A cross-sectional and longitudinal study of prosodic perception in typical and atypical reading development

Beattie, Rachel Lynette University of Southern California 2011 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation is a collection of three studies designed to explore the contribution of prosody to reading development. Each chapter represents a separate study. Chapter 2. Using a non-speech specific measure of prosody, rise time perception, Goswami and her colleagues have found that individuals with dyslexia perform significantly worse than non-impaired readers. Studies have also found that children and adults with specific language impairment were impaired on these tasks. Despite the high co-morbidity of these disorders, only one study has assessed rise time sensitivity in children with co-morbid reading and non-phonological language difficulties. This study further examined rise time sensitivity in children with both reading and non-phonological language difficulties. I compared performance on rise time perception tasks between 17 children with reading difficulties, 16 children with reading and non-phonological language difficulties, and 17 chronological age matched controls. There was a significant interaction between group and performance on auditory tasks. Further tests revealed that chronological age matched controls were significantly better on the rise time measures compared to both groups of children with reading difficulties. Performance between the groups of children with reading difficulties did not significantly differ, indicating that additional non-phonological language difficulties were not associated with a more severe rise time perception deficit. Chapter 3. Studies have begun to focus on what skills contribute to the development of phonological awareness, an important predictor of later reading attainment. One of these skills is the perception of prosody, which is the rhythm, tempo, and stress of a language. To examine whether prosodic perception contributes to phonological awareness prior to formal reading tuition, we assessed 49 children who had not yet learned how to read. Using confirmatory factor analysis, we found that measures of prosodic perception and phonological awareness loaded onto separate factors. Our regression analyses revealed that prosodic perception accounted for a significant amount of variance after partialing out definitional vocabulary, but not after accounting for receptive vocabulary. Based on the independence of prosodic perception from definitional vocabulary, we concluded that prosodic perception contributes to the development of phonological awareness indirectly through receptive vocabulary, by improving speech processing skills, but independently of semantic knowledge. Further studies should examine the role of prosody in children at-risk for later reading difficulties. Chapter 4. In order to reduce the prevalence and severity of reading difficulties, research has begun to focus on early predictive indicators of later reading problems, including prosody. Perception of the rhythm, tempo, and stress of a language has been linked to individual differences in older children and adults, but few studies have examined the role of prosody during the transition from pre-reader to reader. In the current study, we assessed 34 participants in preschool on prosodic perception, vocabulary, and phonological awareness and then ten months later in kindergarten on word reading, vocabulary, and phonological awareness. We found that prosodic perception was significantly associated with word reading, but that phonological awareness acted as the main mediator in that relationship. Vocabulary also partially mediated the link between prosodic perception and reading, but the mediation effect was weaker than that observed for phonological awareness. The lack of a direct pathway between prosodic perception and word reading in this study might be due to the lack of complex words on the reading measures. Additional studies should explicitly investigate the role of prosodic perception in the development of multisyllabic word reading.

Oral Reading Fluency and the Simple View of Reading for English Language Learners

Beattie, Tiffany K ProQuest Dissertations & Theses University of Oreg 2018 해외박사(DDOD)

The Simple View of Reading is a well-known lens for understanding the skills that contribute to proficient reading. The Simple View explains reading comprehension as the product of decoding and listening comprehension. There is a gap in the lite.

An Event History Analysis of Premarital Cohabitation Transitions and Divergent Relationship Pathways

Beattie, Brett A The Pennsylvania State University ProQuest Dissert 2015 해외박사(DDOD)

Cohabitation has become one of the most widely studied, and hotly debated, intimate relationship forms. Little consensus exists on what function cohabitation serves for young adults and what motivates (or inhibits) a transition to marriage from cohabitation. There exists a cohabitation paradox in which recent cohorts are showing higher rates of cohabitation, and higher rates of dissolution from cohabitation, which combine to produce higher rates of serial cohabitation; yet support for marriage remains extremely high and remains the desired relationship form. This dissertation explores this paradox by using the concept of a relationship pathway. By using data from multiple relationships and multiple partners, I am able to map out a complete premarital cohabitation history for a nationally representative sample of American young adults. By leveraging these multiple relationships, I am able to examine three key aspects of a young adult's relationship path. First I include partner information to examine the interplay between respondent variables and partner information and test dyadic theories of relationship cohesion and related gender roles. Second, I construct a frailty variable to parse out an individual's unique hazard for each relationship outcome and quantify how much influence an individual's enduring traits impact transition likelihood. Third, I conduct a latent class analysis to uncover relationship pathways within the data. I find that adding partner variables did not significantly add to a model's predictive power, suggesting that there was a high level of homogeny between a respondent and their partner. However, the frailty variable stayed stable throughout various model specifications, suggesting that a respondent's unique unobserved traits are uncorrelated with the observed variables in this study. This monograph discovered 5 distinct cohabitation pathways that young adults take on their way to marriage and find that cohabitation serves very different purposes among these groups. However, there are strong similarities in the transition hazards between classes, suggesting a common underlying process. I find strong evidence that cohabitation experiences are driven by a person's enduring traits and find strong selection effects into individual cohabitation pathways. I also find support for marital search theory, with longer partner searches and an improving partner pool both associated with higher chances of marriage. I also present evidence that a respondent's circumstances at the start of a relationship has a large impact on the hazards of transitions. I conclude by encouraging research into relationship pathways, rather than discrete relationship events.

Examining Extension Agents’ Adoption of Instructional and Communication Technologies: Training Development and Testing of a Digital Field Experience

Beattie, Peyton Nicole ProQuest Dissertations & Theses University of Flor 2021 해외박사(DDOD)

Extension agents are non-formal educators located in counties and parishes across the United States. Agents develop educational programs for the citizens of the counties and parishes based on the specific needs of the community, and the content of the programs is rooted in research conducted at the state’s land grant universities. Over the past 50 years, Extension agents have reported a sense of feeling unprepared to adequately perform the communication components of their positions. A lack of confidence and training in communication could negatively impact an Extension agent’s abilities to perform their main job duties, which include linking research findings from the land-grant universities to people in local communities to advance livelihoods through Extension programs. Extension agents could use instructional and communication technologies (ICTs) to supplement traditional in-person programing, including developing online formats to reach new and more diverse audience groups. However, Extension agents require specialized training to be able to adequately communicate with clientele and to deliver Extension programs via ICTs.The purpose of the subsequent three-article dissertation was to address the lack of adoption and implementation of ICTs as tools for Extension agents to deliver educational programs for a 21st-century online adult audience. As such, the first article addressed the factors that led to or affected Extension agents’ ICT adoption, such as their level of innovativeness; self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and interest in using ICTs; the perceived attributes of adopting DFEs; the barriers to adopting ICTs; and how the COVID-19 pandemic affected their attitude toward adopting ICTs. The second article provided a detailed discussion of the development of the DFE as an approach to deliver educational programs via ICTs. The article was exploratory in nature and explained UF/IFAS Extension agents’ perceived experience developing and implementing a DFE for the first time. The third article discussed the training and development program created to build ICT adoption and usage capacity among UF/IFAS Extension agents necessary for them to design and implement a DFE. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the DFE training and development program using Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Training Evaluation.

Efficient electromagnetic modeling for gigascale integrated circuit interconnect

Beattie, Michael Werner Carnegie-Mellon University 2000 해외박사(DDOD)

Modern chip design pushes the performance of a given technology to its limits, therefore it is necessary to find increasingly more accurate models for interconnect parasitics. The growing complexity of today's integrated systems, however, makes fast analysis crucial as well. Due to the wide range of applications of interconnect modeling in chip design, it is unreasonable to assume there is just one method which fits in all cases equally well. Two new localized extraction techniques which ensure the stability of the interconnect parasitic model while allowing for fast and accurate analysis are introduced. We investigate hierarchical models which are able to represent detailed near field and global far field couplings with equal accuracy and efficiency. A novel approach for efficient extraction of on-chip inductance and capacitance is presented, combining the best features of previously existing hierarchical approaches in this field. Finally, we discuss methods for generating hierarchical equivalent circuit models for interconnect parasitic couplings for use in existing tools. The various methods developed are applied to examples throughout the thesis.

Pathlength-Dependent Jet Quenching in the Quark--Gluon Plasma at ALICE

Beattie, Caitlin Yale University ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 2023 해외박사(DDOD)

At extremely high temperatures, the quarks and gluons that compose the fundamental building blocks of our universe undergo a phase transition from stable hadronic matter to become a deconfined quark--gluon plasma (QGP). One way to study this medium is through collisions of heavy ions, where extraordinarily high energy densities produce just such a deconfined state. Of particular interest are jets, collimated showers of hadrons that originate early in the collision and undergo modification as they traverse the QGP, thus probing the medium's properties and enabling the study of quantum chromodynamics at multiple scales. Notably, jets lose energy as they propagate through the medium, the pathlength dependence of which remains an open question. The answer is of significant interest, however, given that quantitative constraints on this dependence are closely related to the underlying mechanisms that drive jet quenching phenomena. This thesis will discuss the first measurement of jets using a technique known as event-shape engineering (ESE), a measurement made in an effort to constrain the pathlength dependence of jet energy loss.For this thesis, charged jets were measured in Pb--Pb collisions using the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. These jets were then classified according to their angle with respect to the event plane, as well as the shape of the event that they traversed. No sensitivity of the jet spectra to the event shape was observed; however, the yields were seen to be dependent on the event-plane angle. Moreover, this dependence was stronger for highly-elliptical events and weaker for highly-isotropic events. Such results are consistent with descriptions of pathlength distributions that were studied in Trajectum and the assumption that jets lose energy in a pathlength-dependent manner. Further theoretical models are required to extract quantitative constraints from this study.

Evolutionary Naturalism & the Normativity of the Mental

Beattie, Joshua Scott University of California, Berkeley 2012 해외박사(DDOD)

I examine the following plausible and oft-defended line of thought: (1) Rationality is a normative phenomenon. (2) Facts about intentionality essentially depend on facts about rationality, so intentionality is a normative phenomenon too. (3) Normative phenomena resist naturalistic treatment. So, (4) the normative aspect of intentionality precludes a fully naturalistic account of the mind. I believe the conclusion is mistaken, and I attempt to show this by means of a clarification and assessment of claims (2) and (3). Unlike many of those who resist the above line of thought, I think (2) can be adequately defended. Its defense depends, in my view, on sufficiently appreciating the <italic>dynamic</italic> character of intentionality. That is, as worldly conditions and conceptual repertoires change, so too does the intricate causal network in which intentional states figure. A purely causal-dispositionalist theory, however, is unable to say anything about these changes and why they take place; it must simply be updated to take account of them. It is here that the essential role of rationality considerations comes in: the development of an intentional state's causal profile <italic>tracks</italic> the development of its rational profile. In other words, the dispositionalist would have to await a verdict, so to speak, on a given connection's rational status before knowing whether to include it in a state's defining causal repertoire. (An analogy: a purely dispositionalist approach is akin to defining a biological species in terms of its current structural features, when a species is in fact a dynamic entity whose characteristic structural features change over time). If (2) is defensible, then the problem must lie in claim (3). That said, I do not attempt to overturn (3) by offering, as others have, a naturalistic account of normativity or rationality as such (e.g. expressivism); in my view, the prospects for a naturalistic account of intentionality are independent of this more general issue. I focus, instead, on two key ways in which (3) is underspecified: first, it needs to be said precisely what is required for a "naturalistic" treatment of some phenomenon, and second, it needs to be said precisely how normativity comes into play in a given instance. Once these details are properly filled in, I claim, (3) is false for the particular case of intentionality. On the first point, I argue that the standards for naturalistic explanation must be less demanding than full reductionism but more demanding than the "naïve" naturalism of many anti-reductionists. I claim that <italic> evolutionary continuity</italic> provides the proper naturalistic measure: a phenomenon must be shown to have arisen through a seamless course of evolutionarily explicable transitions. This yields a robust explanatory requirement, but one that is flexible enough to handle cases to which reductionism is ill-suited (like intentionality). Moreover, this brand of naturalism quite clearly calls for an interdisciplinary approach, as I believe naturalism should. In this case, that approach depends on continuing investigation into the evolution of cognition and the brain. As for the second point, I think the tendency to give (2) a strongly metaphysical reading must be resisted. That is, intentional states should be seen not as fundamentally normative entities (as when beliefs are equated with states of commitment), but as causal entities that are essentially approximations to a dynamic normative ideal. The involvement of that ideal is enough to rule out straightforward reductions—the failure of dispositionalism has already been mentioned, and similar considerations can be used to support a broader anti-reductionist thesis—but the more modest naturalistic demand of evolutionary continuity can still be met. This requires an account of our capacity to construct and utilize normative models in our thinking. If it can be shown how we acquired the ability to run through various courses of reasoning and behavior off-line, and to have the results of that feed back and modify our cognitive dispositions, then we can make sense of our having intentional states, i.e. dynamic causal states that approximate to and are in some sense guided by a normative ideal. I cannot claim to tell the whole naturalistic story, but I hope to have made the project look tractable.

Allostery and Hysteresis Are Coupled in UDP-Glucose Dehydrogenase

Beattie, Nathaniel Richard ProQuest Dissertations & Theses University of Geor 2019 해외박사(DDOD)

UDP-glucose dehydrogenase (UDGH) catalyzes the NAD+ dependent oxidation of UDP-glucose to UDP-glucuronic acid. In humans, (h)UGDH is regulated by the feedback inhibitor UDP-xylose by an atypical allosteric mechanism. Briefly, UDP-xylose competes with UDP-glucose for the active site. Binding UDP-xylose triggers a conformational change from an active 32 symmetry hexamer (E) to an inhibited horseshoe shaped complex (E廓). The ligand induced conformational change is the result of altering the affinity of the interface between subunits, i.e. allostery. hUGDH also displays hysteresis, the slow activation of the enzyme upon the addition of substrate. Hysteresis is caused by the slow isomerization from an inactive (E*) to the active state. Crystal structures of unliganded, as well as UDP-glucose or UDP-xylose bound hUGDH identified a buried structural element (the T131 loop-慣6 helix) as the potential allosteric switch. The allosteric switch connects the active site to hexamer interfaces and adopts a unique conformation depending on the ligation state of the enzyme. Here, we have conducted a series of studies to elucidate the role of the switch in both allostery and hysteresis and established that these phenomena are not only coupled but a feature of many UGDH proteins. Introducing the A136M substitution at the apex of the 慣6 helix trapped the allosteric switch in the E state. Restricting the movement of the allosteric switch abolished both allostery and hysteresis; providing the first evidence these phenomena are coupled. The movement of the allosteric switch between the E and E廓 states requires a substantial repacking of the protein core This repacking was hypothesized to be facilitated by large packing defects surrounding the allosteric switch. Filling a packing defect that only exists in the E state of hUGDH with the A104L substitution, also abolished both hysteresis and allostery supporting this hypothesis. Analysis of UGDH primary sequences suggested the large to small substitutions that resulted in these packing defects may serve as a motif to predict allostery in UGDH proteins. Caenorhabditis elegans UGDH was identified using this motif, and was shown to be both allosteric and hysteretic, showing the motif can predict allostery in UGDH proteins.

Redox biology and the aging Leydig cell

Beattie, Matthew The Johns Hopkins University 2012 해외박사(DDOD)

Leydig cells, the testicular cells responsible for testosterone production, do not turn over once formed during the peripubertal period. Previous studies have shown that intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) increase as Leydig cells age, and that this increase is correlated with reduced Leydig cell testosterone production. Although this has suggested that increased ROS might cause decreased testosterone, a cause-effect relationship has not been proven. Moreover, the mechanisms by which ROS increase with age are poorly understand, as are the effect of ROS increases on Leydig cell macromolecules, and on how aging Leydig cells respond to acute changes in their environment. These issues are addressed in the thesis. The redox environment of a cell results from a combination of ROS production and the ability of the antioxidant system to counter the effects of oxidizing molecules and thus protect cellular macromolecules. We hypothesized that the experimental depletion of glutathione (GSH), an abundant Leydig cell intracellular antioxidant, would result in reduced testosterone production. Incubation of Leydig cells isolated from the testes of adult Brown Norway rats with buthionine sulfoximine (BSO) reduced GSH content by more than 70% and testosterone production by about 40%. The antioxidants vitamin E, <italic>N</italic>-tert-butyl-α-phenylnitrone and Trolox countered BSO's effect on steroidogenesis but not on GSH depletion. Together, BSO and glutathione ethyl ester maintained intracellular GSH and also testosterone production, whereas 1,2-dithiole-3-thione, which increases intracellular GSH, increased testosterone production. <italic>In vivo</italic> studies also were conducted. Young (4 month old) and old (24 month old) rats were injected with BSO twice a day for 7 d, after which Leydig cells were isolated and analyzed <italic>in vitro.</italic> BSO treatment reduced Leydig cell GSH content by 70% and the ability of the Leydig cells to produce testosterone by more than 50%. As with aging, decreases were seen in LH-stimulated cAMP production, steroidogenic acute regulatory protein, cholesterol side-chain cleavage, 3β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase, and 17α-hydroxylase/17,20-lyase. The results of these studies, taken together, are consistent with the conclusion that alteration in the oxidant/antioxidant environment plays a causative role in the age-related reduced ability of Leydig cells to produce testosterone. Next, we hypothesized that aging cells, with an increasingly prooxidant intracellular environment, might be particularly susceptible to acute oxidative stress. To test this, MA-10 Leydig tumor cells were incubated with BSO or diethyl maleate (DEM) so as to deplete glutathione (GSH), and then exposed to the prooxidant tert-butylhydroperoxide (t-BuOOH). This increased intracellular ROS concentration and resulted in reduced progesterone production. In contrast, treatment of control cells with t-BuOOH had no effect. Depletion of GSH and subsequent treatment of the cells with t-BuOOH induced the phosphorylation of each of ERK1/2, JNK and p38, members of the MAPK family. Inhibition of p38 phosphorylation largely prevented the t-BuOOH-induced down-regulation of progesterone production in GSH-depleted cells. These results indicate that alteration of the intracellular GSH redox environment results in the increased sensitivity of MA-10 cells to oxidative stress, and that this is mediated by activation of one or more redox-sensitive MAPK members. In the final study, we hypothesized that luteinizing hormone (LH), the pituitary gonadotropin that stimulates testosterone production, affects the oxidant-to-antioxidant balance in Leydig cells, resulting in greater damage in aged than young cells because of the reduced antioxidant capacity that occurs with aging. To address this, we tested the effects of LH stimulation on stress response genes, intracellular ROS formation, and ROS-induced damage to ROS-susceptible macromolecules (DNA) in young and aged cells. Microarray analysis indicated that LH stimulation of Leydig cells resulted in significant increases in genes associated with stress response and anti-apoptotic/cell protective pathways. Short-term LH treatment of primary Leydig cells isolated from young rats resulted in increased levels of ROS compared to controls. Shortly thereafter, ROS production by the young cells decreased to control levels. Aged Leydig cells also showed increased ROS levels soon after their stimulation by LH. However, in contrast to the young cells, ROS production peaked later, and the time to recovery was increased as well. In both young and aged cells, treatment with LH resulted in increased levels of DNA damage, as assessed by Comet assay, but significantly more so in the aged cells. DNA damage levels reflected the levels of intracellular ROS. These results indicate that LH stimulation causes increased ROS production by young and aged Leydig cells, and that while DNA damage occurred in cells of both ages, greater damage was seen in the aged cells. Thus the results are consistent with those obtained with MA-10 cells. These studies, taken together, provide strong evidence that the intracellular oxidant/anti-oxidant redox environment of aging Leydig cells affects intraceullar macromolecules and plays a very important role in the functional decline of these cells over time.

Becoming Baba: A performance guide to Menotti's "The Medium"

Beattie, Rose Marie University of California, Los Angeles 2009 해외박사(DDOD)

In spite of its highly unusual origins and its special place in Menotti's and the public's mind, The Medium has, aside from relatively brief journalistic reviews, received virtually no critical attention from the performance point of view. This is true in spite of the fact that it has had many celebrated Baba's--from Claramae Turner, the performer at the premiere, to Marie Powers, Canadian contralto Maureen Forrester, and Americans Beverly Evans, Joyce Castle, and Cynthia Munzer. Four of these artists are still living. Moreover, in addition to the 1957 television recording with Turner, two other versions have been made---a 1950 film with Marie Powers directed by Menotti and extended to 80 minutes, and the 1977 television version with Forrester that runs 59 minutes. I have not only been able to study these video recordings but I have conducted interviews (two of them extensive) with Claramae Turner, Joyce Castle, and Cynthia Munzer. Moreover, Turner permitted me to examine and photograph her performing score, which is riddled with performance directions arrived at jointly with Menotti and notated faithfully by Turner. I have used these variable but rich and untapped resources to explore the performance parameters employed by the five greatest proponents of this singular role. In what follows I have divided these elements into digestible sections to facilitate a deeper understanding of one of the twentieth century's most memorable operas. While biographical, film, television and theatrical sources abound on Menotti and his works, virtually none of these address direct performance issues surrounding "The Medium". This exploration should interest not only the potential executant of Baba but all those who treasure opera as a living experience. My paper addresses directly and in depth issues of range, register choices, interpretation, stage directions, vocal delivery, notated performance traditions, and potential cuts blessed by Menotti but not notated in the score. Together they remind us that The Medium was just as pivotal a work as Menotti claimed.