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Attention and Metacognition in the Elaborated Intrusion Theory of Desire
The elaborated intrusion (EI) theory of desire is a cognitive model that describes the processes involved in craving as intrusive thoughts that are elaborated upon leading to dissonance when desires are not met. While the theory is based on a wide body of research, certain theoretical predictions have not been fully examined. Specifically, EI theory argues that mental imagery has a central role in craving, and predicts that attempts to suppress substance-related intrusive thoughts and mental imagery is related to increased craving. Further, EI theory suggests that elaboration of craving imagery is related to attention and working memory processes, however, there are questions about whether differential performance in these domains is related to craving. The current study examined the relationship between attention/working memory performance and alcohol craving in a sample of 119 young adult males. Additionally, metacognition was examined to clarify the phenomenological aspects of craving within EI theory. Attention and working memory performance did not significantly predict intrusive thought and mental imagery elaboration. Individuals with high craving reported significantly higher levels of anxiety, thought suppression, and greater strength and frequency of craving-related mental imagery. They were also more likely to try to control their own thoughts and make negative …
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Yates, Robert D., III
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Ab Initio and Density Functional Investigation of the Conformer Manifold of Melatonin and a Proposal for a Simple Dft-based Diagnostic for Nondynamical Correlation
In this work we address two problems in computational chemistry relevant to biomolecular modeling. In the first project, we consider the conformer space of melatonin as a a representative example of “real-life” flexible biomolecules. Geometries for all 52 unique conformers are optimized using spin-component scaled MP2, and then relative energies are obtained at the CCSD (T) level near the complete basis set limit. These are then used to validate a variety of DFT methods with and without empirical dispersion corrections, as well as some lower-level ab initio methods. Basis set convergence is found to be relatively slow due to internal C-H…O and C-H…N contacts. Absent dispersion corrections, many DFT functionals will transpose the two lowest conformers. Dispersion corrections resolve the problem for most functionals. Double hybrids yield particularly good performance, as does MP2.5. In the second project, we propose a simple DFT-based diagnostic for nondynamical correlation effects. Aλ= (1-TAE [ΧλC]/TAE[XC])/λ where TAE is the total atomization energy, XC the “pure” DFT exchange-correlation functional, and ΧλC the corresponding hybrid with 100λ% HF-type exchange. The diagnostic is a good predictor for sensitivity of energetics to the level of theory, unlike most of the wavefunction-based diagnostics. For GGA functionals, Aλ values approaching unity …
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Fogueri, Uma
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Accessing the Power of Aesthetics in Human-computer Interaction
In information systems design there are two schools of thought about what factors are necessary to create a successful information system. The first, conventional view holds that system performance is a key, so that efficiency characteristics such as system usability and task completion time are primary concerns of system designers. The second, emerging view holds that the visual design is also the key, so that visual interface characteristics such as visual appeal, in addition to efficiency characteristics, are critical concerns of designers. This view contends that visual design enhances system use. Thus, this work examines the effects of visual design on computer systems. Visual design exerts its influence on systems through two mechanisms: it evokes affective responses from IT users, such as arousal and pleasure and it influences individuals’ cognitive assessments of systems. Given that both affective and cognitive reactions are significant antecedents of user behaviors in the IT realm, it is no surprise that visual design plays a critical role in information system success. Human-computer-interaction literature indicates that visual aesthetics positively influences such information success factors as usability, online trust, user satisfaction, flow experience, and so on. Although academic research has introduced visual design into the Information Systems (IS) …
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Chenyan, Xu
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Acculturation and Feminist Endorsement on Control of Health and Health Behaviors in Hispanic Females
Hispanic women are the fastest growing population in the United States. Thus, it is important to explore health disparities that affect this population and better understand potential causes. Several explanations have been proposed for disparities that exist including turning to cultural alternatives rather than conventional medicine, low numbers of health insurance enrollments among Hispanics, and acculturation. However, little attention has been given to explanations that take into account the unique experiences of Hispanic women. The present study explored these experiences through investigation of endorsement of feminist attitudes (e.g., gender role adherence and beliefs that men and women should be treated equally in society) and level of acculturation. Undergraduate Hispanic women (18-24 years of age, M = 20.25, SD = 1.51) at the University of North Texas completed measures including the Multidimensional Health Questionnaire, the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-II, and the Liberal Feminist Attitude and Ideology Scale. Although results indicate that acculturation was not significant in the sample, feminist endorsement was found to be positively correlated with health-esteem, health-efficacy, and internal-health locus of control. Limitations and recommended directions for future research are explored.
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Garner, Ashley Nicole
System:
The UNT Digital Library
An Analysis of the Value-altering Effect of Motivating Operations
Motivating operations (MOs) may affect behavior in two ways; A) an MO momentarily alters the frequency of behavior for which a particular consequence has served as reinforcement (evocative-effect) and B) an MO momentarily alters the behavioral effects of the relevant consequence (value-altering effect). Many studies have empirically demonstrated the evocative function of MOs, however, few if any studies have attempted to systematically manipulate and measure the value-altering effect. The focus of this study was to investigate the value-altering effect by measuring choice and response allocation across two alternative tasks. Participants were two female girls diagnosed with autism. During conditioning sessions, experimenters created a history for the children in which clicking on a moving square on a computer monitor produced a small piece of edible. Prior to some conditions, the participants were allowed 5 min of free-access to the edibles, and in other sessions, access to edibles prior to session was restricted. During these sessions, the square was either red or blue depending on the condition type (pre-access or restricted-access). During probe sessions, both colored squares were concurrently available and participants were allowed to allocate their responding to whichever square they chose. One participant preferred the square associated with restricted-access, which …
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Devine, Bailey
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Social Exclusion and Green Consumption
Social exclusion has garnered much attention from researchers across the social sciences, especially among social psychologists. However, given the fact that social relationships and consumption are two of the central activities in daily life, there is surprisingly little research on the impact of social connection threats within the realm of consumer behavior. This study examines the effect of social exclusion on proenvironmental behavior and green consumption. More precisely, the objectives of this study are threefold. The first objective is to examine whether the findings in social psychology literature on how excluded individuals respond to exclusion when they are exposed to proenvironmental consumption behavior. The second objective of this research is to find the underlying mechanism and to rule out some of the possible explanations (e.g., mood) for this effect. The final objective of this study is to establish some of the boundary conditions (individual differences and situational factors) for the proposed effect. The hypotheses of this study were developed based on two main theoretical bases borrowed from social psychology literature: empathy-altruism hypothesis (Batson 1991) and social reconnection hypothesis (Maner et al. 2007). Overall, it was proposed that while social exclusion decreases individuals’ inclination to engage in proenvironmental activities, socially excluded …
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Naderi, Iman
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Technology-enhanced Classroom Environments and English Language Acquisition Among Native Spanish-speaking, English Language Learners in the Preschool and Elementary Classroom
This qualitative study addressed the question: What are the perceptions of preschool and elementary bilingual and ESL teachers on how technology-enhanced classroom environments support native Spanish-speaking English language learners in the acquisition of English as a second language? With the support of six school districts representing three different regions and 15 schools in Texas, this research investigated technology-enhanced learning environments and the influence of emerging technologies on language acquisition by focusing on classroom interactions and learner engagement in preschool and elementary settings. Forty-six teachers completed the self-identified online questionnaire and from that initial group of participants, 10 were chosen for the face-to-face semi-structured interviews. A two-cycle progressive refinement coding technique was used for the analysis of the teacher interviews. In Vivo coding was selected for the first-cycle coding methodology to study teacher perspectives using their direct language. For the second-cycle methodology, focus coding was chosen as a continuation of the analytical process examining the developing patterns resulting in the initial codes being grouped to form salient categories. This process of reanalyzing and reorganizing coded data led to the creation of four emergent themes and in the views of the teachers interviewed describes how emerging technologies influences English language acquisition. The …
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Miller, Gary
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Wanted: an Exploration of Journalism Skills Acquired Through Student Media Experiences
Collegiate newsrooms serve two functions: to provide news and information to their campuses and to provide hands-on career preparation for student journalists. Student media professionals face having to do the latter in a way that keeps up with changing demands on entry-level employees, influenced by evolving technology and role consolidation within professional media. This study provides perspective from recent graduates with student media experience on the skills they felt most confident in upon graduating, where they gained those skills, and how they feel their student media experiences prepared them for the workplace. Using Everett Rogers’ theory of innovation diffusion to frame the issue, results show that student media professionals must recognize their roles as the change agent in shaping and pushing the opportunities to develop digital skills expected of entry-level journalists.
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Francesco, Beth
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Internet Health Information and Patient-health Professional Relationship
The purpose of this study was to investigate patient use and presentation of Internet health information and its effect on patient-health professional relationship from a sample of residents at active adult communities in Texas. Five sites were used to recruit the 260 participants between November 2012 and January 2013. The data were received using a self-administered survey. Using Cronbach’s alpha, logistic regression and regression analysis through SAS, the data revealed that older respondents are less likely to discuss web-based information with health professionals. In addition, logistic regression analysis indicated that four of the variables, IHI Sharing, educational status (bachelor degree), marital status (married), and perceived health status (excellent and very good health) predicted varied of the 20 indicators making up the patient-health professional relationship scale. Further studies are needed to enhance this research.
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Williams, TimMarie Chloe’ Uvonne
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Impact of Standards-based Report Cards on Reading Development of Primary Grade Students
The purpose of this mixed-method study was to explore the instructional changes in first grade classrooms and reading progress of first grade students in relation to implementation of standards-based report cards (SBRC). The goal of this study, conducted in a suburban Texas school district, was to determine whether there was a statistically significant difference in reading progress between students enrolled in first grade classrooms in which traditional report cards were used in comparison to comparable classrooms in which SBRCs were used. Additionally, the instructional practices of teachers were examined to determine the types of changes that took place as the district moved from traditional report cards to SBRCs. A total of 709 students and 15 teachers were involved in the study. The study revealed that there was no statistically significant difference between the reading growth of students assessed in SBRC classrooms and those assessed with traditional report cards. There were, however, significant differences in instructional practices employed by teachers in SBRC classrooms. These changes in practice included instructing with a greater degree of focus on specific objectives to be taught, more closely following the district’s scope and sequence, greater communication regarding the grading criteria and methods used for reporting progress, …
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Newell, Suzanne Payne
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Impact of Professional Development on Student Achievement As Measured by Math and Science Curriculum-based Assessments
The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of teacher professional development on student achievement measured by scores on curriculum-based assessments, CBAs. The participants in the study included 260 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade math and science teachers. Teacher participation in professional development courses was collected for curriculum, instruction, differentiation, assessment, technology integration, and continuous improvement credit types. Achievement data for 8,454 students was used: 2,883 in 3rd grade, 2,752 in 4th grade, and 2,819 in 5th grade. The dependent variable of student achievement was dichotomized at the median: half of the student participants scored above the median and half of the students scored at and below the median. A series of logistic regression models were fit to the data that included examining all main effects and interaction terms among all variables to determine the best fitting model. The results of this study indicate that for 4th grade science, teacher professional development participation in curriculum, instruction, and differentiation credit strands increased the chances for students to score above the district median on CBAs. The larger number of professional development hours in a variety of credit strands had a negative impact on student achievement in 4th grade science. In …
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Parish, Deidre A.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Multilingual Word Sense Disambiguation Using Wikipedia
Ambiguity is inherent to human language. In particular, word sense ambiguity is prevalent in all natural languages, with a large number of the words in any given language carrying more than one meaning. Word sense disambiguation is the task of automatically assigning the most appropriate meaning to a polysemous word within a given context. Generally the problem of resolving ambiguity in literature has revolved around the famous quote “you shall know the meaning of the word by the company it keeps.” In this thesis, we investigate the role of context for resolving ambiguity through three different approaches. Instead of using a predefined monolingual sense inventory such as WordNet, we use a language-independent framework where the word senses and sense-tagged data are derived automatically from Wikipedia. Using Wikipedia as a source of sense-annotations provides the much needed solution for knowledge acquisition bottleneck. In order to evaluate the viability of Wikipedia based sense-annotations, we cast the task of disambiguating polysemous nouns as a monolingual classification task and experimented on lexical samples from four different languages (viz. English, German, Italian and Spanish). The experiments confirm that the Wikipedia based sense annotations are reliable and can be used to construct accurate monolingual sense classifiers. …
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Dandala, Bharath
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Modeling and Analysis of Next Generation 9-1-1 Emergency Medical Dispatch Protocols
Emergency Medical Dispatch Protocols are guidelines that a 9-1-1 dispatcher uses to evaluate the nature of emergency, resources to send and the nature of help provided to the 9-1-1 caller. The current Dispatch Protocols are based on voice only call. But the Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) architecture will allow multimedia emergency calls. In this thesis I analyze and model the Emergency Medical Dispatch Protocols for NG9-1-1 architecture. I have identified various technical aspects to improve the NG9-1-1 Dispatch Protocols. The devices (smartphone) at the caller end have advanced to a point where they can be used to send and receive video, pictures and text. There are sensors embedded in them that can be used for initial diagnosis of the injured person. There is a need to improve the human computer (smartphone) interface to take advantage of technology so that callers can easily make use of various features available to them. The dispatchers at the 9-1-1 call center can make use of these new protocols to improve the quality and the response time. They will have capability of multiple media streams to interact with the caller and the first responders.The specific contributions in this thesis include developing applications that use smartphone …
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Gupta, Neeraj Kant
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Motivating Pre-service Teachers to Incorporate Technology Into the Classroom
Technology integration into the classroom is a multi-faceted and complex topic. One factor that can have an effect on a teacher's incorporation of technology into their classroom is pre-service teacher technology training. In this research study the ARCS instructional design model was applied to a pre-service teacher technology course in the hopes of motivating course attendees to both learn about technology incorporation and to incorporate technology into their future classrooms. The ARCS instructional design model that relies on the motivational sub-components of attention, relevance, confidences, and satisfaction to develop instruction that motivates to students to learn course content and goals. This study analyzed a group of pre-service teachers enrolled in a university technology training course to determine if the redesign resulted in the desired outcomes. Pre-test and post-test data was collected using both quantitative and qualitative instruments to analyze the potential effect of the redesigned course.
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Gardner, David
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Investigating the Relationship Between Internet Attitudes of College Students and Their Stem (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Career Perceptions
Are our students just consumers of technology or do their interests in technology translate into positive perceptions about STEM majors and careers? This research aimed to describe the role of the Internet in undergraduate students’ academic and career perceptions in STEM areas. The purpose of the research was addressed in three parts. First, the attitudes of undergraduate students towards five functions of the Internet namely tool, toy, treasure, telephone and territory were described. Second, students’ STEM career-related perceptions were described in terms of their science and mathematics self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and attitudes towards a STEM career. Third, the relationship between the five Internet functions and the three STEM career-related perceptions was examined. The participants for this study were 566 undergraduate students from a large Southern university. The research design followed a mixed methods approach using multivariate analyses and content analyses. The findings of the research indicated that there was a small but meaningful relationship between undergraduate students’ Internet and STEM perceptions. In their daily lives, the students perceived the Internet more as a toy and a tool. For general career related purposes, they perceived the Internet more as a treasure and a tool. For STEM areas in particular, they perceived …
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Periathiruvadi, Sita
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Minority Stress, Spirituality and Psychological Quality of Life in a Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Sample
Unique factors associated with the experience of spirituality and religiosity for many in lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) communities include minority stress. Using structural equation modeling, we examined whether minority stress mediates the relationship between spirituality and psychological quality of life (QOL). Results indicate minority stress mediates the relationship between spirituality and psychological QOL for gay men and bisexuals. However, minority stress is not a significant mediator for lesbians. Therefore, lesbians may experience minority stress and its relationship to psychological QOL differently than gay men and bisexuals due to higher societal acceptance. This study provides support for examining lesbians, gay men and bisexuals separately rather than as one sexual minority group.
Date:
August 2013
Creator:
Purser, Megan M.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The First Days of Spring: An Analysis of the International Treatment of Homosexuality
In recent history, the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) persons have been in constant fluctuation. Many states criminalize homosexual behavior while other states legally recognize same-sex marriages and same-sex adoptions. There are also irregular patterns where LGBT interest groups form across the globe. With this research project, I begin to explain why these discrepancies in the treatment of homosexuality and the formation of LGBT interest groups occur. I develop a theory that the most obvious contrast across the globe occurs when analyzing the treatment of homosexuals in OECD member states versus non-OECD countries. OECD nations tend to see the gay community struggle for more advanced civil rights and government protections, while non-OECD states have to worry about fundamental human rights to life and liberty. I find that this specific dichotomization is what causes the irregular LGBT interest group formation pattern across the globe; non-OECD nations tend to have fewer LGBT interest groups than their OECD counterparts. When looking at why non-OECD nations and OECD nations suppress the rights of their gay citizens, I find that religion plays a critical role in the suppression of the gay community. In this analysis, I measure religion several different ways, including …
Date:
December 2013
Creator:
Galvan, Michael R.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
A Descriptive Analysis of the Critical Thinking Model in Texas Elementary Education
Contributions from elementary education to the practice and reality of critical thinking are rare, largely because attempts in basic education to elucidate a concept of critical thinking have a hard time breaking through the elusiveness and indeterminacy that characterize the history and reality of the concept. This situation is due to, and a consequence of, the difficulty of delimiting critical thinking from related fields, such as metacognition, higher-order-thinking, problem solving, informal logic, reasoning skills, and decision making, to name a few. Texas school authorities designed and put into practice a battery of tools to evaluate critical thinking through the assessment programs TAKS and STAAR, without taking a position regarding the indeterminacy problems of the content of critical thinking. The purpose of this study was to reconstruct the pieces of the critical thinking model imparted to Texas elementary school children since 1999 and continues today. The findings indicate that the critical thinking model implemented in Texas elementary schools is a particular version of a skills-only approach of critical thinking that follows the classical logical paradigm, consisting of two sets of complementary skills. This model acquaints students with the components and structure of five types of arguments while it fails to substantiate …
Date:
December 2013
Creator:
Quijano, Oswaldo Jorge
System:
The UNT Digital Library