Projects in Psychology

• Peony Fhagen-Smith
  Associate Professor of Psychology

  Sociopolitical development during adolescence and emerging adulthood

  Proposal

  Sociopolitical development, or a consciousness of and motivation to reduce sociopolitical inequality, has been found to be a protective factor for adolescents and emerging adults of color in terms of effectively handling sociopolitical barriers in their career development.  This study extends the research by looking at sociopolitical development among a vulnerable population of young people—those with undocumented status.

  Academic year: 2011-2012

• Jason E. Reiss
  Assistant Professor of Psychology

  Cognitive neuroscience laboratory

  Proposal

  I would like to employ a WRP student(s) to assist in experiments in my Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory. Student responsibilities would include assisting in literature searches and locating research articles, and most importantly collecting data from experimental participants. The overarching goal of my lab is to study the hidden mental processes involved in the acquisition and use of visual information. I am interested in questions such as: How do we pay attention to certain things and disregard other things? What happens in the brain during this selection process? How does this selection determine our visual experience? To help in this exploration, I will be using behavioral methods as well as a new 128-channel high-density electroencephalography (EEG) system that allows one to precisely measure the electrical activity that occurs in the brain. Please see my faculty webpage and Pages 12-13 of the Summer 2009 Wheaton Quarterly for more information.

  Academic year: 2011-2012

• Michael Berg
  Associate Professor of Psychology

  Attention and confirmation bias in obesity stereotyping

  Proposal

  The WRP student will work with me on several experiments examining obesity prejudice.  In addition to becoming a regular member of our student research lab, the WRP student's responsibilities will include conducting research literature searches and creating research summaries, organizing study materials, collecting data and interviewing research participants, and managing data. Last year's experiments examined attitudes towards obesity reducing public policies and the role of subtyping in obesity stereotype perceptions. Our main focus this year will be the role of attention and confirmation bias in obesity stereotyping.

  Academic year: 2011-2012

• Kathleen Morgan
  Associate Professor of Psychology

  Data collection, analysis and documentation

  Proposal

  I would like to apply for a WRP student to help me with two projects over the course of the coming academic year:  1)  the wrapping up of data collection and start of data entry and analysis for an investigation of the impact of physical contact with animals on visitor attitude and behavior at the Southwick's Zoo (bulk of the data for this study was collected this summer), and 2) continuation of the yellow-spotted salamander documentation component of Wheaton's long-term vernal pool research project.

  Academic year: 2011-2012

• Bianca Cody Murphy
  Professor of Psychology

  Effects of modernization on women in Bhutan

  Proposal

  I would like to apply for a Wheaton Research Partnership grant to continue work on the effects of modernization on women in Bhutan. This summer we developed a Likert Scale to measure Bhutanese attitudes toward Buddhism, marriage and family, education, work, the environment and community life in Bhutan. Next semester, we would like to determine the reliability and validity of the instrument and test it on a small sample of RTC students.  In addition, we will work with 3-4 Bhutanese cultural informants to identify key cultural values and to address linguistic issues.  In the future, perhaps with an outside grant or with support from Wheaton, we hope to be able to use the attitude scale together with qualitative interviews to understand how modernization has affected cultural values in three generation of Bhutanese women.

  Academic year: 2011-2012

• Meg Kirkpatrick
  Associate Professor of Psychology

  Digital library of behavioral neuroscience research articles

  Proposal

  This year I will be putting together a digital library of a collection of behavioral neuroscience research articles.  The collection is currently in use by my research lab and upper-level Psychobiology and Neuroscience majors and consists of file cabinets of printed material.  The intended transformation of the collection would enable me to 1) expand the collection using available on-line digital sources, 2) make the collection more searchable for students, 3) digitally preserve 100s of important early research articles (1920s- 1980s) that are not generally not available on-line or the college library and 4) maintain a space-saving collection that is consistent with the "green" ideals of the Mars Center for Science and Technology. The WRP student will be responsible for finding digital versions of articles through on-line sources such as Scopus and Science Direct or creating PDFs of articles with a digital scanner.  The student will also create a database of the articles using software such as RefWorks or Papers.

  Academic year: 2011-2012

• Rolf Nelson
  Associate Professor of Psychology

  Cognitive Effects of Video Game Play

  I want to continue investigating the cognitive effects of video game play. In my recent research (with a number of students) I published a paper demonstrating that different genres of video games can alter responses in terms of a shifted speed/accuracy tradeoff in a subsequent task. I am in the process of collecting data to understand how long-term gamers approach tasks in terms of their speed and accuracy components. Another project I hope to begin is a taxonomy of video games in terms of their cognitive demands. This will be accomplished via multidimensional scaling using ratings from experienced video gamers.

  Academic year: 2010-2011

• Grace Baron
  Professor of Psychology

  Stress & Coping in Autism Research Team

  I seek 2 WRP students to assist with ongoing research projects on the role of stress in lives of those on the autism spectrum. Join me as part of our research team (directed by Matthew Goodwin ’98) at Providence, RI’s Groden Center, a treatment center for children and adults on the autism spectrum. You’ll get a glimpse into the amazing world of children and young adults on the autism spectrum and practice basic research skills. Our team continues to explore ways to measure stress, and to adapt teaching and treatment strategies and technological innovations to facilitate coping with the stress of life. Current projects include telemetric measures of arousal (heart rate, GSR, motor movements) & stress, development and testing of face and emotion recognition devices, testing the effectiveness of various interventions on teaching coping with stress The team also welcomes interns.

  Academic year: 2010-2011

• Peony Fhagen-Smith
  Associate Professor of Psychology

  The Adolescent Self-Portrait Project

  As the process of self development unfolds, adolescents become increasingly aware of how they think, feel and act with different people and in different settings. The reactions of adolescents to the multiple ways they think, feel and act varies by age due to social and cognitive developmental changes. This research study investigates 7th, 9th, and 11th grade adolescents’ reactions to their own self portrait descriptions in terms of the number of opposites and conflicts they indicate between self descriptors in eight different contexts (i.e., with mother, with father, with best friend, with friend, with romantic partner, on-line, in school, and in the classroom). This study will also investigate individual differences in the number of opposites and conflicts based on gender, ethnicity, parents’ marital status, masculinity/femininity traits, and experiences with peer humiliation. Data collection in three high schools will begin in the fall.

  Academic year: 2010-2011

• Jason E. Reiss
  Assistant Professor of Psychology

  Cognitive Neuroscience

  I would like to employ a WRP student(s) to assist in experiments in my Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory. Student responsibilities would include assisting in literature searches and locating research articles, and most importantly collecting data from experimental participants. The overarching goal of my lab is to study the hidden mental processes involved in the acquisition and use of visual information. I am interested in questions such as: How do we pay attention to certain things and disregard other things? What happens in the brain during this selection process? How does this selection determine our visual experience? To help in this exploration, I will be using both behavioral methods as well as a new 128-channel high-density electroencephalography (EEG) system that allows him to precisely measure the electrical activity that occurs in the brain. Please see my faculty webpage and Pages 12-13 of the Summer 2009 Wheaton Quarterly for more information.

  Academic year: 2010-2011

• Michael Berg
  Associate Professor of Psychology

  The Nature of Obesity Prejudice

  Faculty report (Michael Berg)

  This academic year two students, Samantha Walker ’12 and Sara Hollar ’11, worked with me as research collaborators. As a central part of my research lab group, they took part in literature searches and discussion, the design of both research surveys, the collection of the survey data, and the submission of our findings to a regional conference. We ran two related studies during the year. The first project focused on the role of subtyping in obesity stereotypes. The second project examined attitudes towards public policies aimed at reducing obesity. Both of these projects will be presented at the upcoming annual meeting of the New England Psychology Association. Sara wrote much of our submission for the public policy study and Samantha took the reins on the subtyping submission. Each student will be a lead presenter at the conference in October. I believe that both projects yielded publishable data and these students will be part of the writing process and authors on the papers.

  Student report (Samantha Walker)

  Over the course of the 2010-2011 academic year, I worked with Professor Berg in the Psychology Department on several mini projects revolving around obesity and anti-fat stereotypes. One of the main goals in our research was to determine whether or not subtypes for obese individuals exist, as they currently do for other demographic categories such as race. As a team we researched, read, and shared journal articles related to this topic and designed a survey consisting of possible obesity subtypes along with a list of characteristic qualities. As a research assistant, I helped edit the wording of the survey and brainstormed possible subtype labels and characteristics.  After several drafts we settled on a final survey format and submitted our proposal. Once permission was granted, we distributed this survey to students in the Wheaton population. Once enough data had been collected we regrouped to analyze the results. In addition we also created a survey which focused on public policies in regards towards the obese. I, along with two other students, traveled to several public locations to distribute this survey. Through this process I learned to conduct research and how to debrief participants afterwards as to the nature of our experiment. I served as a representative for Wheaton College’s psychology department.

  The results of our public policy survey spurred ideas for another project focusing on attention and memory. We were curious as to what participants would remember after viewing obese and normal weight individuals consuming either healthy or unhealthy meals. A project still in its early stages, I have taken photographs of tables at food courts for our background and have read and researched literature on the topic. Additionally I also helped modify our original subtype/characteristic survey so we could distribute this new version to a broader population of participants. As a research assistant I have always felt included and respected as part of the research team and process. I have learned to conduct better literature reviews, as well as share my opinions and thoughts in a professional manner. I have learned to work well with others and ask tough questions in order to better understand how humans think and interact as social creatures.

  Student report (Sara Hollar)

  Over the past semester I have worked on series of studies regarding perceptions of the obese in American society.  With Sam and Professor Berg, we designed studies to measure obesity subtypes by creating lists of adjectives that may describe characteristics of hypothesized sub-stereotypes. This project allowed me to become familiar with more in depth and nuanced stereotype research, an area I am interested in pursuing further in my graduate career. The other main project I was involved with examined the role of anti-fat prejudice in public policy support or non-support. On top of experimenting with different ways to design the survey, I was also able to collect a large amount of data from a sample outside of the Wheaton student population. This allowed our study to be even more applicable to real world policy decisions. I enjoyed the clear real world applications of this study, and hope that my interest and experience with applied research will allow me to be a strong graduate school candidate. Working with Professor Berg has given me the experience I needed to become confident designing and implementing research methods to measure important questions.

  Original proposal

  I would like to have a Wheaton Research Partnership student to help me with all phases of a two-phase experiment looking at the nature of obesity prejudice. Student responsibilities will include conducting research literature searches, preparing detailed bibliographies, organizing study materials, collecting data / interviewing research participants, and managing data. Although the existence of obesity (antifat) prejudice has been well documented, few if any studies exist to show how the prejudice manifests itself when in comes to novel social judgments or to policy decisions (e.g., soda taxes, fitness graduation requirements, etc.) This is a new line of research for me and would be a great opportunity for a student to see how psychological research is built from the ground up.

  Academic year: 2010-2011