Psychology – Page 3 – Undergraduate Research Symposium Abstracts

Cultural Considerations of the Filming Interactions to Nurture Development Intervention

Presenter: Alvin Lengkong – Psychology

Faculty Mentor(s): Andrea Imhof

Session: (In-Person) Poster Presentation

The relationship between exposure to adverse childhood experiences and adult health risk has been well established (Felitti et al., 1998). Fortunately, research has shown that interventions can disrupt this cycle and even reverse these effects. A strong, established relationship between an infant and a caregiver can act as a “buffer” that regulates and dampens the infant’s physiological response to stress (Flannery et al., 2017; Hostinar et al., 2014). The Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND) intervention is a strengths-based video coaching program designed to disrupt the consequences of early exposure to toxic stress and promote naturally occurring, developmentally supportive interactions between infants and their caregivers (Fisher et al., 2016). While the FIND intervention has been shown to be effective in improving certain child and parent outcomes, the literature has often overlooked the importance of cultural factors when implementing parenting interventions. The focus of this paper will be to explore the cultural differences between English- speaking and Spanish-speaking families, and to identify if these differences influenced the intervention’s effects on parent outcomes (e.g. parent sense of competence). Implications and limitations of the FIND intervention’s cultural considerations will be discussed.

Urotensin-II-related peptides, Urp1 and Urp2, control zebrafish spine morphology

Presenter: Colin Kuhns − Psychology

Faculty Mentor(s): Elizabeth Bearce

Session: (In-Person) Oral Panel—Bio-Zebrafish and DNA

The spine is the defining feature of vertebrate life. The morphology of the vertebral column emerges in animals during embryogenesis and continues to develop into adulthood. Motile cilia, beat back and forth on the surface of cells to generate microscopic fluid flows. The generated fluid flow is essential both for the initial generation of a linear body and for the maintenance of a linear spine. Urotensin-II-related peptides (URP), Urp1 and Urp2, are 10-amino acid cyclized peptides and are expressed in flow-sensory neurons in the central canal. Previous findings have hypothesized a model in which Urp1 and Urp2 promote the axial straightening downstream of motile cilia function through inducing contraction of dorsal muscles. However, it has remained unknown whether Urp1 and/or Urp2 also function beyond embryogenesis in the maintenance of spine morphology during growth. Here we show that Urp1 and Urp2 are in fact dispensable for axial straightening during embryonic and early larval phases, contradicting the current model. Instead, we found that Urp1/Urp2 are essential for maintaining spinal linearity during later growth phases, with clear spinal dysmorphology in mutants during juvenile growth. Curves induced upon loss of Urp1/Urp2 model aspects of kyphosis and are distinct from curves exhibited by cilia motility mutants. Overall, this work links Urotensin peptide signaling to spine morphology and provides a new animal model for the common human spine dysmorphology of kyphosis.

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.

Impacts of Access to Nutritional Information on College Students

Presenter(s): Santino Gentile — Psychology

Co-Presenter(s): Eleanor Yi, Cheyenne Bissonnette, Alana Hilkey

Faculty Mentor(s): Chantelle Russell

Session: (Virtual) Oral Panel—Strive to Thrive ARC

Our research entails the benefits of nutrition on the mind and body, as well as the effects of having access to nutritional information, specifically macronutrients and ingredients, for college students. Students having access to the nutritional information of dining halls would be greatly aided in their personal and/or medical diets. Firstly, we discuss the beneficial effects of nutritional decisions and how they can improve the mental stability and physical health of students and all adults in general, which was found through secondary, scholarly research. Making knowledgeable decisions about dietary intakes can improve mood, blood sugar levels, quality of life, movement, energy levels, sleep quality, cognitive function, and physical recovery. This leads to an improved general quality of life for college students. The next step in this research must be addressing whether students, in particular students attending the University of Oregon, would similarly follow nutritionally beneficial diets to improve their mental and physical health in this way. This data was found via external research from previous studies nation/worldwide. It can be concluded that college students can and will make healthier dietary decisions upon learning about the nutritional information available to them via the dining halls. Multiple benefits, including mental and physical health as well as medical, would open up to students upon becoming knowledgeable in this subject matter.

Like mother, like child: Intergenerational transmission of maternal emotion regulation to infants

Presenter(s): Annaliese Elliot — Psychology

Faculty Mentor(s): Jennifer Ablow, Jeffrey Measelle

Session: (In-Person) Poster Presentation

Emotion dysregulation is a demonstrated precursor to future psychopathology. Infancy is a critical time to develop self regulatory skills in the context of a relationship with primary caregivers. How well a caregiver can aid infant regulation development varies, often depending on the caregiver’s own emotion regulation abilities. This study aims to build upon previous research by examining the predictive association between reported maternal emotional dysregulation, using the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), and observations of infant self regulation at six months. Temperament, measured with the Infant Behavioral Questionnaire (IBQ-R), will be controlled to capture the independent contributions of maternal dysregulation to infant’s early indices of emotion regulation capacities. Infants’ self regulation and negative affect will be measured with micro- analytic behavioral coding during the Still Face Paradigm (SFP), which examines patterns between a caregiver and their infant. It is hypothesized that greater emotion dysregulation in mothers will predict negative affect and ineffective regulation in infants during the SFP, above the effect of temperament. Understanding how a pregnant woman’s dysregulation relates to her infant’s developing regulatory strategies may provide insight into specific mechanisms through which risk for emotion dysregulation is transmitted across generations.

The Effects of the Use of Cannabis on College Students Wellbeing

Presenter(s): Malcolm Durfee – Psychology

Co-Presenter(s): Julia Hibbard, Cali Moore

Faculty Mentor(s): Chantelle Russel

Session: (Virtual) Oral Panel—Strive to Thrive ARC

Introduction: Whether it be for medicinal purposes or recreational use, the use of cannabis among college students has gone up. The hypothesis for our study is that cannabis use in college aged students affects mental health long term but short term it increases happiness.

Question of Study: What are the effects of the use of Cannabis on a College Student’s Wellbeing?

General Statement of the significance of the research: That cannabis use is very prevalent at college and it also very regulated, and the question is it a the problem that people are using it heavily or regulating it heavily.

Primary Results: We found that there is no proof of causation towards cannabis helping your well being or hurting it. Rather it depends on the person and if they personally know that the drug is good for them.

Primary Conclusion: The conclusion there is no conclusive evidence that this drug directly affects rather it could possibly be a signifier of how your well being is good or bad. Therefore our hypothesis was wrong and we need more research to really get to the bottom of this.

General Methods, Procedures, Sources: We examined these sources. In addition Alexis Drakatos showed a study that spoke about cannabis usage of students but it used survey data so it was not the most reliable data considering I know many students that lied on it. The data from all the UO interviews were either unusable or biased due to them trying to prove a narrative.

Cognitive Motivations for Women Faking Orgasm in Heterosexual and Queer Identities

Presenter: Alyssa Bui − Psychology

Faculty Mentor(s): Elliot Berkman

(In-Person) Oral Panel—Sex, Drugs, & Music

Research on the psychosocial phenomenon of women faking orgasms has only focused on a heterosexual population. Our study sought to include responses from both queer and heterosexual women to understand if motivations to fake orgasm and partnered orgasm frequency differ by sexual orientation. Undergraduate participants (N=103) were given possible motivations to fake orgasm and rated them on a scale from 1(Never) to 5(Always) in relation to their personal motivations to fake orgasm. The percentage of time participants faked orgasm and reached orgasm during partnered sex was also collected. A chi-square analysis was used to assess the relationship between sexual orientation and cognitive motivations to fake orgasm. There was a significant relationship between the motivation “Because your partner expects you to have an orgasm during sexual interactions?” and sexual orientation X2(4,103)= 11 .80, p= 0 .019. Descriptive statistics were used to examine counts of the highest motivations to fake orgasm and the average of reached and faked orgasms. Analyses revealed that the highest motivation for women to fake orgasm was “To make your partner happy”, with 70% of women reporting (Almost Always) or (Always). Additionally, heterosexual women were almost 10% more likely to fake orgasm (M=46 .75) than their queer counterparts (M=37 .96) . Results of this study add to the understanding of women’s sexuality, but further research is needed on faking orgasms and the potential for group differences.

Dissociating the Time Courses of Two Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Rod-and-Frame Illusion

Presenter: Ernestine Brannon − Psychology

Faculty Mentor(s): Paul Dassonville, Jeffrey Peterson

(In-Person) Oral Panel—Neuron & Cognition

Witkin and Asch (1948) developed the rod-and-frame illusion (RFI) to investigate how the visual system uses context to determine an object’s orientation by providing a distorted visual field and examining its effects on orientation judgments. The RFI is thought to be driven by a combination of local and global mechanisms. The local mechanism is brought about by low-level visual properties causing an orientation contrast effect between the rod and edges of the frame. The global mechanism is the product of a compromise between the visual and vestibular systems. In this study, we examine the time courses associated with the local and global mechanisms thought to underlie the RFI. We also examined the effect on illusion magnitude when we isolated the global mechanism.Participants performed a two-alternative forced choice task where they made orientation judgments (clockwise or counterclockwise of vertical) of the RFI stimulus and a new type of stimulus, the knob-and-frame illusion (KFI), designed to isolate the global effect. We varied stimulus onset asynchronies to determine when the frame begins to bias perception of vertical and when the illusion reaches its full magnitude for each stimulus type. As predicted, we found the RFI had a greater illusion magnitude than the KFI. We found that the KFI and RFI unfolded under similar time courses. The influence of the frame began with negative SOAs and built until reaching a plateau early in the positive SOAs.

Pandemic Investigation of Newly Burgeoning Acquired LGBTQAI+ Labels

Presenter: Elijah Alexander − Psychology

Faculty Mentor(s): Sara Weston

Session: (In-Person) Poster Presentation, Oral Panel—Covering Covid

Those with LGBTQ+ identities often live in the presence of “audiences” for whom they feel pressured to perform a heteronormative culture (Butler 1988). However, the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns may have removed such audiences from the daily lives of these individuals. Therefore, it is possible that the past year has seen an uncharacteristic emergence of queer gender identities and non-heteronormative sexualities. In this study, we attempt to empirically document the change and development of queer and gender non-conforming identity during the COVID-19 pandemic and their associations with changing social experiences. Using data collected via Prolific (anticipated N = 221), we examine associations between changes in gender identity, sexual orientation, and peer/ family acceptance. Specifically, we hypothesize that change in gender identity/sexual orientation will be predicted by increased use of virtual socializing (e.g., social media) over in-person socializing. By understanding these possible influencing factors, this study would serve as another stepping stone in queer psychology research as well as aiding in the development of new intervention methods for queer individuals.

Sidebar