Digital Commons Network^™

An Evaluation Of The Utility Of Reading Curriculum-Based Measurement As Progress Monitoring Tools And Predictors Of Comprehension, Haley Elizabeth York

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Many American students struggle with reading, particularly in the area of comprehension. As such, early identification of reading difficulties, use of evidenced-based interventions, and monitoring of student reading progress over time is essential. Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is a technically adequate, efficient tool whose features and design make it a good candidate for early identification and progress monitoring purposes, especially within a response to intervention framework. However, there is still some uncertainty regarding the utility of reading CBM as progress monitoring tools. Specifically, the literature has suggested that variability in the difficulty of CBM materials may influence how well these tools …

Mobile Homes: Class, Space And Race In Idealized Landscapes Of Home, Annemarie Michele Galeucia

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study explores the connections between public perceptions and regulation of mobile homes, and how this connection in turn represents and regulates the bodies residing within them. Applying various qualitative methods in participant and media research, I explored the material and social/symbolic aspects of mobile homes in and around East Baton Rouge Parish, LA, as well as media (primarily news) discussing mobile homes across the United States. I sought to explore these in relation to the normative and ideal expressions and image of the American home and its relationship to idealized American landscapes. Dialectics of mobility/rootedness and physical and social …

Biologically Biased Beneficence, Jeffrey E. Stake

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Psychological And Environmental Predictors Of Test Anxiety: A Structural Equation Model, Meredith Taylor Harris

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Test anxiety is a construct that includes cognitive, physiological, and behavioral symptoms occurring in response to anxiety prior to, during, or following examinations. The current literature on test anxiety has evaluated a number of possible predictors, including demographic variables, academic indicators, and self-perceptions. The movement toward school accountability and higher academic expectations of students has increased the severity of consequences occurring as a result of poor academic achievement. Thus, test anxiety is a critical concern that may impact student academic success. The current study evaluated a structural equation model to determine the strength of associations between trait anxiety, academic achievement, …

(Re)Writing History In Maryse Condé, Femi Euba, And Reinaldo Arenas, Lázara Bolton

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This comparative study asserts the centrality of spirituality to literature that explores life in the African Diaspora. Specifically, it emphasizes the importance of spirituality both to the authors and to the lives of their characters in the novels Victoire, les saveurs et les mots (2006) by the Guadeloupian author Maryse Condé, Camwood at Crossroads (2007) by Nigerian author Femi Euba, and El color del verano (1991) by Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas. A close reading of the three novels shows that they are representative of autohistoría literary works, which represent the spirituality of the writer, as well as the people written …

The Effect Of Teacher Beliefs And Self-Efficacy On Environmental Education Program Implementation, Ashley Wilson Mullens

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study describes the development and initial validation of a tool to measure teachers’ beliefs about environmental education (EE), perceptions about their own self-efficacy in implementing EE in their classroom, perceptions about the support they receive in regards to implementing EE in their classroom, the perceived motivators towards EE, and the perceived barriers towards EE. This instrument was then utilized to measure these five constructs and compare results between participants and non-participants of a school-based environmental education program. All respondents had positive beliefs about environmental education. Participants and non-participants did differentiate between their perceptions of self-efficacy, support, and motivators, suggesting …

Promoting Literacy Development In The Early Childhood Classroom: An Evaluation Of Phonemic Awareness And Phonics Instruction, Elise Catherine Mciver

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Research has consistently demonstrated that literacy skills are associated with a host of benefits that are both substantial and long lasting. Given the implications of reading skill development, efforts to understand the most effective methods of teaching students how to read are consequential. Fortunately, substantial research has been conducted on this topic and has subsequently highlighted two essential building blocks of a balanced literacy framework: phonemic awareness and phonics. The current literature on the reading acquisition process shows that if students are to benefit from phonics instruction, they must have a certain level of phonemic awareness proficiency. The question remains, …

The Influence Of Selected Academic And Demographic Characteristics On The Success Of First-Year Students Enrolled In A Baccalaureate Nursing Program, Scelitta F. Bond

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The primary purpose of the study was to determine the influence of selected demographic and academic characteristics on success in nursing education among first year baccalaureate nursing students enrolled in a private college in the Southern region of the United States. The participants in the study were 102 baccalaureate students admitted to the nursing program in Fall, 2013. For the purpose of the study, success was defined as a grade of C or higher in two clinical nursing courses in the first year of the nursing program. Academic and demographic criteria were examined and compared using means, standard deviations, Independent …

Artificial Sweeteners And Weight Gain: Fighting Or Feeding The Obesity Epidemic?, Shanna Frisch

The Science Journal of the Lander College of Arts and Sciences

Our world has developed an obsession with weight control and, as a result, has begun replacing high calorie foods with low-fat and non-caloric substitutes. Artificial sweeteners are a widely used solution to this growing problem. Though the intention when using artificial sweeteners is to lose weight, studies have shown that the opposite sometimes occurs. Researchers attempt to explain this surprising phenomenon with multiple hypotheses. Lack of appetite suppression and reward response may cause individuals to search for more food and to consume more calories. Artificial sweeteners can also have negative affects on biological mechanisms such as resting metabolic rate, as …

Successful Aging In Oldest-Old Adults: Role Of Physical And Social Factors, Katie Elizabeth Stanko

LSU Master's Theses

Successful aging, increasing in chronological age while maintaining health, is related to a multitude of factors including social and physical behaviors. Older adults may report that they are aging successfully while biomedical outcomes suggest otherwise. In the present study, sociodemographic characteristics, social engagement, physical activity in relation to frailty and health-related quality of life (HR QoL) were examined using a lifespan sample of adults (N = 732) from the Louisiana Healthy Aging Study (LHAS). Four age groups were compared: younger (21-44 years), middle-aged (45-64 years), older (65-84 years), and oldest-old adults (85 to 101 years). A main effect of age …

Decolonizing World History: Mis-Representations Of The Middle East In Secondary Social Studies Textbooks, Amanda Megan Schellhaas

LSU Master's Theses

This study utilizes content analysis to evaluate three United States High School World History textbook’s coverage of the Middle East since 1945 in order to determine if an authentic global approach to history is being utilized. This was determined by analyzing the amount of coverage that was dedicated to the Middle East, the focus of the narrative, and the portrayal of the Middle East. Analysis of the narrative content of the texts showed that coverage of the Middle East overall did not receive an equitable representation in comparison to other regions. The focus of this coverage centered on defining the …

Strategic Use Of Language In White House Twitter Communications, Margo L. Jolet

LSU Master's Theses

Lippmann (1922) theorized that we understand our world through elites and the media because we cannot experience everything ourselves. We look to others to share their experiences with us. In this way, the media and elites tell us what is important in our world. Converse (1964), Zaller (1992), and Lupia (1994) argue that not only do elites and the media help us see what is important, but they draw out attributes of these issues to help us make political determinations congruent with our belief systems. In this thesis, I conduced two studies investigating candidate, party, and White House tweets about …

Initial Development And Validation Of The Student Wellbeing Teacher-Report Scales, Anthony Joseph Roberson

LSU Master's Theses

Given that youth mental health is associated with their success in school and in life more broadly, it is important that school-based psychological service providers embrace best-practice prevention and intervention strategies that target mental health when working with student populations. One line of study in this area has begun exploring the incorporation of a dual-factor model of mental health within universal screening systems in schools. The dual-factor model is differentiated from the traditional unidimensional mental health model, which focuses on the presence or absence of psychopathology, by conceptualizing mental health alternatively as consisting of both psychopathology and wellbeing dimensions. The …

An Examination Of Autism Symptomatology In Young Children With Family History Of Autism Spectrum Disorder, Jasper Abarte Estabillo

LSU Master's Theses

Multiple genetic and environmental factors have roles in the etiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Thus, researchers have become increasingly interested in studying family members of individuals with ASD in order to examine possible risk factors and to identify early markers of the disorder. While family history of ASD may put an individual at risk for developing autism, there is limited research examining how the degree of relationship to the affected individual may be related to an individual’s presenting ASD symptomatology. Because closer familial relationships (i.e., first-degree relatives) have more shared genetic material and tend to have increased common environment …

Reentering Survivors: Invisible At The Intersection Of The Criminal Legal System And The Domestic Violence Movement, Courtney Cross

Scholarly Works

Like all returning citizens, women coming home after incarceration face significant challenges to successful reentry. In addition to the collateral consequences of their criminal convictions, reentering women also encounter uniquely gendered obstacles. This Article explores one such obstacle: the relationship between women's reentry and domestic violence. Women on probation or parole who are also experiencing domestic violence too often fall into a blind spot in which the structure of community supervision pressures them to remain in unsafe homes and also punishes them when the abuse they endure interferes with their ability to comply with the conditions of their release. Because …

Constructing The Search Template: Episodic And Semantic Influences On Categorical Template Formation, Juan D. Guevara Pinto

LSU Master's Theses

Search efficiency is usually improved by presenting observers with highly detailed target cues (e.g., pictures). However, in the absence of accurate target cues, observers must rely only on categorical information to find targets. Models of visual search suggest that guidance in a categorical search results from matching categorically-diagnostic target features in the search display to a top-down attentional set (i.e., the search template), but the mechanisms by which such attentional set is constructed have not been specified. The present investigation examined the influences of both semantic and episodic memory on search template formation. More precisely, the present study tested whether …

Enhancing Program Soft Error Resilience Through Algorithmic Approaches, Sui Chen

LSU Master's Theses

The rising count and shrinking feature size of transistors within modern computers is making them increasingly vulnerable to various types of soft faults. This problem is especially acute in high-performance computing (HPC) systems used for scientific computing, because these systems include many thousands of compute cores and nodes, all of which may be utilized in a single large-scale run. The increasing vulnerability of HPC applications to errors induced by soft faults is motivating extensive work on techniques to make these applications more resilient to such faults, ranging from generic techniques such as replication or checkpoint/restart to algorithm-specific error detection and …

Gotta Catch 'Em All, Jennifer Lynn Lombardi

LSU Master's Theses

The ability to imagine is essential to shaping who we are, and is an important part of our humanity. Children have the ability to use aspects of their environment as their playthings, becoming the characters in their world through their sense of imagination. We lose this ability as we grow, leaving us with only memories and sentimentality. I have come to realize that my art is an expression of the longing and search to regain that ability to become fused with my imagination and my environment. I allow myself to become lost in a world of fantasy once more, and …

The Attentional Mechanisms Of Active Forgetting, Laura Lee Heisick

LSU Master's Theses

Recent work has shown that intentional forgetting of distracting, erroneous, or irrelevant information aids memory, and relies on active, effortful processes. Two experiments investigated the underlying attentional mechanisms that are active during directed forgetting (DF). Across both experiments, participants completed a modified item-method DF task, in which they received memory instructions to remember or forget individual images for a subsequent memory test. Participants studied items associated with remember or forget instructions before they were shown a subliminal presentation of target items. Finally, participants responded to probes by identifying briefly shown letters to assess how attention and item identity information are …

“What Credit Is That To You?” The Social Context Of Moneylending In Medieval England A Comparative Study 1340-1509, Elizabeth Ann Green

LSU Master's Theses

This study makes use of the manorial court rolls of Dyffryn Clwyd, a cantref in Northern Wales, and the certificates of debt from London to examine the lives of two medieval usurers, Ieuan Kery and Sir William Capell, between the years 1340 to 1352 , and 1478 to 1509 . By examining the life of these two individuals who both operated one of the rarest, most socially complex occupations of his place and time, this study begins to expose the ways in which usury helped to shape the fabric of late Medieval culture in the British Isles. The singular focus …

Resident Perceptions Of Natural Resources Between Cities And Across Scales In The Pacific Northwest, Anita T. Morzillo, Betty J. Kreakie, Noelwah R. Netusil, J. Alan Yeakley

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

As the global population becomes increasingly urban, research is needed to explore how local culture, land use, and policy will influence urban natural resource management. We used a broad-scale comparative approach and survey of residents within the Portland (Oregon)-Vancouver (Washington) metropolitan areas, USA, two states with similar geographical and ecological characteristics, but different approaches to land-use planning, to explore resident perceptions about natural resources at three scales of analysis: property level (“at or near my house”), neighborhood (“within a 20-minute walk from my house”), and metro level (“across the metro area”). At the metro-level scale, nonmetric multidimensional scaling revealed that …

Burnout And Depression: Two Entities Or One, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Renzo Bianchi

Publications and Research

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the overlap in burnout and depression. Method: The sample comprised 1,386 schoolteachers (mean age = 43; mean years taught = 15; 77% women) from 18 different U.S. states. We assessed burnout, using the Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure, and depression, using the depression module of the Patient Health Questionnaire. Results: Treated dimensionally, burnout and depressive symptoms were strongly correlated (.77; disattenuated correlation, .84). Burnout and depressive symptoms were similarly correlated with each of 3 stress-related factors, stressful life events, job adversity, and workplace support. In categorical analyses, 86% of the teachers identified as …

Working Memory And Interference Control In Children With Specific Language Impairment, Klara Marton, Naomi Eichorn, Luca Campanelli, Lilla Zakarias

Publications and Research

Language and communication disorders are often associated with deficits in working memory (WM) and interference control. WM studies involving children with specific language impairment (SLI) have traditionally been framed using either resource theories or decay accounts, particularly Baddeley's model. Although significant interference problems in children with SLI are apparent in error analysis data from WM and language tasks, interference theories and paradigms have not been widely used in the SLI literature. A primary goal of the present paper is to provide an overview of interference deficits in children with SLI. Review of the extant literature on interference control shows deficits …

Burnout In Firefighters: A Word On Methodology, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Renzo Bianchi

Publications and Research

At least three methodological problems affect the study by Katsavouni et al. (2016). First, there are currently no diagnostic criteria for burnout, neither in the DSM-5, nor in the ICD-10. Second, one extremely important variable was omitted from this study of firefighters, namely, depression. Third, the authors did not control for relevant nonoccupational factors such as stressors occurring outside of work.

Who Matters?: Effective Classroom Management Strategies For Multicultural Elementary Education, Erica Bailey-Ramos

University Honors Theses

Current classroom management procedures, which are dominated by white affluent culture, are not conducive to effectively teaching the increasingly growing diverse school population. Differing backgrounds in a classroom are often viewed as deficits that teachers need to correct instead of individual strengths that add to the classroom knowledge. Currently, the public education system is making students conform to the school culture, instead of the school changing to reflect the community. Multicultural education is for all students, preparing them for the real world by teaching tolerance, acceptance, and learning through multiple perspectives. Current research agrees that a shift in management techniques …

Meditation And Mindfulness: Combatting Negative Mindsets And Mental Health Afflictions While Promoting Positives Such As Confidence And General Well-Being, Charlotte R. Dicharry

University Honors Theses

Popular opinion holds that meditation and mindfulness render positive effects. However, minimal empirical evidence has been submitted except in the last seven years that it has gained attention. This study uses data from these recent years to gather a concise view of the effects of meditation and mindfulness practices in combatting anxiety, depression, and poor self-esteem as well as the increase in positives such as confidence and general well-being.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. has been promoting meditation and mindfulness as treatment for stress since the 1980s. He has applied the practice to physical ailments as well as mental maladies (Kabat-Zinn, 2014b). …

Preventing Campus Sexual Assault: Evaluating Studies Of Male Offender Prevention Programs And Determining Best Practices, Cam Tu Tran

University Honors Theses

Campus sexual assault is becoming a highly publicized issue, with the U.S. White House recently releasing a report urging universities to improve prevention efforts through systematic evaluations, policies, reporting procedures, and victim support (U.S. White House Task Force, 2014). Although these recent headlines have focused attention on universities’ responses to sexual assault, research in prevention program effectiveness has been conducted in university settings for over 30 years. This thesis focuses on past research in primary prevention in facilitated educational trainings for college men. This thesis reviews studies on interventions implemented on college campuses by exploring the most effective practices, and …

Trespass, Veronika Ivanova

University Honors Theses

Controversial artworks are relentlessly defended by art critics, who frequently downplay their disturbing emotional affect. Against an overwhelming consensus to the contrary, this essay will propose that ethical analysis is an effective and critically revealing method of engaging with contemporary transgressive art. It will argue that in favoring conceptual rather than emotional reactions, commentators fail to fully engage with the work they promote. Far from clouding our judgement, shame, outrage, and revulsion are the very emotions that artworks can set out to evoke. I am specifically interested in artists that challenge the attitude of aesthetic disinterestedness through engaging our moral …

Language Sample Length Effects On Various Lexical Diversity Measures: An Analysis Of Spanish Language Samples From Children, Morgan Stills

University Honors Theses

Purpose: various studies have assessed whether lexical diversity in language samples is a useful clinical tool for assessing language abilities. However, not all studies used the same measure of lexical diversity indices or sample demographic. Therefore it is unclear which lexical diversity indices work best when analyzing Spanish language samples. The current study aimed to compare validity evidence for five lexical diversity measures based on Spanish language samples. Specifically it assessed how changes in language-sample length influenced each measure. The most accurate lexical diversity measures were expected to yield similar estimates for a given child across language samples that differed …

Differences In How Boomers And Millennials Experience Listening To Recorded Music, Pablo Saldana

University Honors Theses

Music is present in people’s lives. This work looks at cultural changes among two generations, the Baby Boomers and Millennials. Furthermore, there is a focus on values held by each generation when it comes to recorded music. Through textual analyses, claims are made about consumer habits, preferences, and relationships with music held by these distinct generations.