Digital Commons Network^™

Language Dysfunction In Traumatic Brain Injury While Controlling For Effort, Matthew T. Heinly

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The present study included three traumatic brain injury (TBI) groups (good effort mild TBI, poor effort mild TBI, and good effort moderate/severe TBI) and two neurologic control groups (dementia and unilateral left hemisphere stroke). Language impairment was examined using the following measures: Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III Verbal Comprehension Index and the Vocabulary, Similarities, Information, and Comprehension subtests; the Boston Naming Test; the Phonemic and Semantic cue conditions of the Controlled Oral Word Association Test; the Auditory Comprehension subtest of the Cognistat; Wide Range Achievement Test-3 Reading subtest; and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. When effort was controlled, there was a …

From Teacher To Teller: How Applied Storytelling Informs Autobiographical Instruction., Peggy Rosann Kent

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses autobiographical inquiry to "re-member" how I came to understand that applied storytelling was a valid teaching tool in facilitating autobiographical expression in mature learners. It is an examination of how story sharing and story listening can transform a continuing education classroom into a learning community. Applied storytelling can help elders reframe their negative mental models about the value of their stories, memory, and mythology and create opportunities for positive story sharing experiences. I selected highlights of my journey that best represented my experience and use of applied storytelling techniques. Each chapter includes an exercise and reflection as …

Relationships Between Student Attendance And Test Scores On The Virginia Standards Of Learning Tests., Jeffrey Cassell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the relationship between student attendance and student test scores on a criterion-referenced test, using test scores of all 5^th graders in Virginia who participated in the 2005-2006 Standards of Learning tests in reading and mathematics. Data collection for this study was performed with the cooperation of the Virginia Department of Education using a state database of student testing information. Pearson correlation coefficients were determined for the overall student population and for the subgroups of economically disadvantaged, students with disabilities, limited English proficient, white, black, and Hispanic. The results of this study indicate that there is a …

Claudius Greer Clemmer, Doctor Of Humane Letters January 4, 1911-November 20, 2005., Sheila Breen Agen Pedersen Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While there are facts that are known about Claudius Greer Clemmer, there is much that is not known. By most accounts, he was a generous man who grew up during some of the hardest years of the Great Depression, worked to get an education, and had a successful teaching career. Clemmer worked diligently to do what he could to support himself and his family, working at two jobs. When his career track changed from teaching to business, in 1946, he experienced success in business and investments, sharing that wealth with East Tennessee State University and others. The intent of this …

Effective Caucasian Female Teachers Of African American Students, Wanda Walker-Bowen

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore and analyze the nature of and rationale for classroom pedagogical and management strategies used by two effective female, Caucasian teachers who taught predominantly low socioeconomic, African American students. Teachers’ perceptions about the cultural and linguistic differences between low socioeconomic African American students and themselves were studied, as well as how these differences influenced their teaching and management strategies. Ladson-Billings’ (1994) work on culturally relevant pedagogy and Weinstein, Curran, and Tomlinson-Clarke’s (2003) and Brown’s (2003) models on culturally responsive classroom management served as conceptual frameworks for this study. Qualitative data were …

Fuzzy Logic Techniques Applied To A Switchgrass Ecological Site Suitability Model For The State Of Mississippi, Michele Louise Maxson

Theses and Dissertations

Fuzzy logic provides a natural way of dealing with models that require the modeler or user to interpret linguistic variables in order to make a decision. This study focuses on employing fuzzy logic methodologies in order to create an Alamo switchgrass ecological site suitability map for the state of Mississippi. The inputs in the model are available water content (AWC), slope, pH, drainage, color, and texture. All variables were examined through the fist six inches (15cm) of soil. These six variables were assigned fuzzy restrictions based on expert knowledge from plant and soil scientists, combined using the fuzzy additive weighting …

Winter Commencement: December 14, 2007, University Of North Dakota

UND Commencement Programs

UND Winter Commencement program from December 14, 2007.

The Effect Of "Developmental Speech-Language Training Through Music" On Speech Production In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Hayoung Audrey Lim

Open Access Dissertations

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders demonstrate deficits in speech and language, with the most outstanding speech impairments being in comprehension, semantics, prosody, and pragmatics. Perception and production of music and speech in children with ASD appear to follow the same principles of Gestalt pattern perceptual organization. In addition, common neuroanatomical structures and similar patterns of cortical activation mediate the perception and production of speech and music. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore how the perception of musical stimuli would impact the perception and production of speech and language in children with ASD. The study examined the effect …

Commencement Program 2007 December, University Of Texas At Arlington: School Of Nursing, The University Of Texas At Arlington

Commencement Programs, Photos, and Video

No abstract provided.

Domain Tasting Is Taking Over The Internet As A Result Of Icann’S “Add Grace Period”, Christopher Healey

Duke Law & Technology Review

When a domain name is registered, the registrant is given five days to cancel for a full refund. While the purpose of this grace period is to protect those who innocently err in the registration process, speculators have taken advantage of the grace period through a process called "domain tasting." These "domain tasters" register hundreds of thousands of domain names and cancel the vast majority of them within the five-day grace period, keeping only those that may be valuable as placeholder advertising websites or to holders of trademark rights. This iBrief will outline the "domain tasting" process, analyze why it …

Effects Of Time-Compressed Audio And Adjunct Images On Learner Recall, Recognition, And Satisfaction, Albert Dieter Ritzhaupt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of time-compressed narration and representational adjunct images on undergraduate college students' 1) ability to recall and recognize information in a multimedia learning environment, and 2) overall satisfaction with this type of learning environment. The goals of this research were to shed light on time-compression technology incorporated into multimedia learning environments, help fill the existing gap in the research literature by merging two disjoint bodies of research, and aid instructors and instructional designers to better understand time-compression technology while creating rigorous multimedia materials.

This research was guided by the underlying principles …

Communication And Culture: Implications For Hispanic Mothers With Deaf Children, Alliete Rodriguez Alfano

Open Access Dissertations

The majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents. The fact that many of these children use sign language as their primary form of communication poses a unique language barrier between them and their hearing families. In addition, for children who are born into Hispanic families, these children have limited access to Hispanic and Deaf cultures unless their families actively pursue involvement with those communities. Data were collected through ethnographic interviews and limited participant observation and analyzed by means of grounded theory methodology. The study investigated how Hispanic mothers communicate with their deaf children who use ASL as their …

Do Parents' Literacy Beliefs And Home Literacy Experiences Relate To Children's Literacy Skills?, Rebecca C. Norman

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the relationship among parents' literacy beliefs, home literacy experiences, and children's literacy skills. Forty-three children, who attended a university preschool, and their parents participated in the study. Parents' literacy beliefs and the home literacy experience, namely shared book reading, were examined through a self-report questionnaire. One important section of this questionnaire provided information about parents' beliefs concerning literacy acquisition; specifically, whether they believed in a top-down or bottom-up approach. The children were tested individually for emergent literacy skills, including concepts of print, alphabetic knowledge, rhyming skills, oral language skills, word recognition, and invented spelling. The results were …

December 12th 2007, Hispanic News

Inland Empire Hispanic News

No abstract provided.

Mobile Dna Elements In Primate And Human Evolution, Jinchuan Xing, David J. Witherspoon, David A. Ray, Mark A. Batzer, Lynn B. Jorde

Faculty Publications

Roughly 50% of the primate genome consists of mobile, repetitive DNA sequences such as Alu and LINE1 elements. The causes and evolutionary consequences of mobile element insertion, which have received considerable attention during the past decade, are reviewed in this article. Because of their unique mutational mechanisms, these elements are highly useful for answering phylogenetic questions. We demonstrate how they have been used to help resolve a number of questions in primate phylogeny, including the human-chimpanzee- gorilla trichotomy and New World primate phylogeny. Alu and LINE1 element insertion polymorphisms have also been analyzed in human populations to test hypotheses about …

Leadership Competencies In Today's Complex Healthcare Environment, Judy Moseley

Theses and Graduate Projects

The increasingly diverse, multicultural population in the United States is offering significant challenges to nurses to provide culturally competent care. If the provision of the best possible care for all patients is the goal, nurse leaders must have the expertise and skill to lead staff through the complex problems of organizations. Nurses must possess the ability to generate solutions consistent with the organization's mission and with sensitivity to the needs of a diverse patient population. Through the interconnected processes of teaching and practice, an innovative Master of Arts in Nursing program that emphasizes transcultural nursing practice experience for leaders was …

Importance And Availability Of Content And Communication Skills Among Entry-Level Interpretive Naturalists, Jonathan Ivey

All Theses

Interpretation seeks to help visitors to make intellectual and emotional connections between themselves and park resources through a communication process. To accomplish this goal, interpreters must be intimately knowledgeable of park resources as well as excellent communicators. The details of what types of knowledge and communication skills are most important to interpretive naturalists have not been formally documented. Likewise, little is formally known about the availability of each skill in pools of entry-level applicants for interpretive positions. This study documented the varying importance and availability of content and communication skills for entry-level interpretive naturalists, based on the perceptions of experienced …

A Corpus-Based Approach To Determining Standard American English, Delys Ann Waite Snyder

Theses and Dissertations

Many teachers, test designers, textbook writers, and instructional designers turn to books written by usage experts to determine what is correct standard written American English. Unfortunately, though, experts often disagree about what is correct and what is incorrect, and this disagreement can create problems with validity when people create and assess instruction about usage. One way to discover the rules of standard English usage is to describe what writers actually do in printed, edited English. Researchers can access large collections of standard English through digital text archives, which can be searched electronically. The text archives for this study were taken …

Suzan-Lori Parks’S The America Play And Its Deconstructive Ontology, Rachel A. Naor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I intend to showcase Suzan-Lori Parks's repetitious, supplemental virtuosity, which is a testament to the fluid, indeterminate condition of her concepts. I seek to demonstrate that in textualizing the quality of absence in the written dialogue, Parks's The America Play becomes uniquely deconstructive. For indeed, through the absent "presence" of an historically mythified president and a gravedigger's skewed identity, the play becomes a stage for splinters of historicized, differentiating, repeating signifiers that supplement, even as they redefine, their referential signified. Performing deconstructive thinking, Parks's textuality is accommodated by a content through which she calls attention to the structures of metaphysics …

Yearbooks As A Genre: A Case Study, Melissa Caudill

All Theses

ABSTRACT
In the United States, high school and college yearbooks are extraordinarily well known as a genre, yet they are largely unstudied. Yearbooks preserve images, stories, and facts from each year for one specific group of people, linked by age and geographic community. Yearbook production is a significant commercial enterprise, yet it involves novice writers, editors, and designers. Blending elements of craft, tradition, business, and media, yearbooks as a distinctive genre bear closer rhetorical study and application of professional communication theories.
This historical case study of production practices for a particular college yearbook positions yearbooks rhetorically as texts and sites …

Professor Publishes Novel In Finland, Sarah Crabtree Walker

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. - A University of Mississippi professor of English has published a novel on the life of the late Finnish poet and translator Pentti Saarikoski. Doug Robinson, a former resident of Jyvaskyla, Finland, recently revisited Finland for the Helsinki Book Fair to promote his novel, "Pentinpeijaiset" ("Saarikoski's Spirits"). The event included a panel discussion of the book attended by more than 300 people, including two of Saarikoski's former wives.

When West Meets East: Communicative Language Teaching In China, Rong Li

Theses and Dissertations

With radical social change and educational reform taking place in China since 1976, the English teaching system there has been changing accordingly. The Chinese Traditional Method (CTM) is giving way to the Western Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach. This research is a study of both Chinese and expatriate English teachers who are involved in classrooms and affected by reforms. The goal of this research study is to identify the extent to which Chinese and expatriate English teachers use CLT in China, to discover the possible factors that prevent them from using CLT and to explore an English teaching method that …

The Enabling Potential Of Losses In Later Life: Linking Constraints To Selective Optimization With Compensation, Begum Aybar-Damali

All Dissertations

A substantial literature describes factors that prevent people from participating in and enjoying leisure and recreation activities. These factors have often been regarded as negative and helping individuals use strategies to maintain participation has been advised. The primary purpose of this study was to explore whether losses catalyzed selective optimization of resources. This exploratory research investigated the relationship among (1) life satisfaction, (2) change in leisure behavior, (3) life management strategies of selection, optimization, and compensation, (4) enhancement outcomes, and (5) leisure satisfaction. The participants of the study were recruited from older adults who attended activities and classes provided by …

A Process-Based Call Assessment: A Comparison Of Input Processing And Program Use Behavior By Activity Type, Kathryn Rimmasch

Theses and Dissertations

In an effort to better understand the mental processing connected to different kinds of CALL activities, this study collected data on time subjects spent, as well as buttons subjects clicked while doing 10 different CALL activities accompanying a beginning French text book. In addition, a group of subjects thought out loud as they completed the same activities. These subjects were recorded on video, their thinking out loud was transcribed and the transcriptions were coded according to how they indicated they were dealing with the language input. The frequencies of coded categories were compared to see if there were connections between …

December 6, 2007, Council On Academic Affairs

Minutes

No abstract provided.

The Daily Egyptian, December 05, 2007, Daily Egyptian Staff

December 2007

No abstract provided.

December 5, 2007 Faculty Senate Minutes, University Of South Carolina

Faculty Senate

No abstract provided.

Mayanwiki: An Online, Consensus-Based Linguistic Corpus Of The Mayan Hieroglyphs, Robbie A. Haertel

Theses and Dissertations

The writing system used by the ancient Maya civilization has intrigued researchers and aficionados for centuries. Now that it has mostly been deciphered, the emphasis in the field of Mayan epigraphy has shifted to a study of the system of phonological, morphological, and grammatical rules that once governed the language that the hieroglyphs encode. One of the most important resources for linguistic study of this type is a comprehensive, electronic corpus of texts to investigate phraseology, frequency information, and collocations. Because Mayan linguistic epigraphy is in the early stages, a publicly available, editable corpus would be an invaluable resource in …

Reading Comprehension By People With Chronic Aphasia: A Comparison Of Three Levels Of Visuographic Contextual Support, Aimee R. Dietz

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This repeated measures investigation evaluated the impact of three levels of visuographic context—(a) photos of high-context scenes, (b) photos of low-context scenes, and (c) no-context—on the reading comprehension of narratives by people with chronic aphasia. The researcher defined high-context scenes as photographs in which people interact with each other, the natural environment, and the central action of the scene and low-context scenes as photographs with no central action and limited-to-no interaction between the people and the natural environment. Participants included 10 medically-stable adults with chronic aphasia and concomitant reading comprehension deficits. The participants read three different narratives, each presented with …

Spectator 2007-12-05, Editors Of The Spectator

The Spectator

No abstract provided.