Digital Commons Network^™

Community-Based Organization Leaders' Perceptions On Efforts To Promote Informal Learning Among Young Low-Income Readers, Virginia S. Rector

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Narrative Discourse Predictors Of Response To Naming Intervention In Aphasia, Dirk B. Den Ouden, Laura Giglio, Sigfus Kristinsson, Leonardo Bonilha, Deena Schwen Blackett, Brielle C. Stark, Janina Wilmskoetter, Julius Fridriksson

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Purpose:

Method:

Does A Common Threat Unite?: Alliance Formation In East Asia Under Chinese Pressure, Sean G. Mcclellan

Honors Theses

The study explores whether a shared geopolitical threat fosters alliance formation among East Asian nations, focusing on Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea in the context of increasing Chinese influence. Integrating insights from international relations theory and social psychology—particularly Realistic Conflict Theory and the out-group unifying effect—the research evaluates whether perceived Chinese aggression corresponds with increased positive sentiment toward the United States. Utilizing data from the Asian Barometer Survey, linear regression analysis is conducted to assess how perceptions of Chinese and U.S. influence, democratic values, and political affiliation shape public attitudes. Results show that while negative views of Chinese and U.S. …

Foundations' Deep, Emily Williams, Morgan Williams

University Honors Theses

Most historic buildings do not survive as they were built, yet preservation frameworks still tend to evaluate them as if they did.

Foundations' Deep begins with a structure located in Helena, Montana 59602, a building that sits uneasily within the categories it has been asked to meet. Built in the early twentieth century, it has persisted through alteration, abandonment, and use. What remains is not a stable artifact but a record of accumulated decisions, some careful and many indifferent, now embedded in the fabric of the building itself.

The thesis grows from this condition and from the limits of the …

Office Discipline Referral Narratives, Context, And Categorization, Deanna M. Bush

Education Dissertations

This two-part qualitative study examined the experiences of students with disabilities (SWD) in the middle school discipline. Phase one was a qualitative document analysis study that examined school discipline for SWD through the lens of Critical Disability Theory (CDT), Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), Constructivist Learning Theory, and the Vulnerable Decision Point model (VDP) in a midsize suburban district in Washington state. The study explored alignment of ODR teacher-written narratives with behavioral categories assigned to the ODR at the time of issue to determine variance based on behavior category or student disability status. Phase two a semi-structured interview (shown on …

Growth In Early Infancy Drives Optimal Brain Functional Connectivity Which Predicts Cognitive Flexibility In Later Childhood, Chiara Bulgarelli, Anna Blasi, Samantha Mccann, Bosiljka Milosavljevic, Giulia Ghillia, Ebrima Mbye, Ebou Touray, Tijan Fadera, Lena Acolatse, Sophie E Moore, Sarah Lloyd-Fox, Clare E Elwell, Adam T Eggebrecht, Bright Study Team

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Functional brain network organisation, measured by functional connectivity (FC), reflects key neurodevelopmental processes for healthy development. Early exposure to adversity, for example undernutrition, affects neurodevelopment, observable via disrupted FC, and leads to poorer outcomes from preschool age onwards. We assessed longitudinally the impact of early growth trajectories on developmental FC in a rural Gambian population from age 5-24 months. To investigate how these early trajectories relate to later childhood outcomes, we assessed cognitive flexibility at 3-5 years. We observed that early physical growth before the fifth month of life drove optimal developmental trajectories of FC that in turn predicted cognitive …

Declination Of Groundwater Potential Zones Of Nashik, Maharashtra Using Geographic Information System With Analytic Hierarchy Process-Fuzzy Techniques, Madhusudhan M. Reddy, Bhogayya G. Naidu, Bharat N. Mulay, Ramanjaneyulu B, Ravi K. Kumar, Mirzi L. Betasolo, Praveen U. Goud, Snehal N. Chaudhari

Mansoura Engineering Journal

Groundwater is a critical resource for agriculture and domestic use in the semi-arid region of Nashik District, Maharashtra, where overexploitation and erratic climatic conditions have led to declining groundwater availability. This study integrates Geographic Information System (GIS) with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy-AHP techniques to delineate groundwater potential zones (GWPZs) and identify suitable sites for artificial recharge. A total of ten thematic layers drainage density, rainfall, geomorphology, elevation, distance from river, geology, slope, land use/land cover, topographic wetness index (TWI), and curvature were derived from SRTM DEM, Landsat-8, and IMD datasets, representing key controls on groundwater recharge, infiltration, and …

Resource Utilisation And Quality Of Education In Secondary Schools In Lagos State, Nigeria, Jacob A. Adeyanju

International Journal for Research in Education

The need for the education sector to deliver on its goals has always been a major expectation of all stakeholders in the system. For this expectation to be met, the major resources in the school system must be combined in a reasonable proportion. On this premise, this study investigated the relationship between resource utilisation and quality of education in Lagos State. The study was conducted using descriptive survey research design with a population of 664 public secondary schools in Lagos State, Nigeria. These schools had a total population of 23,793 teachers. A self-developed instrument titled “Education Resource Utilisation and Quality …

Many Hands Make Light Work: Restoring Edu-Economical Debts For Black Males, Joyice Robinson Myers

VA Engage Journal

A college degree is closely linked to economic stability, yet only 20% of Black men in the United States hold a bachelor’s degree or higher. These disparities are not accidental; they are the cumulative result of systems that have systematically denied Black males equitable access to educational and economic opportunity across generations. This systematic review examines the compounding relationship among family structure, educational attainment, and economic standing for Black males, and considers what restoring that relationship could look like in practice. I integrate three theoretical frameworks—Education Debt (Ladson-Billings, 2006), African American Male Theory (Bush & Bush, 2013), and the R³ISE …

Storytelling, Gender, And The Double-Empathy Problem, Annie Rogers

Theses and Dissertations

Storytelling has been proposed as a meaningful way to facilitate empathy and connection, particularly across neurotypes. The present study examined whether a live storytelling event influenced perceptions of the autism community, empathy, and interpersonal connection, while also exploring differences on biological sex and levels of autistic traits. Participants completed pre- and post-event measures assessing relationship perceptions and connection, along with standardized measures of empathy and autistic traits. Results showed a significant increase in positive perceptions of the autism community and perceived closeness to storytellers after the event. Engagement, emotional impact, openness, and motivation to support the autism community were all …

The Evolution Of Collaborative Dialogue And Instructional Change Among Secondary Mathematics Teachers Engaged In Peer Observation, Shazia Akbar

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined how collaborative dialogue evolved across four cycles of a formative peer observation system involving one veteran and two first-year secondary mathematics teachers, exploring which aspects of that dialogue teachers attributed to changes in their instructional practice. Using the Math Talk for Equitable Participation (MTEP) framework across one academic year, data were drawn from verbatim transcripts of eight collaborative sessions and video-stimulated recall interviews. Four key findings emerged: evidence shifted from planning documents to video of student thinking, deepening pedagogical reasoning; novice teacher contributions grew from peripheral to central; relational trust fostered critical rather than merely affirming …

Flip It And Reverse It: Probing Consistency Of Llm World Knowledge Under Logical Transformations, Rhianna Smith

Computer Science Senior Theses

When assessing the extent to which someone truly understands the topics they discuss, you might ask them a series of questions that examine their knowledge from different angles. As Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly integrated into real-world tasks, they are often required to reason through ambiguous and uncertain scenarios that rarely have a single correct answer. In these settings, their usefulness is contingent on more than accuracy alone. Rather, it depends on the strength of the reasoning that underlies their responses. This begs the question: how might we extend these types of tests to LLMs? We formalize this informal …

Unheard Voices: Language And Humanity In Memoirs Of Immigration From Latin America To The United States, Aj Setala

Honors Projects

At the time of writing this project, aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) raids and mass deportations are being carried out across the U.S. The need to recognize the humanity of those targeted grows with every deportation. In this project, I address the question - What does it mean to be human? - by considering how language impacts the ways in which others affirm or deny the humanity of immigrants. To do this, I examine the role language plays in memoirs of undocumented Latin American immigrants. My analysis is grounded in Gloria Anzaldúa’s borderlands theory and César Miguel R. Vega …

The Pragmatics Of Emoji: A Multimodal Investigation Of Politeness And Sarcasm In Student Interactions On Facebook, Twitter, And Reddit, Wesam Khairy Morsi

English Language and Literature

This study investigates the pragmatic functions of emojis as multimodal resources in students' interactions on Facebook, Twitter (X), and Reddit, with a focused distinction between politeness and sarcasm. Drawing on a corpus of 4000 naturally occurring student-generated posts (Facebook: 1200; Twitter/X: 1500; Reddit: 1300), the study applies a qualitative-quantitative coding framework grounded in Brown and Levinson's politeness theory and Gricean pragmatic models. Emojis are analyzed as components of semiotic bundles rather than isolated affective markers. Statistical analysis reveals significant gendered patterns (χ2 (1, N = 420) = 89.2, p < 0.001), with female students demonstrating greater use of emojis for politeness and solidarity functions (70.0%) compared to male students (35.0%), while male students show higher utilization for sarcasm and irony (65.0%) versus female students (30.0%). Platform-specific affordances significantly shape these pragmatic functions, with Facebook favoring politeness strategies, Reddit enabling ironic communication through anonymity, and Twitter facilitating compressed evaluative expressions. The findings suggest that emoji competence constitutes a fundamental component of digital pragmatic literacy requiring integration into higher education curricula.

Blended Family Dynamics And Executive Functioning In Preschoolers: A Cross-Sectional Study, Kayla Butler

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Predictors And Outcomes Of Reading Intervention Success In Autistic Children: Memory And Brain Connectivity, Meagan Elizabeth Beckerson

ETDs from 2020-2029

Reading comprehension is a complex skill that relies on linguistic and cognitive abilities, including executive control processes. Creating a cohesive representation of text involves maintaining visual and verbal information in short term memory (STM) and using executive control skills to integrate information, apply it to questions, and draw inferences. Many autistic children demonstrate strong individual word reading (decoding) but poor comprehension, resulting in a discrepant reading profile. The role of STM and executive control—along with the underlying neural systems that support these processes—in reading comprehension and response to intervention has not been examined in autistic children with this profile. The …

Bad Mothers In Translation: Early Motherhood In Contemporary Turkish Editions, Merve Sevtap Süren

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article examines how three recent Anglophone novels of early motherhood, namely, Szilvia Molnar’s The Nursery (as Süt Lekesi), Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch (as Gece Kancığı), and Claire Kilroy’s Soldier Sailor (as Asker ile Denizci), circulate in Turkish translation in a context shaped by pronatalist moral economies. Pairing peritextual analysis (covers, back-cover copy, blurbs, and bio notes) with close readings of selected key scenes of postpartum crisis, feral transformation, and toddler-year burnout, I show how Turkish editions both render and manage maternal negativity: translation choices modulate voice, affect, and register, while peritexts frame these mothers for local readability …

Emotion-Focused Teaching And Preschool Children's Social, Emotional, And Self-Regulatory Development, Brielle Emily Petit

Dissertations and Theses

Contributing to the literature on supportive mechanisms for children's development of social, emotional, and self-regulatory competencies, the current study examines the contributions of emotion-focused teaching in preschool classrooms. Emotion-focused teaching is a framework used within preschool classrooms that encompasses three domains of teaching that support children's development of emotion skills—how teachers display their own emotions or emotion-related behaviors and actions (modeling), the ways they respond to children's emotional expressions (responding), and how instruction is used to inform children about emotions and related processes (instructing). More frequent emotion-focused teaching has been shown to be a …

Modeling The Spread Of Competing Narratives In Multimodal Social Media Network, Mayor Inna Gurung

Theses and Dissertations

Social media has fundamentally transformed how narratives are produced, contested, and disseminated, enabling competing interpretations of the same event to spread rapidly across networked populations. Understanding how narratives gain traction over others in these environments is critical for addressing misinformation, supporting informed public discourse, and designing effective counter-messaging strategies. Yet existing research largely treats narrative propagation as a single-process phenomenon and focuses predominantly on textual data, overlooking both the competitive dynamics between opposing narratives and the growing role of visual symbolic communication in shaping how narratives are received. This dissertation addresses these gaps through a multi-platform, multimodal framework applied to …

Multispecies Mutualistic Resilience: Riverine Lifeworlds Along The Irrawaddy River, Phyo Su San, Maya Kóvskaya

Forest and Society

This article advances the concept of multispecies mutualistic resilience to analyze how human and more-than-human communities in Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta navigate ecological rupture under conditions of extractive infrastructure and climate crisis. Drawing on ethnographic research in the Ywar Thit village tract, including life-story and semi-structured interviews, digital ethnography, and analysis of vernacular cultural texts, we examine how deltaic communities attune to kaing grasses (Saccharum spontaneum) as land-making agents and vernacular indexical signs of alluvial transformation, and the Irrawaddy River as a living semiosic and material force. Rather than treating resilience as a return to prior equilibrium or as …

Implementation And Evaluation Of A Nurse-Led Telehealth Protocol To Reduce No-Show Rates Among Chronic Care Patients, Yaneisy Puig

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Revisiting Representation Learning For Natural Language Processing From The Fundamentals For Misinformation Detection, Vishnu S. Pendyala

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

While existing language embeddings achieve high accuracy on benchmark tasks, recent studies suggest they often struggle to distinguish true from false statements. This work argues that new representation learning and aggregation strategies are needed, especially those that adapt to misinformation's evolving patterns and incorporate explainability. As a first step, we explore two directions: (1) aggregation strategies inspired by signal processing, where word embeddings are transformed into spectrogram-like representations for classification to overcome context window limitations, and (2) future extensions using dynamic neural architectures such as Neural ODEs, Liquid Time-Constant Networks (LTCs), Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs), and Legendre Memory Units (LMUs). Preliminary …

Can Technology Augment Order Writing Capacity At Regulators?, Natasha Aggarwal, Amrutha Desikan, Bhavin Patel, Satyavrat Bondre, Dipyaman Sanyal

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

This article critically examines the opportunities and challenges of using technology, in particular Large Language Models (‘LLMs’), to assist regulatory order writing in quasi-judicial settings in India. It proposes augmenting rather than replacing human decision-makers, aiming to improve regulatory order writing practice through responsible use of LLMs. This article identifies the core principles of administrative law that must be upheld in these settings and analyses how inherent limitations of LLMs may undermine these principles. The article reviews international frameworks and case studies from various jurisdictions, highlighting common design principles. It proposes a comprehensive Problem-Solution-Evaluation ('PSE') framework for responsibly integrating LLMs …

A Developing Critical Lens Based On Distinct Scholar Experiences In Scholarly Communication, Angel Y. Ford

FORCE 2026

Scholars around the world, even from core research locations, express frustration at the processes of sharing and disseminating research. Scholars discuss the confusing or conflicting reviews they receive, and the astronomical fees to publish in Open Access (OA) journals, but when these global factors are combined with regional factors for scholars in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the view of the scholarly communication landscape can quickly go from challenging, to treacherous and at times a career stunting topography with a variety of obstacles and barriers. The terrain scholars cross to obtain, produce, and disseminate research outputs looks different based on …

Cross-Cultural Differences Among Children And Youth With Special Health Care Needs: A Mixed-Methods Analysis Of Chinese, Spanish, And English-Speaking Families, Kathleen Mcgrath, Miriam Franco, Amy Morales-Lara, Karen Bonuck Phd, Joanne Siegel

Developmental Disabilities Network Journal

One in five U.S. children has a special health care need, with prevalence rates rising each year. Children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN) from immigrant and/or non-English speaking families face heightened barriers to care, unmet health needs, and worsened health outcomes. This mixed-methods study explores cross-cultural similarities and differences among English-, Spanish-, and Chinese-speaking families of CYSHCN across four key domains – (1) the diagnostic process, (2) access to essential services, (3) community integration, and (4) social supports. As part of a statewide, New York State Department of Health funded initiative implemented across three University Centers for …

Generative Ai Synthesis Of Automated Interactions Into A Structured Agent Briefing, Deep Raithatha, Tanmay Kayande

Defensive Publications Series

Systems for escalating interactions from automated agents to human agents can create inefficiencies, for example, by transferring unstructured transcripts. An intermediary system can employ a generative artificial intelligence synthesis engine to process the context of an automated interaction upon an escalation trigger. The engine may analyze the dialogue transcript, user metadata, and the automated agent's internal state to perform semantic abstraction, diagnose potential failure points, and infer a possible resolution. The system can then generate a structured briefing for the human agent, which could include a concise summary, a failure diagnosis, or a recommended next action presented as an interactive …

Mimic: A Multimodal Dataset For Affective Incongruity In Video, Ethan M. Baird

Computer Science Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the computational challenges of constructing a database for affective incongruity, exploring the difficulties in automating the collection of contradictory affective states. Capturing these incongruities is essential for advancing Vision-Language Models (VLMs) and sentiment analysis, which struggle to interpret signals deviating from basic emotional archetypes. Curating non-congruent affect provides the data necessary for models to navigate complex social contexts, which is critical for applications like automated Audio Description (AD) for the visually impaired and nuanced Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). To capture these signals, two distinct methodologies were employed. The first utilized a tripartite decomposition of video data, isolating textual, …

Representing Lean Proofs: Tactics, Trajectories, Search, Elisaveta Samoylov

Computer Science Senior Theses

In neural theorem proving for interactive proof assistants such as Lean, tactic prediction models score proof steps by surface likelihood, missing whether a move actually advances the proof. This thesis proposes representing each step by the symbolic edit it induces on the proof state rather than by its token-level surface form, and shows that this effect-grounded view yields better tactic embeddings, reveals structured geometry in complete proofs, and enables a practical proof search prior.

We introduce Delta Tokens — token-level state edits augmented with structural indicators — and show they outperform surface-only representations on tactic retrieval and operator-analogy benchmarks. Embedding …

Bilingual Math For Kindergartners (Biki), Anna Aldrin, Caroline Tapia, Lillian Le

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

For many children from bilingual households, kindergarten represents a critical, learning benchmark where the introduction of fundamental math concepts coincides with their first significant exposure to the English language. Traditional educational methods often fail to support English language learners, leading to a disconnect between their understanding of math in the home and its application in the classroom. This linguistic barrier frequently results in reduced engagement, diminished confidence, and an unstable educational foundation that can discourage students from pursuing STEM careers later in life. While existing platforms like Khan Academy and Duolingo address either language acquisition or mathematical proficiency independently, they …

Concept Analysis In Occupational Therapy Research: Exploring Approaches And Discipline-Specific Considerations, Patricia Schofield, Tanja Krizaj, Kirsty Thomas

School of Nursing and Midwifery

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the use and considerations needed for conducting a concept analysis within occupational therapy research. Concept analysis is a popular analytical research tool used with the methodology providing firmer definitions of ambiguous concepts.Design/methodology/approachAn exploration into the use of concept analysis within occupational therapy research. Discussing current approaches of concept analysis and the implementation of this within occupational therapy research.FindingsConcept analysis within occupational therapy research requires further consideration. Current research is favouring one approach when completing a concept analysis that leads to common flaws within the methodology.Originality/valueFurther consideration is required to the approaches followed when completing a …