UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
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Item Explorations in Diagnosing Competence and Performance Factors in Linguistic Inquiry(2022) Liter, Adam; Lidz, Jeffrey; Hornstein, Norbert; Linguistics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation presents a series of case studies concerned with whether the signal in a given set of measurements that we take in the course of linguistic inquiry reflects grammatical competence or performance factors. We know that performance and competence do not always covary, yet it is not uncommon to assume that measurements that we take of linguistic performance do transparently reflect the underlying grammatical competence that is the target of inquiry. This has been a very useful and fruitful assumption in the vast majority of cases. Nonetheless, there are certain cases where more careful consideration of the linking hypothesis between the underlying competence of interest and the measurements of linguistic behavior (i.e., performance) that one takes might be warranted. This dissertation presents three case studies that try to model such consideration. How performance and competence might interact is highly dependent on the phenomenon being investigated as well as the method being used to investigate it, so there is no one-size-fits-all approach to these kinds of considerations. The goal of this dissertation is to model such consideration and to encourage more of it. In Chapter 2, we investigate English-acquiring children’s non-adult-like productions of medial wh-phrases. On the basis of experimental data showing a correlation between an independent measure of cognitive inhibition and the production of such examples, we will argue that the best explanation of these productions is that children fail to inhibit the pronunciation of the wh-copy at the intermediate clause boundary due to an underdeveloped executive function and that children do have the target adult-like English grammar with respect to the formation of wh-dependencies (contra, e.g., Thornton 1990, McDaniel, Chiu, & Maxfield 1995, de Villiers, de Villiers, & Roeper 2011). Then, in Chapter 4, we investigate the status of island violations under sluicing (i.e., TP ellipsis). Sluicing apparently improves the acceptability of island violations contained inside the ellipsis site (see, e.g., Ross 1969). Whether we should understood this improved acceptability as indicative of such examples being grammatical is an open question (cf. Ross 1969, Chomsky 1972, Lasnik 2001, Fox & Lasnik 2003, Merchant 2005, 2008b, 2009, Temmerman 2013, Griffiths & Lipták 2014, Barros 2014a, Barros, Elliott, & Thoms 2014, 2015). We investigate the status of such examples with several 2 × 2 experiments, an experimental paradigm discussed in detail in Chapter 3. The idea of the experimental design is to use differences between acceptability ratings and subtraction logic afforded by the linking hypothesis between acceptability and grammaticality to try to more directly get at grammaticality. Our results from this chapter are ultimately somewhat inconclusive, but for potentially methodologically informative reasons. Finally, in Chapter 5, we use the same kind of experimental paradigm to investigate the status of Bulgarian examples with multiple wh-dependencies, where one of the wh-dependencies crosses an island and the other does not. Bulgarian is a language with multiple fronting of wh-elements, and it has been observed that examples where one of the wh-dependencies spans an island but not the other are improved in acceptability (see, e.g., Richards 1997, 1998, 2001). Such examples have thus been taken to be grammatical, though they do still exhibit some degree of unacceptability. We use the same sort of experimental paradigm to try to ascertain the grammaticality status of these examples. We find evidence that such examples are indeed grammatical, which reaffirms the importance of ensuring our syntactic theories can account for such examples.Item Teacher Competence Support for Reading in Middle School(2012) McRae, Angela; Guthrie, John T.; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between student perceptions of teacher competence support, self-efficacy for reading, and reading achievement for African American and European American students. Previous studies of teacher support have emphasized emotional support and have found considerable evidence for positive effects on motivation and achievement (Wentzel, 2009). Over time, support for competence has increasingly emerged as a distinct dimension of teacher support (Beghetto, 2007; Wentzel et al., 2010) and there is a need for the extension of this empirical research on the association between teacher competence support, motivation, and achievement. This study seeks to narrow this focus to student perceptions of teacher competence support, student self-efficacy, and reading achievement in middle school. The study sample consisted of 366 seventh- grade students in an ethnically and economically diverse school district. Students completed measures of their perceptions of teacher competence support, which included encouragement and instrumental help in reading. Students also completed a reading self-efficacy questionnaire and an assessment of information text comprehension. While controlling for socioeconomic status, hierarchical multiple regressions and MANOVA were conducted. African American students perceived statistically significantly higher levels of teacher competence support for reading compared to their European American peers. European American students performed at a higher level on the reading achievement measure, and there was no significant difference between groups in self-efficacy. Teacher competence support was significantly associated with self-efficacy regardless of ethnicity, and was also significantly associated with reading achievement, but only for African American students. Self-efficacy was significantly correlated with reading achievement for both ethnic groups; however, this correlation was statistically significantly higher for European American students. Post hoc analyses revealed that the correlation between self-efficacy and reading achievement was significant for European American students regardless of perceived level of teacher competence support, and the self-efficacy and reading achievement relationship was significant for African American students only if they perceived high levels of teacher competence support.Item Counseling strategies with lesbian, gay, and bisexual clients: An online analogue study(2006-08-01) Asay, Penelope; Fassinger, Ruth E; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The differences of three approaches to addressing a client's sexual orientation in an initial counseling session were investigated. Utilizing an online analogue method, participants were assigned to read and rate a hypothetical counseling vignette between a White, gay male client and a White, heterosexual male therapist. Participants were randomly assigned to Counselor A, who talked about the client's sexual orientation directly, Counselor B, who talked about the client's sexual orientation indirectly, or Counselor C, who did not mention the client's sexual orientation. It was found that addressing a client's sexual orientation in a first session was associated with higher ratings of general and multicultural competence and a greater willingness of the participant to discuss issues of sexual orientation with the hypothetical counselor. Addressing culture either directly or indirectly was rated more highly than not addressing culture at all. No differences in perceptions of counselor approach were found either by race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or previous experience in therapy. More generally, it was found that perceived general competence, multicultural competence, and working alliance were predictive of how willing participants would be to discuss both issues of sexual orientation and other issues with the hypothetical counselor. Multicultural competence contributed unique variance over and above general competence and working alliance. Results suggest that empirical efforts to investigate multicultural counseling competence may be enriched by including sexual orientation.