Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Observable Behavior For Implicit User Modeling: A Framework And User Studies, Jinmook Kim, Douglas W. Oard

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a framework for observable behavior that can be used as a basis for user modeling, and it reports the results of a pair of user studies that examine the joint utility of two specific behaviors. User models can be constructed by hand, or they can be learned automatically based on feedback provided by the user about the relevance of documents that they have examined. By observing user behavior, it is possible to obtain implicit feedback without requiring explicit relevance judgments. Four broad categories of potentially observable behavior are identified: examine, retain, reference, and annotate, and examples of …

Men Kissing, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

The author, a heterosexual woman, uses the theme of men kissing to show relational dynamics in her fieldwork community, a network of gay male friends. Political implications of public same-sex kissing also are discussed. At the time the events described in "Men Kissing" occurred (1997) and for six more years, it was not legal for persons of the same sex to be intimate in Florida and 13 other states.

Introduction To Between Gay And Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation [Book], Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

This chapter sets a personal, academic, and cultural context for the author's PhD dissertation research (1994-98), an ethnographic and interview study of a network of gay male friends in Tampa, Florida.

Homeward (Chapter 6 Of The Book Between Gay And Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation), Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

“Homeward” is Chapter 6 of the book Between Gay and Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation (AltaMira Press, 2001). Here I present events that took place during the spring 1997 semester and that summer. An issue that comes to the forefront is the binary (gay-straight) construction of sexual orientation and identity. I ask what it means to say, “I’m straight,” or “I’m gay,” and what options and experiences such a claim opens up and closes off. By exploring an attraction between myself and one of my participants, I question the popular wisdom that friendships between straight women and gay men …

Talking Through Meaning (Chapter 7 Of The Book Between Gay And Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation), Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Chapter 7 provides a dialogic analysis of my PhD dissertation research (1994-98) on a network of gay male friends in Tampa, Florida. The chapter is based on a conversation my husband Doug and I had while I was trying to compose a more conventional conclusion on gay-straight friendship and friendship as method. We discuss my project’s academic, personal, interpersonal, and cultural implications.

Behavioral Inhibition, Social Withdrawal, And Parenting, Kim B. Burgess, Kenneth H. Rubin, Charissa S. L. Cheah, Larry J. Nelson

Faculty Publications

The study of children's social and emotional development requires that attention be paid to such factors as dispositional/biological factors (e.g., temperament), familial interactions and relationships, social contexts (e.g., school, neighborhood), and culture. For example, Hinde (1995) has advanced the notion that development be considered from a multi-level perspective beginning with individual characteristics and progressing the interaction, relationship, and group levels of analysis and conjecture. At the level of the individual child, developmental scientists have studies such constructs as temperament that might lead to problematic social or behavioral outcomes. One such interpersonal characteristic is that of "difficult" temperament – a phenomenon …

Non-Social Play As A Risk Factor In Social And Emotional Development, Charissa S. L. Cheah, Larry J. Nelson, Kenneth H. Rubin

Faculty Publications

Children spend much of their youthful energy engaged in play. Indeed, play, in its various forms, represents a serious business – not only for the active participations, but also for students of the phenomenon. To many researchers, play is viewed as a generative fore in children's social, emotional, and cognitive development (see Rubin, Fein, & Vandenberg, 1983; Saracho & Spodek, 1998; Fromberg & Bergen, 1998). The extent to which children engage in play with others is of added developmental significance. In light of the complexity and developmental significance of children's play and especially play with peers, it seems important to …

Lg-Soar: Parsing For Information, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Merrill Hutchison, Tim Richards, William Taysom

Faculty Publications

Mine content from problematic text

Address complicated linguistic issues

Output information into a usable format

Integrate components within an agent architecture

A Two-Level Implementation For Lushootseed Morphology, Deryle W. Lonsdale

Faculty Publications

This paper describes the implementatio of a computer system that processes Lushootseed word forms. Built on the two-level model and leveraging finite-state technology, the system is able both to parse surface forms to arives at the underlying morphemic decomposition, and to generate surface forms given such a representation. Components of the system are discussed including the lexicon architecture, rule formulation and specification, ans the word-structurer grammar. Issues relevant to processing Lushootseed are discussed including reduplication, allomorphic variation, inflectional and derivational affixation, and morphophonemic alternations.

Index Of Utah Construction Company / Utah International Collection, 1900-1984 Ms 100, J. Michael Hunter

Faculty Publications

This is a detailed index of the Utah Construction / Utah International Collection or Manuscript Collection 100 (MS 100) housed in Special Collections at the Stewart Library, Weber State University. The collection comprises 275 boxes of records chronicling the activities of Utah Construction Company/Utah International. From these files comes a history of worldwide construction and mining activities undertaken by the company for nearly a century. Records of the Administrative Departments: meeting announcements, minutes, agendas, and financial files pertaining to the Board of Directors and Executive Committee. The collection also includes organizational charts, financial data, annual reports, daybooks, journals, ledgers, legal …

Carter, Reagan, And Khomeini: Presidential Transitions And International Law, Nancy Amoury Combs

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Relational Victimization In Childhood And Adolescence: I Hurt You Through The Grapevine, Nicki R. Creek, David A. Nelson, Julie R. Morales, Crystal Cullerton-Sen, Juan F. Casas, Susan E. Hickman

Faculty Publications

Sylvia usually feels pretty good about herself, but lately her friends at school have been acting a little strangely toward her. When she goes to sit with them in the cafeteria at lunch, everyone stops talking. When she passes people in the hall, she hears them whispering behind their hands. And then just yesterday she overheard someone saying that Mindy was having a birthday party, and she hasn't been invited. What Sylvia doesn't know is that Mindy has been spreading gossip about her to their mutual friends ever since Sylvia beat her out for the lead in the school play. …

Varieties Of Religion-Family Linkages, John R. Snarey, David C. Dollahite

Faculty Publications

The 4 articles in this special issue make important contributions to both family and religious studies as well as to their interface. This commentary begins by considering 4 unifying themes present across all of the articles, including meaningful religion-family linkages, the importance of gender differences in the faith-family interface, the significance of intergenerational relationships, and the need for better theory. The authors then discuss the unique major strength and secondary limitations of each study. Finally, the commentary focuses on two challenges inhibiting the contemporary study of religion and the family–a relative lack of racial and religious diversity in samples and …

Technology And Market Failure, Fred Foldvary, Daniel Klein

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of Taxation, Fred Foldvary

Faculty Publications

The judgment of taxation by ethical standards requires a universally applicable ethic. Such an ethic, natural moral law, can be derived using the Lockean framework based on equality. By this universal ethic, persons have property rights in their bodies and lives, and thus in their labor. The taxation of wages and of products of labor are therefore morally wrong. The equality premise, combined with the Lockean proviso on land, leads to the conclusion that public revenues may be justly obtained from the rental benefit of natural resources. Voluntary user fees and invasion penalties such as pollution charges are also morally …

An Operator-Based Account Of Semantic Processing, Deryle W. Lonsdale, C. Anton Rytting

Faculty Publications

This paper explores issues of psychological plausibility in modeling natural language understanding within Soar, a symbolic cognitive model. It focuses on constructing syntactic and semantic representations in simulated real time, with particular emphasis on word sense disambiguation (WSD). We discuss (i) what level of WSD should be modeled and (ii) how to use resources such as WordNet to inform these models. A preliminary model of coarse-grained WSD is included to show how syntactic, semantic, and other knowledge sources interact in Soar. Finally, we explore issues of interleaving, learning, and integrating other WSD approaches with Soar's native model of learning.

Surface Analogy And Spelling Rules In English Vowel Alterations, David Eddington

Faculty Publications

Previous psycholinguistic research into the English vocalic system suggest that the vowel alternations [ei-re, ii-£, ai-1, ow- a, u"-A], termed SPELLING RULE ALTERNATIONS, are psychologically significant for English speakers, in that they can influence the pronunciation of unfamiliar words. In this paper, the influence of these salient alternations on nonce words and neologisms is assessed. The effect of su1face analogy on the pronunciation of novel words is also examined. Surface analogy may be defined as the influence exerted by the fu lly specified surface forms of the morphemic relatives of a word. It assumes that all allomorphs of a given …

Public Librarians And The Civil Rights Movement: Alabama, 1955-1965, Patterson Toby Graham

Faculty Publications

Racial segregation in southern public libraries affected millions of African Americans before the Civil Rights movement, and for librarians in the South it created a conflict between professional and regional values. Ultimately, it was the efforts of black activists rather than librarians acting on their ethical impulses that ended library segregation. Librarians were constrained by local racial customs, Jim Crow laws, and, often, by their own racial attitudes. Also, librarians recognized that there were inherent dangers associated with defying the segregationists. There were a few, however, who challenged the racial status quo, and these individuals demonstrated the potential of librarians …

Functional Projections Of Predicates: Experimental Evidence From Coordinate Structure Processing, Stanley William Dubinsky, Marie Egan, A. Rene Schumauder, Matthew J. Traxler

Faculty Publications

This paper reports the results of six experiments involving an on-line self-paced reading task that examine the processing of coordinate small clause predicate phrases versus coordinated arguments NPs. The results have particular significance for the analysis of small clause complement constructions, and support accounts wherein the small clause complement has an Agr projection associated with it. An adequate explanation of the processing of small clause coordination is shown to motivate a new parsing principle, Coordination Feature-matching, which accounts for the longer reading times observed for the coordination of predicates in small clause complements.

Gender Differences In Sexual Behaviors And Factors Associated With Nonuse Of Condoms Among Homeless And Runaway Youths, Duncan A. Mackeller, Linda A. Valleroy, John P. Hoffmann, Donna Glebatis, Marlene Lalota, William Mcfarland, Johnny Westerholm, Robert S. Janssen

Faculty Publications

Few studies have examined gender-specific factors associated with the nonuse of condoms among homeless and runaway youths (HRYs)–a population at high risk for HIV infection. In this article, we evaluate these factors and explore gender differences in background experiences, psychosocial functioning, and risk behaviors among HRYs from four U.S. metropolitan areas. Of 879 sexually active HRYs sampled, approximately 70% reported unprotected sexual intercourse during a 6-month period, and nearly a quarter reported never using condoms in the same period. Among males and females, having only one sex partner in the previous 6 months had the strongest association with nonuse of …

Emotion And Group Cohesion In Productive Exchange, Edward J. Lawler, Shane R. Thye, Jeongkoo Yoon

Faculty Publications

This study refines and experimentally tests a theory of relational cohesion that explains how and when actors become committed to one another in the context of multiactor exchange. The theory asserts that frequent social exchange results in (1) positive emotions that solidify and strengthen the person-to-group bond and (2) uncertainty reduction that renders the focal group more salient in relation to others. These two mechanisms produce a sense of psychological group formation and ultimately increase observable acts of commitment. In a “productive exchange” setting, three actors negotiate a joint venture that requires the assent of all members. The exchanges featured …

Mission College, Thailand, Assignment: October 26 - November 8, 2000, Keith Clouten

Faculty Publications

This report tells the story of a library consultation visit to Mission College, a new Adventist post-secondary school situated in the hill country northeast of Bankok, Thailand.

Chinese Privatization: Between Plan And Market, Lan Cao

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Affirmative Actions, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Publications

Liberals and progressives have been slow to realize that their preferred vocabulary has been hijacked and that when they respond to once hallowed phrases they are responding to a ghost now animated by a new machme. The point is not a small one, for in any debate, especially one fought in the arena of public opinion, the battle is won not by knock-down arguments but by the party that succeeds in placing its own spin on the terms presiding over the discussion.

The Cover Design, Thomas D. Walker

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Dynamical Balance In The Indonesian Seas Circulation, William H. Burnett, Vladimir M. Kamenkovich, David A. Jaffe, Arnold L. Gordon, George L. Mellor

Faculty Publications

A high resolution, four-open port, non-linear, barotropic ocean model (2D POM) is used to analyze the Indonesian Seas circulation. Both local and overall momentum balances are studied. It is shown that geostrophy holds over most of the area and that the Pacific-Indian Ocean pressure difference is essentially balanced by the resultant of pressure forces acting on the bottom.

A Balanced Nitrogen Budget Of The Surface Layer Of The Southern Ross Sea, Antarctica, Walker O. Smith Jr., Vernon L. Asper

Faculty Publications

To understand marine biogeochemical cycles, it is critical to quantitatively balance organic matter transformations within the euphotic zone. Such an assessment for nitrogen is difficult because of lateral advection, uncertainties in individual measurements, the complexity of elemental transformations (including nitrification and denitrification), and the difficulty of collecting data on appropriate space and time scales. Two cruises were conducted to the southern Ross Sea, Antarctica, to understand the time-varying fluxes of nitrogen into its various pools. From these data a balanced inventory was constructed. Nitrate removal in the upper 200 m was balanced by particulate and dissolved organic nitrogen production, ammonification, …

A Library ‘Teens’Cape’ Against The New Callousness, Anthony Bernier

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Preservation And Interpretive Plan For The Dill Tract Civil War Earthworks On James Island, South Carolina, Steven D. Smith

Faculty Publications

Beginning in the late fall of 1862 the Confederate Army defending Charleston began work on a line of earthworks and batteries across James Island, South Carolina, from Secessionville to the Stono River. The lines were called the "New Lines" to distinguish them from other lines built in 1861. Today, approximately 3,000 feet of these lines still exist in very good condition on a 17.3 acre tract of land that represent a portion of the Dill Tract. The tract and earthworks (archaeological site 38CH 195) are part of a noncontiguous district listed on the National Register of Historic Places and are …

The Cover Design, Thomas D. Walker

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.