Digital Commons Network^™

Sexual Racism In A Gay Community On The U.S.-Mexico Border: Revisiting The Latin Americanization Thesis Online, Jesus Gregorio Smith

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The aim of this investigation is to examine racism in a sexual context or as it shall be defined here, sexual racism, along the border town of El Paso, TX by expanding upon Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's (2002) Latin Americanization Thesis of tri-racial stratification that posits that the U.S. will reflect a three tier racial structure with the White race on top, then an intermediary group of Honorary Whites and a Collective Black category at the bottom. This study will expand upon the Latin Americanization Thesis by examining the intersection of race/ethnicity with sexuality. Specifically, I will add to this thesis by …

Implicit And Explicit Memory Performance In Bilinguals: Implications For Transfer-Appropriate Processing And Vocabulary Learning, Elva Natalia Strobach

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Two experiments examined whether translation and sentence context improved memory performance in explicit and implicit memory. For explicit memory, an effect of translation was found such that translation led to better item recognition than read aloud encoding. Sentence context did not benefit recognition memory performance. For implicit memory, neither translation nor sentence context led to priming in a word-stem completion paradigm. The results are discussed in terms of the transfer-appropriate processing framework.

Echo Questions In Turkish, Hasan Sezer

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The main purpose of this study is to see the extent to which Turkish echo questions (EQ) are on a par with English EQs. A detailed English EQs analysis of Sobin (2010) is presented in the study as a backdrop to the main discussion. What follows it is the parsing of the data in Turkish echo questions. Then it is shown that the data in both superficially distinct languages can be argued for a proposal that echo question formation in English and Turkish follows similar norms.

The Origin Of The Eschatological Feast As A Wedding Banquet In The Synoptic Gospels: An Intertextual Study, Phillip J. Long

Dissertations

The Problem. The problem this dissertation seeks to address is the origins of the wedding banquet imagery in the teaching of Jesus. Frequently, scholars will state that the image of a wedding banquet was a common messianic image in the first century. However, other than Isa 25:6-8, sources for the image of a banquet for the messianic age in the Hebrew Bible are sparse. Yet the image of a banquet clearly appears in the Synoptic Gospels in both the actions of Jesus as well as his teaching. Because the metaphor of a wedding banquet is not found in the literature …

The Meaning And Function Of System In Theology, Timothy Watson

Dissertations

Topic. Due to the nature of the discipline, the importance of our understanding of the meaning of the term "system" in systematic theology cannot be gainsaid. Unfortunately, however, there seems to be little discussion or critique to how this term is being used and its meaning is often taken for granted, even though it seems to mean different things to different authors.

Purpose. To address this ambiguity, this study takes a close look at the etymological development of this word in its various linguistic forms as it has been used in theology through history. Then, based on this etymological analysis, …

Syllable Effects In A Fragment-Detection Task In Italian Listeners., Caroline Floccia, Jeremy Goslin, Jjd Morais, Régine Kolinsky

School of Psychology

In the line of the monitoring studies initiated by Mehler et al. (1981), a group of Italian listeners were asked to detect auditory CV and CVC targets in carrier words beginning with a CV, a CVC, or a CVG (G = geminate) syllable with variable initial syllable stress. By slowing participants reaction times (RTs), using both catch and foil trials, a syllable effect was found, partially modulated by participants' speed and stress location. When catch trials were removed in a second experiment the syllable effect was not observed, even if RTs were similar to that of the first experiment. We …

The Poverty Puzzle: The Surprising Difference Between Wealthy And Poor Students For Self-Efficacy And Academic Achievement, Diomaris E. Jurecska, Kelly B.T. Chang, Mary A. Peterson, Chloe E. Lee-Zorn, Joav Merrick, Elizabeth Sequeira

Faculty Publications - Psychology Department

This study explored the relationship between intellectual ability, socioeconomic status (SES), academic achievement and self-efficacy in a cross-cultural sample. Data from 90 students (63 students from Central America and 27 from the US) showed that regardless of culture or IQ, students from low SES families had signifi cantly lower grade point averages than students from medium- or high-SES families. Unexpectedly, data showed that regardless of culture or IQ, students from high-SES families had the lowest self-efficacy, but the highest academic performance. Results suggest that self-efficacy is likely to be related to expectations and selfperception beyond IQ or culture.

Linguistic Discrimination In Writing Assessment: How Raters React To African American “Errors,” Esl Errors, And Standard English Errors On A State-Mandated Writing Exam, David M. Johnson, Lewis Vanbrackle

Faculty Articles

Raters of Georgia''s (USA) state-mandated college-level writing exam, which is intended to ensure a minimal university-level writing competency, are trained to grade holistically when assessing these exams. A guiding principle in holistic grading is to not focus exclusively on any one aspect of writing but rather to give equal weight to style, vocabulary, mechanics, content, and development. This study details how raters react to “errors” typical of African American English writers, of ESL writers, and of standard American English writers. Using a log-linear model to generate odds ratios for comparison of essays with these error types, results indicate linguistic discrimination …

Adding Within-Utterance Emotion Decay For More Human-Like Dialog, Michael Hans Durcholz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

While spoken dialog systems have been used for commercial applications for several decades, most commercial spoken dialog systems provide only simple information exchange capabilities. Emotion synthesis in spoken dialog systems has become an active research area recently, and use of emotion-adaptive dialog systems has demonstrated improvements in user experience and rapport. This thesis seeks to improve how emotions are conveyed in dialog systems to enable robust emotional support that improves user experiences with dialog systems and models human speech characteristics more accurately than current dialog systems.

Prior work with Gracie (GRAduate Coordinator with Immediate response Emotions), an emotion-adaptive dialog system, …

The Armchair Daoist, Robert Lucky

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This collection of poems is in three parts with a critical introduction. It explores the creation of identities and truths and the production of meaning. The collection comprises free verse poems, prose poems, tanka, senryu, and haibun, a Japanese form of prose poem. The last section parodies and pays homage to Chuangzi and Laozi.

The Impact Of Literacy Through Movement In A 3rd Grade Hispanic Classroom, Daniel Peregrino

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This case study examines the effects of a kinesthetic literacy-training program on the complexity of narrative production and performance on the Garfield Motivation to Read Survey in a group of four 3rd grade elementary students. The 3rd grade teacher attended a Literacy Through Movement workshop to learn a range of movement-based literacy activities and methods for the classroom. The LITMO program was then implemented as part of a language arts poetry module for 3 weeks in her classroom. Changes in four students' performance on the Garfield Survey and narrative samples were measured before and after the LITMO intervention. Results suggest …

Brain Maturation In The Adolescent Athlete And It's Implication On Concussion Management, Jacqueline Picone

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

As the adolescent brain develops, any event that interrupts the process, such as a concussion, may result in long-term academic and social effects (Dennis & Levin, 2004). To date, there is no specific assessment or protocol published that consider the cognitive and development of the adolescent brain when managing concussion (Patel, et al., 2005). Purpose: to investigate whether there is a statistically significant difference between the composite scores and sub-test scores in the subtests on the ImPACT battery: Word Memory, Design Memory, X's and O's, Symbol Match, Color Match, and Three Letters, of high school male athletes between the ages …

Writing Across Institutions: Studying The Curricular And Extracurricular Journeys Of Latina/O Students Transitioning From High School To College, Todd Ruecker

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation is based on a year and a half multi-institutional study of seven Mexican American students transitioning from high school to a community college or a university. It explores the differences between high school, community college, and university literacy environments, focusing on the following: the impact of standardized testing at the high school level, the role of rhetoric and composition disciplinary expertise in shaping first-year composition (FYC) curricula, writing in the disciplines, and the digital divide between institutions. Seven case studies examine students' literacy experiences across institutions as well as both challenges and sources of support in and beyond …

Comparison Of Performance Between Elderly Individuals And Collegiate Athletes On The Immediate Post-Assessment And Cognitive Test, Kevin Van Den Bogaard

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Preventing falls in the elderly population requires a collaborative effort that includes medical treatment, rehabilitation, and environmental modification. Medical assessment of the elderly after a fall is designed to treat the potential conditions associated with the fall, such as broken limbs and trauma to the head resulting in a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Currently, there is no standardized test or protocol accepted across health care facilities to track the cognitive-communicative recovery of elderly patients. A group of elderly individuals deemed healthy and capable of independent living were administered the baseline Immediate Post Assessment and Cognitive Test (ImPACT). This study …

Lacking A Connection To A Community Water System: Water Quality And Human Health Impacts In El Paso Colonias, Yolanda Jane Mcdonald

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Water-borne disease and its symptoms, such as stomach cramps and diarrhea, are a serious concern in areas that are not connected to a public water system. To investigate the impacts of not being connected to a community water system, I surveyed households in El Paso County colonias that were not connected to a community water system (household n = 75, individual n= 293) and households that were connected to a community water system (household n = 75, individual n= 320). I conducted 150 door-to-door surveys and tested water samples from each household for free residual chlorine level, turbidity level, presence …

Analysis Of Differential Item Functioning On Selected Items Assessing Conceptual Knowledge Of Descriptive Statistics For Spanish-Speaking Ell And Non-Ell College Students, Angelica Amy Monarrez Rodriguez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Recently, there has been growing interest in promoting conceptual understanding of statistical concepts in the classroom. The Assessment Resource Tools for Improving Statistical Thinking (ARTIST) project is a resource for maintaining and developing scales useful for measuring statistical conceptual knowledge. The focus of this study is to investigate whether items assessing conceptual knowledge of measures of center and variation from the (ARTIST) database show evidence of differential item functioning when administered to English Language Learners (ELLs). This is pertinent topic since the population of English Language Learners (ELL) in the United States has been growing rapidly in the past few …

The Historical Context During The 1964-1984 Period Of The National Writing Project: Its Importance To The Fields Of Rhetoric, Composition, And Teacher Education, Kay Lester Mooy

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Historical Context of the National Writing Project (NWP) is a broad inquiry into the core values and importance of theory-driven pedagogical "best practices." This dissertation situates the teaching of writing within societal changes as well as changes in the disciplines. The researcher interviewed six primary sources (all participants in the first summer institute of the NWP) in a total of nine interviews. The research also reviews secondary sources and examines the personal documents of Gray twice, once before they were archived and once after archival procedures were begun. Results indicate that in the early days of the NWP theory …

Knowledge Of Adjective Reference By Monolingual Spanish-And English- Speaking Children, Martha Elizabeth Rayas Tanaka

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Previous studies (Waxman and Kosowski 1990, Waxman, Senghas and Benveniste, 1997 and Waxman and Guasti, 2009) have concluded that there is a distinct inclination for Spanish-speaking monolingual children but not for English-speaking children (3 and 4 years of age) to "extend" a novel adjective that is applied to an individual object, to other members of the same superordinate level category due to the Determiner-Adjective construction in Spanish, in which a postnominal adjective occurs in the same surface position as a noun such as in: La azul `the blue (one)'. In an Across-Category condition, children were presented with a model object …

Professional Learning Communities As A Critical Structure For Ell Schooling, Miguel A. Serrano

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Nationally, English language learners (ELLs) have underperformed in making the grade on standards set by the U.S. Department of Education. National data indicate that ELLs are performing lower (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011). ELLs are likely to perform less well on state assessments and drop-out rates are higher than their English speaking peers (Ballantyne, Sanderman & Levy, 2008). Current school practices lack a comprehensive knowledge base as to how to prepare ELLs to be academically successful. With the advent of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), educators have to demonstrate annual language and academic gains for English Language Learners (ELLs) …

The Bonds Of A Common Faith: Catholicism, Marriage, And The Making Of Borders In Nineteenth-Century Paso Del Norte, Jamie Matthew Starling

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Roman Catholic Church occupied a central place in life in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands as it governed interpersonal relationships, marriage, and family law from the Spanish colonial period until the 1860s and 1870s. This project examines the role of this church in Paso del Norte (present-day Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and El Paso, Texas) as a social institution that regulated domestic life against the backdrop of dramatic political, economic, cultural, and ecological transformations. The central sources for this study are the marriage records of the Parish of Guadalupe. This church emerged as a Franciscan Mission for the indigenous Manso people in …

Phonological Memory Associations Of Language Impairment In Bilingual Children, Marcela Susa

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Knowledge-based assessments of language impairments have been found to contain bias for assessing performance in bilingual children from diverse cultural backgrounds. As an alternative, measures related to performance of phonological working memory are becoming more popular for bilingual children. The purpose of the current study was to investigate how bilingual children with language impairment (BILI) would perform on nonword repetition and sentence repetition when compared to typically developing peers (BITD). Also, the current study investigated the extent to which the nonword repetition task and sentence repetition task were associated with each other in bilingual (English-Spanish) children. Results demonstrated that typically …

Guerreras Sitiadas: Ansiedades De Género En Dos Obras Del Siglo De Oro, Daniel Alfredo Vega

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Uno de los momentos más dramáticos de la historia de España fue la Guerra de Sucesión Castellana que tomó lugar entre 1475 y 1479. Durante ese periodo, se desató una contienda de sucesión por el trono que habí­a quedado vacante tras la muerte del rey Enrique IV. Siglo y medio más tarde, Lope de Vega y Tirso de Molina escogieron este conflicto como telón de fondo para ambientar dos obras dramáticas en las cuales se ven representadas diversas ansiedades y temas relacionados con género.

On The Selection Of Prosodic Features For Language Modeling, Alejandro Vega

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Previous studies show that immediate and long range prosodic context provide benecial information when applied to a language model. However, the fact that some features provide more information to the prediction task should be considered. If the information contribution of each feature can be determined, then a well-crafted feature set can be built to improve the performance of a language model. In this study, I measure the contribution of dierent prosodic features to a baseline trigram model. Using this information, it should be possible to build a language model that uses the most informative resources and ultimately performs better than …

Asl Versus Gestures: Mothers Promotion Of Manual Communication With Their Children, Vanessa Michelle Arreola

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Using ASL and/or gestures has been found to facilitate verbal language in hearing children and has become a new area of interest among researchers. Because socioeconomic status plays a role in behaviors and language development, this study was designed to target individuals from low socioeconomic backgrounds in the hopes of finding whether ASL or gestures were used more by their children, whether mothers are capable of promoting the use of ASL in the home environment, and whether ASL or gestures was preferred more by the mothers. Mothers were taught ASL signs based on the MacArthur Communicative Index and gestures in …

Correlates Of Marijuana Use In A Hispanic College Sample, Joseph Ephraim Charter

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Currently there is a dearth of literature regarding marijuana and its correlates of use, particularly in Hispanics. Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug, and its use has increased in recent years. This study aimed to assess correlates of marijuana use in a Hispanic college student sample. Data were collected from 549 participants from University psychology courses. Participants completed a comprehensive survey packet consisting of: demographics, marijuana use history, tobacco and alcohol use, depression, anxiety, stress, and acculturation. Descriptive analyses were used to provide a characteristic profile of Hispanic college student marijuana use. Eight percent reported past 30-day marijuana …

The Big Green Mama-Mind-Fuck Machine, Byron W. Cross

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

PREFACE

"so much depends upon

a red wheel barrow

glazed with rain water

beside the white chickens."

-W. C. Williams

The Big Green Mama-mind-fuck Machine was born in a debris field of violence, of conflict. I write mostly from an autobiographical place and a debris field is the perfect way to describe the careful stitching together of my experiences, taking a memory and extracting the emotional boom it left behind. I take the piece and spin it in zero gravity, carefully examining it. For this reason, writing an Ars Poetica without "I" would be an impossibility for me. So, after …

The Effects Of Defendant And Juror Language Use On Sentencing Recommendations, Victoria Christine Estrada

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Spanish-language testimony is an extra-legal variable not widely studied in the legal psychology field. More emphasis has been placed on the translation of the testimony as well as accent attitudes. The current study extended research conducted by Stephan and Stephan (1986) to investigate the impact of Spanish-speaking defendants and mock-juror's language use and proficiency on sentencing recommendations. Two hundred and seventy-seven participants from the University of Texas at El Paso read a case vignette of a first-degree aggravated assault and asked were asked to provide sentence recommendations for the defendant. The defendant's testimony was presented in English or Spanish with …

Readiness For College: A Case Study Of Three Hispanic Immigrant Students Who Overcame The Odds, Holly Fields

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study is about Hispanic, immigrant, low-income students who have graduated from high school college ready and the contexts from which they achieved such success. Few studies exist relative to immigrant, Hispanic student college readiness. This research hopes to provide insight into how institutional, peer and family culture helped to produce the success of the three students in this study.

The purpose of the study is to provide a deeper understanding of the ways in which immigrant, low-income, Hispanic students and the modern contexts of schools interact to produce distinct life experiences for the participating graduates. This study aims to …

Deaf Culture: The Creation Of Self And Socialization Through The Use Of Sign Language, Marisela Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

There is a strong perception of the physicality of disabilities. The review of literature in this project shows that there is a large number of disability related studies in the field of communication that focus primarily on physical and/or visible disabilities. The purpose of this study is to incorporate research on hidden and/or invisible disabilities, specifically deafness. The literature in the field of communication relating to hidden disabilities is limited and much more limited in deaf related research. There are an estimated two thousand deaf individuals in El Paso. Their participation and integration in the community is hindered by societal …

"Clothes Make The (One Like A Son Of) Man": Dress Imagery In Revelation 1 As An Indicator Of High Priestly Status, Ross E. Winkle

Dissertations

Problem . The Epistle to the Hebrews is the only document in the New Testament that explicitly describes Jesus as a high priest. The purpose of this dissertation is to ascertain whether or not the book of Revelation, in particular, in John's description of the "one like a son of man" in his inaugural vision (1:12-16), implicitly presents Jesus as having a high priestly status.

Method . This study focuses on Revelation since it is the work closest to Hebrews in terms of its rich cultic imagery, and it analyzes Revelation's first chapter since that is the part of Revelation …