Tag: Poster 106

The Influence of Women’s Self-Perceptions of Ability and Effort Expenditure on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Field Persistence

Presenter(s): Samuel Ryan Adcock – Psychology

Faculty Mentor(s): Sara Hodges, Kathryn Denning

Poster 106

Research Area: Social Psychology

Women in the United States consistently drop out of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields at various points along the career pathway. While discrimination is an important factor, women’s self-perceived levels of natural ability and effort exertion relative to those of others in their field may lead to decreased future persistence in STEM. To discover whether these factors influence the decision to leave STEM at the undergraduate level, the current study used questionnaires to measure male and female undergraduates’ future persistence, field identification, and self-perceptions of ability and effort expenditure. We expect to find that low self-perceived natural ability as well as high self-perceived effort exertion relative

to peers will be associated with low future persistence, moderated by gender. However, we also expect to find that field identification will act as a buffer allowing for future persistence in spite of self-perceived low ability and high relative effort exertion. If confirmed, these findings will speak to the importance of conveying to women that gender does not influence STEM ability

Caregiver singing and infant vocalizations in everyday infancy

Presenter(s): Madison Edgar

Faculty Mentor(s): Caitlin Fausey

Poster 106

Session: Social Sciences & Humanities

The auditory environments infants encounter impact their vocal development, especially during interactions between a caregiver and their infant (e.g., Franklin et al., 2014; Cartmill et al., 2013). We know that caregivers not only talk but also sing to their infants; however, we don’t yet know how singing might matter for many infant behaviors in everyday life (Custodero, Britto, & Brooks-Gunn, 2003). In this study, I ask: Does singing impact infant vocalizations in everyday life? We audio recorded one full day at home from 35 infants (ages 6-12 months old). Trained coders identified moments of live vocal music by listening to these recordings. Speech modeling software automatically identified infant vocalizations (Ford et al., 2008). Overall, infants encountered 6.5 minutes of live vocal music each day (Median = 6.52 , SD = 7.24) and vocalized 1165 times over the course of each day (Median = 1165, SD = 523.55). Interestingly, infants who encountered more live vocal music also vocalized more (r = .48, p < .01). These results raise the possibility that caregiver singing promotes vocalization practice for infants. We know that high quality auditory environments include lots of speech directed specifically at the child, which suggests that singing may also be high quality input. Thus, this study provides implications for future interventions for infants with lower quality auditory environments.