una sexualidad liberada que se manifiesta en la experimentación de relaciones erótico-amorosas de tipo …

The Argentine Tango As A Discursive Instrument And Agent Of Social Empowerment: Buenos Aires, 1880-1955, Lorena Elizabeth Tabares

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

As an indisputable central element of Argentine popular culture, the tango constitutes much more than an artistic expression or a recreational activity. It is the manifestation of a collective ideology and idiosyncrasy. The development of the tango as a song of the people and social history between the 1880's and the first half of the 20th century, was not merely the result of a matter of identification but more importantly, the fact that it, in its `tridimensionality' comprised of music, dance and lyrics, offered the milieu to the existence of the people that identified with it. In other words, the …

Nonword Repetition Performance Patterns In English - Spanish Bilingual Adults And English And Spanish Monolingual Adults, Nadia Arriazola Flores

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Nonword repetition (NWR) is known to be a less biased measure for assessing language abilities of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children (Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998). NWR is used to examine phonological short-term memory mechanisms (also called working memory), because the tasks require the capability to discriminate, store, remember and reproduce phonological sequences (Baddeley, 1989; Braddeley 1974). The purpose of this study was to collect normative data on the NWR performance of bilingual and monolingual adults. This may contribute to the interpretation of performance in bilingual children by providing the standard of adult-like performance. This study examined the performance patterns …

An Intelligent System For High Resolution Radar Systems, Janette C. Briones

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Cognitive radio is a recent, novel approach that integrates machine perception software into wireless systems. The term cognitive radio was first used by Joe Mitola. The concept and the term cognitive radio quickly caught the attention and interest of many in the communications field. Cognitive radios are capable of making decisions and selecting or modifying the operating parameters of a radio. Given these capabilities, it is feasible to build a cognitive radar system as introduced by Simon Haykin in 2006. Cognitive radar, as described by Haykin, is an intelligent system that must be aware of its environment, uses prior knowledge, …

Las Cruces, Karen Lee Dockal

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

n/a

Practicing Philosophical Pluralism With `Forrest Gump' A Speech-Act Body-Mind Analysis, Robert Lorenzo Oropeza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This essay looks at three different types of philosophy: Pragmatism and communication, phenomenology and Zen Buddhism. I discuss these philosophies using the film, Forrest Gump as a guide to get through the convoluted ideas and make the concepts easier to understand. We first wade through the waters of analytical philosophy and the language game in communication. We discuss speaker's intention in meaning according to Paul Grice and Forrest's problems with the implicatures of language. In the second chapter I focus on the phenomenology of the characters as well as the perspective of the person viewing the film. How do we …

Secondhand City: Stolen Stories From La Limonada, Byron José Sun

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Roboton, Jupa and Calicas have just been drafted by the city of La Limonada to petrol, to rob, to intimidate, to extort, to kill and when necessary to protect those citizens that need it; as their crime spree progresses their tactics and abilities improve shaping them into criminal machines. The three new criminals will be tasked with the reality of destroying people's lives in order to insure La Limonada maintains its dominion over every citizen by controlling every aspect of their past, present and future. Many of those citizens are clueless on how they are controlled; it isn't until their …

The Effects Of Cognates On Receptive And Expressive Language Among Typically Developing Preschool Second Language-Learners, Jesica B. Zavala De Guerrero

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This exploratory study considers the facilitating effects of cognates across language of intervention, seeking to assess potential cross-language generalizations among typically developing preschool bilinguals. Nine bilingual, English-Spanish speakers of preschool age were assigned to one of three experimental groups (an English only group, a Spanish only group, and a bilingual group) or to a control condition. Children in the experimental groups were introduced to a vocabulary intervention that incorporated cognates and non-cognates. Analysis of data suggests the absence of a cognate advantage among preschool age children; furthermore limiting any possible cross-language generalizations. It is plausible to suspect that age may …

Literatura Sobre La Frontera Norte Mexicana: Comparación Y Análisis Del Discurso Pragmático, Emily Celeste Vázquez Enríquez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

En este trabajo se comparan cuatro novelas que incluyen a la frontera del norte de México entre sus páginas. El punto de diferencia del cual la comparación parte es el origen de los autores. Lo anterior se debe a que en la tradición del trabajo crítico que ha intentado entender y definir la literatura de la zona, uno de los principales puntos de debate refiere al cuestionamiento de si importa la pertenencia de los escritores al lugar narrado. Mientras hay críticos y académicos que afirman que las obras de la literatura norfronteriza mexicana son únicamente aquéllas escritas por autores de …

Constructing A Participatory Citizenship: Rhetoric And Agency Of The Revolutionary Association Of The Women Of Afghanistan, Lauren M. Connolly

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This project addresses the various constructions of citizenship and considers the concept of a participatory citizenship. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) is an example of how citizenship activities are performed by a transnational feminist organization and how the members' actions contrast with the frames about Afghan women provided by the United States government and news outlets. Feminist critical discourse analysis is used to analyze texts from these groups in order to consider how citizenship is constructed and/or denied to othered women. The texts analyzed demonstrate how colonial concepts impact Afghan women and feminist rhetorical studies demonstrates …

The Challenges Latino Parents Of English Language Learners Encounter In Their Child's Schooling: The Politics And The Praxis, Vanessa Espitia Mendoza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Extensive research on home-school relations has indicated the academic advantages of positive home-school relations for students (Domina, 2005; Englund, Luckner, Whaley & Egeland, 2004, Marsh & Willis, 2007, Turney & Kao, 2009). The United States Department of Education has identified positive home-school relationships as critical to a student's education and has developed nation-wide policies to support parents, placing emphasis on culturally and linguistically diverse parents such as Latinos parents of English Language Learners (ELLs) (Departamento de Educación de EU, 2003; U.S. Department of Education, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2011; Waterman, 2008). Bilingual education policies also advocate that parents are essential in …

Developing And Testing An Implicit Measure Of Moral Foundation Accessibility, Scott D. Frankowski

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Moral Foundations Theory provides a framework for understanding moral judgments and behavior. With the present research, I developed a word fragment task as an implicit measure of moral foundation accessibility. In an experiment, I used this measure as a predictor of moral attitudes and behaviors toward two moral violations. Responses on this implicit measure predicted moral attitudes; however, the priming conditions did not affect responses. The failure of the primes are discussed, as well as future directions.

Potential Influences Of Compliance For Short-Term Recovery From Sports-Related Concussion, Erin R. Ewing

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Currently, treatment of sports-related concussion dictates the prescription of physical and cognitive rest to allow the injured brain to recover and for concussion-related symptoms to subside. However, clinicians who prescribe rest are often met with resistance from athletes who do not recognize its therapeutic value in the recovery process. Research has shown that athletes often fail to comply with rest recommendations, resulting in protracted recovery and the persistence of symptoms. Method: This study employed a three-group pretest-posttest experimental design to compare the effects of three different concussion management protocols. Participants were recently concussed athletes ages 18-25 seen in the UTEP …

Language Difference Between Peer And Professional Drug And Substance Abuse Counselors: What Can It Tell Us?, Lizzeth Celeste Jensen

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Language studies that explore the human mind are not new. In recent years new techniques have opened new areas of investigation. One such is whether different professional groups do not merely use language in different ways, but a) "think" differently, or b) may be professionally more effective.

This is an exploratory study that uses secondary data analysis to see if difference in approach to providing help by Peer versus Professional substance use counselors, are reflected in differences of language use. For the purpose of this study Peer will stand for those counselors which, during the interview, stated they were ex-addicts …

The Talk Of Unwed Adolescent Fathers Of Mexican Origin: A Discourse Analysis, Jose Arturo Jaime

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Since the 1970s, changing family and marriage trends in the United States have led to a dramatic 41% increase in the rate of unwed parents also known as fragile families, i.e., those at high risk of living in poverty and/or disintegrating (McLanahan, Garfinkel, Mincy, & Donahue, 2013, p.3). By 2011, more than 20 million children (28%) lived in biological father-absent homes and one-fourth, or five million, of these children were Hispanic of any race (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). Recent studies suggest a clear disparity in cognitive, behavioral and health outcomes for children who live with single or cohabiting parents when …

Investigating Bilingual Non-Selective Lexical Access Within A Reading Comprehension Framework, Justin Gerald Lauro

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Thesis examines the role of bilingual non-selective lexical access on sentence comprehension. According to the BIA+ model of lexical access, bilinguals have an integrated lexicon with, and activation flows automatically across both languages. This model assumes that the bilingual lexicon is fundamentally non-selective. Previous research shows that cognates, words that share form and meaning across languages, are processed faster relative to non-cognates, even in sentence contexts. However, previous research focuses primarily on processing of single lexical items. The structure building framework of reading comprehension states that readers initially lay a foundation for subsequent information to be mapped on to. …

Inviting Citizen Designers To Design Learning Management System (Lms) Interfaces For Student Agency In A Cross-Cultural Digital Contact Zone, Rajendra Kumar Panthee

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Inviting Citizen Designers to Design Learning Management System (LMS) Interfaces for Student Agency in a Digital Cross-Cultural Contact Zone assesses how FYC students from periphery cultural and linguistic backgrounds perceive Blackboard Learn and other learning management system (LMS) interfaces. The report of an empirical study shows that the current LMS design does not provide writing students in general and writing students from periphery cultural and linguistic backgrounds in particular an opportunity of a higher-level interactivity with the LMS. The current design neither includes periphery students' cultural and linguistic norms and values, nor does it allow them to affect the existing …

The Rhetorical Making Of A Personhood: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey Into Literacies And Subjectivities, Viethang Thi Pham

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the form of an autoethnography, an examination of "the private troubles of individuals" and their connection to "public issues and to public responses to those troubles" (Denzin viii), this Dissertation demonstrates the impact of a country's history on its people's lives. According to Bourdieu's theory, changes in field trigger changes in habitus and capital; this interrelatedness "offers an epistemological and methodological approach to a historicized and particular understanding of social life" (Thomson 81). From an eyewitness' perspective, this writer/ethnographer narrates her stories/experiences in Viet-Nam and in America to shed light on her cultural and linguistic struggles, her transitions through …

Three Essays On Social/Political Structures And Icts Use, Seungeui Ryu

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

My research identifies how social structures affect the use of the Internet and/or a mobile chat application and how the Internet impacts the political structure of a nation. In my first essay of the 3-essay Dissertation, I am designing three models based on social structure theory that are used to study the Internet and a popular mobile chat application's use by managers in South Korea, with the help of a survey instrument. In my first essay, the contribution is on i) testing a model of manager's personal behavior on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) use at the individual level involving …

Perspectives On The Nature Of Science From A Group Of Students Attending Predominantly Hispanic West Texas High School, Cameron King Wilson

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The United States is falling far behind the rest of the world in its ability to fulfill its needs for qualified workers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. The Hispanic population is now the largest minority in the United States but is proportionally underrepresented in the STEM fields today. It is shown that students who have a good understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS) are far more likely to be interested in science which may lead to an interest in careers in STEM fields. There is very little if any research identifying Hispanic high school students' view …

The Effects Of Cognates On Receptive And Expressive Language Among Typically Developing Preschool Second Language-Learners, Jesica B. Zavala De Guerrero

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This exploratory study considers the facilitating effects of cognates across language of intervention, seeking to assess potential cross-language generalizations among typically developing preschool bilinguals. Nine bilingual, English-Spanish speakers of preschool age were assigned to one of three experimental groups (an English only group, a Spanish only group, and a bilingual group) or to a control condition. Children in the experimental groups were introduced to a vocabulary intervention that incorporated cognates and non-cognates. Analysis of data suggests the absence of a cognate advantage among preschool age children; furthermore limiting any possible cross-language generalizations. It is plausible to suspect that age may …

Rolodex Of Saints: A Collection Of Short Stories, Yvette D. Benavides

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A critical preface and collection of short stories.

Reading Highly Interactive Electronic Storybooks Vs. Minimally Interactive Electronic Books: Relative Influence On Time On Task, Narrative Retell, And Parental Perceptions, Jose Humberto Carrasco

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there was a difference in percentage of book read and the complexity of the narrative retell when children read highly interactive electronic books (e-books) versus minimally interactive e-books. An area to study further was parent's perceptions of their children's preference of highly versus minimally interactive e-book. A single subject rapid-alternating treatment design was used on three children (4-6 years of age). The participants read and then provided a narrative retell of both e-books over a 12-week period. Children's percentage of book read, grammar elements, cohesion elements, and proposition use were analyzed. …

A Pilot Study: Examining The Microstructural And Macrostructural Narrative Measures In Bilingual Preschool Aged Children, Caroline Esparza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Purpose: Research has identified narratives as accurate and reliable predictors of language skills, yet little is documented on the microstructural and macrostructural narrative production of preschool aged bilingual children. This pilot study examined the microstructure and macrostructure elements of narratives in these children to provide preliminary data for further research.

Method: This study examined the narrative skills of 11 bilingual children between the ages of 3 and 4. Narrative retells in Spanish were elicited and were analyzed for the microstructural measures of lexical diversity (NDW) and productivity (TNW and MLU) measures and for the their macrostructural Narrative Scoring Scheme (NSS) …

An Assessment Of Income Inequality And Administrative Corruption In Less Developed Countries: The Case Of Mexico, Rosa Alicia Garcia Compean

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

N/A

A Corpus-Based Study Of The Use Of Prepositional Verbs In Second Language Emergent Academic Writing, Elizabeth Wilcoxon

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In this paper, the author reports on a corpus-based study of prepositional verbs in L2 emergent academic writing using data collected from English as a Second Language [ESL] and English for Academic Purposes [EAP] classrooms in a Hispanic-serving university in the US. Prepositional verbs are relatively common in academic prose (lacking the informal overtones of phrasal verbs) and draw on the full set of prepositions (Biber et al., 1999). They are also difficult to acquire given the challenges posed by prepositional usage for most ESL/EAP learners. The literature in this area highlights the importance of prepositional verbs in L2 learning …

Decollations, Joseph Mcbirnie

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The following presents the critical preface to the unpublished manuscript, Decollations. Through the tapestry metaphor, the author describes the process of creating the collection through the lenses of aesthetics, psychology and mythology.

A Variationist Sociolinguistic Study Of /R/ Deletion In Turkish, Sevda Rahymov

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Variable /r/ deletion in word final position has been explored in several languages such as English and different dialects of Spanish. This study will investigate /r/ deletion in Turkish, an Altaic language that belongs to Ural-Altaic languages family. Specifically, the purpose of this study is to explore the influence of linguistic and social factors in the variation of /r/ in the progressive affix, /-yor-/ in the dialect of Turkish spoken in Istanbul. I hypothesize that the variability in the deletion of /r/ is not random, but can be accounted for by the study of linguistic and social factors.

Multi-Dimensional Emotion Recognition From Geometry And Color Information, Geovany A. Ramirez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Emotions play a fundamental role in everyday interactions among humans. Humans are adept at expressing themselves and interpreting others through a multi-modal, subtle and complex process using non-verbal cues including speech prosody, facial expression, eye gaze, body gestures, head motion, posture, and skin color changes. However, recognizing the affective state of humans is a difficult task for computers.

Automatic emotion recognition has focused on analysis of the six discrete basic emotions: happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger and disgust. However, humans express more complex and subtle affective states such as confusion, shame, pleasure, anxiety or depression. Therefore, a different representation based …