Digital Commons Network^™

Verbal Behaviors During Employment Interviews Of College Students With And Without Asd, Dennis James Bublitz, Katherine Fitzgerald, Maria Alarcon, Joanne D'Onofrio, Kristen Gillespie-Lynch

Publications and Research

BACKGROUND: Even well-educated people with ASD struggle with obtaining employment, partially due to social difficulties during interviews. Although increasing numbers of individuals with ASD are entering college, little research focuses on this population. Particularly little is known about how to help college students with ASD obtain jobs.

OBJECTIVE: This study attempts to identify challenges with verbal communication during employment interviews that are specific to college students with ASD.

METHODS: We administered mock employment interviews to 16 college students with ASD and 14 college students without disabilities. Responses to interview questions were coded for content and timing.

RESULTS: Students with ASD …

The King And The Land: A Geography Of Royal Power In The Biblical World, Stephen C. Russell

Publications and Research

The King and the Land offers an innovative history of space and power in the biblical world. Stephen C. Russell shows how the monarchies in ancient Israel and Judah asserted their power over strategically important spaces such as privately-held lands, religious buildings, collectively-governed towns, and urban water systems. Among the case studies examined are Solomon's use of foreign architecture, David's dedication of land to Yahweh, Jehu's decommissioning of Baal's temple, Absalom's navigation of the collective politics of Levantine towns, and Hezekiah's reshaping of the tunnels that supplied Jerusalem with water.

By treating the full range of archaeological and textual evidence …

Executive Control Mechanisms In Bilingualism: Beyond Speed Of Processing, Klara Marton, Mira Goral, Luca Campanelli, Jungmee Yoon, Loraine K. Obler

Publications and Research

The question of interest in this study was whether bilingual individuals show superior executive control compared to monolingual participants. Findings are mixed, with studies showing advantage, disadvantage, or no difference between bilingual and monolingual speakers. In this study, we used different experimental conditions to examine implicit learning, resistance to interference, monitoring, and switching, independently. In addition, we matched our monolingual and bilingual participants on baseline response time. Bilingual participants demonstrated faster implicit learning, greater resistance to interference, more efficient switching compared to monolingual participants. The groups did not differ in monitoring. In conclusion, depending on task complexity and on the …

On The Overlap Of Vital Exhaustion And Depression, Bianchi Renzo, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Eric Laurent

Publications and Research

Our reexamination of the symptoms and main measure of vital exhasution (VE) suggests that the overlap of VE with depression has been problematically underestimated due to inconsistent comparisons and blindness to definitional similarities. In our view, the case of VE is emblematic of a trend toward construct proliferation. Many ‘‘new’’ constructs are introduced in the literature precipitously, with insufficient examination of their added value, and based on ‘‘linguistic contortions’’ and anecdotal evidence rather than robust empirical findings and sound theorizing. Such constructs are often ‘‘distinguished’’ from existing ones on the basis of specious arguments and missing-the-point conclusions. This is for …

Narrating Refuge, Colette Daiute

Publications and Research

As I complete this essay, people across the world are protesting a recent Executive Order banning refugees from entering the United States. Millions of people, organizations, other collectives, and even some corporations are crying out in solidarity that it is a human responsibility to provide refuge to those fleeing inhuman conditions. A detailed analysis of the ban and the reaction is beyond the scope of this essay, but my argument is deeply related to the issue at the center of the protests – refuge. I will argue that considering refuge brings to the analysis of contemporary conflict and displacement a …

Flexible Loyalties: How Malleable Are Bicultural Loyalties?, Andy Y. Chiou, Brittany K. Mercado

Publications and Research

Biculturals are individuals who are acculturated in two cultures and have dual identities. Due to this, many early discussions on biculturalism argued that biculturals may have divided loyalties between their two cultural backgrounds and the identities derived from these backgrounds. This view is further highlighted given historical and contemporary debate regarding immigrants in the European and American political arenas. These concerns illustrate two possibilities. First, that biculturals have a preference for their home or host culture, identifying one as the in-group to express loyalty toward and the other as the out-group. Second, biculturals may alternate between who they identify as …

Implicit Prosody And Cue-Based Retrieval: L1 And L2 Agreement And Comprehension During Reading, Elizabeth Pratt, Eva M. Fernández

Publications and Research

This project focuses on structural and prosodic effects during reading, examining their influence on agreement processing and comprehension in native English (L1) and Spanish–English bilingual (L2) speakers. We consolidate research from several distinct areas of inquiry—cognitive processing, reading fluency, and L1/L2 processing—in order to support the integration of prosody with a cue-based retrieval mechanism for subject-verb agreement. To explore this proposal, the experimental design manipulated text presentation to influence implicit prosody, using sentences designed to induce subject-verb agreement attraction errors. Materials included simple and complex relative clauses with head nouns and verbs that were either matched or mismatched for number. …

Agitando Lo Cotidiano. Una Conversación Sobre El Desafío Ⓐnarquista Frente Al Sexismo En El Lenguaje, Mariel Mercedes Acosta Matos, Ernesto Cuba

Publications and Research

Ernesto Cuba entrevista a Mariel Acosta acerca de los hallazgos en sus tesis de maestría, que aborda las propuestas de morfemas de género inclusivo en publicaciones anarquistas de habla hispana, entre las que se halla el uso de " @ " , " x " y otras innovaciones ortográficas que buscan desafiar el sesgo androcéntrico de la lengua. Palabras clave: Lenguaje no-sexista; anarquismo; ortografía; sociolingüística; estudios de lenguaje y género; español.

Ernesto Cuba interviews Mariel Acosta about the findings in hers master's thesis, which addresses the proposals of inclusive gender morphemes in Spanish-language anarchist publications, among which is the use …

Music And Words: Connecting The Love Of Music With Language, Eileen P. Kennedy, Raymond Torres- Santos

Publications and Research

Children from different cultures have a natural affinity for rhymes, rhythm and music. Imagine if students were able, from the beginning of their education and experiences with academic writing and literacy, to access their unconscious and original selves from which to create their writing. The study of music can help to access this aware, inventive side that can enhance anyone’s writing. As an early childhood writing teacher and a composition teacher, we draw on our experiences with young children with words and music. We examine the relationship between music and words in an effort to bring the primitive drive of …

Review Of Muslims And Jews In France. History Of A Conflict By Maud S. Mandel, Bryan Turner

Publications and Research

The mood of European scholarship with respect to the recognition and integration of Islam is typically pessimistic. The rise of anti-immigrant and anti-Islam political parties – Golden Dawn in Greece, the Northern League in Italy, Marine Le Penn and the National Front in France, and the English defense league in Britain – have exposed a hitherto hidden or ignored under-current of resentment against foreigners. In the context of these developments, Maud Mandel’s study of Muslims and Jews in France is a welcome corrective to the dominant focus on anti-Islam in the academic literature and in the popular media. The historical …

Statistical Learning In Songbirds: From Self-Tutoring To Song Culture, Olga Fehér, Iva Ljubičić, Kenta Suzuki, Kazuo Okanoya, Ofer Tchernichovski

Publications and Research

At the onset of vocal development, both songbirds and humans produce variable vocal babbling with broadly distributed acoustic features. Over development, these vocalizations differentiate into the well-defined, categorical signals that characterize adult vocal behaviour. A broadly distributed signal is ideal for vocal exploration, that is, for matching vocal production to the statistics of the sensory input. The developmental transition to categorical signals is a gradual process during which the vocal output becomes differentiated and stable. But does it require categorical input?We trained juvenile zebra finches with playbacks of their own developing song, produced just a few moments earlier, updated continuously …

Culturally Responsive Teaching: Implications For Educational Justice, Magnus O. Bassey

Publications and Research

Educational justice is a major global challenge. In most underdeveloped countries, many students do not have access to education and in most advanced democracies, school attainment and success are still, to a large extent, dependent on a student’s social background. However, it has often been argued that social justice is an essential part of teachers’ work in a democracy. This article raises an important overriding question: how can we realize the goal of educational justice in the field of teaching? In this essay, I examine culturally responsive teaching as an educational practice and conclude that it is possible to realize …

Neutrality, Autonomy, And Power, Eldar Sarajlic

Publications and Research

This paper critically examines Alan Patten’s theory of neutrality of treatment. It argues that the theory assumes an inadequate conception of personal autonomy, which undermines its plausibility. However, I suggest that the theory can resolve the problem by developing and reinterpreting its conception of autonomy and introducing an additional strategy for addressing the power imbalances that result from the market-based interactions between individuals and their conceptions of the good.

Policy Brief: Expanding Food Benefits For Immigrants: Charting A Policy Agenda For New York City, Anabel Perez-Jimenez, Nicholas Freudenberg

Publications and Research

This policy brief explores the eligibility of various categories of New York City’s immigrant populations, from those who have become citizens to permanent residents (Green Card holders) to those who lack legal immigration status, for SNAP, WIC and School Food, the nation’s main food benefit programs. We also examine factors that facilitate or block immigrants’ enrollment in these programs. Our larger goals are to encourage more systematic study of immigrant access to food benefits and identify opportunities for improving access. We hope to widen a public conversation among immigrants and their organizations, food security groups, food justice advocates and policy …

On The Hispanophone Caribbean Question, Vanessa Pérez-Rosario

Publications and Research

This essay introduces the special section “The Idea of Hispanophone Caribbean Studies” with a focus on hispanopone Caribbean literature and how it is situated in the region and in the diaspora. The essay suggests the need for creating spaces of dialogue and communication, translation and multilingualism, that are interdisciplinary and intertextual, if we are to deepen our critical frames of reference and complicate and invigorate new creative and analytic discourses.

Sex And Seasonal Differences In Diet And Nutrient Intake In Verreaux's Sifakas (Propithecus Verreauxi), Flávia Koch, Joerg U. Ganzhorn, Jessica M. Rothman, Colin A. Chapman, Claudia Fichtel

Publications and Research

Fluctuations in food availability are a major challenge faced by primates living in seasonal climates. Variation in food availability can be especially challenging for females, because of the high energetic costs of reproduction. Therefore, females must adapt the particular demands of the different reproductive stages to the seasonal availability of resources. Madagascar has a highly seasonal climate, where food availability can be extremely variable. We investigated the seasonal changes in diet composition, nutrient and energy intake of female and male sifakas (Propithecus verreauxi) in a dry deciduous forest in western Madagascar. We examined how females adjust their diet to different …

Traversing The Triangulum: The Intersection Of Tobacco, Legalised Marijuana And Electronic Vaporisers In Denver, Colorado, Emily Anne Mcdonald, Lucy Popova, Pamela M. Ling

Publications and Research

Objective: To explore the intersection of tobacco, legalised marijuana and electronic vaporiser use among young adults in the ‘natural laboratory’ of Colorado, the first state with legalised retail marijuana.

Methods: We conducted semistructured interviews with 32 young adults (18–26 years old) in Denver, Colorado, in 2015 to understand the beliefs and practices related to the use of tobacco, marijuana and vaporisers.

Results: We found ambiguity about whether the phrase ‘to smoke’ refers to the use of tobacco or marijuana products. Smoking marijuana blunts (emptied cigarillo or tobacco wrap filled with marijuana) was common, but few interpreted this as tobacco use. …

The Epic Of Gilgamesh: Selected Readings From Its Original Early Arabic Language. Including A New Translation Of The Flood Story, Saad D. Abulhab

Publications and Research

This book introduces the earliest known literary and mythology work in the world, the Epic of Gilgamesh, in its actual language: early Classical Arabic. It provides a more accurate translation and understanding of the important story of the flood, one of the key stories of the monotheistic religions. In this book, the author was able to decipher the actual meanings and pronunciations of several important names of ancient Mesopotamian gods, persons, cities, mountains, and other entities. He was able to uncover the evolution path of the concept of god and the background themes behind the rise of the monotheistic religions. …

Virtual Meatspace: Word Formation And Deformation In Cyberpunk Discussions, Matt Garley, Benjamin Slade

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

“Straight” Acting: Changing Image Of Queer-Masculinity In Media Representation, Zheng Zhu

Publications and Research

In this essay, I critically examine media representation of Welsh rugby legend Gareth Thomas, with a specific focus on the construction of his masculinity as an outing gay celebrity. The existing critical scholarship has studied various forms of media representation of queer images. But they did not examine how unconventional queer representation interacts with the normative gender performance. This paper investigates mainstream media’s discursive construction of masculine gay male. The findings call our attention to the emergence of macho gay characterization, which supports the hegemonic domination of heterosexual normativity. The stigmatization of gay-ness as the deviated other is rationalized through …

From Sensory Perception To Lexical-Semantic Processing: An Erp Study In Non-Verbal Children With Autism, Chiara Cantiani, Naseem A. Choudhury, Yan H. Yu, Valerie L. Shafer, Richard G. Schwartz, April A. Benasich

Publications and Research

This study examines electrocortical activity associated with visual and auditory sensory perception and lexical-semantic processing in nonverbal (NV) or minimally-verbal (MV) children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Currently, there is no agreement on whether these children comprehend incoming linguistic information and whether their perception is comparable to that of typically developing children. Event-related potentials (ERPs) of 10 NV/MV children with ASD and 10 neurotypical children were recorded during a picture-word matching paradigm. Atypical ERP responses were evident at all levels of processing in children with ASD. Basic perceptual processing was delayed in both visual and auditory domains but overall was …

Statistical Learning In Specific Language Impairment And Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Meta-Analysis, Rita Obeid, Patricia J. Brooks, Kasey L. Powers, Kristen Gillespie-Lynch, Jarrad A. G. Lum

Publications and Research

Impairments in statistical learning might be a common deficit among individuals with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Using metaanalysis, we examined statistical learning in SLI (14 studies, 15 comparisons) and ASD (13 studies, 20 comparisons) to evaluate this hypothesis. Effect sizes were examined as a function of diagnosis across multiple statistical learning tasks (Serial Reaction Time, Contextual Cueing, Artificial Grammar Learning, Speech Stream, Observational Learning, and Probabilistic Classification). Individuals with SLI showed deficits in statistical learning relative to age-matched controls. In contrast, statistical learning was intact in individuals with ASD relative to controls. Effect sizes did …

Counterfeit Letters And Fictional Trials: Thomas More’S Utopia As Cultural Brand, Andie Silva

Publications and Research

Utilizing marketing theory on iconic brands, this article provides a focused study of surviving English editions of Thomas More's Utopia (1551) and the different ways in which the publication was adapted by its print agents, who eventually turned it into an iconic, English brand-name. By drawing a connection between the popularity and versatility of More’s text and the rapidly developing genre of utopian fiction, this article sheds light on the speed with which the press both reacted to and played a role in creating popular taste.

Review: The New Celebrity Scientists. Out Of The Lab And Into The Limelight. Fahy, Declan. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

In the last couple of decades, we have seen the widespread ascendancy of the

phenomenon of celebrity in society. Celebrities as a cultural manifestation are not

necessarily something new. We saw that notion in the twentieth century being

exploited by Hollywood through their “star system” as well as by sports teams

hungry to increase their revenues. Now that phenomenon has expanded into areas

that we would not have imagined decades ago, and one of them is in the field of

science. With the advent of social media and the relaxation of social views

regarding stereotypes, we have seen the rise …

Communication Practices In The Us And Syria, Rebecca S. Merkin, Reem Ramadan

Publications and Research

This study highlights Syrian communication practices using comparative tests with the United States communication as a baseline. Additionally, theoretical findings on individualism and collectivism theory are extended to include findings from Syria. Multivariate Analysis of Covariance was used to test culture’s effect in demographically similar (in age, SES, and education) student convenience samples, with the covariate communication adaptability, on dependent variables: empathy, social confirmation, social composure, friendships, non-verbal immediacy, social self-efficacy, and general self-efficacy. Results indicated that Syrians possess more empathy, social confirmation, and perceived general self-efficacy in comparison to U.S. citizens who have greater social composure, friendships, non-verbal immediacy …

Using The Visual World Paradigm To Study Retrieval Interference In Spoken Language Comprehension, Irina A. Sekerina, Luca Campanelli, Julie A. Van Dyke

Publications and Research

The cue-based retrieval theory (Lewis et al., 2006) predicts that interference from similar distractors should create difficulty for argument integration, however this hypothesis has only been examined in the written modality. The current study uses the Visual World Paradigm (VWP) to assess its feasibility to study retrieval interference arising from distractors present in a visual display during spoken language comprehension. The study aims to extend findings from Van Dyke and McElree (2006), which utilized a dual-task paradigm with written sentences in which they manipulated the relationship between extra-sentential distractors and the semantic retrieval cues from a verb, to the spoken …

From Marginality To Mattering: Linguistic Practices, Pedagogies And Diversities At A Community-Serving Senior College, Andrea Springirth, Hannah Göppert

Publications and Research

The cultural diversification of colleges and universities which initially targeted the needs of a specific minoritized group raises questions concerning the inclusion of every individual and the maintenance of the advances which have been made for the original population. This paper provides insight into the challenges and merits at the intersection of linguistic and racial/ethnic diversification within CUNY’s Medgar Evers College. Historically tied to the Black Campus Movement, the college is committed to being an agent of social transformation for the surrounding community. Aiming to understand the perspectives on language and diversity of the key stakeholders at the college, a …

Alterations In Gray Matter Volume Due To Unilateral Hearing Loss, Xingchao Wang, Pengfei Xu, Peng Li, Zhenmin Wang, Fu Zhao, Zhixian Gao, Lei Xu, Yue-Jia Luo, Jin Fan, Pinan Liu

Publications and Research

Although extensive research on neural plasticity resulting from hearing deprivation has been conducted, the direct influence of compromised audition on the auditory cortex and the potential impact of long durations of incomplete sensory stimulation on the adult cortex are still not fully understood. In this study, using voxel-based morphometry, we evaluated gray matter (GM) volume changes that may be associated with reduced hearing ability and the duration of hearing impairment in 42 unilateral hearing loss (UHL) patients with acoustic neuromas compared to 24 normal controls. We found significant GM volume increases in the somatosensory and motor systems and GM volume …

An Exploration Of Elementary Teachers' Views Of Informal Reading Inventories In Dual Language Bilingual Programs, Laura Ascenzi-Moreno

Publications and Research

This study examines how elementary teachers (grades three through five) in dual-language, bilingual programs (Spanish/English) view informal reading inventories (IRIs) to support their students’ reading growth. The research, conducted in an urban district in the Northeastern United States, draws on interviews with 20 teachers in these programs. One significant finding is that although teachers in the sample collected IRIs in the two languages of instruction, they did not examine English and Spanish reading assessment data side by side in order to construct a unified portrait of their students as bilingual readers. This study highlights the finding that IRIs are currently …

Feral And Isolated Children From Herodotus To Akbar To Hesse: Heroes, Thinkers, And Friends Of Wolves, Karl Steel

Publications and Research

"In 1304, a small child of Hesse was taken by wolves, and lived with them for a while, eating well, learning to run on all fours, perhaps joining them in their raids on sheep and humans, until he was taken by hunters and forced to live, unhappily, in human society, compelled to learn to walk upright, and exhibited as a spectacle. This account, almost certainly legendary, belongs to a small set of similar stories of feral children from roughly the same time, which, unlike so many modern accounts of wild children, are not about isolation, deprivation, or a catastrophic separation …