Master of Arts in Psychology, Cleveland State University, 2012, College of Sciences and Health Professions

Although word-finding difficulty is commonly self-reported by older adults, there are no clinical instruments able to reliably distinguish normal age-related effects from pathology in word-finding impairments. The purpose of this study is two-fold: (1) design and evaluate the validity of the Poreh Naming Test, a novel electronic confrontation naming test used to evaluate naming difficulties in demented populations and (2) to investigate the effect of normal aging word-finding abilities on confrontation naming tests, using both accuracy and response latency as performance indices. A community sample was used with each participant being administered the Boston Naming Test, the Poreh Naming Test, semantic verbal fluency and phonemic verbal fluency tasks. Each participant over the age of 65 or younger participants reporting health problems shown to interfere with confrontation naming test performance also received the St. Louis University Mental Status Exam. The 57-item Poreh Naming Test used in this study was analyzed and refined to a 30-item test. Items were defined as easy, medium, or hard based on latency and proportion of the sample that correctly named the item. The Poreh Naming Test was found to be a valid measure of word-finding abilities and was shown to better distinguish between mental status exam groups than the Boston Naming Test. However, the findings of this study do not support the hypotheses that normal aging has a negative impact on word-finding skills. Cognitive status was the best predictor for accuracy and latency on the confrontation naming tasks and no effect of age was found on accuracy or latency in either confrontation naming test.

Committee: Amir Poreh PhD (Committee Chair); Naohide Yamamoto PhD (Committee Member); Steve Slane PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Clinical Psychology

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.), University of Findlay, 2023, Education

Academic achievement cannot be addressed without considering the underlying neurocognitive constructs foundational to learning. Early identification and interventions can keep disabilities from manifesting (Balikci et al., 2020), however, there is little research or consistency in practice relative to using kindergarten screening assessments, and linking interventions to specific foundational weaknesses. This study aims to provide information regarding current practices of identifying neurocognitive constructs and developmental weaknesses for developing prescriptive interventions. This descriptive research study utilized a sequential mixed-methods design. An electronic survey was disseminated through three professional educator groups (n = 58). Data analysis included descriptive analysis, Chi-square cross-tabbing, and inductive coding. Results indicate only one neurocognitive construct is assessed by more than half of the respondents, and 5 of the neuroconstructs are assessed by less than 25% of the respondents. In spite of 95% - 100% of respondents being familiar with research-based interventions, less than 10% of respondents design interventions for neurocognitive areas they assess. The results of this study show huge discrepancies between knowledge and application in kindergarten screening. Recommendations include utilizing a standardized kindergarten screening assessment to identify foundational weaknesses necessary for learning in order to design prescriptive interventions.

Committee: Mary Heather Munger Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Kara Parker Ed.D. (Committee Member); Jon Brasfield Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Early Childhood Education; Education; Educational Evaluation; Educational Leadership; Educational Psychology

PHD, Kent State University, 2022, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Computer Science

Identifier names are an intrinsic part of the software and more importantly, program comprehension. They are the primary source of information programmers use to acquire knowledge about source code. There are many ways to improve the comprehension of software, but one crucial way is to improve the quality of names used inside the source code. High-quality identifiers play an essential role in increasing productivity, and according to the literature, high-quality identifier names save a significant amount of time and costs during software evolution. The dissertation comprehensively examines factors for assessing the quality of method names in source code. Ten method naming standards are proposed and evaluated by +1100 software engineering professionals. The various standards for source code method names are derived from and supported in the software engineering literature. The large-scale evaluation results in a consensus among developers that the standards are accepted and used in practice. Factors such as years of experience and programming language knowledge are also considered. The dissertation also presents an approach and a tool to automatically assess the quality of method names by providing a quality rate and feedback about the flaw in a name. The approach implements the ten method naming standards to evaluate a given method name. Natural language processing techniques such as part-of-speech tagging, identifier splitting, and dictionary lookup are used to implement the standards. A large golden set of method name quality ratings is developed. Each method name is rated by several experienced developers and labeled as conforming to each standard or not. These ratings allow comparing the results of the proposed approach against expert assessment. The golden set is used to evaluate the approach. The approach is also applied to several systems written in different programming languages, and the results are manually inspected for accuracy. The final resul (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jonathan Maletic (Advisor); Mikhail Nesterenko (Committee Member); L. Gwenn Volkert (Committee Member); Michael Carl (Other); Joseph Ortiz (Committee Member); Michael Collard (Committee Member); Gokarna Sharma (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

It is believed that over 90% of sexual violence cases involve situations in which a victim knows their attacker. Yet, cultural depictions of sexual assault and rape focus primarily on furthering the violent `stranger-in-the-alley' narrative, than representing the majority of victim's lived experiences. This disconnect contributes to many victims of sexual assault, specifically within romantic relationships or friendships, struggling to recognize what happened to them as rape or as something else. Researchers refer to this as rape ambiguity or unacknowledged rape, where a victim cannot define what happened and thus internalizes victim-blaming rape myths. Yet, the role of relational context is rarely acknowledged in examining this disconnect, and the impact this has on recognizing and naming experiences is broadly overlooked. Blending an evocative autoethnographic method – detailing the author's personal experience with sexual abuse within relationships – with the findings from qualitative community-based research, this project asks how sexual abuse has become normalized in intimate heterosexual relationships and what impact this has on a female victim's ability to name her experiences. Grounded in feminist theory and utilizing The Listening Guide, participant narratives are presented in the form of voice poems, with a critical focus on language. Findings highlight a trend of male-centric relationship dynamics, manipulation, and sexual coercion as normalized within heterosexual relationships. Additionally, the rhetorical discourse of sexual assault and rape as inherently violent is cited as a disruption to naming experiences as either term, due at least in part to concern over labeling male partners rapists. Implications of this research suggest a greater need for gender equality in heterosexual relationships – with a specific need for consent communication to involve sex positivity grounded in the normalization of female (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lee Nickoson Ph.D. (Advisor); Hyeyoung Bang Ph.D. (Other); Dan Bommarito Ph.D. (Committee Member); Sue Carter Wood Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender Studies; Literature; Rhetoric; Womens Studies

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2020, Speech and Hearing Science

The purpose of this study is to determine whether there is a relationship between attention and picture naming gains following a word retrieval treatment. Thirteen persons with aphasia were administered the Test of Everyday Attention to measure sustained attention, auditory selective attention, attentional switching, cognitive flexibility, auditory verbal working memory, selective attention, and divided attention. They were also administered a picture naming task via Eprime. These scores were then run through SPSS using a Spearman's rank order correlation to determine if there was a correlation between attention and word retrieval. There was no significant correlation found between attention and picture naming gains following word retrieval treatment in this study. Small sample size, discontinuation of the TEA by participants due to difficulty with task completion, and participants falling below the scaled score of the TEA are factors that may have attributed to no significant correlation being found between word retrieval during picture naming and attention skills.

Committee: Stacy Harnish (Advisor); Jennifer Brello (Committee Member) Subjects: Rehabilitation; Speech Therapy

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2017, Arts and Sciences: Psychology

While it is generally assumed that learning difficulties are the antecedent to affective problems, little is known about whether the reading-emotion association is bidirectional. If learning problems give rise to affective problems, then a subsequent question is whether affective problems, in turn, exacerbate reading difficulties. The purpose of the present study is to examine whether affective problems (i.e., anxiety, depression) predict unique variance in a critical reading skill (i.e., rapid automatized naming) above and beyond cognitive processing speed and basic reading skills (i.e., isolated word recognition, pseudoword reading) within a sample of adults referred for learning difficulty (M = 25.97 years; SD = 9.4). Based on extant literature, it was hypothesized that affective processing would predict variance in rapid automatized naming (RAN) above and beyond control variables (i.e., cognitive processing speed, basic reading skills). Such an observation will broaden our understanding of the bidirectional relation between reading and affective processing. We used three hierarchical regressions to examine the contributions of cognitive and affective variables to each of the following RAN skills measured by RAN/RAS (Wolf & Denckla, 2005): (1) RAN-Object/Color, (2) RAN-Number/Letter, and (3) RAS/2-3Set. Participants completed all RAN/RAS subtests (RAN/RAS: Wolf & Denckla, 2005), the processing speed cluster of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities III (WJ-III COG: Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001a), the basic reading skills cluster of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement III (WJ-III ACH: Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001b), and anxiety and depression subscales of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI: Morey, 1991). Results from the hierarchical regression analysis showed that affective variables predicted significant variance in RAS/2-3Set (i.e., 16.8%), above and beyond contributions from cognitive processing speed and basic reading s (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Quintino Mano Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Chung-Yiu Peter Chiu Ph.D. (Committee Member); Kristen Jastrowski Mano Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2017, Arts and Sciences: Psychology

Participants provided decisions in three-word recognition experiments designed to keep stimulus and response constant while simultaneously manipulating task demands: go-no-go naming, lexical decision, and semantic categorization. The aggregate response time distributions of these tasks were analyzed with a lognormal inverse power-law mixture distribution, the cocktail model (Holden & Rajaraman, 2012), to probe the influence of longer timescale demands on cognitive dynamics. Changes in task demands influenced the shape of the response time distributions, despite identical stimuli across the tasks. The outcomes are discussed in terms of the influence of temporally nested networks of performance. Constraints are aspects of physical, perceptual or cognitive systems that shape behavior in particular ways. For instance, linguistic development unfolds a long timescale of development. However, the influence of these constraints are expressed on much faster timescale activities, such as acts of individual word recognition and articulation. Fast timescale cognitive dynamics are influenced by a web of longer contextual and historical constraints (Van Orden, Hollis, & Wallot, 2012). The narrative explains how the characteristic shapes of response time distributions reveal these influences.

Committee: John Holden Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Anthony Chemero Ph.D. (Committee Member); Quintino Mano Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Therapy

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2017, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

The search for identity within Richard Wright's Native Son and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man has long been analyzed, yet the fact that each protagonist's search for self is brought to a point of crisis during an intimate interaction with a white woman has often been neglected. Here, I analyze each author's strategic use of a nameless narrator by utilizing the work of W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon, arguing that the act of “literary unnaming” is used to critique the development of black American identity during the time of Jim Crow. The use of a nameless narrator is explored through “the unnaming and naming process,” which I situate as symbolic of the historical unnaming of the African people, who were subjected to naming and cultural stripping during the time of slavery. Each narrator's scene with a white woman (Mary in Native Son and Sybil in Invisible Man) is critiqued in order to highlight the most intimate unnaming and naming process, and is identified as the narrator's catalyst that begins the re-claiming of his unnamed state, identified here as the “re-naming” process.

Committee: Julie Burrell Ph.D. (Committee Chair); James Marino Ph.D. (Committee Member); Adam Sonstegard Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; American Literature; Literature; Modern Literature

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2017, Speech Language Pathology

The current study aims to determine if overlearning exposure and performance are related to the maintenance of treatment stimuli in a cued picture-naming treatment in adults with aphasia. Ten individuals with chronic aphasia were asked to name 40 black and white picture stimuli during stimulus probes prior to cued picture-naming treatment on each day of an eight session therapy block. The amount of overlearning and the accuracy achieved during the overlearning trials that occurred for each stimulus item were calculated. Each participant's accuracy per stimulus item during probes on three maintenance sessions three months post treatment was also calculated. Overlearning exposure and overlearning performance were both highly correlated with maintenance of probed items after three months. Future research needs to be done to better determine the effects of overlearning conditions on maintenance of trained items. Clinically, speech therapists may be missing an opportunity to increase learning and maintenance of items by dismissing goals upon mastery. Introducing an overlearning scenario may boost treatment outcomes in this and other populations in the field.

Committee: Stacy Harnish Ph.D (Advisor); Allison Bean Ellawadi Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Speech Therapy

Master of Environmental Science, Miami University, 2016, Environmental Sciences

Place names are vital to orienting ourselves in the world. In ancient times, people must have had names for places like hunting grounds or berry groves. This act of naming roughly delineates geographic features which can be revisited and described to others, affixing an added cultural meaning to that place. Place naming has since come a long way. Official place names for the United States and its territories are managed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), National Geospatial Technical Operations Center (NGTOC). This report details my experience working in the Geographic Names Unit. As a Pathways Career Intern, my main duties were to manage the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), a database containing official place names for features outlined on federal topographic maps. Most of the work involved duplicate names; an issue where there are two name records for one feature, often indicating that one record is a copy and should be deleted. Sometimes the two records were not copies, and the correct locations were identified by visually analyzing historic and recent maps. The coordinates were then updated respectively in the GNIS. I gained valuable experience reading topographic maps, identifying features and managing a large database of geographic names.

Committee: Robbyn Abbitt MS (Committee Chair); Suzanne Zazycki JD (Committee Member); Mark Allen Peterson PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Cartography; Computer Science; Cultural Anthropology; Earth; Environmental Science; Geographic Information Science; Geography; History; Information Science; Information Technology; Language; Native American Studies

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2015, Vision Science

The Whorfian linguistic relativity hypothesis is a highly contested model linking cognition and perception, in which substantial cultural-linguistic differences between languages are proposed, which significantly constrain in individual's perception and world view. Due to the wide variation in color naming in cultures around the world, the constraints on naming imposed by color physics and the physiology of the visual system, and the near-ubiquitous nature of color communication, color naming has often been used as a model for testing linguistic relativity effects. However, by themselves, variations in color naming cannot give any useful information about whether color perception is affected by linguistic relativity. For this reason, we used color naming in conjunction with unique hue selection and multidimensional scaling (MDS) to test for the presence of Whorfian effects related to color naming for speakers of English and Somali, a language previously shown by our lab to show great inter-individual variation in both color naming and non-lexical measures of color perception. In Experiment I we tested English subjects using a non-metric MDS paradigm with heteroluminant stimuli and found it to generally replicate fiducial orderings of stimuli in CIE UV space. Experiment II added a unique hue selection task, and English speakers' unique hue selections in this task were concordant with those obtained from previous studies. We introduced a new method of MDS data collection, the binary sort protocol, in Experiment III, which allowed us to quickly gather MDS data from English and Somali-speaking subjects. Somali color naming showed similar patterns to previous experiments by our lab, but we were unable to gather data from a sufficient variety of Somali informants to robustly test for Whorfian effects. Somali speakers' MDS maps conformed more poorly to CIE UV space than English speakers' maps, though analysis of stress indicated that Somali subjects may use two dimensio (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Delwin Lindsey PhD (Advisor); Angela Brown PhD (Committee Member); Andrew Hartwick OD, PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Behavioral Psychology; Cognitive Psychology; Experimental Psychology; Linguistics; Psychology

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2013, Computer Science (Engineering and Technology)

Delay and Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) was developed to deliver network communications to so-called "challenged environments." These include space, military, and other networks that can be described as having extremely long link delay and frequent disconnections. The DTN paradigm implements a store-and-forward network of nodes to overcome these limited environments as well as delivering "bundles" of data instead of packets. The bundles nominally contain enough data to constitute an entire atomic unit of communication. DTN introduces the Endpoint Identifier (EID) to identify bundle Agents or groups. The EID can imply naming, addressing, routing and network topology, but these features and flexibility come at the cost of verbosity and a per-packet overhead introduced by large and descriptive EIDs. In this document, we apply lossless text compression to EIDs using Zlib's DEFLATE algorithm. We develop a novel method for generating a large sample of verbose EIDs based upon Apache access logs, allowing testing over a larger, more varied, and more realistic data set than would be possible with the current DTN testing networks. Analysis of the processing overhead and compression ratio lead us to the conclusion that Zlib reduces the overhead of EIDs substantially. By compressing the dictionary, more featureful EIDs can be used without increasing overhead in the form of larger bundle dictionaries due to syntactical verbosity.

Committee: Shawn Ostermann (Advisor) Subjects: Computer Science

Master of Sacred Theology (S.T.M.), Trinity Lutheran Seminary, 2013, Ministry Division

"The Future of Milestones Ministry at Broad Street Presbyterian Church" describes how one congregation, in Columbus, Ohio, connects church and home by using the Milestones Ministry approach in faith formation. Five milestones: the Baptism Milestone, the Baptismal Anniversary Milestone, the Bible Milestone, the Confirmation Milestone and the High School Graduation Milestone, engage parents and children in spiritual practices. A sixth, the 90+ Milestone, celebrates the legacy of older adults. The author, an associate pastor, interviews twelve intergenerational families about the meaning of these milestones in their lives, and categorizes their responses in ways revealing God's presence in daily life. Materials from Vibrant Faith Ministries, including the Milestones Ministry template of naming, equipping, gifting and blessing, plus biblical resources and current discussions in the fields of Christian Education and faith development, provide the context for this exploration. The appendix contains a liturgy for each milestone as well as a thorough bibliography.

Committee: Mary Hughes PhD (Advisor); Diane Hymans PhD (Other) Subjects: Adult Education; Aging; Bible; Clergy; Families and Family Life; Individual and Family Studies; Religious Congregations; Religious Education; Spirituality; Teaching; Theology

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2009, Arts and Sciences : Psychology

Olfactory abilities decline with age and have been linked with a number of neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Preliminary studies in young, healthy adults showed that a manipulation that improved performance on a semantic task of odor naming also improved performance on an episodic task of odor recognition. The results supported the hypothesis that simultaneous presentation of the odors together with their names improved olfactory pattern matching thereby facilitating the identification and episodic recognition of the odor. The present study investigated the effect of providing label alternatives during the episodic encoding or retrieval phases of the memory task. One hundred healthy adults were randomly assigned to four experimental groups. Odor naming and recognition memory performance was assessed for each condition. The results support previous findings suggesting that the effects of labels on episodic memory cannot be explained as cuing effects at the time of encoding or as retrieval cues. An alternative explanation is that verbal labels serve to enhance olfactory pattern recognition which aids in identifying the odor and leads to improved naming and recognition memory performance.

Committee: Robert Frank PhD (Committee Chair); Paula Shear PhD (Committee Member); Peter Chiu PhD (Committee Member); Steven Howe PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2009, Arts and Sciences : Psychology

The classic receptive (temporal lobe)/generative (frontal lobe) dissociation of language function may be inadequate in characterizing language function in epilepsy. The relative impact of temporal versus frontal lobe epileptogenic foci on language function is also unknown. Individuals with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE), have higher rates of psychopathology relative to the general and other chronically ill populations, as well as structural hippocampal abnormalities associated independently with the MTLE syndrome and the effects of high levels of emotional distress. Therefore, cognitive dysfunction may result from some combination of the intrinsic epileptogenic lesion or damage associated with chronic high levels of emotional distress, or both. The present study evaluted the diagnostic utility of the Boston Naming Test, phonemic paraphasic error production on the BNT, Controlled Oral Word Association Task, Animal Naming, and Token Test in terms of their ability to predict frontal lob epilepsy (FLE), left MTLE, or right MTLE focus, as well as the potentially moderating effects of perceived emotional distress. Seventy-seven individuals with MTLE (43 left and 34 right) and 30 individuals with FLE were included. Binary logistic regression models evaluated the predictive ability of each language measure to differentiate diagnostic group. Main effect and interaction terms for scales D and Pt on the MMPI-2 were added to each model to assess the possible moderating effects of perceived emotional distress. The results did not explicitly support a receptive/generative dichotomy, but rather a continuum of language function with some tasks more or less reliant on receptive and generative language components. Left MTLE and FLE patients performed equally poorly on all language measures, while right MTLE patient performance was largely unimpaired. Performance was moderated by perceived emotional distress; however, depression and anxiety were found to differentially modera (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Bruce Schefft PhD (Committee Chair); Steven Howe PhD (Committee Member); Michael Privitera MD (Committee Member); Christine Hovantiz PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2008, Allied Health Sciences : Communication Science and Disorders

Confrontation naming abilities decline with normal aging and in Alzheimer's disease (AD). The focus of this research was to investigate at which stage the breakdown in processing occurs for typically aging elderly and individuals with AD. This research investigated the hypothesis that naming impairment in AD is a result of visual perceptual deficits occurring prior to accessing semantic memory. Sixty subjects participated in this study; 30 young control subject, 30 elderly control subjects and 30 individuals with early to mid-stage AD. Subjects were given a neuropsychological battery of tests related to visual perception (BVFDT, BFRT), semantic abilities (P&PT) and confrontation naming abilities (BNT). In addition, subjects participated in a visual discrimination task and a visual naming task created for this research. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed significant group differences between the performance of elderly control subjects and individuals with AD on each of the standardized tests, indicating visual perceptual, semantic and confrontation naming impairment in subjects with AD. Regression analysis confirmed that semantic abilities (as measured by performance on the P&PT) were a better predictor of AD participants' performance on a visual discrimination task and a visual naming task than were visual perceptual abilities (as measured by the BVFDT and the BFRT). There were visual perceptual deficits in AD, but no significant correlation between confrontation naming abilities and visual perceptual abilities (as measured by the BVFDT and BFRT). Post hoc analyses confirmed a positive relationship between AD participants' performance on the P&PT and measures of confrontation naming (BNT and visual naming task), which support the theory that naming impairment in AD stems from degradation of semantic knowledge. Although no causal relationship was found between visual perception and naming impairment in AD, there were subjects who presented with evide (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jean Neils-Strunjas (Committee Chair); James Eliassen (Committee Member); John Clark (Committee Member) Subjects: Speech Therapy

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2012, African-American and African Studies

This study on African naming practices during slavery and its aftermath examines the centrality of names and naming in creating, suppressing, retaining and reclaiming African identity and memory. Based on recent scholarly studies, it is clear that several elements of African cultural practices have survived the oppressive onslaught of slavery and European domination. However, most historical inquiries that explore African culture in the Americas have tended to focus largely on retentions that pertain to cultural forms such as religion, dance, dress, music, food, and language leaving out, perhaps, equally important aspects of cultural retentions in the African Diaspora, such as naming practices and their psychological significance. In this study, I investigate African names and naming practices on the African continent, the United States and the Caribbean, not merely as elements of cultural retention, but also as forms of resistance – and their importance to the construction of identity and memory for persons of African descent. As such, this study examines how European colonizers attacked and defiled African names and naming systems to suppress and erase African identity – since names not only aid in the construction of identity, but also concretize a people's collective memory by recording the circumstances of their experiences. Thus, to obliterate African collective memories and identities, the colonizers assigned new names to the Africans or even left them nameless, as a way of subjugating and committing them to perpetual servitude. In response, my research investigates how African descendants on the continent and throughout the Diaspora resisted this process of obliteration of their memories and how they deployed the practice of naming for survival in such a hostile environment. Therefore, this study not only focuses on the deliberate attempt made by European colonizers to obliterate African memory and instill a sense of shame within the African community, but a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lupenga Mphande PhD (Advisor); Leslie Alexander PhD (Committee Member); Judson Jeffries PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2011, Arts Policy and Administration

The arts' place in the university is changing in response to the demands of the creative economy. Universities will be responsible for producing creative human capital in their graduates. The 2004 American Assembly provided campus-based practitioners with new language to pursue these goals when it introduced the “Creative Campus” terminology. This comparative case study explores the value of this naming language during policy formulation and implementation of two Creative Campus projects. Qualitative interviews, document analysis, and autoethnography are used to assess the value of a common naming strategy. A critical framework that crosses semiotics and the policy cycle is used to analyze the data from each of the cases. The findings suggest that a symbolically isomorphic naming strategy can be very effective in formulating and implementing a Creative Campus program because the name label provides cultural entrepreneurs with a tool to contextualize their work, frame the issue on the institutional agenda, define their work in juxtaposition to a prototypical schema, and gain legitimacy, understanding, consensus, and control of resources. This thesis concludes by suggesting that the shared signifier also offers an opportunity for a more formalized network of Creative Campus practitioners to learn from and engage in the labeling contests that shape the sign.

Committee: Margaret J. Wyszomirski (Advisor); Wayne Lawson P. (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education; Arts Management; Cultural Resources Management; Language; Linguistics; Public Policy; Rhetoric

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2009, Vision Science

Baseball players of all ages work on improving their skills during practice. Some more recent training methods have worked on vision training to improve hitting skills. One particular method involves using a pitching machine to throw tennis balls at a high velocity. The goal of this training is to be able to call out colored numbers written on the tennis balls as they are pitched, as this relates to pitch recognition during game play. There has been no scientific research done on this system to see whether or not players are able to improve their tracking ability. This study seeks to investigate the tracking accuracy of subjects using the color naming task. Subjects were tested using a pitching machine called the Flamethrower. Tennis balls with numbers written in either black or red ink were fed at random into the Flamethrower for each pitch. Balls were pitched from a distance of 60.75 feet from home plate. The average velocity was 79.76 MPH for each pitch. Eye movements were recorded using the ISCAN infrared tracking device, while head movement were recorded using the mini-Bird 800, which was mounted to the ISCAN goggles. Raw data from these devices were converted to digital format, compared, and analyzed with a computer program written in Visual Basic 6.0. Thirty subjects were assigned at random into one of three groups. The subjects' tasks in these three groups were color (and number) naming of a pitched ball, tracking the ball as well as one can, and coordinating the eye and head as one would when batting. Subjects wore the ISCAN goggles to record data during each pitch. Data was recorded on total of 2950 pitches between the three groups. The primary outcome measure was mean gaze error away from the location of the ball, which was measured at 6 feet in front of the plate. Mean gaze error for groups 1 , 2, and 3 were -4.81 degrees (StDev 4.30), -2.20 degrees(StDev 6.08), and -3.03 degrees (StDev 5.82) respectively. A one-way analysis of variance with Tukey (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Nicklaus Fogt Ph.D. (Advisor); Gregory Good Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jeffrey Walline Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Biophysics; Optics; Physical Education; Sports Medicine

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2007, Psychology

The connectionist approach to reading aloud has been a serious challenge to the traditional dual-route theory, but several issues concerning the theoretical distinctions of the connectionist approach from the dual-route theory remain unresolved. First, through what kind of internal structure a single-route connectionist model represents the two seemingly distinct kinds of ability to process regularities and exceptions without relying on dual-route structure, has yet to be fully answered. Second, the question of whether the single-route connectionist model is indeed functionally a single mechanism is yet to be convincingly demonstrated. Third, whether a single-route model can simulate surface dylexia, of which the dual-route theory has been the only traditional interpretation, has not been thoroughly investigated. By taking a model from Plaut et al. (1996) and examining it closely, the present study attempts to resolve these issues. Various forms of network analysis demonstrate that the representational system in hidden unit space is structured in the same way regardless of learning regularities or exceptions. Further analyses about the effect of the reading network's exception learning upon its nonword reading reveal a proper viewpoint on the relationship between its regularity and exception learning. That is, ‘exception learning' in connectionist modeling of reading aloud does affect the model's nonword reading performance just as ‘noise capturing' in statistical modeling does the model's generalization. In reality, however, the severity of “ordinary exceptions” in normal word reading happens to be not high enough to ruin the network's nonword reading, as “noise” does in statistical modeling. These findings are also used to disprove the idea that the reading network may have developed a functional dual route. A careful interpretation of the findings shows not only that a hidden representation corresponding to the correct pronunciation of an exception word develops (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jay Myung (Advisor) Subjects: