Tag: Poster 119

The World War II Correspondence of Billy and Bonnie Amend

Presenter(s): Will Curtis − History

Faculty Mentor(s): Alexander Dracobly, Julie Hessler

Poster 119

Research Area: History

For just short of three years, from June 1942 to August 1945, my great-grandparents, newlyweds Billy and Bonnie Amend, did not see each other or hear one another’s voice. Billy was a Major in the 190th Field Artillery, stationed in England until the Allied invasion of Western Europe on June 6, 1944. During the years he was gone, the Amends communicated exclusively through letters. They each wrote almost one a day for the duration of the war. My thesis examines just one year of this correspondence, 1944, during which Billy saw some of the most violent combat of the war, including the Battle of the Bulge. Meanwhile, Bonnie was left to struggle through daily life and care for my grandmother back home in Hugo, Oklahoma. Through examination and careful reading of just over one thousand pages of their original letters, my thesis evaluates how the Amends persisted through World War II and how the letters they exchanged helped them to do so. Primarily, the letters served to maintain the bond between Billy and Bonnie. While they spent ink discussing the war itself, the letters are largely dedicated to summaries of day-to-day life, and expressions of each other’s desire to finally be together again. However far apart they were and however much danger Bonnie imagined Billy to be in, the letters they wrote back and forth seemed to lessen their separation, and mitigate some of that danger. Though my thesis only examines the correspondence of Billy and Bonnie, their experience was one had by millions of Americans during the war. They provide a direct account of was on the minds of families separated by the deadliest war the world has ever known, and detail just how they were able to come out on the other side.

Effect of Blocked vs. Interleaved Training on Associative Inference Ability

Presenter(s): Rennie Kendrick

Faculty Mentor(s): Dasa Zeithamova & Caitlin Bowman

Poster 119

Session: Social Sciences & Humanities

Memory allows us to link across multiple experiences to derive new information. For example, if we see a person, person 1, walking a Dalmatian, and later see another person, person 2, walking the same Dalmatian, we may infer that person 1 and 2 live in the same household. This linking of experiences to derive new information is called associative inference, and my research asks which conditions lead to the best associative inference. Participants are trained and tested on object pairs that each share an object in common with another pair. Half of the participants see object pairs in blocked format and the other half see the object pairs in interleaved format. In the blocked condition, participants have strongly established prior knowledge before encountering overlapping new information. In the interleaved condition, participants encounter a new overlapping episode before the first is strongly established. For the associative inference test, participants must infer that two objects that were never directly paired together, but paired with the same object, are indirectly related. I found that participants in the blocked condition performed significantly better on associative inference and directly-paired object tests compared to interleaved condition participants. Thus, strong memory for the first episode before encountering the second, overlapping episode enhanced associative inference ability and memory for both individual episodes. One possibility for this effect is that strongly established prior knowledge prevents interference from overlapping, but distinct episodes. Further investigation into the effect of blocked versus interleaved training on learning could lead to enhanced teaching methods.