Digital Commons Network^™

Complex Scientific Testimony: Can Educational Psychology Turn Jurors Into Students And Lawyers Into Teachers?, Jason A. Krebs '98

Honors Projects

Jury trials are an integral part of the United States system of justice. However, as of late, the institution of the jury has been attacked on the front that much of the testimony presented to jurors is too complex for them to comprehend. For the proposed study, using the principles of educational psychology theorized by David Ausubel, a mock video of a trial hinging on a "complex scientific concept" will be created and then viewed by mock jurors. We are expecting that, by using Ausubel's principles, that jurors will, in effect, become "students" in a virtual classroom. Conversely, attorneys and …

A Comparison Of Prospective Memory And Executive Processes In Patients With Subcortical Illness, Milan Elmer "Trey" Folkers Iii '98

Honors Projects

Dementia is a common disorder affecting neuropsychological function in several spheres of mental activity including language memory, visuospatial function, and cognition. Studies into the cognitive deficits associated with dementia have allowed researchers to rank disorders into two subclasses: cortical and subcortical dementia. Cortical dementias such as Alzheimer's disease have been the focus of a plethora of studies. Subcortical dementia, which is commonly found in Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease patients, is marked by bradyphrenia, visuospatial abnormalities, personality alterations, memory disturbances primarily involving recall but not recognition, and loss of executive functions. The most recent disorder to be classified as a …

Aggression, Relational Aggression, Sociometric Status And The Quality And Authenticity Of Children's Friendships, Carrie C. Finch '98

Honors Projects

The purpose of the present study is to assess how aggression, relational aggression, and sociometric status relate to the quality and authenticity of children's friendships. Relations between aggression, relational aggression, and sociometric status as well as between friendship quality and friendship authenticity were also explored. 136 fourth and fifth grade children (69 boys, 67 girls) completed several measures, including a sociometric measure, the aggression section of the Pupil Evaluation Inventory with a few items measuring relational aggression inserted, the Friendship Quality Questionnaire, and a questionnaire assessing friendship authenticity. Children's peer rated levels of aggression and their sociometric status did not …

Supporting The Management Of Electronic Engineering Design Teams Through A Dynamic Contingency Approach, Richard David Parsons

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

The contribution to knowledge presented in this thesis is the dynamic contingency approach, supported through software, which supports the management of the early, conceptual stages of electronic engineering team design. 1he term contingency pertains to the design environment being in a contingent state, that is "dependent on uncertain issues" (Hayward & Sparkes, 1991). These issues are typically dynamic, that is ''pertaining to forces not in equilibrium, forces that produce motion" (Hayward & Sparkes, 1991). The concept for the dynamic contingency approach was developed through a soft systems analysis. This analysis drew upon an ethnographic study conducted in parallel with the …

An Investigation Into The Development Of Engineering Students' Conceptual Understanding Of Mathematics, Wendy Mary Maull

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Following widespread concern over an apparent decline in the mathematical skills of engineering students, this study employed survey and observation methods to investigate the ways in which engineering students understand mathematical concepts, and to compare these with the concepts held-by students of mathematics. It was found that the engineering students employ a different vocabulary from mathematics students in discussing mathematics, and that their understanding of mathematical concepts develops differently from mathematics students both in response to teaching (which appears to be a transitory effect) and as their experience gives meaning to the ideas in life outside study. These findings are …

The Bears Banter : Freshers Mag. Vol. 2 Ed. 1, 1998, Dit Bolton Street Students' Union

DIT Student Union

Freshers Mag. A magazine for students of DIT Bolton Street.

The Orientation Toward Domestic Labor Questionnaire: Exploring Dual-Earner Wives' Sense Of Fairness About Family Work, Alan J. Hawkins, Christina M. Marshall, Sarah M. Allen

Faculty Publications

This study explored the psychometric properties of the Orientation Toward Domestic Labor Questionnaire (ODL-Q) with a sample of 622 dual-earner wives. Adequate internal consistency reliability was obtained for most of the construct in the ODL-Q. In addition, construct validity for the ODL-Q was provided with multiple regression and discriminant analyses of the constructs' relationships to wives' sense of fairness about family work. The ODL-Q scales accounted for 57% of the variance in wives' sense of fairness. Effective communication about domestic labor (expressions of appreciation, sympathetic listening, mutual decision making) was by far the most powerful predictor and discriminator of fairness. …

Annual Report 1 September 1997 - 31 August, 1998, Dublin Institute Of Technology

DIT Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Why I Am A Lawyer, Joseph L. Daly

San Diego Law Review

With so little honor associated with the law profession these days, one must wonder why any person aspiring to do something respectable with her or his life7 would choose to be a lawyer.8 To become a lawyer today, students must have a firm desire to be an attorney and a steadfast willingness to accept social opprobrium.9

Automated Interpretation Of The Background Eeg Using Fuzzy Logic, Edward Peter Riddington

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

A new framework is described for managing uncertainty and for deahng with artefact corruption to introduce objectivity in the interpretation of the electroencephalogram (EEG). Conventionally, EEG interpretation is time consuming and subjective, and is known to show significant inter- and intra-personnel variation. A need thus exists to automate the interpretation of the EEG to provide a more consistent and efficient assessment. However, automated analysis of EEGs by computers is complicated by two major factors. The difficulty of adequately capturing in machine form, the skills and subjective expertise of the experienced electroencephalbgrapher, and the lack of a reliable means of dealing …

Latent Variable Generalized Linear Models, Jane Creagh-Osborne

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) (McCullagh and Nelder, 1989) provide a unified framework for fixed effect models where response data arise from exponential family distributions. Much recent research has attempted to extend the framework to include random effects in the linear predictors. Different methodologies have been employed to solve different motivating problems, for example Generalized Linear Mixed Models (Clayton, 1994) and Multilevel Models (Goldstein, 1995). A thorough review and classification of this and related material is presented. In Item Response Theory (IRT) subjects are tested using banks of pre-calibrated test items. A useful model is based on the logistic function with …

The Priming Of Visual Feature Integration And Illusory Conjunctions, Graham Derek Smith

School of Psychology Theses

Whether non-spatial previewing can interact with the process of integrating visual features and thereby affect the formation of illusory conjunctions was studied. A series of ten experiments were undertaken that employed methods borrowed from the illusory conjunction and visual previewing paradigms. Participants reported the identities of two briefly presented target objects. Preview stimuli were presented prior to the to-be-reported target stimuli. The preview objects and target objects were colour-filled geometric shapes. The effects of two types of non-spatial previewing were investigated; feature previewing and conjunction previewing. In feature previewing the preview stimuli were congruent or incongruent with one of the …

Understanding "Spirit" In The Writing Center, Lynn Briggs

The Writing Center Journal

No abstract provided.

Training Variables Of Male And Female Collegiate Cross Country Runners, Kori J. Stoffregen

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The primary purpose of the study was to describe training variables of the individuals and teams that participated in the 1995 Men's and Women's NCAA Division 1,11,111 Cross Country Championships. Subproblems in this study were (a) to determine the relationship between weekly mileage and training intensity and performance within and across all divisions and (b) to determine if the differences exist between selected training variables by performance tiers and divisions. A questionnaire developed by the investigator was used to gather information regarding weekly mileage, intensity, and duration the months of August, September, October, and November. The questionnaire was sent to …

Relationship Between Self-Esteem, Eating Behaviors, And Eating Attitudes Among Female Collegiate Swimmers, Melissa Ann Fey

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between self-esteem and eating behaviors/attitudes among female collegiate swimmers. Specifically, the relationship between self-esteem as measured by the Rosenburg Self-Esteem Scale (1965) and eating behaviors/attitudes as measured by the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26) (Gamer, Olmstead. Bohr. & Garfinkle. 1982) was determined for a purposive sample of female collegiate swimmers at the University of Northern Iowa. A total of 24 subjects completed self-report measures on self-esteem and eating behaviors/attitudes. Subjects' Body Mass Index was also assessed. Pearson product-moment correlation was used to examine the relationship among the scores on the Rosenburg …

The Incidence Of Domestic Violence Among A Group Of Iowa Women In Substance Abuse Treatment, Patricia G. Fitzgerald

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Domestic violence is receiving increasing attention in the media, communities, and classrooms across the country. It is suggested a minimum of from 2 to 3 million women are assaulted by male partners each year in the United States. More than 3 out of every 100 or 1.8 million women were severely assaulted as they were kicked, punched, choked, beaten, threatened with a knife or gun, or had a knife or gun used on them. The contribution of alcohol or drugs to this phenomena is frequently acknowledged but rarely examined in detail. This paper reports the incidence of domestic violence among …

The Relationship Between The Intensity And Duration Of Extracurricular Activities And Teenage Pregnancy, Rhonda L. Drilling

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Extensive research has been done in the area of adolescent pregnancy prevention. One possible means of prevention that has not been adequately explored is involvement in extracurricular school activities. The purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship existed between the intensity and duration of participation in extracurricular school activities and the incidence of teenage pregnancy. In the study, 200 female high school students who had never been pregnant and 36 females who had become pregnant as teenagers were surveyed. All females were from Fayette County, Iowa. A 33-item questionnaire was used to survey the two groups regarding …

An Investigation Of Women’S Motivational Factors To Run A Marathon, Michelle Roland

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this study was to begin to understand what motivates women to participate in marathons. Twenty-seven Caucasian women enrolled in the "Seminar in Fitness and Mental Health" at a Midwest university answered the questionnaire (Motivations of Marathoners Scale Questionnaire). After participants completed the questionnaire a focus group interview was conducted with six participants. The Motivations of Marathoners Questionnaire was used to identify the participants' motives to run a marathon. The questionnaire contained 56 items distributed across nine scales. The scales included the following areas: health orientation, weight concern, self-esteem, life meaning, psychological coping, affiliation, recognition, competition, and personal …

Awareness Of Deficits In Dementia Of The Alzheimer’S Type And Normal Aging, Jay D. Anderson

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Past research has documented the presence of frontal lobe dysfunction in both dementia of the Alzheimer's Type (DAT) and normal aging. The purpose of the present study was to further investigate whether one particular type of frontal lobe dysfunction, unawareness of deficits or anosognosia, differs qualitatively or quantitatively when occurring in DAT versus the normal aging process. Anosognosia was investigated in three groups of subjects: individuals diagnosed with DAT (N = 25), older normal controls (N = 25), and middle-aged normal controls (N = 25). Unawareness of deficits was operationalized as the discrepancy between subjects' self-rating and that of another …

Prospective Memory And Age-Related Impairment, Barry Robert Ardolf

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Research on age-related changes in prospective memory has yielded mixed research results. Some research has shown no age-related impairments, while other research has shown age-related impairments. The present study investigated variables affecting these different findings in prospective memory research. Subjects between the ages of 18-92 were asked to identify pictures presented to them. The prospective memory task required subjects to identify individuals wearing glasses and to indicate this by circling the number on their answer sheet corresponding to the picture being presented. Order of instructions presented to subjects was also manipulated. Half of the subjects received the prospective memory instructions …

Parent Training Effects On Satisfaction With Parent-Child Relationships, Parenting Performance, And Conduct Symptoms, Conna Sue Bral

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of parent training in reducing conduct symptoms in adolescents. The study also investigated the relationship between parent training and parental satisfaction with the parent-child relationship and with their parenting performance. Participants in the study consisted of parents of adolescent children. The participants consisted of two groups: (a) the control group (N = 17) and (b) the parent training group (N = 11 ). The control group (C) completed a biographical data sheet and a scale assessing satisfaction with parent-child relationship and satisfaction with parenting performance. The parent training (PT) …

Frontal Lobe Dysfunction In Non-Clinical Compulsive Checkers, Christopher J. Boys

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Recent studies suggest deficits in set-shifting ability, as assessed by tasks such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The present study examined the extent to which these deficits were demonstrated by nonclinical "checkers" selected on the basis of scores on the Maudsley Obsessional Compulsive Inventory. A modified version of the WCST was used, the Milwaukee Card Sorting Test (MCST), in order to determine whether the deficits in set-shifting ability are due to a complete lack of switching or to a dysregulation in switching. In the latter case, the individual illustrates correct set shifting …

Gender, Gender Role Socialization, And The Tripartite Model Of Anxiety And Depression In Male And Female College Students, Sarina E. Abel

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This study, including 141 female and 71 male college students, investigated the relationship of gender and gender role socialization within the context of the tripartite model of anxiety and depression. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that gender contributed significantly to the prediction of specific depression and mixed anxiety-depression, but not to the prediction of specific anxiety. Gender role contributed to the prediction of specific depression, but did not uniquely contribute to the prediction of specific anxiety or mixed anxiety-depression. Significant multivariate effects were found for gender role and for the interaction of gender and gender role, but not for gender. Univariate …

The Relationship Between Coping Strategies And Body Image Among Adolescent Females, Lisa Monae Yarrow

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between coping strategies and body image disturbance among adolescent females. Fifty-eight of 78 (74.4%) seventh grade female students at a midwestern middle school completed all phases of the research.

The Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26; Gamer & Garfinkel, 1979) identified subjects with maladaptive eating behaviors. The Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS; Endler & Parker, 1990) and the Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ; Cooper, Taylor, Cooper, & Fairburn, 1987) provided information concerning the type of coping strategies employed as well as feelings concerning appearance.

Pearson product-moment correlation was used to determine the …

Relationship Between Television Viewing And Physical Activity Levels Among College Students, Sarah Joan Brummer

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between leisure time physical activity levels and time spent viewing television (including video or computer game play) among college students. Sub-problems included the physical activity profiles of males compared to females and the association between self-reported intensity of physical activity and time spent viewing television. The present study utilized a nonexperimental research design. Specifically, survey methodology using a self-report questionnaire was used as the means of data collection. The self-report questionnaire was designed to measure demographic characteristics, leisure time television viewing, and physical activity behaviors. A total of 789 students …

Playing The Game: Female Graduate Students’ Communication Experiences, Jacqueline Marie Brucher

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

In this thesis I examine the communication experiences of four female graduate students and the language they use to describe those experiences. Specifically, the women's use of metaphor to describe their academic environments is explored. A qualitative analysis of the linguistic choices of these women is achieved by applying Kenneth Burke's cluster analysis. I attempt to break the boundaries of rhetorical criticism by applying cluster analysis to conversation. Not only does this application open up new uses for the methodology, it also introduces additional means of analyzing various types of communication. All four women describe graduate school as "a game." …

Employee Expectations And Job Stress: A Study Of Attrition In The Employment Of Telemarketers, Jeff Cooper

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The present study investigated the factors associated with the extremely high attrition rate of a large midwestern telemarketing firm. Factors associated with employee expectations, stressful organizational characteristics, and job satisfaction were explored. The research strategy involved multiple questionnaires, dissatisfaction surveys, and a semi-structured interview, that were developed by the researchers based on information obtained from the company. Current and former employees of the company participated in the study. Results indicated the presence of stressful organizational characteristics that were common between current and former employees. Sale conversion rate pressure from supervisors and inadequate training were identified as the most salient factors …

Piezoelectric Biomechanical Assessment Of Swallowing Across Ages And Swallowing Task, Janel Elizabeth Crow

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Even though the Modified Barium Swallow (l\1BS) is the gold standard for the evaluation of swallowing disorders, the MBS has several limitations ( e.g., invasiveness, cost and portability). Noninvasive tools to measure swallowing ability at low cost and with low risk to the patient are desirable. Recently, thin film, piezoelectric technology (Computerized Laryngeal Analyzer: CLA) has become available which allows for noninvasive biomechanical analysis of swallowing. Noninvasive biomechanical measurement of swallowing is possible due to the close correlation of hyolaryngeal movement, airway protection and upper esophageal sphincter (UES) opening (Jacob, Kahrilas, Logemann, Shah, & Ha, 1989). The vertical and anterior …

Multicultural, Gender-Fair Infusion Index And Survey, William P. Austin

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This study investigated teachers' and students' perceptions of the degree of infusion of multicultural gender-fair educational components at the high school level. Two instruments were used: Multicultural Gender-Fair Educational Infusion Index and Multicultural Gender-Fair Educational Infusion Survey. The Multicultural GenderFair Educational Infusion Index was administered to 50 teachers in the subject areas of reading language arts, social studies, and physical science. The Multicultural GenderFair Educational Infusion Survey was administered to 82 high school-age students from the same mid-size Midwestern town. The results of the study showed a discrepancy in what teachers value in terms of multicultural education and how regularly …

Emotional Competence In Children With Adhd:, Patricia J. Bonello

Wayne State University Dissertations

The study investigated the emotional competence in children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), explored the possibility of differences between the behavior of parents of children with and without ADHD, and considered the relevance of classifying children into groups of normal/nonpathological, mild/moderate ADHD, and severe ADHD. It was hypothesized that, compared to normal children, children with ADHD would demonstrate specific deficits in both emotion appraisal and emotion regulation. It was also anticipated that the level of emotional competence deficits would be related to the severity of ADHD. Eighty (44 ADHD and 36 normal) children and their parents participated in a puzzle …