Digital Commons Network^™

Phonetic Realization Of /P, T, K/ In Spanish-English Code-Switching, Gisela Simental

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The aim of this investigation is to contribute to the relatively unexplored area of phonetic realization of sounds during code switching. The present study will focus on the analysis of voice onset time of voiceless stops in stressed word initial position. Spanish and English are ideal languages to test how bilinguals process and produce the low-level phonetic properties of stops during CS. Both languages have the same set of voiceless stops: /p, t, k/, yet these stops have different phonetic (or acoustic) characteristics in each language. Data was collected from the naturalistic speech of balanced bilinguals who were exposed to …

Relationship Between Intimate Partner Violence And Alcohol Use Among Hispanic Women In The Border Region, Sujehy Arredondo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE: Hispanic/Latinos are the largest and fastest growing minority group in the United States and are disproportionately affected by alcohol use and intimate partner violence (IPV). Although a strong relationship between substance use and IPV has been documented in the literature, no studies have explored this relationship among Hispanic women in the El Paso, TX. STUDY AIMS: The aims of this study are to (1) determine the prevalence of alcohol use and intimate partner violence and (2) assess the association between IPV and alcohol use among Hispanic women living in the El Paso Border Region. METHODS: Project VIDA …

Digital Technology: The Modern Medium For The Art Classroom, Linda Sue Al-Hanna

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Digital technology is an important tool teachers can utilize in the art classroom for the purposes of instruction, lesson planning and student interaction. The computer has been around for many years, and has been a key factor in globalization in the educational setting. More and more students are connecting with others around the world and learning with the computer in more diverse ways than ever. Digital art has been quickly expanding since `Sketchpad' was developed in the late 1960's by Ivan Sutherland. Students today have been born into a digital world and it has become imperative that teachers make the …

Arab Muslim Immigrant Women's Experiences Of Living In The United States: A Qualitative Descriptive Study, Maissa Khatib

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Background: Over three million Arab Muslims live in the United States, and more than half are women (Nasser-McMillan, 2003). Little is known about these women in the growing and diverse Arab American Muslim population, and there is limited information available regarding their experiences of living in the U.S. Their experiences influence multiple aspects of their lives, including functioning in mainstream culture, use of resources or agencies, and the decisions they make that shape their acculturation outcome.

Purpose: To describe the experiences of Arab Muslim immigrant women living in the U.S.

Methods: This qualitative study examined the shared experiences of immigrant …

A Revision Of The New World Ants Of The Genus Platythyrea Roger 1863 (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), Mayra Janett Leyva

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The genus Platythyrea consists of arboreal ants that are rarely collected. The genus was last partially revised in 1975 by Brown. Since that revision two additional species have been described. The New World genus Platythyrea now includes nine species: P. angusta Forel, P. exigua Kempf, P. lenca De Andrade, P. pilosula (Smith), P. prizo Kugler, P. punctata (Smith), P. sinuata (Roger), P. strenua Wheeler and P. zodion Brown. A new key, illustrations, diagnoses and distributions of the ants are provided.

Complexity Of Affective Disposition And Reflective Transphenomenality: An Exploratory Study Of Middle School Mathematics Teacher And Student Self-Positioning And Positioning-By-Others Toward Mathematics, Mathematics Teaching, And Learning, Ruby Lorilee Lynch-Arroyo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the mixed methods study was to examine the phenomenon of transphenomenal simultaneity between teacher and student disposition that contributed to the phenomenological conflict of teacher self-positioning and positioning-by-others toward mathematics, mathematics teaching and learning. The intent was to provide a view of self-reported and observed middle school teacher and student experiences in mathematics, based on the analysis of affective dispositional characteristics within the context of its complexity.

There is evidence that documents a relationship between teacher and student disposition, but to what extent and encompassing what characteristics and factors has not been sufficiently substantiated. Beyers (2011) identified …

The Development And Validation Of A Domestic Violence Scale Administered To Ged Program Participants To Determine The Effect On Test Performance, Andres Muro

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Overwhelming evidence shows that domestic violence is a very serious problem affecting women in the United States. Black et al. (2010) report that approximately 34 million women in the United States, or approximately 30%, have experienced some form of violence including rape, physical, violence, and/or stalking in their lifetimes. Twenty-two percent of the victims have experienced PTSD, 15% have been injured, and 8% have needed medical care. While these statistics show that domestic violence is a serious problem, there are virtually no statistics about the extent to which domestic violence is a barrier to the academic success of Latina immigrant …

Calibán Traduce Con Pluma De Cuervo, Agustin Abreu Cornelio

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Calibán traduce con pluma de cuervo es un ensayema o poesayo que aborda el fenómeno de la traducción de poesí­a desde el enfoque de la deconstrucción y la teorí­a poscolonial. El propósito del mismo es transvalorar las nociones de originalidad y fidelidad --que desde siempre han orientado las reflexiones sobre la traducción literaria-- con tal de que el ejercicio de traducir sea visto como el mecanismo de transformación crí­tica de la tradición que realmente es. De este modo, se abordan las versiones que José Luis Rivas y Octavio Paz hicieron de T. S. Eliot, Derek Walcott, Fernando Pessoa y William …

Political Corruption: Accountability And Party System Institutionalization, Susan Achury

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Providing a definition built on the agency relationship between voters and public officials, this study presents an institutional approach to the causes of political corruption. I argue that higher levels of political party institutionalization reduce political corruption. Institutionalized political party systems help to overcome collective problems among voters within democracies. By increasing levels of accountability, institutionalized political party systems alter public officials' incentives towards a cleaner exercise of the public power. Focusing on different strategies adopted by political parties, I analyze the effectiveness of the constraints imposed on public officials' corrupt behavior within democracies. On the one hand, institutionalization of …

Traducción, El Cuerpo Y La Sombra. Jane: A Murder De Maggie Nelson, Sylvia F. Aguilar Zéleny

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Maggie Nelson publicó Jane: A Murder en 2005 y en él se reconstruye la historia en torno a Jane Mixer. Jane fue la tercera de siete ví­ctimas de un asesino en serie a finales de los años 60. Jane, además, era tí­a materna de la autora. Este libro investiga la figura de Jane sin Jane. Maggie Nelson lo escribió preguntándose ¿puede una colección de pequeños poemas lí­ricos contar la historia de un terrible asesinato? Mi premisa es: quiero traducir esta serie de pequeños poemas lí­ricos bajo la declaración de que un caso como el de Jane Mixer continúa ocurriendo en …

The Impact Of Interpersonal Communication On Breastfeeding, Jennifer Alarcon

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The medical community has offered a lot of evidence in support of breastfeeding which has led to many of the leading medical associations (i.e. the American Academy of Pediatrics, World Health Organization) to recommend breastfeeding infants exclusively for the first six months of life and for at least a full year, up to two years or whatever is mutually desirable to mother and child. However, in the United States, many mothers do not follow this recommendation. Research shows that instances of women being unable to breastfeed exist but are minimal. Many people have attempted to address the problem of low …

Evaluation Of Language Of Intervention On Expressive-Receptive Lexical Skills For Preschool Bilingual Children, Blanca Estela Cisneros

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the expressive-receptive lexical skills gained in bilingual preschool children for both their native language (L1) and second language (L2) when provided a bilingual vocabulary intervention and compared to contrasting monolingual and controlled conditions. This group study assessed four treatment conditions: monolingual English intervention, monolingual Spanish intervention, bilingual English-Spanish intervention, and a controlled intervention condition receiving math instruction. English and Spanish expressive and receptive lexical skills were the dependent variables measured at pretest and posttest. After a brief 4 week intervention block, the bilingual group achieved greater gains in Spanish expressive lexical skills …

Examining Articulatory Kinematics Using Diadochokinesis In Concussed And Non-Concussed Individuals, Lindsay Deann Dolan

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Cognitive and communicative deficits associated with traumatic brain injury are an active area of research. However, no research to date has reported on the functionality of motor speech following a concussion. A common tool used to evaluate the motor speech status of potentially impaired individuals is the measurement of the diadochokinetic speech rate. The purpose of this study is to investigate diadochokinetic speech rates in individuals who experience a sports-related concussion. Determining the nature and extent of motor speech involvement post concussion will contribute to the diagnosis, prognosis, and management of recovery. The present investigation will determine; (i) if …

School Library Acquisitions Policy: How It Impacts The Delivery Of Library Services To Middle School English Language Learners, Aurea Lourdes Galindo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Del Sol Independent School District (DSISD) serves a student population totaling 64, 214 that includes a Hispanic population of eighty-two percent (DSISD, 2011). Of this total student population, 25.2 percent consists of English Language Learners (ELLs)--predominantly Spanish-speaking students (DSISD, 2011). Current DSISD library collection figures reveal that each campus library has an inordinate low number of Spanish materials. The district librarians are guided by an acquisitions policy that seemingly offers scant guidelines for acquiring books that address the information and literary needs of diverse student populations.

To this end, it is vital to examine and bring better understanding of …

The Impact Of Baby Sign On Motor Development In Typically Developing Infants And Toddlers, Melissa Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

"Baby Sign is an augmentative communication approach that teaches babies keyword signing that they can use to communicate before they talk." (Sneddon 2003). Baby sign has become popular among parents of infants as a means to communicate before the child can verbally express wants and needs. Programs and classes are now becoming available in many areas of the country to help teach parents basic signs to use with their children. This study aimed to assess the impact of baby

sign on motor development in typically developing infants. The study found that the impact of baby sign language on motor development …

Using Emotion As Inferred From Prosody In Language Modeling, Shreyas Ashok Karkhedkar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Research has focused on using prosody as an alternative source of information for language modeling. However, prosody is a surface phenomenon and to develop deeper models of language production, the underlying mental processes need to be considered. There are several cognitive factors, such as dialog-states and formulation, that have been given attention. However, emotion { as a cognitive factor, has been neglected so far. Speakers' emotional state plays an important role in spoken dialog. Participants seem to infer each others emotional state from multiple cues and react accordingly. In particular, these states manifest themselves moment-by-moment in the speakers voice. This …

An Exploration Of Social Media Use Among Multiply Minoritized Lgbtq Youth, Alfie Leanna Lucero

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study responds to a need for research in a fast-growing and significant area of study, that of exploring, understanding, and documenting the numerous ways that multiply marginalized LGBTQ youth between the ages of 14 and 17 use social media. The primary research question examined whether social media provide safe spaces for multiply minoritized LGBTQ youth to express and explore issues of sexuality and gender. In addition, the study explores and categorizes multiple ways that the participants interact with social media and makes comparisons to prior work with more general populations. The study provides descriptions of the participants in terms …

Evolución Estilí­Stica De La Expresión Del Sufrimiento En La Poesí­A De Alfonsina Storni, Jesus Eduardo Morales

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

La presente investigación se propone superar dos obstáculos que afectan la crí­tica literaria sobre Alfonsina Storni: el estigma de su poesí­a como "escritura de (y para) mujeres" y la interpretación de su obra desde su mitificada biografí­a.

¿Cómo abordar la obra de Storni con una metodologí­a que la revalorice, cuando la perspectiva de género y la exactitud biográfica han agotado ya sus posibilidades? La respuesta se halla en un abordaje de tipo estilí­stico que dé luz sobre el proceso evolutivo por el cual pasa la elaboración lí­rica. Sin embargo para la puesta en práctica de tal método, es obligado encontrar …

Rewriting Revision: A Case Study Of First Year Composition Students, Myshie M. Pagel

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This case study focuses on the revision practices of seven first year composition students at a U.S./Mexico border community college. The analysis of revision practices is framed by the negotiation of dissonance between gist and intention. Three types of data were collected: screen captured writing sessions, instructor comments, and participant interviews. The data was analyzed through a grid based on Faigley and Witte's taxonomy grid of revision changes. This included three major categories: surface level, meaning preserving, and text base level changes. As in past studies on revision, the participants in this case study followed a similar trend. A majority …

Bilingual Adult Nonword Repetition Performance Patterns In English And Spanish, Gabriela Villaneda

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Nonword repetition (NWR) is known to assess phonological working memory. During NWR, the individual listens to made-up words and repeats them back. This study evaluated NWR performance patterns, and the relationship between NWR and language recall tasks among forty English and Spanish bilingual adults. Bilingual adults' ages ranged from 18-67 years. Four language recall tasks were administered, including NWR tasks (assessed by PPC), language questionnaire to assess participants' language usage in English and Spanish, sentence repetition task (assessed by raw score), and a story retell (assessed by NDW). All recall measures were administered in a counterbalanced manner across English and …

Knowledge, Perceptions, Discrimination, Health Self-Efficacy, And Risky Behaviors For Hiv/Aids And Its Association With Migration Time Among Mixtec And Zapotec Men Who Migrate, 2012, Sandra Iveth Bejarano

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE: Historically, there has been a transnational migration flow from Mexico to the United States. There are many reasons for which people make the decision to migrate; the most common ones are unemployment and economic hardship. Currently, Oaxaca is considered one of the states with the highest poverty levels in Mexico. As a result of extreme poverty groups of indigenous people, such as Zapotec and Mixtec, are forced to migrate out of their communities in order to find jobs. Migration has been associated with various health outcomes, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease as well as …

Acoustic Analysis Of The Allophones Of The Mid-Front Spanish Vowel /E/, Raquel Gonzalez De Anda

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines the Spanish phoneme /e/ and its open allophone(s). Current literature shows that there is no complete agreement with regards to the specific phonetic environments that trigger the opening of /e/, nor if "open" is the best term to describe the allophone(s). Examining /e/ allophones in Spanish monolinguals clarifies current literature inconsistencies; and therefore, creates a baseline for future studies related to this particular vowel. In this study, the speech of ten Spanish monolingual university students was recorded. Participants read a list of words that contained /e/ in certain phonetic contexts. Each instance of /e/ was acoustically analyzed …

Strengthening Cognitive Development In Minority Populations: A Study Of The Beneficial Effects Of Bilingualism, Marisela Gutierrez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The long-term goal of this research is to better understand and characterize the "bilingual advantage" so that educational and child care institutions begin to recognize and encourage the active use of two languages to strengthen cognitive development in minority populations. The present study is one of the first one to include a very large sample of well-defined "active bilinguals" who, by objective measures, were determined to be bilingual and determined to engage in language switching on a daily basis. Another goal was to manipulate and activate in the laboratory what might be referred to as the "switching benefit." One hundred …

Pressing Seams, Abigail Carl

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

"Pressing Seams" is a collection of poems based on the experiences of Old Colony Mennonites living in settlements near Seminole, Texas, and Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, as well as on the experiences of marginalized individuals and groups living in the El Paso/Juárez region. The juxtaposition of the experiences of these individuals and communities within the geographic location of the United States-Mexico border creates a third space that is, as defined by Gloria Anzaldúa, "both geographical and metaphorical" where these poems seek to intersect and interact in dynamic ways that challenge the dominant socio-political and religious discourses and ideology that govern these communities …

Language Of Intervention In Bilingual Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Alejandra Carrillo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Over the last few decades the United States has seen a heavy increase in the incidences of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Also increasing in the United States is the increase in multicultural and multilingual groups. Although both of these populations are increasing there is very limited information regarding the language abilities of bilingual individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder, the language used for intervention, and those servicing them. A survey was developed to gather information regarding the current practice trends used by Speech-Language clinicians with bilingual children with ASD. The study was conducted in El Paso, Texas a city located on the …

A Son Of Mercy, Un Hijo De Misericordia, Carlos Fidel Espinoza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A Son of Mercy is a novella that follows Charlie Cantero as he struggles to find his role in the Cantero family after the death of the family's patriarch, Braulio "Pepper" Cantero. A Son of Mercy is set along the El Paso/Juarez border and deals with issues of language, racism and sexuality.

Traditionalism, Institutions, And Rational Bargaining In Sub-Saharan African Civil Conflict, Joseph Anthony Jastrzembski

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

When many speak of Africa, they convey a narrative that portrays a continent haunted by ethnic conflict. However many countries are both highly diverse and relatively stable, such as Botswana or Tanzania, and we find that inter-ethnic cooperation is far more common place than conflict. In this thesis I argue that cultural differences between ethnic groups are not the cause of ethnic civil war, rather, the mechanisms find their root in economics. To explain ethnic conflict on the continent, I examine the self-interested behavior of bargaining groups in society, where ethnic communities act more as an interest group and less …

Mental Health And Medication Adherence As A Function Of Early Life Physical And Sexual Trauma In Hiv+ Latino Men Who Have Sex With Men, Carolina Lara

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The objective of the study is to understand sexual risk and medication adherence among Latino HIV+ men who have sex with men (MSM) and who have a history of childhood trauma (CT; which may include unwanted sexual experiences, physical threats, physical harm and /or verbal abuse prior to the age of 16). We sampled 150 Latino adult MSM living with HIV at a clinic in El Paso, Texas that offers comprehensive HIV/AIDS services to those living on the U.S.-Mexico Border. We assessed self-reported histories of childhood abuse and participants' control expectancies not only toward sexual impulsivity, but also more generally. …

My Mother's Daughter, Monica Vanessa Martinez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In order to address the way the Chicano culture attempts to silence its women, My Mother's Daughter is a collection of short stories narrated by Chicanas. The collection uses the complicated relationship between mothers and daughters to highlight the conflicts that lead to the silencing of Chicanas. The collection attempts to challenge this silencing by utilizing the first person perspective to give a voice to these traditionally silenced women. Another literary technique employed is the use of dramatic irony. With multiple first person narrators in the same story the collection uses dramatic irony as a way of playing up the …

Between-Language Repetition Priming In Antonym Generation: Examining Conceptual Encoding And Representation Of Adjectives, Randy Steven Taylor

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Previous research has shown repetition priming effects between languages, suggesting that a bilingual's two languages share conceptual representation. However these studies have been conducted mainly utilizing concrete nouns as stimuli. In the present study, it was hypothesized that adjectives would produce significant between-language repetition priming. The experiment utilized a 4 (encoding task) X 2 (test language) within-subjects design in which participants (N = 64) encoded words in read only, translation English to Spanish and translation Spanish to English conditions and at test performed an antonym generation task in either Spanish or English. The results revealed that participants were significantly faster …