University of North Texas

About: University of North Texas is a education organization based out in Denton, Texas, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 11866 authors who have published 26984 publications receiving 705376 citations. The organization is also known as: Fight, North Texas & UNT.

Using a Technology-Enriched Environment to Improve Higher-Order Thinking Skills

Abstract: This study examined the effect of a technology-enriched classroom on student development of higher-order thinking skills and student attitudes toward computers. A sample of 80 sixth-grade and 86 fifth-grade students was tested using the Ross Test of Higher Cognitive Processes and surveyed using the Computer Attitude Questionnaire. The creation of a technology-enriched classroom environment appears to have had a positive effect on student acquisition of higher-order thinking skills. This study identified several implications related to classroom design to enhance the development of higher-order thinking skills. Teachers reported that the technology-enriched classroom differed from the traditional classroom in several significant ways.

Health Information, Credibility, Homophily, and Influence via the Internet: Web Sites Versus Discussion Groups

Abstract: Despite concerns about online health information and efforts to improve its credibility, how users evaluate and utilize such information presented in Web sites and online discussion groups may involve different evaluative mechanisms This study examined credibility and homophily as two underlying mechanisms for social influence with regard to online health information An original experiment detected that homophily grounded credibility perceptions and drove the persuasive process in both Web sites and online discussion groups The more homophilous an online health information stimulus was perceived as being, the more likely people were to adopt the advice offered in that particular piece of information

Personal Attribute Models of the Voting Behavior of U.S. Supreme Court Justices: Liberalism in Civil Liberties and Economics Decisions, 1946–1978

Abstract: The prevailing view among students of judicial politics is that judges' background characteristics or personal attributes cannot provide satisfactory explanations for variation in their decision-making behavior. Parsimonious attribute models reported here account for 70 to 90 percent of the variance in the voting of postwar Supreme Court justices in split decisions concerning civil rights and liberties, and economics. Seven variables representing six meaningful and easily interpretable concepts achieve this success. The concepts are Judge's Party Identification, Appointing President, Prestige of Prelaw Education (economics only), Appointed from Elective Office, Appointment Region (civil liberties only), Extensiveness of Judicial Experience, and Type of Prosecutorial Experience. The impressive performance of these models is attributed to superior measurement, operationalization, and model building; to a greater similarity between personal attribute models and more fully specified ones than has been assumed; and to the possibility that the attitudes which intervene between the personal attributes and the voting of judges are causally very closely linked to voting.

Entropic nonextensivity: a possible measure of complexity

Abstract: An updated review (corresponding to the inaugural talk delivered at the The International Workshop on Classical and Quantum Complexity and Nonextensive Thermodynamics, Denton, TX, April 3–6, 2000) of nonextensive statistical mechanics and thermodynamics is colloquially presented. Quite naturally the possibility emerges for using the value of q −1 (entropic nonextensivity) as a simple and efficient manner to provide, at least for some classes of systems, some characterization of the degree of what is currently referred to as complexity (M. Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar, Freeman, New York, 1994). A few historical digressions are included as well.