Digital Commons Network^™

Intentions And Creative Insights: A Reinforcement Learning Study Of Creative Exploration In Problem-Solving, Thomas R. Colin

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Insight is perhaps the cognitive phenomenon most closely associated with creativity. People engaged in problem-solving sometimes experience a sudden transformation: they see the problem in a radically different manner, and simultaneously feel with great certainty that they have found the right solution. The change of problem representation is called "restructuring", and the affective changes associated with sudden progress are called the "Aha!" experience. Together, restructuring and the "Aha!" experience characterize insight. Reinforcement Learning is both a theory of biological learning and a subfield of machine learning. In its psychological and neuroscientific guise, it is used to model habit formation, and, …

Masthead

Wraparound South (Archived)

No abstract provided.

Towards A New Cholx Consciousness: The Visual Rhetorics Of Cholx Artistas As A Method For Social Justice Movements, Elvira Carrizal-Dukes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

My dissertation study examines the Cholx subculture through the artwork of Chola artistas Paola Rascón and Vicko Alvarez Vega. Growing up, I interacted easily with Cholos and Cholas, but I also knew that in society there was an overall negative idea of Cholos and Cholas. My research advances Cholx consciousness as a method for social movements through the examination of the visual and written rhetorics by Chola artistas. For my dissertation study, I have drawn on theoretical frameworks from Chicana Feminism, Latino Critical Theory, and Social Justice Rhetorics as discussed by Dolores Delgado Bernal, Kendall Leon, Tara Yosso, Daniel Solórzano, …

Assessing Cervical Cancer Knowledge Among High-Risk Women Living In The Us-Mexico Border Region In El Paso, Tx, Crystal Costa

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Despite major decreases in cervical cancer incidence rates in the U.S. over the past several decades, certain populations of women continue to be disproportionately affected by it. One of these groups includes US Latina/Hispanic women who have the highest cervical cancer incidence rates as compared to their racial/ethnic counterparts. To improve detection and prevention in US Latina/Hispanic women, it is important to first understand their current knowledge and health literacy with regard to cervical cancer.

This cross-sectional study examined perceived self-knowledge of cervical cancer and cervical cancer functional health literacy in high-risk Hispanic women living in the El Paso, Texas …

Evaluating The Impact Of The In-Store Programming And Outreach Coalition (Ipoc) On Increasing Access To Healthy Food And Healthcare Services In Paso Del Norte Region: First-Person Account Of Stakeholders' Perspective, Dennis Nyachoti

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Grocery stores can provide a conducive environment for interventions targeting healthy eating and access to health services, particularly in low-income communities. Nationally, several organizations have implemented grocery store interventions and have shown impact on perceptions of purchasing nutritious food, especially by raising awareness of fruits and vegetables. However, most of those programs have not been implemented in a coordinated manner despite being delivered in the same location. Collaboration of local health promotion organizations with grocery stores could increase consumers' access to and selection of healthy foods, as well as access to and use of services.

This evaluation of the In-Store …

Rhythm Manipulation Of Read Poetic English, Erika Moreno

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Forecasting Consumer Consumption Behavior Of Water Bottles Using Generlized Linear Model For Supply Chain Resilience, Abdulaziz Alidrees

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

When forecasting the amount of water consumed by individuals at Kuwait's Mubarak Al-Kabeer city Block 8, it is important for any water producing company to tell the amount of water they should produce for its target consumers. After interviewing a couple of residents in this block, it was discovered that they were restricted by being unable to shop for their essentials, including water packs. Data on the amount of water consumption in milliliters for different individuals were collected and recorded. Generic scanners and smartphone scanners were installed in 20 different households that rely on water packs instead of central water …

Love, The Other And The City: Critical Analysis Of The Ethics Of Alterity In A Capitalist Society, Juan Luis Cabrera

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Loving for Levinas is a desubjectivation. The one who loves is the one who does not resist the call of the Other. He who loves, according to Levinas, recognizes in the face of the migrant, the orphan, the widow, and the poor, as an inescapable responsibility. However, is this desubjectivation a possibility in capitalist cities? Capitalism is the consequence of a philosophical heritage founded in the totality of the same. Philosophy understood as “love of wisdom” places man in a position of control towards everything that surrounds him, the Other included. Everything belongs to the subject that knows the reality …

Constructing Community At The Border: Perspectives From Korean-Origin Residents In El Paso, Texas, Josue E. Lopez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Studies of communities at the U.S.-Mexico border have usually contrasted their views on living at the border with wider U.S. perspectives which understand the border mainly in terms of security concerns. This Thesis aims to extend such studies through focusing on the Korean-origin community in El Paso, Texas, in order to examine how border perspectives are shaped through global comparisons. The study is organized around two central questions: (1) How do Korean residents experience and construct community in El Paso? (2) How do notions of the Korean border shape or remain separate from notions of the U.S.-Mexico border? Through interviews …

U.S. Supreme Court I.P. Cases, 1810-2019: Measuring & Mapping The Citation Networks, Joseph S. Miller

Scholarly Works

Intellectual property law in the United States, though shaped by key statutes, has long been a common-law field to a great degree. Many decades of decisional law flesh out the meaning of broad-textured, sparely worded statutes. Given the key roles of patent law and copyright law, both federal, the Supreme Court of the United States is i.p. law’s leading apex court. What are the major topical currents in the Supreme Court’s i.p. cases, both now and over the course of the Court’s work? This study uses network-analysis tools to measure and map the entirety of the Court’s i.p. jurisprudence. It …

Reconceptualizing Hybrid Rights, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

In landmark decisions on religious liberty and same-sex marriage, and many other cases as well, the Supreme Court has placed its imprimatur on so called “hybrid rights.” These rights spring from the interaction of two or more constitutional clauses, none of which alone suffices to give rise to the operative protection. Controversy surrounds hybrid rights in part because there exists no judicial account of their justifiability. To be sure, some scholarly treatments suggest that these rights emanate from the “structures” or “penumbras” of the Constitution. But critics respond that hybrid rights lack legitimacy for that very reason because structural and …

The Concept Of Criminal Law, Sandra Mayson

Scholarly Works

What distinguishes “criminal law” from all other law? This question should be central to both criminal law theory and criminal justice reform. Clarity about the distinctive feature(s) of criminal law is especially important in the current moment, as the nation awakens to the damage that the carceral state has wrought and reformers debate the value and the future of criminal law institutions. Foundational though it is, however, the question has received limited attention. There is no clear consensus among contemporary scholars or reformers about what makes the criminal law unique. This Essay argues that Antony Duff’s The Realm of Criminal …

Factors That Affect Language And Literacy Development In International School Contexts, Jessica Cardoza

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Kindergarten students attending English-immersion, international school programs in Spanish-speaking countries may be at risk for learning difficulties. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine the relationship and comparisons between factors of duration of program enrollment, home language spoken by parents and caregivers, and children’s gender (independent variables), and the English language proficiency (dependent variable) of dual language learners attending an international school where the instruction was primarily in English and the dominant language of the country was Spanish. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and Dworin’s theory of bidirectionality in bilingual language development formed the theoretical foundation for this study. Research …

Consumer Credit Card Debt And Immigrants: A Cross-Sectional Study Of U.K. Immigrants’ Financial Capability, Paul Wesley Thompson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The problem addressed in this study is the ubiquitous nature and high level of consumer debt associated with certain demographics; however, research in the context of immigrants in the U.K. are limited. The problem is the lack of information about the association between credit card debt and immigrants, specifically on whether the income gap between U.K. immigrants and British citizens affects the level of consumer debt. The purpose of this quantitative cross-sectional correlational study is to examine whether there is an association between the income gap that exists between immigrants and British citizens and their respective levels of consumer debt, …

Using Prosody To Spot Location Mentions, Gerardo Cervantes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Identifying location mentions in speech is important for many information retrieval and information extraction tasks; here I explore the use of prosody for location spotting. While previous work has explored the use of prosody for spotting named entities, including locations, the specific value of prosody for finding locations in spontaneous speech has not been measured. Using the Switchboard corpus and LSTM modeling I obtain results indicating that prosody is useful in spotting location mentions. Further, I identify specific prosodic

features that tend to mark locations in American English.

Comparing The Language Of Computer-Mediated Versus Face-To-Face Motivational-Type Interviews, Karla Deyanira Llanes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The current study seeks to determine if computer-mediated and face-to-face motivational-type interviews elicit the same level of affect words and insight words in young adults who are ambivalent about their marijuana use. One-hundred and fifty young adults from a large urban university were randomly assigned to complete a brief motivational-type interview using a standard face-to-face format or instead a novel computer-mediated format. In the computer-mediated format, the interviewer and participant communicated via computer from separate rooms. A two-month follow-up survey assessed each participant's past two-month marijuana use. Pennebaker's Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program was used to determine if …

The Development Of The Rapport Scales For Investigative Interviews And Interrogations, Observer Version (Rs3i-O), Justin Loren Magee

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Rapport between an interviewer and a source is a vital component of successful investigative interviews and interrogations. Accurate measurement of rapport in these interactions is crucial to understanding its development and maintenance. The Rapport Scales for Investigative Interviews and Interrogations, Source version (RS3i-S; Duke et al., 2018) was developed to measure sources' perception of rapport, but no tool has been developed to measure rapport from a third-party observer's perspective. The primary purpose of this study was to develop the Rapport Scales for Investigative Interviews and Interrogations, Observer version (RS3i-O), a tool that allows observers to rate the rapport generated in …

Logic, Thought, And Language In Hegel, Marx, And Rosenzweig, Omar Moreno

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The objective of this Thesis is to open a conversation regarding the role of grammar in two areas of philosophy: interpretation and normative philosophy. The task is divided into three chapters, each of which focuses on one major issue. The first is a demonstration of the use of grammar in understanding and interpreting works of philosophy, namely those of Hegel and Marx. The second chapter is an interpretation of Franz Rosenzweig's renovated grammar as seen in The Star of Redemption. The last uses an analysis of grammar to challenge the role of empirical knowledge in community building. The last chapter …

Working Memory Performance In Spanish-English Bilinguals' First And Second Languages, Jordan Allyssabeth Orozco

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Background: Working memory is important for speech understanding in that speech recognition requires the processing, temporary storage, and manipulation of information during complex cognitive tasks. Previous research has shown contradictory findings on whether bilinguals have an advantage in working memory capacity compared to their monolingual counterparts. Differences in findings have been attributed to various factors to include task-dependent effects and poorly matched samples. Therefore, the existence of a bilingual advantage in working memory remains unclear.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the working memory performance of Spanish/English bilingual individuals compared to English monolingual individuals using a linguistically …

"Celebrated, Not Tolerated": How Transgender And Nonbinary Individuals Navigate The Social World, Hannah Penklis

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Seventeen individuals (4 trans men, 2 trans women, and 11 nonbinary people) were interviewed in this exploratory study on how transgender and nonbinary people feel about their bodies, and the role that social support plays in their experiences and feelings about their bodies. Semi-structured interviews revealed themes, including how transgender and nonbinary people interact with social support, their motivations for gender affirming medical interventions, and non-medical ways in which they alter their physical appearance. Participants reported a variety of experiences within their body across the spectrum of human experience: in some cases, individuals changed their weights dramatically; others felt strong …

Mother Nature, Lady Justice: Ecofeminism And Judicial Decision-Making, Jonathan Alexis Picado

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Ecofeminism offers a feminist perspective that links gender to how humans relate to the natural world. As such, this framework explores the connections between the oppression of nature and the oppression of women, such as widespread views that both women and nature are property, are to be dominated, and are most valuable when cultivated and curated by men. I apply this philosophical and sociological framework to judicial decision-making, where women judges should view environmental issues as women's issues and thus be more likely to vote in favor of the environmental protections relative to her male peers. I evaluate this theory …

Bilingual Children's L1 And L2 Word Frequency Effects: The Role Of Individual Differences, Astrid Michelle Portillo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Bilingualism continues to grow among the world's population. Nevertheless, most research studies on language processing have focused on monolingual individuals, leaving questions about how language processing unfolds in bilingual individuals. Here, we investigated how individual differences in bilingual experience, indexed by current L2 exposure, impact eye movement measures of reading fluency, indexed by word frequency effects, in an understudied population: bilingual children. Prior eye movement research involving bilingual younger adults (aged 18 to 30) has reported a trade-off in L1 and L2 word frequency effects with greater levels of current L2 exposure (Whitford & Titone, 2012, 2017). We wanted to …

Cultural Identity As A Predictor Of Weight Loss In U.S. Hispanics, Leon Daniels

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Research on behavioral weight-loss programs has guided the development of health-related, behavior-change interventions that contribute to combating overweight and obesity in the United States, and illnesses that co-occur with unhealthy weight. However, research on behavioral weight-loss programs that focus on the U.S. Hispanic population and cultural identity is largely unrepresented in the current literature. The purpose of this study was to quantitatively examine body mass index (BMI) decreases of U.S. Hispanics while observing their (a) motivation toward exercise, (b) cultural identity, (c) physical activity program type, (d) exercise frequency, and (e) demographic variables as predictors of weight-loss. Guiding this study …

Preparing Bilingual Teachers On The U.S./Mexico Border: Including The Voices Of Emergent Bilinguals, Alcione N. Ostorga, Peter Farruggio

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Language policies in the U.S., including matters relating to bilingual education, are tangled up with political tensions and ideology. All too often, the dialogue among educators and policymakers about what constitutes best practices for people learning English – for whom we will use the term emergent bilinguals (EBs) (Garcia, Kleifgen and Falchi 2008) – fails to include the voices of those they serve. The Rio Grande Valley (RGV) of South Texas provides a uniquely valuable laboratory in which to study bilingual education because of its location, demographic makeup, and migration patterns. In this study, a pedagogical intervention was made …

Becoming Transfronterizo Collaborators: A Transdisciplinary Framework For Developing Translingual Pedagogies In Wac/Wid, Marcela Hebbard, Yanina Hernández

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

Given that pedagogical approaches that challenge dominant language ideologies are not yet well represented in WAC/WID scholarship, this chapter outlines a transdisciplinary framework for developing translingual pedagogies. The framework is built around the notion of transfronterizo/ a collaborators because before instructors can engage their students in exploring and challenging their views toward language, instructors must first critically interrogate their own. This interrogation must consider the unique political, social, economic, and linguistic exigencies of where an institution is located. The chapter concludes by showing that a transdisciplinary and translingual collaboration that is mutually transformative changes faculty collaborators in how they perceive …

Collectivism And Uncertainty Avoidance In Narrative Oral Histories Of Resettled Syrian Refugees, Suzy S. Ismail

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Emotional resilience among resettled refugees is an indicator of cultural integration and adaptation into a host country which in turn impacts schools, resettlement agencies, and refugee service organizations in how they can best meet the needs of refugees. The documented decline in emotional resilience among resettled Syrian refugees during the past decade is linked to the problem of cultural value disparities causing a resultant decline in mental health and socioemotional wellbeing. The purpose of this narrative qualitative study was to explore expressions of cultural value dimensions such as collectivism and uncertainty avoidance in oral histories of resettled Syrian refugees. Applying …

Child Naming Practice And Changing Trends In Modern Japan, Noriko Mori-Kolbe

The Coastal Review

Given name is a cultural component that reflects family life. The present study is a literature-based research on newborn baby naming practice in Japan from 1912-2018. Based on existing literatures on naming, examples and surveys on given names, an overview of a naming pattern in Japan is presented and discussed within a sociocultural framework. Historical observations of baby names include popular female and male names and their recent trends. The study also shows that in Japan computerization has changed learning method, information transmission method and communication modes, and that digital natives name their children in different ways than older generations.

Assessing The Severity Of Health States Based On Social Media Posts, Shweta Yadav, Joy Prakash Sain, Amit P. Sheth, Asif Ekbal, Sriparna Saha, Pushpak Bhattacharyya

Publications

The unprecedented growth of Internet users has resulted in an abundance of unstructured information on social media including health forums, where patients request healthrelated information or opinions from other users. Previous studies have shown that online peer support has limited effectiveness without expert intervention. Therefore, a system capable of assessing the severity of health state from the patients’ social media posts can help health professionals (HP) in prioritizing the user’s post. In this study, we inspect the efficacy of different aspects of Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to identify the severity of the user’s health state in relation to two perspectives(tasks) …

A Hermeneutic For The Aqedah Test: A Way Beyond Jon Levenson's And Terence Fretheim's Models, Arlyn Sunshine Drew

Dissertations

Problem

The works of Jon Levenson and Terence Fretheim highlight the problem of determining which interpretations of the biblical worlds of meaning around the text are congruent with the text of the Aqedah (also known as the Sacrifice of Isaac, Genesis 22: 1-19) and which should be disclaimed. A hermeneutical model is needed for Abraham's test that provides a text-based paradigm for sound interpretation of the narrative world (in the text), the historical world (behind the text), the theistic world (above the text), the cosmological world (below the text), and the present world (in front of the text).

Method

Four …

Preservice Teachers' Preferred Definitions Of Intelligence, And Related Demographics (Age, Gender, Educational Level, Academic Domains And Educational Psychology Enrollment), As Predictors Of Their Implicit Beliefs Of Intelligence, Michelle A. Bacchiocchi

Dissertations

Problem

Just as teachers help their students bridge their prior knowledge to new understandings of ideas including conceptions of intelligence, preservice teachers as future teachers are undergoing the same training and work environment. Preservice teachers' implicit beliefs and their preferred definitions of intelligence are important, since as persons of authority they influence children and their beliefs about ability. For future teachers, there is limited empirical evidence exploring preservice teachers' implicit beliefs about intelligence and how they define intelligence.

Method

A survey was used to collect data on implicit beliefs about intelligence and definitions of intelligence from a sample of 262 …