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Master's Recital: 2014-04-24 – Rachelle Moss, mezzo-contralto

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall in partial fulfillment of the Master of Music (MM) degree.
Date: April 24, 2014
Creator: Moss, Rachelle
Object Type: Video
System: The UNT Digital Library

Master's Recital: 2014-02-09 – Cheuk Fai Chung, flute and piccolo

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall in partial fulfillment of the Master’s of Music degree.
Date: February 9, 2014
Creator: Chung, Cheuk Fai
Object Type: Video
System: The UNT Digital Library
An Implementation of Consensus Through Bluetooth Communication (open access)

An Implementation of Consensus Through Bluetooth Communication

This thesis provides an implementation of consensus of multi-agent networked systems. Consensus problem is an important issue of distributed computing and has various algorithms and applications in the field of electronical and computer science. The consensus requests all nodes of a network reach an agreement over a certain measurement. An algorithm of convergent consensus problem is implemented through a small network of Bluetooth communication in the thesis. The connections of the Bluetooth devices are wireless, and the device nodes of the network are driven by C++ software and Winsock API. The simulation results show that the implementation completes all the requirements of the distributed consensus algorithm.
Date: May 2014
Creator: Wang, Yinan
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Racial/ethnic Differences in Hospital Utilization for Cardiovascular-related Events: Evidence of a Survival and Recovery Advantage for Latinos? (open access)

Racial/ethnic Differences in Hospital Utilization for Cardiovascular-related Events: Evidence of a Survival and Recovery Advantage for Latinos?

Evidence continues to demonstrate that racial/ethnic minority groups experience a disproportionate burden of disease and mortality in cardiovascular-related diseases (CVDs). However, emerging evidence suggests a health advantage for Latinos despite a high risk profile. The current study explored the hospital utilization trends of Latino and non-Latino patients and examined the possibility of an advantage for Latinos within the context of CVD-related events with retrospective data collected over a 12-month period from a local safety-net hospital. Contrary to my hypotheses, there was no advantage for in-hospital mortality, length of stay or re-admission in Latinos compared to non-Latinos; rather, Latinos hospitalized for a CVD-related event had a significantly longer length of stay and had greater odds for re-admission when compared to non-Latinos. Despite data suggesting a general health advantage, Latinos may experience a relative disparity within the context of hospital utilization for CVD-related events. Findings have implications for understanding the hospital utilization trends of Latinos following a CVD-related event and suggest a call for action to advance understanding of Latino cardiovascular health.
Date: May 2014
Creator: García, James J.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Development of High Gain Ultraviolet Photo Detectors Based on Zinc Oxide Nanowires (open access)

Development of High Gain Ultraviolet Photo Detectors Based on Zinc Oxide Nanowires

Semiconductor nanowires acts as an emerging class of materials with great potential for applications in future electronic devices. Small size, large surface to volume ratio and high carrier mobility of nanowires make them potentially useful for electronic applications with high integration density. In this thesis, the focus was on the growth of high quality ZnO nanowires, fabrication of field effect transistors and UV- photodetectros based on them. Intrinsic nanowire parameters such as carrier concentration, field effect mobility and resistivity were measured by configuring nanowires as field effect transistors. The main contribution of this thesis is the development of a high gain UV photodetector. A single ZnO nanowire functioning as a UV photodetector showed promising results with an extremely high spectral responsivity of 120 kA/W at wavelength of 370 nm. This corresponds to high photoconductive gain of 2150. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest responsivity and gain reported so far, the previous values being responsivity=40 kA/W and gain=450. The enhanced photoconductive behavior is attributed to the presence of surface states that acts as hole traps which increase the life time of photogenerated electrons raising the photocurrent. This work provides the evidence of such solid states and preliminary …
Date: May 2014
Creator: Mallampati, Bhargav
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Thermally Stimulated Depolarization Current Evaluation of Molding Compounds (open access)

Thermally Stimulated Depolarization Current Evaluation of Molding Compounds

TSDC (thermally stimulated depolarization current) is one of the most important and popular technique for investigating electret materials. TSDC technique can indicate the magnitude of polarization and depolarization, relaxation time, charge-storage, glass transition, and activation energy. To fully investigate polarization and relaxation for pure epoxy and filled epoxy materials, a TSDC system was built and verified by the research. The article describes the building processes and verification of the TSDC system. TSDC, TSPC, and TWC tests data for epoxy and filled epoxy samples are presented in the article. To compare TSDC technique with other related techniques, DEA (dielectric analysis), DMA (dynamic mechanical analysis), and DSC (differential scanning calorimetry) tests are introduced.
Date: May 2014
Creator: Zhao, Shunli
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Family Structure and Marijuana Use Among Adolescents (open access)

Family Structure and Marijuana Use Among Adolescents

Family structure as a predictive variable of juvenile delinquency has been studied for the last hundred years. This relationship originated due to societal belief that divorce was detrimental to adolescents. Due to the changing societal roles in the United States, family structure has been changing. More children are growing up in non-intact families, such as single-parent households, households with stepparents, cohabitating families, and households without a parent present. To study the effect family structure has on juvenile delinquency, researchers have utilized social control theory, differential association, self-control theory and general strain theory to conceptualize variables to explain why family structure influences delinquent behavior. A review of previous literature on this topic indicates that living in intact households, which are households with two biological parents who are married, have, on average, the lowest rates of delinquency. This thesis investigates the relationship between family structure and lifetime marijuana use among eighth and tenth grade adolescents in the United States through the use of secondary data analysis of Monitoring the Future Study, 2012. The results provide support for the relationship between family structure and lifetime marijuana use.
Date: May 2014
Creator: Aguilar, Jamie M.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
“The Inevitable: Withdrawn” (open access)

“The Inevitable: Withdrawn”

The Inevitable: Withdrawn is a critical preface and collection of non-fiction writing: personal essay, lyric essay, fragments, and experimental forms. The work’s cohesive subject matter is the author’s European vacation directly following her divorce. Within the pieces, the author attempts to reconcile who she is when starting over and she begins to ask questions regarding the human condition: How do I learn to exhibit intimacy again, not just with romantic partners, but with also in a familial way with my father, and how does absence in these relationships affect my journey and how I write about it? How do I view, and remake myself, when finding my identity that was tied to another individual compromised? How does a body, both physical and belonging to me, and physical as text, take certain shapes to reflect my understanding? How do I define truth, and how do I interpret truth and authenticity in both experience and writing? How do I define and know the difference between belief and truth? And finally, how does narrative and language protect, or expose me? The Inevitable: Withdrawn considers debates regarding the definition of narrative in order to address a spectrum of non-fiction writing. The collection takes into …
Date: May 2014
Creator: Christy, Gwendolyn Anne
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Cross-cultural Textual Analysis of Western and South Korean Newspaper Coverage of North Korean Women Defectors and Victims of Human Trafficking (open access)

A Cross-cultural Textual Analysis of Western and South Korean Newspaper Coverage of North Korean Women Defectors and Victims of Human Trafficking

Trafficking women for sexual abuse has been a serious concern worldwide, particularly over the last two decades. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that illicit profits of human trafficking may be as high as $32 billion. However, the international media community has scarcely focused on North Korean women defectors and victims of human trafficking, despite the severity of the issue. More than two million North Koreans, predominantly women, have crossed borders to enter China from starvation. Among those women migrants, about 80% to 90% of them were abducted by traffickers at the border between North Korea and China, and the traffickers sold them to the Chinese sex industry or Chinese men who are unable to find a woman as a wife or a sex slave.This cross-cultural textual analysis examined South Korean and Western (U.S. and British) newspaper coverage of North Korean women as victims of human trafficking to discover similarities and differences in those countries’ news frames. The analysis has shown that politics was a crucial factor in the coverage of the issue. However, by generally failing to report on the fundamental causes of the trafficking, such as inequality between genders, both Western and South Korean newspapers perpetuated hegemonic masculinity …
Date: May 2014
Creator: Chong, Miyoung
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Intimacy of Death: Mahler’s Dramatic Narration in Kindertotenlieder (open access)

The Intimacy of Death: Mahler’s Dramatic Narration in Kindertotenlieder

There has been relatively little scholarship to date on Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder. The writings about this song cycle that do exist primarily focus on the disparate nature of the poems and justify Kindertotenlieder as a cycle by highlighting various musical connections between the songs, such as keys and motivic continuity. Mahler, however, has unified the cycle in a much more complex and sophisticated way. His familiarity with Wagner’s music and methods, and his mastery of the human voice and orchestral voices allowed him to weave a dramatic grief-laden narrative.
Date: May 2014
Creator: Strange, AnnaGrace
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Effects of Vegetation Structure and Canopy Exposure on Small-scale Variation in Atmospheric Deposition Inputs to a Mixed Conifer Forest in California (open access)

Effects of Vegetation Structure and Canopy Exposure on Small-scale Variation in Atmospheric Deposition Inputs to a Mixed Conifer Forest in California

Data on rates of atmospheric deposition is limited in many montane ecosystems, where high spatial variability in meteorological, topographic, and vegetation factors contributes to elevated atmospheric inputs and to the creation of deposition hotspots. Addressing the ecological consequences of increasing deposition in these areas will require a better understanding of surface controls influencing atmospheric deposition rates at both large and small-scales. The overarching objective of this thesis research was to understand the influence of vegetation structure and canopy exposure on small-scale patterns of atmospheric sulfate, nitrate, and chloride deposition inputs to a conifer forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains, California. Throughfall ion fluxes (i.e., ions delivered in water that pass from the forest canopy to the forest floor), bulk deposition (i.e., primarily wet deposition), and rainfall data were collected during the rainy period from October 2012 to May 2013. Throughfall SO42-, Cl-, and NO3- fluxes were measured beneath eight clusters of Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) trees (three trees per cluster) differing in tree size (i.e., diameter at breast height; DBH) and canopy exposure. In each cluster, a throughfall collector was placed 1-meter from the bole of an individual tree, for a total of 24 individual collectors. The position of each …
Date: May 2014
Creator: Griffith, Kereen
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Source Apportionment Analysis of Measured Volatile Organic Compounds in Corpus Christi, Texas (open access)

Source Apportionment Analysis of Measured Volatile Organic Compounds in Corpus Christi, Texas

Corpus Christi among of the largest industrialized coastal urban areas in Texas. The strategic location of the city along the Gulf of Mexico allows for many important industries and an international business to be located. The cluster of industries and businesses in the region contribute to the air pollution from emissions that are harmful to the environment and to the people living in and visiting the area. Volatile organic compounds (VOC) constitute an important class of pollutants measured in the area. The automated gas chromatography (Auto GC) data was collected from Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and source apportionment analysis was conducted on this data to identify key sources of VOC affecting this study region. EPA PMF 3.0 was employed in this sources apportionment study of measured VOC concentration during 2005 - 2012 in Corpus Christi, Texas. The study identified nine optimal factors (Source) that could explain the concentration of VOC at two urbane monitoring sites in the study region. Natural gas was found to be the largest contributor of VOC in the area, followed by gasoline and vehicular exhaust. Diesel was the third highest contributor with emissions from manufacturing and combustion processes. Refineries gases and evaporative fugitive emissions …
Date: May 2014
Creator: Abood, Ahmed T.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Daily-collected Sleep Diaries Compared to Weekly-collected Sleep Diaries Via Actigraph Concordance (open access)

Daily-collected Sleep Diaries Compared to Weekly-collected Sleep Diaries Via Actigraph Concordance

Both sleep diaries and actigraphy have been recommended to assess sleep in research and clinical settings. Investigators have traditionally used sleep diaries that were completed daily by participants and collected weekly but have recently begun using sleep diaries that are both completed and collected daily. No research had previously assessed the agreement between daily-collected sleep diaries and actigraph data over one week. Undergraduate students were randomly assigned to use daily- or weekly-collected sleep diaries. Sleep parameters obtained from these measures were compared to each other via concordance with concurrent actigraph data. It was hypothesized that daily-collected sleep diaries would have greater concordance with actigraphy than weekly-collected sleep diaries. Results indicated that daily-collected sleep diaries provided more reliable data than weekly-collected sleep diaries, but the differences were not statistically significant. Additional aims examined self-reported sleep diary adherence, the participation day number, and day of the week. There were trends for the Daily group to have better adherence. Overall concordance did not change based on the day number or day of the week. Both sleep diaries yield comparable sleep parameter data, suggesting that clinicians and researchers can use either method to estimate sleep parameters.
Date: May 2014
Creator: Francetich, Jade M.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Physiological and Psychological Effects of an Acute Stressor: Comparing Coping Strategies Among Very Physically Active and Less Active Adults (open access)

Physiological and Psychological Effects of an Acute Stressor: Comparing Coping Strategies Among Very Physically Active and Less Active Adults

The purpose of this study was to examine whether physical activity status of healthy adult males (N = 59) while in a coping strategy condition (association, disassociation, or control) influences psychophysiological responses to an acute painful stimulus. Measures of pain tolerance, state anxiety, body awareness, and salivary cortisol were investigated. Results indicated no significant differences between physical activity groups for pain tolerance, stress responses (i.e., self-reported state anxiety and cortisol levels), or body awareness. Though, those who indicated using a disassociation coping technique during the exit interview tolerated the acute, surface pain longer. More research is required to further understand the effects of physical activity and coping strategies on pain perception and psychophysiological responses.
Date: May 2014
Creator: Brandt, Grace A.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Underground Men: Alternative Masculinities and the Politics of Performance in African American Literature and Culture (open access)

Underground Men: Alternative Masculinities and the Politics of Performance in African American Literature and Culture

This study explores intersections between performance, race and masculinity within a variety of expressive cultural contexts during and after the African American Civil Rights Movement. I maintain that the work of James Baldwin is best situated to help us navigate this cross section, as his fiction and cultural criticism focus heavily on the stage in all its incarnations as a space for negotiating the possibilities and limits of expressive culture in combating harmful racial narratives imposed upon black men in America. My thesis begins with a close reading of the performers populating his story collection Going to Meet the Man (1965) before broadening my scope in the following chapters to include analyses of the diametric masculinities in the world of professional boxing and the black roots of the American punk movement. Engaging with theorists like Judith Butler, bell hooks and Paul Gilroy, Underground Men attempts to put these seemingly disparate corners of American life into a dynamic conversation that broadens our understanding through a novel application of critical race, gender and performance theories. Baldwin and his orbiting criticism remain the hub of my investigation throughout, and I use his template of black genius performance outlined in works like Tell Me …
Date: May 2014
Creator: Gray, Jezy J.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Product Management: the Decision Process (open access)

Product Management: the Decision Process

This thesis builds upon several theoretical ideas. The first of which is the anthropologists’ transition into the corporate context and the particular type of skills and value that someone with anthropological training can bring to operations management. As anthropology is relatively new and unfamiliar to corporations, anthropologists are often hired without explicit knowledge of how they will address organizational problems. Frequently, this incremental relationship building between the anthropologist and the organization leads to shifting project goals which come only after the anthropologist is able to reveal initial findings to someone who has the power to grant the anthropologist further access to employees and company information. This refocusing comes from a building of trust that is crucially important for the anthropologist’s ability to identify social issues, which is the anthropologist’s expertise. In order to develop the context of this project the following paragraphs will explain in more detail and expand into particular cases in which anthropologists have helped organizations to identify and manage social, organizational problems. As a relationship needs to be built between the anthropologist and the organization, here I argue that there needs to be continual relationship building between anthropological, design, and management theories to optimally solve organizational problems.
Date: May 2014
Creator: Pahl, Shane D.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Ddos Defense Against Botnets in the Mobile Cloud (open access)

Ddos Defense Against Botnets in the Mobile Cloud

Mobile phone advancements and ubiquitous internet connectivity are resulting in ever expanding possibilities in the application of smart phones. Users of mobile phones are now capable of hosting server applications from their personal devices. Whether providing services individually or in an ad hoc network setting the devices are currently not configured for defending against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. These attacks, often launched from a botnet, have existed in the space of personal computing for decades but recently have begun showing up on mobile devices. Research is done first into the required steps to develop a potential botnet on the Android platform. This includes testing for the amount of malicious traffic an Android phone would be capable of generating for a DDoS attack. On the other end of the spectrum is the need of mobile devices running networked applications to develop security against DDoS attacks. For this mobile, phones are setup, with web servers running Apache to simulate users running internet connected applications for either local ad hoc networks or serving to the internet. Testing is done for the viability of using commonly available modules developed for Apache and intended for servers as well as finding baseline capabilities of …
Date: May 2014
Creator: Jensen, David
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Homeless Abjection and the Uncanny “Place” of the National Imagination (open access)

Homeless Abjection and the Uncanny “Place” of the National Imagination

This project examines the effects of the homeless body and the threat of homelessness on constructing a national imaginary that relies on the trope of locatability for recognition as a citizen-subject. The thesis argues that homelessness, the oft-figured specter of public space, functions as bodies that are “pushed out” as citizen-subjects due to their inability maintain both discursive and material location. I argue that figures of “home” rely on the ever-present threat of dislocation to maintain a privileged position as the location of the consuming citizen-subject. That is, the presence of the dislocated homeless body haunts the discursive and material construction of home and its inhabitants. Homeless then becomes the uncanny inverse of home, functioning as an abjection that reifies home “place” as an arbiter of recognition in a neoliberal national imaginary. The chapters proceed to examine what some consider homeless “homes,” focusing on the reduction of the homeless condition to a place of inhabitance, or the lack thereof. This attempt to locate the homeless body becomes a symptom of the desire for recognition as a placed body. The thesis ends on a note of political possibility, figuring the uncanny as a rupture that evacuates language of signification and opens …
Date: May 2014
Creator: Sloss, Eric J.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Further Evaluation of Blocked Trials to Teach Intraverbal Conditional Discriminations: Effects of Criterion-level Probes (open access)

Further Evaluation of Blocked Trials to Teach Intraverbal Conditional Discriminations: Effects of Criterion-level Probes

Individuals with autism often have deficient intraverbal repertoires. Previous research has found success in using a blocked trials procedure to facilitate discrimination training. A previous study (unpublished) from our laboratory extended this procedure to intraverbal training. The current study continued this line of research by exploring the outcomes of probing the criterion performance more frequently. Three children with autism, ages 7-13, participated. Eight question pairs were taught. One question was presented repeatedly until a specified number of consecutive correct responses occurred, then the other question was presented. Contingent on specific mastery criteria, the trial blocks were faded into smaller blocks until the questions were presented in quasi-random order. Between each step, a criterion probe was conducted to determine if further steps were necessary. The procedure has been successful for two of the three participants. Criterion probe performance showed that not all teaching steps were needed every time. The procedure may have facilitated acquisition over time, because the number of trials to mastery generally decreased over successive targets.
Date: May 2014
Creator: Haggar, Jennifer Lynn
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Identifying Opportunities for the Revitalization of Downtown Bloomsburg (open access)

Identifying Opportunities for the Revitalization of Downtown Bloomsburg

American downtowns were once the place to see and be seen, but the introduction of the shopping mall in the late 1950s challenged this notion and gave the American consumer a different place to spend their time and money. The prevalence of shopping malls has slowly been declining across the country since the beginning of this century, leaving room in the American retail landscape for downtowns to reclaim their status as community and retail centers. Towns across the U.S. are turning to national and local organizations to assist them in revitalizing their downtown districts. Downtown Bloomsburg, Inc. (DBI), a non-profit organization located in the small town of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, has been working since 2006 to revitalize its town’s downtown and main street area. The unique findings presented here were derived from a four month long ethnographic study of downtown Bloomsburg merchants and shoppers and are meant to be used by DBI as a supplemental guide for further revitalization of the town.
Date: May 2014
Creator: Schlieder, Victoria Mae
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Design and Application of a New Planar Balun (open access)

Design and Application of a New Planar Balun

The baluns are the key components in balanced circuits such balanced mixers, frequency multipliers, push–pull amplifiers, and antennas. Most of these applications have become more integrated which demands the baluns to be in compact size and low cost. In this thesis, a new approach about the design of planar balun is presented where the 4-port symmetrical network with one port terminated by open circuit is first analyzed by using even- and odd-mode excitations. With full design equations, the proposed balun presents perfect balanced output and good input matching and the measurement results make a good agreement with the simulations. Second, Yagi-Uda antenna is also introduced as an entry to fully understand the quasi-Yagi antenna. Both of the antennas have the same design requirements and present the radiation properties. The arrangement of the antenna’s elements and the end-fire radiation property of the antenna have been presented. Finally, the quasi-Yagi antenna is used as an application of the balun where the proposed balun is employed to feed a quasi-Yagi antenna. The antenna is working in the S-band radio frequency and achieves a measured 36% fractional bandwidth for return loss less than -10 dB. The antenna demonstrates a good agreement between its measurement …
Date: May 2014
Creator: Mohamed, Younes
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Lipodystrophy, Body Image and Depression in Hiv Positive Black Women (open access)

Lipodystrophy, Body Image and Depression in Hiv Positive Black Women

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) seropositive men on highly active antiretroviral therapy treatment (HAART) who experience lipodystrophy syndrome (LD), a side effect of HAART, rate themselves as more depressed than those who did not experience LD(Crane et al., 2008). Furthermore, men who rated their LD symptoms as more severe also scored higher on depression measures than men who experienced less severe symptoms. It is unknown these findings can be generalized to other groups of HIV positive individuals. The current study seeks to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the associations between LD, body image, and depressive symptoms in an archival sample of HIV positive Black women. This study aims to describe the body changes associated with HAART in a Black female sample and explore the relationships between LD, body image, depression, and quality of life. Findings supported past research indicating a correlation between depression and poor body image but did not indicate that body image quality of life moderated the relationship between perceived body changes and depression. Results expanded on the literature by indicating that perceived body changes may be more distressing to Black women with HIV than objective changes. Lastly, findings suggested that Black women may have inaccurate …
Date: May 2014
Creator: Carr, Jarice N.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Opening Doors for Excellent Maternal Health Services: Perceptions Regarding Maternal Health in Rural Tanzania (open access)

Opening Doors for Excellent Maternal Health Services: Perceptions Regarding Maternal Health in Rural Tanzania

The worldwide maternal mortality rate is excessive. Developing countries such as Tanzania experience the highest maternal mortality rates. The continued exploration of issues to create ease of access for women to quality maternal health care is a significant concern. A central strategy for reducing maternal mortality is that every birth be attended by a skilled birth attendant, therefore special attention was placed on motivations and factors that might lead to an increased utilization of health facilities. This qualitative study assessed the perceptions of local population concerning maternal health services and their recommendations for improved quality of care. The study was conducted in the Karatu District of Tanzania and gathered data through 66 in-depth interviews with participants from 20 villages. The following components were identified as essential for perceived quality care: medical professionals that demonstrate a caring attitude and share information about procedures; a supportive and nurturing environment during labor and delivery; meaningful and informative maternal health education for the entire community; promotion of men’s involvement as an essential part of the system of maternal health; knowledgeable, skilled medical staff with supplies and equipment needed for a safe delivery. By providing these elements, the community will gain trust in health facilities …
Date: May 2014
Creator: McLendon, Pamela Ann
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Shall We Dance? Teaching Parents the Communication Dance to Enhance Generalized Communication in Their Children (open access)

Shall We Dance? Teaching Parents the Communication Dance to Enhance Generalized Communication in Their Children

Children diagnosed with autism exhibit deficits in communication that impact their ability to control their immediate environment. Recent research on mand training has been criticized for producing a limited number of mand topographies over a long span of time with limited generalization to novel environments. There is a body of research, however, that successfully establishes larger repertoires. Training parents as change agents may mediate generalization by teaching under naturally maintaining contingencies. Additional effects of parent training may reduce parent reports of stress, increase favorable quality of parent-child interactions, and increase reports of parental self-efficacy. The current study evaluated the effects of a generalized training framework to teach parents how to target generalized mands and expand their child’s communicative topographies. The effects of the training were evaluated using a non-concurrent multiple baseline across participants and skills. Results indicated that parents were able to effectively teach their child to mand for a variety of items and events and to substantially increase the number of different mand topographies and expand the topographies the child emitted. Parents were observed to have higher overall confidence and lower overall stress following intervention. The current study builds on previous research on generalized teaching strategies for parents that …
Date: May 2014
Creator: Baker, Jacqueline R.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library