Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Virtual Reality Glasses On The Behavior Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder In The Dental Setting, Robert Lunka

Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: The study investigated if viewing a simulated dental exam on virtual reality glasses between two visits would desensitize participants with autism spectrum disorder to the dental environment and improve their anxiety and behavior.

Methods: This randomized prospective cohort study compared behavior between a Control Group and Experimental Group who wore the glasses between visits. Blinded raters watched video recordings of participants and assessed behavior using the Venham scale. Heart rate and post-visit questionnaires completed by guardians were also analyzed.

Results: Five subjects were enrolled (two in the Control and three in the Experimental groups). The median heart rate at …

Why We Use A New Currency: The Role Of Trust And Control In Explaining The Perception And Usage Of Bitcoin, Joseph B. Walton

Theses and Dissertations

Social media, e-commerce, global peer-to-peer technologies, and the near ubiquity of computers and smartphones allow people to interact, trust, and exchange value across traditional socio-economic control boundaries and over significant distances. Since the creation in 2008 of a new cryptographic currency system called Bitcoin, a financial technology market sector of about 250 billion USD has rapidly emerged, raising questions about the nature of currency in society and whether new types of non-national money are warranted and viable. This debate has pitted heterodox economic interests against orthodox economic interests while it has rekindled interest in theories that view money as a …

Language-Supportive Strategies And Their Associations With Child Language Outcomes During Instructional Time, Erin S. Wallace

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I conducted a correlational study that examined the frequency of educator-delivered language-supportive strategies during instructional time in public Kindergarten classrooms. Additionally, I explored the association between educators’ use of language-supportive strategies and child language outcomes. To index child language, I assessed a sample of 96 children from 10 different classrooms on standardized measures of expressive and receptive language. I recruited 10 educators to participate in the present study and assessed their use of language-supportive strategies during instructional time in the classroom through transcription and coding of audio recordings. The educators completed demographic forms for themselves as well …

Separate And Unequal: Latinx Access, Enrollment And Completion Of Ap Coursework In The State Of Virginia, Virginia Elizabeth Palencia

Theses and Dissertations

In response to the national problem of overrepresentation of Latinx students in general education classes, this study addresses Latinx access to Advanced Placement (AP) coursework, enrollment, and completion patterns in Virginia, a growing destination state for many Latinx families and students. Through a secondary data analysis of both the Civil Rights Data Collection (2015-6) and College Board data (2016), this quantitative study mapped patterns of disproportionality in AP access, enrollment, and completion for Latinx students, who comprise 13% of enrollment in Virginia public high schools. In addition, a case study of two diverse school districts provides evidence of segregation and …

The Experiences Of Minority Female Leaders In Educational Leadership: A Generic Qualitative Study, Gale Denise Beasley

Theses and Dissertations

Due to the underrepresentation of female minority leaders in the field of educational leadership, the scientific literature lacked evidence in understanding the experiences of those who, despite adversity, successfully secured administrative roles. The experiences of minority women who pursued and secured principal and/or assistant principalship appointments were examined using a generic qualitative approach.

The analysis of the data presented the challenges, barriers, and constraints that minority women were confronted with during the development and establishment of their careers as educational leaders. As a result of the complex intersectionality of race and gender, these leaders found themselves as the subjects of …

Doctor-Patient Communication: The Experiences Of Black Caribbean Women Patients With Diabetes, Rosanne Paul-Bruno

Theses and Dissertations

This applied dissertation was designed to examine the verbal and non-verbal communication experiences of Black Caribbean diabetic women patients with their doctors, in order to provide a better understanding of the essential aspects of doctor- patient communication and their experiences as they managed their condition. Black Caribbean women have been disproportionately impacted by medical conditions such as diabetes. It has been a documented fact that minorities experience disparities in the health care system at different levels and doctor-patient communication is no exception. Poor doctor-patient communication has been known to hinder patients’ health outcomes, and therefore warrants such studies to increase …

The Teacher’S Role In Increasing Student Engagement In High School Social Studies Courses, Quarnitra L. Price

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study explored (a) how teaching practices of high school teachers influence student engagement levels and performance in social studies classes, (b) how teachers might deliver more student relatable social studies content, (c) how teachers might help students relate to and become more engaged with important social studies concepts, and (d) how teachers can motivate students to become well-informed and fully engaged citizens. This study also examined existing barriers that prevent students from learning or engaging in social studies coursework.

Research findings suggest teachers play essential roles in how students perceive social studies content and respond to lessons …

The Impact Of Clinician Attachment Style On Burnout And Job Satisfaction: Introducing Mindfulness As A Mediator, Jill Marie Calderon

Theses and Dissertations

Attachment style is theorized to develop in childhood, as a result of the bonds that develop between child and caregiver. The research has shown individuals with an insecure attachment style are more at risk for job burnout and less satisfied with their jobs. This study proposed, mindfulness may be the internal process influencing the relationship between attachment style, burnout and job satisfaction. Mindfulness is defined as paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, nonjudgmentally and has found to be positively correlated with secure attachment styles. Additionally, mindfulness has shown to have a negative relationship with burnout and a positive …

Dr. Andrew Foster's Contributions To Deaf Education In Africa, The Ghana Years (1957-1965), Joel Benjamin Runnels

Theses and Dissertations

Dr. Andrew Foster (1925-1987) was a Deaf African American missionary educator known to have established among the first 32 schools for the d/Deaf across 13 African nations. Foster tragically died in the 1987 Rwanda airplane accident. Deaf communities in Africa and the United States, soon after, lionized him as the “father of d/Deaf education in Africa”. Chroniclers of history largely ignored Foster and treated as invisible his contributions to d/Deaf education.

I had been waiting, like many, for researchers to give an in depth, historical treatment to Foster’s work. I felt knowledge from such a study would support me to …

Motor Competency's Relationship To Interpersonal Coordination In Stationary Basketball Dribbling, Daniel Bell

Theses and Dissertations

A gold standard for student pairing strategies in a physical education setting has still yet to be discovered and is a widely debated topic in the field. Inclusion and equitable learning environments are areas of emphasis for practitioners while trying to find new ways to elicit these things to benefit students. Interpersonal coordination (IC), a social phenomenon on which this study focused, has direct applications for pairing strategies in physical education. In essence, IC is a state in which two individuals non-consciously mimic each other’s motor patterns. IC was measured between 182 student pairings performing stationary basketball dribbling. Participants included …

An Exploratory Case Study On The Perceived Effectiveness Of Co-Teaching And A Need For Professional Development, Jaquelyn M. Joas-Foy

Theses and Dissertations

Co-teaching is an instructional method used to educate many special education and at-risk youth. This study explored the perceived knowledge of and effectiveness with co-teaching through the perceptions of co-teachers and administrators at a large suburban high school. This study also explored the perceived effectiveness of co-teachers in Gately & Gately's eight components of effective co-teaching (2001). Four dyads completed the Co-teaching Rating Scale and a questionnaire. They also engaged in classroom observations and a focus group. Data from these data sources along with a focus group that included administrators from the high school generated a picture of co-teaching and …

Supporting Student Success In Chemistry Using Peer Mentoring, Laboratory Experiments, And Eye-Tracking Analysis, Viveka Lakruwani Perera

Theses and Dissertations

Active participation in the learning process enhance students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills. We implemented peerocused, active learning, recitation sessions with the large-enrollment sections for General Chemistry I courses at Mississippi State University (MSState) over a period of four semesters beginning in Spring 2016. The peerocused recitation program was a success improving student final (standardized ACS) exam scores, pass/fail rates for the course, and continuation on to General Chemistry II (CH 1223) courses. Peerocused collaborative learning and students possessing ownership over their learning significantly enhanced academic outcomes of our program. Worked-example effect is the best known and apparently the most …

Reading Instruction For Students With Intellectual Disabilities:Inservice Teachers' Perceptions, Agatha Lee Gibbons

Theses and Dissertations

Students with intellectual disabilities have at times been overlooked and denied effective reading instruction. Teachers tasked with instructing such students are often limited in the training, resources, and support necessary to effectively instruct these students in reading. These problems are further compounded by the fact that students with intellectual disabilities have historically been misperceived, often by the very educators tasked with instructing them, as either being unable to learn to read or that the prospect of teaching them to read is simply too daunting and complicated to be of sufficient worth (Aldridge, 2014; Kluth & Chandler-Olcott, 2008). Such misperception may …

Measuring L2 (Russian) Reading Proficiency Across Various Levels Using Eye Tracking, Anastasiia Nikol Rybakova

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years interest in L2 reading research has focused largely on word frequency, sentence level, word recognition, and several researchers have begun to use eye tracking to better study reading behaviors. Parshina et al. (under review) have found that high proficiency heritage speakers of Russian read faster in terms of gaze duration and total time and had fewer regressions than low proficiency heritage speakers. The current study focuses on the establishment of benchmarks for L2 Russian readers in terms of first fixation duration, gaze duration, and total time when reading a complete passage, and compares these variables among different …

Evaluating And Addressing The Information Needs And Habits Of Turkish English Majors, Leanna C Fry

Theses and Dissertations

Information literacy is a relatively new concept in Turkey and is most accessible to English Language Learners. This article-format dissertation identifies the information needs and habits of English Language and Literature majors at a major Turkish university, discusses the development of an online intervention to teach information literacy to these students, and tests the efficacy of using Turkish subtitles to teach information literacy skills to these English majors. Article 1 surveyed students majoring in English Language and Literature about their attitudes towards library usage and sources. Student attitudes revealed a preference for internet sources over library sources and a belief …

A Preliminary Study Using Electropalatography In Second Language Instruction: An Examination Of Formant Frequencies, Summer Ann Price

Theses and Dissertations

The importance of accent reduction to those who are learning English as a second language cannot be understated as it has direct and indirect impacts on credibility and income. This study is an evaluation of an instructional technique involving visual feedback through an electropalatography device to assist speakers in acquiring the /r/ and /l/ sound contrast in American English and whether or not that progress varied across speech task type or word position. This study involved four native Japanese participants in their first semester at the English Language Center located at Brigham Young University. Each subject participated in 7 45-minute …

Verb Usage In Egyptian Movies, Serials, And Blogs: A Case For Register Variation, Michael G. White

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis contributes to the discussion of register variation within Egyptian Arabic by focusing on the usage of verbs in blogs and transcripts of movies and television. Register variation has been extensively researched for English as well as several other languages; yet, the lexical and grammatical features that distinguish registers of Egyptian Arabic have not been analyzed. Several challenges have prevented such an analysis, among them the perceived lack of an automatic annotator and the uncertainty of results. In order to overcome these challenges, two corpora were compiled: one containing texts from blogs and the other transcripts of movies and …

A Text-Based Exploration Of Topics In White Hmong Grammar, Katherine Ann Birnschein

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis traces the historical development of the understanding of White Hmong grammar, comparing, contrasting, and synthesizing the extant analyses. It then responds to these analyses, based exclusively on a corpus of interlinearized texts included as appendices. It proposes new elements in the grammar including an indefinite article, a potential prefix (the perfective aspect marker), and several aspect markers that have grammaticalized from adverbs. It resolves conflicting descriptions of the constituent order of the noun phrase. It clarifies a number of incomplete or inaccurate descriptions including the lexical and structural ambiguity of constructions involving the homophones of tau (a lexical …

Evaluative Discourse As Community Identity Among Expatriates In Shenzhen, China, Karyn Harding

Theses and Dissertations

Expatriates are a modern-day community built by a rapid advance towards globalization. Expatriates are now likely to be self-initiated; that is, they chose to live in a foreign country rather than having been sent there by an employer, and they are changing the face of the global job market. However, their social interactions have not been the subject of much previous study. This paper delves into the ways that expatriates build and maintain their communities. In this case, participant observation and discourse analysis are used to study an expat community living in Shenzhen, China. As a group not defined by …

Assisting School Level Teams To Identify And Address The Needs Of Struggling Learners Through A Tiered Intervention And Aligned Professional Development Model, Tammy Dionne Person

Theses and Dissertations

The adoption of the IDEA charged schools with the responsibility of identifying students who have disabilities and special needs and then providing them with appropriate educational services so that they progress academically. Schools have adopted, implemented, and revised a variety of screening processes to identify these students. The process of trying to help students who are experiencing difficulties is often referred to as RTI. The RTI framework is comprised of a multi-tiered educational system that outlines instructional practices based on student needs. Many schools have formed teams and devised policies to explore options for student assistance. This study involved designing …

Yea, Yea, Nay, Nay: Uses Of The Archaic, Biblical Yea In The Book Of Mormon, Michael Edward De Martini

Theses and Dissertations

This work examines the word yea in the Book of Mormon, the Earliest Text and enumerates the usages found therein. Already recognized definitions in addition to new definitions are given with examples. Also included are textual variations from the Earliest Text and the current Book of Mormon used generally as scripture in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Impact Of Intercultural Competence On Communicative Success In L2 Environments(With Reference To Missionaries Of The Church Ofjesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints), David Milford Lucero

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the impact of cultural competence on success in completing key missionary tasks. Qualitative survey results are supported by data from an intercultural effectiveness assessment and a Mandarin Chinese listening proficiency test to describe themes related to missionary communicative success and to explore correlations between intercultural effectiveness and listening proficiency. Missionary communicative tasks are clarified into themes:"obtaining referrals,"obtaining teaching opportunities," and"helping people make and keep commitments." Factors perceived as associating with communicative success include"feeling and communicating love" and receiving"spiritual guidance." The effect of training on intercultural competence is also described. The intercultural effectiveness subcategory of positive regard is …

Understanding College Readiness Through The Framework For Success In Postsecondary Writing: An Analysis Of Algebra Writing In High School, Gabriel Cerda

Theses and Dissertations

The topic of college readiness in the United States has become increasingly important as the number of students entering post-secondary institutions has continued to increase. Along with efforts to increase college readiness for students in K-12, calls have been made to better define what it means to be college ready and understand what factors play a role in preparing students for a postsecondary education. This study uses the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing as a critical lens and method of analysis to understand how the Framework can broaden our understanding of college readiness. This is a mixed methods study …

Educator Perspectives Of High-Stakes Testing In An Urban School District In Deep South Texas, Sergio R. Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore how the high-stakes testing setting and the state assessments have influenced elementary teachers and other school professionals’ approach to preparing students for standardized tests. Policymakers and the public see standardized tests as simple quantifiable measures of school quality and student learning. They assume that high stakes tests will influence teachers and students to try harder and that the results will be used rationally to benefit all students.

Fredrick Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory was used as a framework for this research. Study participants included nine experienced elementary school educators in a large urban district …

Phonology And Morphology Of Bolgo, Katie Ann Tikka

Theses and Dissertations

Bolgo [bvo] is a language spoken in central Chad. It is a Bua language within the Adamawa branch of the Niger-Congo language family. This thesis provides an overview of the phonology and morphology of Bolgo, focusing on the underdocumented Bolgo Dugag dialect. The data on which the thesis is based consist of original research; approximately 600 nouns, 350 verbs, and 50 adjectives were elicited, as well as a number of phrases and sentences.

A significant aspect of Bolgo phonology is its ATR harmony system, which contains nine phonemic vowels. In this harmony system, words contain either the +ATR vowels /i/, …

A Systematic Approach For Automatically Answering General-Purpose Objective And Subjective Questions, Lok Prasad Acharya

Theses and Dissertations

In this era of information explosion, people generally rely on the Internet, and more precisely, the search engines to get answers to their questions. However, what a search engine can do is just retrieve documents. Given some keywords, it only returns the relevant ranked documents that contain the keywords. Although users often want a precise answer to a question, they are left to extract answers from the documents themselves. This is where Automatic Question Answering (AQA) systems come into play. An AQA system takes questions in natural language as input and searches related answers in the set of documents and …

Improving The Classification Of Tiny Images For Forensic Analysis, Roba Jafar Alharbi

Theses and Dissertations

Forensics can be defined as the approach that connects with and uses in governments and different organizations in order to detect any malicious activity. Digital forensics has become an essential approach to cyber investigation. Image forensics is one of the most beneficial ways that are used in digital forensics in order to help investigators in cybercrimes. Therefore, investigators can discover some new evidence besides what is already available on their systems when they use some digital forensics techniques. This thesis focuses on identifying an image based on its contents, especially tiny images. We investigated ways to improve the performance of …

Degree Of Bilingualism, Age, Income And Teacher Ratings Of Giftedness As Potential Predictors Of Dichotic Listening Performance, Francisco J. Sierra

Theses and Dissertations

Bilinguals and gifted individuals have consistently shown distinctive patterns of performance on measures of brain laterality and auditory processing. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between bilingualism, teacher ratings of giftedness, and auditory divided attention by comparing children and adults with income partialed out. Child participants from first to fifth grade were included in addition to an adult comparison group. Assessment of bilingualism, auditory divided attention, and giftedness occurred via the Woodcock-Munoz Language Survey-III (WMLS-III), the Dichotic Test of Attention (DITA), and the Hispanic Bilingual Gifted Screening Instrument (HBGSI). The main hypothesis of this study is …

Immediate Repeated Reading Has Positive Effects On Reading Fluency For English Language Learners: An Eye-Tracking Study, Jennifer Hemmert Hansen

Theses and Dissertations

Fluent reading has been described as the ability to read a passage with accuracy, at a steady rate, with minimal hesitancy, and good comprehension (Grabe, 2009; Kuhn, Schwanenflugel, & Meisinger, 2010). Dysfluent reading can affect motivation for reading in English language learners, thereby limiting access to a wealth of language input from written texts (Taguchi, Gorsuch, & Sasamoto, 2006). Extensive research of repeated reading in L1 settings has been shown to increase reading fluency (Samuels, 1979; National Reading Panel, 2000), while comparatively little research has been done on repeated reading in L2 settings (Grabe, 2009). The objective of this eye-tracking …

The Impact Of Electropalatography In Teaching The /R/-/L/ Sound Contrast For Native Japanese Language Learners Of English: Evidence From Lingua-Palatal Contact, Nicole Rose Mcdougal

Theses and Dissertations

The ability for English Language Learners (ELL) to communicate in a native-like manner can be vital when seeking to improve job opportunities and social interactions. Native Japanese ELL speakers commonly struggle with identifying and producing the English consonants /r/ and /l/ as separate phonemes, even for experienced Japanese ELLs. Traditional means of second language (L2) learning has primarily used auditory feedback. Electropalatography (EPG) is a visual biofeedback system designed to visualize lingua-palatal contact in real time. This study explores the impact of using EPG technology in L2 Speech Learning with Japanese ELLs. Research has shown that EPG technology is an …