Theses and dissertations

This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students. 

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The Effect of Auditory Masking on the Behavioral Welfare of Shelter Dogs

Description
Dogs in animal shelters are subjected to a number of stressors during their stay, including barking which can reach 120 dB. Music has been suggested as a way to reduce this stress, however, the properties of music that result in reduced stress behavior have not been examined. An affective response…

Dogs in animal shelters are subjected to a number of stressors during their stay, including barking which can reach 120 dB. Music has been suggested as a way to reduce this stress, however, the properties of music that result in reduced stress behavior have not been examined. An affective response to music, like that found in humans, is unlikely due to human higher cognitive function. Masking, reducing the magnitude of volume change with the presence of another sound, is one property that may be responsible for this observed stress reduction. Using white and pink noise, we examined the effects of auditory masking on stress behaviors in shelter dogs. Overall, we observed no difference in the amount of sitting, lying, head resting, or barking between the control and treatment conditions. Limitations and future directions of studies are listed.
ContributorsRedmond, Domenic Xavier Wendell (Author) / Wynne, Clive (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Steele, Kenneth (Committee member) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
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What Predicts Student Comprehension in Language Learning? Augmenting Student Action with Elapsed Time in an Educational Data Mining Approach

Description
Reading comprehension is a critical aspect of life in America, but many English language learners struggle with this skill. Enhanced Moved by Reading to Accelerate Comprehension in English (EMBRACE) is a tablet-based interactive learning environment is designed to improve reading comprehension. During use of EMBRACE, all interactions with the system…

Reading comprehension is a critical aspect of life in America, but many English language learners struggle with this skill. Enhanced Moved by Reading to Accelerate Comprehension in English (EMBRACE) is a tablet-based interactive learning environment is designed to improve reading comprehension. During use of EMBRACE, all interactions with the system are logged, including correct and incorrect behaviors and help requests. These interactions could potentially be used to predict the child’s reading comprehension, providing an online measure of understanding. In addition, time-related features have been used for predicting learning by educational data mining models in mathematics and science, and may be relevant in this context. This project investigated the predictive value of data mining models based on user actions for reading comprehension, with and without timing information. Contradictory results of the investigation were obtained. The KNN and SVM models indicated that elapsed time is an important feature, but the linear regression models indicated that elapsed time is not an important feature. Finally, a new statistical test was performed on the KNN algorithm which indicated that the feature selection process may have caused overfitting, where features were chosen due coincidental alignment with the participants’ performance. These results provide important insights which will aid in the development of a reading comprehension predictor that improves the EMBRACE system’s ability to better serve ELLs.
ContributorsDexheimer, Matthew Scott (Author) / Walker, Erin (Thesis advisor) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / VanLehn, Kurt (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017