Tag: Dare Baldwin

Exploring the Effect of Social Media Popularity Metrics on Curiosity

Presenter: Erica Waldron – Psychology, Sociology

Faculty Mentor(s): Dare Baldwin

Session: (In-Person) Poster Presentation

Social media inundates us with information about popularity; for example, social media posts are accompanied by a number of likes and comments. Dubey and colleagues (2020) recently demonstrated that such indicators of popularity influence people’s curiosity to learn more about specific topics. If so, this is one unexpected, beneficial side effect of social media popularity metrics. However, the way in which they manipulated popularity via Reddit-like “upvotes” may have introduced a confound into their findings. In particular, people were asked to report about an item’s popularity immediately before reporting on their curiosity regarding that item. The immediate juxtaposition of these two questions may have led participants to assume that popularity was relevant to curiosity, thereby creating what is called a demand characteristic that contaminated their findings. My thesis research attempts to replicate Dubey and colleagues’ research while avoiding this potential demand characteristic. People rated curiosity first and were asked about popularity only at the end of the survey. Analyses on preliminary findings modeled after Dubey et al. suggest that their findings are not replicating. That is, people are no more curious about items with a high number of upvotes than those with a low number of upvotes. To the extent that my full data set is consistent with this non-replication, these new findings bring into question whether popularity has any relationship to curiosity.

Possible Benefits of Maternal Thiamine Supplementation for Mother-Infant Joint Attention in Cambodia

Presenter: Sera Lew – Global Studies, Psychology

Co-Presenter(s): Audrey Saing

Faculty Mentor(s): Dare Baldwin, Jeffrey Measelle

Session: (In-Person) Poster Presentation

Thiamine deficiency is a common micronutrient deficiency in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia (Measelle, et al., 2020). Severe thiamine deficiency contributes to infant mortality, while subclinical levels undercut infants’ neurocognitive development (Fattal-Valevski, et al. 2009). This study focuses on the possible implications of mother-infant thiamine status for neurocognitive development in terms of joint attention interactions where caregivers and babies simultaneously engage with the same object. This study is part of a larger randomized controlled trial in rural Cambodia investigating how low-dose thiamine supplementation of breastfeeding mothers might benefit infants’ cognitive development. Cambodian mothers (N=335) were randomly assigned to receive daily supplements of either 0mg, 1.2mg, 2.4mg, or 10mg of thiamine hydrochloride from 2 to 24 weeks postnatal. We hypothesized that mothers and infants who received thiamine would display longer joint attention interactions than those in the control group. Preliminary findings from 70 mother-infant dyads (control: 18; supplementation: 52) provided possible confirmation of these predictions; joint attention interactions were marginally longer for dyads who received supplemental thiamine than those who did not, F(1, 68) = 3.69, p = .059. If these findings are reflected in the full sample, they would indicate that thiamine facilitates infants’ joint attention interactions, a key catalyst for neurocognitive development.

Does Low-Dose Thiamine Supplementation Affect Mothers’ Support For Infant Secondary Engagement?

Presenter: Bridget Johns − Psychology

Faculty Mentor(s): Dare Baldwin, Diana DeWald

Session: (In-Person) Poster Presentation

Thiamine is a crucial nutrient for the body; considerable evidence indicates that its deficiency can negatively impact infants’ health and neurocognitive development. Unfortunately, in Southeast Asia, thiamine deficiency is common due to cultural reliance on thiamine-poor polished white rice as a dietary staple. My research is part of a larger, randomized, controlled trial investigating possible benefits of maternal thiamine supplementation for breastfed babies’ neurocognitive development. I focused on Cambodian mothers’ ability to support infants in secondary engagement; specifically, their skill in facilitating joint attention regarding a novel object. To understand effects of thiamine on maternal joint engagement efforts, we developed a code using a five-point Likert scale to examine mother’s behavioral efforts on four dimensions: presentation of object, joint engagement efforts, contingent responding, and affective tone. Mothers participated in a task where they attempted to initiate and sustain their infant’s attention on a novel object for five 30-second increments (epochs) and were coded on how well they displayed each dimension per epoch. We expected the dimensions’ ratings to display a systemic pattern across each epoch, and mothers who received higher doses of thiamine to have the highest joint engagement codes. Analyses indicate the presence of the predicted systemic patterns but no effect of thiamine dosage.

Monitoring Infant Neurodevelopment Via the Hammersmith Neurological Exams in Cambodian Infants

Presenter(s): Katherine Dong —Human Physiology

Faculty Mentor(s): Dare Baldwin

Session: (Virtual) Oral Panel—Health and Social Science

Thiamine deficiency affects millions of infants growing up in South and Southeast Asia due to heavy cultural reliance on thiamine-poor, polished white rice as a dietary staple. Recent evidence indicates that a thiamine-deficient diet not only endangers infants’ health, but also hinders infants’ neuro-cognitive development. As part of a larger, randomized controlled trial, my thesis investigated possible benefits of maternal thiamine supplementation for protecting breastfed Cambodian infants’ neurological development. Lactating mothers were randomly assigned to four treatment groups (0, 1.2, 2.4, and 10mg daily thiamine supplement) when infants were between 2 and 24 weeks postnatal. Infants’ neurological function was measured at 2, 12, 24, and 52 weeks via the Hammersmith Neurological Examination, a field-standard clinical assessment tool. As expected, infants’ Hammersmith scores improved significantly with age. However, maternal thiamine supplementation dose did not affect infants’ Hammersmith scores. Above all, this research indicates that the basic neurological functions assessed by the Hammersmith in early infancy were relatively unaffected by maternal thiamine supplementation.

ChangeDwell: The Interaction Between Change Blindness and Dwell Time Paradigms

Presenter: Ava Archer − Psychology

Co-Presenter(s): Ethan Scott

Faculty Mentor(s): Dare Baldwin

(Virtual) Oral Panel—Health and Social Science

People witnessing identical streams of information can experience that information very differently. This phenomenon was strikingly documented in a famous psychological experiment: one group of research participants watching a video of a crowded area failed to notice a man in a gorilla suit meander across the room, although another group described the man in the gorilla suit as the most salient aspect of the video. How do we account for such diversity in experience? My research investigates this general question via a new technique: the dwell-time paradigm, in which viewers advance at their own pace through slideshows depicting dynamic events while the time they spend looking (dwelling) at each image is measured. As dwell time is an emerging technique within the field of attentional work, there are many new insights that can be gained from collecting data in this manner. We hypothesize that patterns of dwelling across time will clarify which aspects of events viewers are prioritizing in their processing, and thus we will be able to predict—well in advance— who will subsequently report salient features of interest (such as a man in a gorilla suit). If this is confirmed, these findings will hold considerable real-world significance. Specifically, it will be possible to utilize dwell-time patterns across a range of situations where monitoring the focus and adequacy of people’s attention is crucial.

A Look at the Development of Action Segmentation in Children and Adults

Presenter: Jennifer Paternostro

Mentor: Dare Baldwin

AM Poster Presentation

Poster 35

In order to process and understand events as they unfold, adults break down events into smaller parts. For example, the process of making a sandwich would include big, medium, and small events. A big event would be completing making the sandwich, a medium event would be finishing putting the condiments onto the sandwich, and a fine event would be placing one slice of turkey onto the bread. Adults are readily able to predict the next step in a sequence of actions, such as predicting that the cheese will go on top of the meat in the sandwich example. The present research investigates developmental differences in how humans predict action. We hypothesize that when adults are processing an action sequence, they tend to look longer at the end of that sequence as they actively make predictions about the next step. Children, however, may be slower to predict what will happen next and therefore will have longer looking times at the beginning of each additional sequence. Specifically, this study explores the differences in action segmentation between 3-year old children, 5-year old children, and adults. Participants advanced through a self-paced slideshow of an actor making an ice cream sundae while the computer recorded their looking times to each individual slide. Our findings point to the differences in how children and adults segment and predict action.

Motionese: Subject to Preference?

Presenter : Natalie Brezack

Mentor : Dare Baldwin

Major :Psychology

Poster 12

Research by Kuhl, Coffey-Corina, Padden, and Dawson, 2005, demonstrated that typically developing infants prefer “motherese” speech to a non-speech analog. In contrast, children with autism spectrum disorder show the reverse preference, and the degree to which this is true predicts their developmental progress in processing properties of speech streams. I am investigating possible parallels to these findings in children’s processing of human action; specifically, whether developmental skills in preschool-aged children predict the degree to which they prefer “motionese” versus a non-action analog (or the reverse), and whether the strength of their preference predicts the sophistication of their processing of intentional action. Preliminary results based on participation from forty 2- to 3-year- olds indicate a significant correlation between executive function skills and degree of preference for motionese versus the non-action analog. Should these findings be borne out in the full sample, they point to important links between the development of language and intentional action processing, and they may have implications for designing interventions for children developing atypically.

Re-evaluating Recasts as Negative Evidence

Presenter: Amanda Hammons

Mentor: Rose Maier, Dare Baldwin

Poster: 17

Major: Psychology & German 

Marcus (1993) argues that recasts (feedback on children’s speech errors provided via a corrected version of the utterance) are of little value for language acquisition: although parents recast children’s errors, they also recast well- formed utterances. Perhaps, however, parents provide pedagogical cues that distinguish recasts with corrective versus non-corrective intent. If so, children might be especially receptive to recasts accompanied by corrective intent, and update their linguistic constructions accordingly. To test this, 5- and 6-year-old children are introduced to two novel verbs in present tense forms. Both verbs take irregular past tense forms, modeled after real irregular verbs in English (e.g. ling/lang modeled after ring/rang), so children’s initial attempts to use the past tense are typically overgeneralizations (e.g. linged). The experimenter recasts these errors in two conditions: In the informative condition, pedagogical cues signaling corrective intent accompany recasts. In the uninformative condition, recasts are linguistically identical but lack pedagogical cues to corrective intent. If these cues help children disambiguate corrective versus non-corrective recasts, children in the informative condition should show greater preference for the correct (irregular) past tense form over the incorrect (overgeneralized) form. This work contributes to the growing body of research on children’s use of social cues to disambiguate linguistic input in the service of language acquisition.

Referential communication task in a naturalistic setting

Presenter(s): Aaron Macarthur

Faculty Mentor(s): Dare Baldwin & Netanel Weinstein

Oral Session 3 C

Reaching shared understanding in conversation is an important part of daily life. Various mechanisms facilitate this achievement including: the ability to engage in perspective taking, sensitivity to gaze, sharing attention, and making pragmatic inferences about an interlocutor’s intent. Prior research on this topic has prioritized experimental control over ecological validity by placing participants in highly constrained situations. We addressed these limitations in the present study by correlating performance in a modified referential communication task with participants’ performance on several standard personality and socio-cognitive measures. Specifically, pairs of participants were placed on either side of a shelf with a series of cells and prepared a cake from a given recipe card. Some of the cells on the shelf were visible to only one participant or the other, while some cells were visible to both. We measured participants use of various disambiguation strategies (e.g. gaze checking or making a clarification request) and examine whether performance on standard socio-cognitive measures predict these behaviors. This research helped shed light on the relationship between standard decontextualized socio- cognitive measures and real-life social interaction as well as the extent to which these measures predict individual differences in the way people achieve shared understanding in conversation.

Phase One Of A Free Curriculum For Treating Anxiety And Increasing Productivity With Evidence Based Methods

Presenter(s): Nolan Kriska—Business and Psychology

Faculty Mentor(s): Dare Baldwin

Session 3: To Care and How Not to Care, that is the Question…

If people avoid their anxiety now, they put themselves at serious risk for mental and financial damage . A 2013 meta analysis deduced the effects of anxiety on cognitive function from over 200 studies that involved thousands of participants . They found anxiety decreased productivity and quality of life, “The impacts of anxiety on cognition [are as follows] . Both threat of shock—a translational anxiety induction—and pathological anxiety disorders promote the detection of potentially harmful stimuli at multiple levels of cognition from perception to attention to memory and executive function” (Robinson 7) . One proven method that helps people control their anxiety is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a psychotherapy that creates new paths of thought in order to challenge unwanted behaviors and mood disorders . Using CBT now rather than later gives people a chance to continue to contribute to society and maintain a quality of life . I plan to teach CBT and its affiliated counterparts (habituation, inhibitory learning model, yuck diagram, dialectics and some existential thought) via youtube, published research, and the use of a live secure network . Thank you for your time and consideration .

Works Cited: www .ncbi .nlm .nih .gov/pmc/articles/PMC3656338/