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The Solo Piano Works of John Corigliano: Etude Fantasy (1976) and Fantasia on an Ostinato (1985) (open access)

The Solo Piano Works of John Corigliano: Etude Fantasy (1976) and Fantasia on an Ostinato (1985)

John Corigliano (b. 1938) is a contemporary American composer who has in the last twenty years established himself as a composer whose versatility and accessibility are appreciated by a wide range of audiences. He has labeled himself an eclectic composer who unashamedly borrows from other musical styles and periods in an effort to create works that appeal to a variety of listeners. He has been mentioned along with George Rochberg, George Crumb, and Jacob Druckman as an advocate of the post-modern movement in contemporary American music, a trend that has been crucial to the development of contemporary concert music. The purpose of this study is to examine the two solo piano works of Corigliano in terms of style, structure, and musical influences. The Etude Fani-agy (197 6) is a set of five etudes, performed without pause. The etudes are unified through an elaborate use of thematic transformation in which a row-like idea generates most of the material. The keyboard writing is varied and dramatic, with similarities to Debussy, Bartok, Prokofiev, and Copland. Fantasia on an Qstinato (1985), commissioned for the van Cliburn International Piano Competition, is an atmospheric tone poem that transforms the theme from Beethoven's Symphony no« 7 (second …
Date: August 1990
Creator: Simms, Beverley
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Songs of Giacomo Puccini: An Analytical Study of His Style and Self-borrowing (open access)

The Songs of Giacomo Puccini: An Analytical Study of His Style and Self-borrowing

The songs of Puccini provide another approach to understanding the composer's musical development. The objective of the study is twofold; first to provide a discussion of the musical style of Puccini's songs; and second, to show how Puccini utilized and integrated the preexistent material into the operas. The songs are grouped and characterized in three stylistic periods. In each period, Puccini was concerned with different issues in text setting. They anticipated or corresponded to the musical style of his operas, and this is evident by his use of the earlier songs in the later operas. Three examples of such cases are examined. The details involved in the transformation of self-borrowing are illustrated in terms of recomposition, expansion of the vocal line and orchestration. Each case illustrates the textual and/or musical consideration by Puccini of the original source for the new dramatic context of the opera. The borrowed material, often incorporated with new themes and expressive orchestration, blooms as an effective dramatic piece of music in his operas. In addition to the lecture recital, based on the dissertation and given on June 23, 1997, three other public recitals were performed. The first, on February 27, 1989, included works of Schubert, Brahms, …
Date: August 1997
Creator: Kim, Soo Hong
System: The UNT Digital Library
Parenting Stress in Mexican American and Caucasian Parents of Children with ADHD (open access)

Parenting Stress in Mexican American and Caucasian Parents of Children with ADHD

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether differences exist between reports of parental stress in Mexican American and Caucasian mothers of children with ADHD. A second purpose was to examine whether there were child and family characteristics that made unique contributions to levels of parenting stress in Mexican American parents of children with ADHD. A third purpose was to examine the role that level of acculturation plays in the Mexican American mothers' reports of stress. Dependent measures used in this study include the Parenting Stress Index (PSI) and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL).
Date: August 1998
Creator: Cleveland, Jennifer
System: The UNT Digital Library
Perceptions of Social Support among Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Pre- and Post-Parent Training (open access)

Perceptions of Social Support among Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Pre- and Post-Parent Training

The literature demonstrates that children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) often experience peer rejection as a result of their difficulties with interpersonal interactions. The manner in which children with ADHD process social information and the extent to which social difficulties may adversely impact these children has remained unclear. In the first part of the study, the perceptions of social support between boys (ages 7 to 11 years) with and without ADHD were compared. An analysis of variance procedure (ANOVA) was performed and children with ADHD were found to perceive significantly lower levels of social support from their classmates than normal peers at pretreatment. The groups did not differ significantly with regard to perceptions of parent, teacher, and close friend support. In the second part of the study, the role of ADHD parent training and its effectiveness in decreasing problem-behaviors, ameliorating social problems, and enhancing perceptions of social support was examined. Repeated measures MANOVAs revealed a significant rater (mother and teacher) by time (pretreatment and posttreatment) interaction effect for total behavior problems, externalizing behavior problems, internalizing behavior problems, and social problems. On each scale, mothers reported more behavior problems than teachers at pretreatment, but fewer problems than teachers at posttreatment …
Date: August 1994
Creator: Askins, Martha Ann
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Effect of Relationship Support and Parenting Style on Externalizing and Internalizing Behaviors of Children with ADHD (open access)

The Effect of Relationship Support and Parenting Style on Externalizing and Internalizing Behaviors of Children with ADHD

Influences between quality of intimate heterosexual relationships, parenting style, and externalizing and internalizing behavior problems of children with Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) were examined in a sample of intact and single parent families. The perspective on marital quality was expanded to include an examination of intimate adult relationships within single parent households. Associations between the quality of custodial parents' serious dating and/or cohabiting relationships, parenting style and the behavior problems of children with ADHD were studied. Results from this study found tentative support for previous findings that family functioning may mediate the development of conduct disorders among children with ADHD.
Date: August 1995
Creator: Walker, Frances (Frances Ann)
System: The UNT Digital Library
MMPI-2 Patterns of Adults with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (open access)

MMPI-2 Patterns of Adults with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Recent literature suggests that not only does Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD/ADD) persist into adulthood, but it can also be accompanied by personality characteristics which cause emotional difficulties. In fact, adults diagnosed with ADHD can present with a profusion of difficulties. Several constructs appear to accumulate dynamically throughout development to place the adult with ADHD at risk for multiple emotional problems. These interwoven influences include familial characteristics, childhood emotional and academic difficulties, and inadequate coping skills to respond to adulthood pressures. This document, first, describes a developmental model for conceptualizing negative trajectories leading to nonadaptive coping and psychopathology and identifies personality factors of adults diagnosed with ADHD. This model provides clinicians and researchers with a better understanding of the complexity and challenges of adulthood ADHD in order to aid in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. The purpose of this study is to examine personality factors common to adults diagnosed with ADHD and compares these characteristics with a group of adults diagnosed with a depressive disorder. Adults responding to a community advertisement who provided documentation of the diagnosis of Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder were administered the MMPI-2. This ADHD group was compared with MMPI-2 profiles of a group of adults diagnosed with Major Depressive …
Date: August 1998
Creator: Campbell, Catherine Elaine
System: The UNT Digital Library
Structured Child and Parent Groups with ADHD Children: Evaluation of Varying Levels of Parent Involvement (open access)

Structured Child and Parent Groups with ADHD Children: Evaluation of Varying Levels of Parent Involvement

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most commonly diagnosed disorders of childhood. This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of combined parent training and structured group therapy with children diagnosed with ADHD. The study sought to evaluate the amount of parent training needed to lead to significant changes in children and parents. Families were assigned to a wait-list control condition or to one of two parent treatment conditions: a complete parent group or a handout-only group. Children participated in a seven session social skills and behavior management group. The treatments were designed to concurrently enhance skills of both parents and children. Dependent measures assessed change in the following three areas: (1) child symptomatic behaviors, (2) parental attitudes, and (3) parental behaviors. Results showed that the full parent group led to greater levels of improvement in both child behavior problems and parental feelings of stress and control. The full parent group also led to greater consistency in parenting methods. Findings in the study are discussed in the context of the parent-child coercive cycle model.
Date: August 1999
Creator: Driskill, Julie D. (Julie Diane)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Deterministic Brownian Motion (open access)

Deterministic Brownian Motion

The goal of this thesis is to contribute to the ambitious program of the foundation of developing statistical physics using chaos. We build a deterministic model of Brownian motion and provide a microscpoic derivation of the Fokker-Planck equation. Since the Brownian motion of a particle is the result of the competing processes of diffusion and dissipation, we create a model where both diffusion and dissipation originate from the same deterministic mechanism - the deterministic interaction of that particle with its environment. We show that standard diffusion which is the basis of the Fokker-Planck equation rests on the Central Limit Theorem, and, consequently, on the possibility of deriving it from a deterministic process with a quickly decaying correlation function. The sensitive dependence on initial conditions, one of the defining properties of chaos insures this rapid decay. We carefully address the problem of deriving dissipation from the interaction of a particle with a fully deterministic nonlinear bath, that we term the booster. We show that the solution of this problem essentially rests on the linear response of a booster to an external perturbation. This raises a long-standing problem concerned with Kubo's Linear Response Theory and the strong criticism against it by van …
Date: August 1993
Creator: Trefán, György
System: The UNT Digital Library