Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Facilitating Digitization And Reformatting Via Committee Work, Nicole Lewis, Abby Beazer, Marissa Bischoff, Michael F. Gates, Benjamin Harry, Lindsey Memory, Rebecca A. Wiederhold

Faculty Publications

The Reformatting Committee at Brigham Young University Library actively manages and facilitates the digitization of library materials, playing a pivotal role in advancing larger digitization projects. The committee comprises various stakeholders in the digitization and reformatting workflow, each with unique concerns and requirements, allowing the committee to effectively navigate the complexities of the digitization process. This exploration of the committee includes motivations for its formation, an explanation of its documentation, and the benefits gained.

The Reformatting Committee exemplifies a balanced approach to meeting various stakeholders’ expectations and building bridges between departments, thereby advancing the library’s mission in the context of …

Ai Use On Campus, Paul Djupe

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

‘Routines’ And ‘Formulaic Language’ In Conversation Analysis (Author's Extended Data), Danielle M. Pillet-Shore

Faculty Publications

Though the field of conversation analysis (CA) was founded upon examinations of interactional “routines” such as conversation openings and closings, conceptualizing and categorizing communicative phenomena as “formulaic” is anathema to CA. This chapter details how, since its inception, CA work has empirically elucidated how participants to recorded episodes of naturally occurring social interaction actively and collaboratively accomplish conversational activities as ‘routine’ or not by selecting from available action alternatives, spontaneously coordinating their selections vis-à-vis one another. Taking a multimodal CA approach, this chapter reviews state-of-the art literature on how people open and close in-person and telephone conversations, showing the immense …

Sample Instruction Class: Germ 525--Fall 2024, Kathrine C. Aydelott

Faculty Publications

A sample slide deck of a library instruction class given in GERM 525 (a sophomore-level German class) using Mentimeter as a presentation platform.

Where Do I Belong? : Creating An Inclusive Metadata Policy, Nicole Lewis, Karen Glenn, Jeremy Myntti, Sharolyn Swenson, Katie Yeo

Faculty Publications

Inclusiveness and honoring different cultures that reflect our patrons has been discussed in many different venues in the last few years. The staff of the Brigham Young University Library recognized the need for our metadata to demonstrate the commitment we have to honor others and to create a community of belonging. The staff also recognized that a policy would provide a roadmap for how to embark on fixing legacy metadata and how to move forward in creating metadata that reflects our core values in the library and at the university. This case study details how we developed an inclusive metadata …

Recruiting The Right Candidate, Cynthia Bassett

Faculty Publications

The market for hiring a law librarian has changed significantly over the last few years. Those on both sides of the equation are a little uncertain about the whole process, wondering when the job search should start, how much to expect in pay, and what aspects of a position are up for discussion. The challenge of a limited pipeline of law librarians requires new approaches to recruiting.

Webster Parish Library, 1929-1935 : A Rosenwald Demonstration Library, Suzanne Marie Stauffer

Faculty Publications

In 1929 the Julius Rosenwald Fund instituted its County Demonstration Library program of matching grants to promote public library service to Blacks in the South. By the end of the program, total circulation in the demonstration counties averaged 5.2 per capita, with circulation among Blacks more than twice what it had been the previous year. One such segregated library system was established in Webster Parish Louisiana with the support of the State Library Commission. The central white library and eight branches opened on October 4, 1929. The central Black library and four branches opened a short time later. The Library …

Consumer Preferences For Ride-Hailing: Barriers To An Autonomous, Shared, And Electric Future, Tamara L. Sheldon, Rubal Dua

Faculty Publications

Research has shown that automation, carpooling, and electrification combined in a mobility on demand framework have the potential for theoretically large emissions reductions. However, less research has been done regarding consumer preferences and behavioral responses to this vision of transportation of the future. In this paper we use choice experiment data collected from an online ride-hailing survey to quantify consumer preferences for these technologies. Our results suggest there are major barriers to consumers’ willing to ride in such vehicles. We find that respondents require large discounts to ride in driverless vehicles or to carpool with other passengers, even holding ride …

An Examination Of Homo Naledi Early Juveniles Recovered From The Rising Star Cave System, South Africa, Juliet K. Brophy, Debra R. Bolter, Marina Elliott, John Hawks, Lee R. Berger

Faculty Publications

Background: Six Homo naledi early juveniles were recovered from U.W. 101 (Dinaledi Chamber), U.W. 102 (Lesedi Chamber), and U.W. 110 in the Rising Star cave system. Aim: This paper develops the information for the H. naledi early juvenile life stage, as defined by a combination of deciduous and permanent dentition, and the eruption of the first permanent molar. Subjects and methods: The growing number of young individuals recovered from the Rising Star cave system allows us to gain a better understanding of their variation, or lack thereof, and provides a basis to estimate broad ranges for age at death of …

Human–Environment Interactions At Ta’Ab Nuk Na, A Submerged Maya Salt Works Site In Belize, Cheryl M. Foster, Heather Mckillop, E. Cory Sills

Faculty Publications

Sea-level rise and settlement are investigated at Ta’ab Nuk Na, an ancient Maya salt works in Belize, by examining samples from wooden posts and marine sediment. The samples included Post 145 of Building B and the Nunavut beam, along with marine sediment columns cut from beside both wooden posts. The sediment columns were sampled at 2 cm intervals. Loss-on ignition confirmed the presence of organic material. Identifying the organic content involved removing nonorganic material from the sediment and sorting the organic material under magnification. This procedure established that most of the organic material was red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle). Red mangroves …

Flooded Mangrove Landscapes Hide Ancient Maya Coastal Sites In Belize, Heather I. Mckillop

Faculty Publications

Evidence of ancient Maya exploitation of salt, other marine resources, settlement, and sea trade is hidden in flooded mangrove landscapes on the cays, mainland, and in shallow offshore locations on the south coast of Belize. This article includes a discussion of the coastal economy from the Middle Preclassic through the Postclassic periods (600 B.C.–A.D. 1500). Data from sites discovered and excavated since 1982 in the coastal area of the Port Honduras and Paynes Creek National Park support a model of coastal reliance on marine resources and tree crops. The need for a regular supply of coastal salt to inland cities …

Dpal-Bert: A Faster And Lighter Question Answering Model, Lirong Yin, Lei Wang, Zhuohang Cai, Siyu Lu, Ruiyang Wang, Ahmed Alsanad, Salman A. Alqahtani, Xiaobing Chen, Zhengtong Yin, Xiaolu Li, Wenfeng Zheng

Faculty Publications

Recent advancements in natural language processing have given rise to numerous pre-training language models in question-answering systems. However, with the constant evolution of algorithms, data, and computing power, the increasing size and complexity of these models have led to increased training costs and reduced efficiency. This study aims to minimize the inference time of such models while maintaining computational performance. It also proposes a novel Distillation model for PAL-BERT (DPAL-BERT), specifically, employs knowledge distillation, using the PAL-BERT model as the teacher model to train two student models: DPAL-BERT-Bi and DPAL-BERT-C. This research enhances the dataset through techniques such as masking, …

Convolution-Transformer For Image Feature Extraction, Lirong Yin, Lei Wang, Siyu Lu, Ruiyang Wang, Youshuai Yang, Bo Yang, Shan Liu, Ahmed Alsanad, Salman A. Alqahtani, Zhengtong Yin, Xiaolu Li, Xiaobing Chen, Wenfeng Zheng

Faculty Publications

This study addresses the limitations of Transformer models in image feature extraction, particularly their lack of inductive bias for visual structures. Compared to Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), the Transformers are more sensitive to different hyperparameters of optimizers, which leads to a lack of stability and slow convergence. To tackle these challenges, we propose the Convolution-based Efficient Transformer Image Feature Extraction Network (CEFormer) as an enhancement of the Transformer architecture. Our model incorporates E-Attention, depthwise separable convolution, and dilated convolution to introduce crucial inductive biases, such as translation invariance, locality, and scale invariance, into the Transformer framework. Additionally, we implement a …

Afbnet: A Lightweight Adaptive Feature Fusion Module For Super-Resolution Algorithms, Lirong Yin, Lei Wang, Siyu Lu, Ruiyang Wang, Haitao Ren, Ahmed Alsanad, Salman A. Alqahtani, Zhengtong Yin, Xiaolu Li, Wenfeng Zheng

Faculty Publications

At present, super-resolution algorithms are employed to tackle the challenge of low image resolution, but it is difficult to extract differentiated feature details based on various inputs, resulting in poor generalization ability. Given this situation, this study first analyzes the features of some feature extraction modules of the current super-resolution algorithm and then proposes an adaptive feature fusion block (AFB) for feature extraction. This module mainly comprises dynamic convolution, attention mechanism, and pixel-based gating mechanism. Combined with dynamic convolution with scale information, the network can extract more differentiated feature information. The introduction of a channel spatial attention mechanism combined with …

Demographic Change, Migration, And The African American Vowel System In Georgia, Jon Forrest, Margaret E. L. Renwick, Joseph A. Stanley, Lelia Glass

Faculty Publications

The theme of this volume is generational trends in language change, with an emphasis on the Baby Boomer to Gen X transition as an important period of time. Many studies have found sharp changes in vowel systems in communities after the Baby Boomer Generation on the East Coast (Thiel and Dinkin 2020) and in the Midwest (Nesbitt 2021). Though we know a great deal about the geographic consistency of the Baby Boomer to Gen X transition, in all of these cases, the focus has been on White speakers and regional varieties. Besides the general importance of including a breadth of …

A Corpus-Based Comparison Of Keywords And Themes From The Book Of Mormon And The Bible, Brett James Hashimoto, Joshua Cowley

Faculty Publications

The Book of Mormon has been studied for its thematic, literary, and theological content using almost exclusively qualitative methods (e.g., Turley, 2019; Morrill, 2017). However, scholars have conducted little analysis comparing it to the Bible, even though those who view it as scripture consider it directly comparable in purpose. (e.g., The Book of Mormon, 2015; McConkie, 1985). The present study applies quantitative linguistic analysis to statistically derive the distinctive language from the two volumes of scripture and identifies the key themes and language from the two books. To accomplish this, corpora of The King James Version of the Bible (66 …

From Three-Pillars To Three-Environments: Shifting The Paradigm Of Sustainability In Civil And Construction Engineering, Xiaomei Wang, Andrew South, Clifton Farnsworth, Brett James Hashimoto

Faculty Publications

This research explores the usage of sustainability in literature and presents ‘three environments’ for addressing sustainability in the Civil and Construction Engineering (CCE) disciplines. Scholars have increasingly studied sustainability and sustainable development across CCE disciplines as the importance of sustainability awareness and action in society has increased. However, the vastness of its conceptual breadth and depth in CCE research is difficult to holistically evaluate. As a result, CCE researchers often focus on specific aspects of sustainability applied to discrete contexts, or address sustainability in broad aspirational terms and guiding motivations. This research utilized a rigorous analytical corpus linguistics approach for …

Neurological Evidence For The Contextindependent Multisensorial Semantics Of Ideophones In Pastaza Kichwa: An Fnirs Study In The Ecuadorian Amazon, Dan Dewey, Jeffrey J. Green, Janis Nuckolls, Auna Nygaard, Tod D. Swanson

Faculty Publications

Ideophones – imitative words using the stream of speech to simulate/depict the rise and fall of sensory perceptions and emotions and temporal experiences of completiveness, instantaneousness, and repetitiveness – have been characterized as semantically empty and context dependent. The research reported here tested a simple schematic for the semantic categories of Pastaza Kichwa ideophones by tracking neurological responses to ideophones categorized as VISUAL, MOTION, and SOUND. Seventeen native speakers of Pastaza Kichwa listened to audio clips of ideophones extracted from sentential contexts. Subjects’ neural activity was assessed using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Results demonstrate that these posited semantic categories activate areas …

Movement, Economy, Orientation 20th Century Shifts In North American Language, Monica Nesbitt, Joseph A. Stanley, Margaret E. L. Renwick

Faculty Publications

How are regional varieties of English faring in the US?

Ample evidence shows that canonical regional variables are undergoing _____

• “reversal” in Cincinnati and Philadelphia (Strassel & Boberg 1996, Fruehwald 2017)

• “decline” and “fall” in Michigan (Rankinen et al. 2019, Nesbitt 2021)

• “rejection” and “retreat” in Raleigh (Dodsworth & Kohn 2012; Dodsworth & Benton 2017)

Nesbitt (2021: 359) observes that “[T]he Baby Boomer–Gen X transition appears to be a pivotal transition throughout the country [and] appears to be of great importance to North American dialects in general.”

What Are University Students Doing With Language?: A Proportional Description Of University Student Mode And Register Use, Brett James Hashimoto

Faculty Publications

The extent to which university students read, write, speak, and listen in a range of registers is not completely understood, but such descriptions could lead to better designed curriculum for English learners. The purpose of this study is to estimate the proportions of time American university students spend reading, writing, speaking, and listening in various registers. The present study combines diary and survey techniques to describe the language use behavior for 53 university students. The results indicated that nearly half of university student language use time is spent listening (49.5 %), followed by reading (20.7 %), writing (18.2 %), and …

Teaching Positive Psychology Lessons In An Intensive English Program, Carolee Rogers, Benjamin L. Mcmurry, Dan Dewey

Faculty Publications

This article investigates the effectiveness of positive psychology interventions (PPIs) in an intensive English program for non-matriculated university students. Interventions based on the PERMA model were implemented through weekly 65-minute lessons given during the first class of each week. These were followed by short daily activities during the rest of the week. Using positive psychology topics as the content, students concurrently engaged in language learning activities. Each participant was asked to complete a questionnaire at the end of the semester consisting of five open-ended questions relating to the PPIs, the lessons, the activities, the topics, and how they felt the …

Here-, There-, And Every Where-: Exploring The Role Of Pronominal Adverbs In Legal Language, David Chandler, Brett James Hashimoto

Faculty Publications

Many have claimed that pronominal adverbs, such as hereby, thereafter, and wherein, are a frequent, distinctive, and problematic in their use in legal language (Tiersma, 1999; Mellinkoff, 2004). The purpose of this study is to examine those claims empirically. In the present study, the prevalence of PAs in legal registers is compared to more general registers of contemporary American English to determine the extent to which these words are distinctly legal. The study will also explore why different types of PAs may be (in)frequent in specific legal registers to better understand their use. The frequency of PAs was extracted from …

Understanding The Role Of Standardized Exams In Second Language Programs, Troy L. Cox, Alan V. Brown, Margaret E. Malone

Faculty Publications

Standardized language tests are used for many purposes in pK-12 and higher education, including program admission and placement, certification of language attainment and proficiency, and graduation requirements. Despite the many standardized language tests that exist, many administrators and instructors possess limited understanding of how they are designed, what functions they fulfill, and how to interpret and use the results. The influx of AI in the language testing space has only exacerbated this problem. Key program stakeholders often rely on these tests to make pressure-filled and high-stakes decisions but may be doing so without understanding their limitations. However, the issue is …

Ai Use Is Growing, Paul Djupe

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Young Adults Are Shifting Away From Drinking - How About Denison?, Paul Djupe

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Digital Usage Of Indian Teleworkers In Home Settings: A Digital Inclusion Framework, Anindita Paul, Borchuluun Yadamsuren, Kim M. Thompson

Faculty Publications

This research focuses on ICT adoption and digital use by teleworkers operating from their homes during the pandemic in India. A two-phase mixed-method approach is used: Phase 1 involved in-depth interviews with three individuals during the pandemic, findings from which were used along with the Factors Affecting Digital Inclusion (FDI) model (Thompson & Paul, 2020) to develop the survey instrument for Phase 2. This survey was distributed to professionals via listservs, and the FDI model was subsequently utilized to analyze the survey responses. The study’s findings highlighted multiple factors related to digital inclusion among teleworkers that could impact work productivity. …

Ethnic-Racial Socialization Experiences Of Mexican American Youth, Katherine J. Bingham, Elizabeth A. Cutrer-Párraga, Timothy B. Smith

Faculty Publications

Research has shown that ethnic–racial socialization (ERS) predicts education and mental health outcomes for adolescents. However, limited research has evaluated the ERS experiences of Latinx students. The current study examined ERS experiences of Mexican American youth in four focus group interviews that were transcribed and analyzed at both the individual and group level using interpretive phenomenological analysis. Main themes included feeling like an outsider, navigating discrimination, encountering social/emotional difficulties, and achieving a positive identity. Each theme contained two to three subcategories that provide further insight into the Mexican Americans' ERS experiences. Participants reported within-group discrimination, motivation to disprove stereotypes, and …

Expression Of Customer (Dis)Satisfaction In Online Restaurant Reviews: The Relationship Between Adversative Connective Constructions And Star Ratings, Matthew J. Baker, Brett James Hashimoto

Faculty Publications

Online restaurant reviews contain expressions of customer expectations in prose as well as in star ratings that indicate overall customer satisfaction. In prose, one way customers communicate that expectations are or are not met is through a grammatical construction called adversative connectives (ACs) (i.e., constituents such as but, although, however, and even though). In the present study, we examine the relationship between star ratings and customers’ use of ACs by employing a combination of content analysis, mixed-effects models, and thematic analysis in a corpus of nearly 35,000 online reviews for restaurants located in the United States. The results reveal an …

Does Leaving Faith Mean Leaving Family? Longitudinal Associations Between Religious Identification And Parent-Child Relationships Across Adolescence And Emerging Adulthood, Justin J. Hendricks, Sam A. Hardy, Emily M. Taylor, David C. Dollahite

Faculty Publications

The present study investigated the parent-child relational repercussions of converting to religion, switching, or de-converting from religion. Qualitative research indicates that these religious changes may negatively affect parent-child relationship quality, however, few quantitative studies investigate this issue. Subsequently, we utilized structural equation modeling to test if changes in religious identification during adolescence and emerging adulthood predicted worse parent-child relationship quality using three waves of the National Study of Youth and Religion (N = 2,352). We found that deconversion between Waves 1–2 significantly predicted poorer parent-child relationship quality at Wave 2 and father-child relationship quality at Wave 3. Further, deconversion between …

Language Change At The Intersections Of Movement, Economy, And Orientation, Joseph A. Stanley, Margaret E. L. Renwick, Monica Nesbitt

Faculty Publications

A growing amount of research on North American English varieties shows that many sociolinguistic variables peaked among the Baby Boomer Generation (born approximately 1946–64). By “peak,” we mean that a linguistic phenomenon in one community has reached its point of greatest intensity and is maximally divergent from realizations of that same variable in most other North American communities. Similarly, we also find studies that describe a “cliff” beginning among Generation X (born approximately 1965–82) such that after generations of relative stability, local dialect features are lost. Nesbitt (2021, 359) observes that “the Baby Boomer–Gen X transition appears to be a …