Tag: Psychology

Perceptions of Risky Sexual Behavior

Presenter: Serena Agterberg − Psychology, Sociology  

Faculty Mentor(s): Sanjay Srivastava, Bradley Hughes

(In-Person) Poster Presentation 

College is a time when many young adults engage in sexual behavior that may involve physical, psychological, and/or emotional risk. Accurately assessing the ways in which college students are perceiving and engaging in sexual risk taking is an important step in understanding what information needs to be distributed on campuses to eliminate consequences of risk taking. The purpose of this study is to examine college students’ perception of sexual risk taking in their own and others’ behavior. This study will seek to answer the following research questions:

1. What sexual behaviors do college students consider to be “risky”?

2. How do individual differences affect views of and participation in sexual risk taking?

300 participants from the University of Oregon human subjects pool were recruited for this study. Participants were asked to write two narratives describing times in which they, someone close to them, or someone they know participated in sexual behavior that they would consider to be “risky.” Participants then answered questions about personality and were asked for demographic information. The narratives were analyzed using an inductive thematic analysis to identify patterns in the responses. Identifying which behaviors are of concern to college students as well as examining which individual differences relate to attitudes about sexual risk taking will help in the creation and execution of sexual risk reduction strategies.

Using Personality to Predict Risky Sexual Behavior

Presenter: Serena Agterberg − Psychology, Sociology

Faculty Mentor(s): Sanjay Srivastava, Bradley Hughes

(In-Person) Oral Panel—Healthy Considerations, Poster Presentation 

To investigate the relationship between personality traits and risky sexual behavior (RSB) with the goal of understanding if students with different levels of stable individual differences may be more or less likely to engage in RSB, we collected data from N= 605 college students. Participants completed the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2) and the Sexual Risk Survey (SRS). We estimated correlations of each Big Five domain and facet with overall sexual risk, and four subscales of risk: Sexual Risk Taking, Risky Sex Acts, Impulsive Sexual Behavior, and Intent to Engage in Risky Sexual Behaviors. The results suggest that students with high Extraversion, low Conscientiousness, and low Agreeableness are most likely to engage in overall RSB. Low Agreeableness is the strongest indicator of likelihood of participating in overall RSB, as well as all four subscales of risk. Several BFI-2 facets were significantly related to RSB including high sociability, high assertiveness, low respect, and low compassion. These results indicate that personality may be a valuable asset in identifying students who are more or less likely to engage in RSB.

Bullying, Victim, and Aggressor: Past Experience versus Current Behavior

Presenter : Fushu Tan

Mentor : Holly Arrow

Major : Psychology

Poster 38

Bullying is the most common type of violence in American schools, and the consequences can persist into adulthood, affecting school achievement, prosocial skills, and psychological well-being for both victims and bullies. The current study examined whether past experience with bullying affects how likely college students are to intervene when someone they know is bullied. 120 college students (50 males, 70 females) completed a questionnaire that assessed their past experience with physical and relational aggression. They then read a scenario that asked them to imagine a real-life situation of bullying. Next, they decided whether they would intervene by contacting the aggressor, the victim, or both. Over 95% of participants reported some past experience as both aggressor and victim. Unexpectedly, males reported significantly more past experience as relational aggressors than females. Over half the participants said they would intervene by contacting both victim and bully. However, past victimization experience did not increase the likelihood of intervening. In fact, past experience scores tended to be somewhat lower for those who intervened. The only significant past experience predictor was that those who chose not to intervene at all tended to have more experience as a bully. The findings provide additional evidence that exposure to bullying often includes experience as both aggressor and victim, and that can complicate an un- derstanding of how this experience affects future decisions to intervene.

Reoccurring Goal Monitoring Display Design: Effects on Completion Rates, Motivation, and Emo- tional Affect

Presenter : Molly Martini

Mentor : Sara Hodges

Major : Psychology

Poster 24

Reoccurring goals, such as exercising every other day, are important for health and work-life balance, yet seem to be quickly disre- garded as soon as other deadlines and daily stressors enter our lives. Given that information presentation affects how one processes and acts upon the information, could a different display design other than a standard weekly planner increase an individual’s chances of completing his or her goals? Specifically, could a visual object display lead to increased motivation and more goal completions com- pared to a text based display? Three different goal monitoring tools were created to answer this question: an Android app that shows goals as squares that visually stretch out as goal deadlines approach, another Android app that lists the goals and their deadlines by text, and a paper planner consisting of two calendar weeks. Participants were randomly assigned one of these three tools and asked to monitor their own reoccurring goals for two weeks, completing nightly questionnaires asking about motivation level, goal completion, and affect. It is predicted that the visual app will lead to more goal completions, higher motivation, and higher levels of both positive and negative affect compared to the two text conditions. Data analysis has yet to take place, but will be completed by May 16, 2013. Importantly, the study may suggest new ways in which display design can be utilized to help people achieve personal reoccurring goals.

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.

Brain Training and Cognitive Aging: A Meta-analytic Review

Presenter: Lauren Williams

Co-Presenters: Selina Robson

Mentor: Ulrich Mayr

Poster: 35

Major: Psychology

Cognitive decline is an unfortunate hallmark of aging. Deficits can interfere with daily activities and often come at the cost of living independently. In recent years, “brain training” programs and games have become a popular option for older adults who are looking to sharpen their cognitive skills. However, despite their commercial success, it is not clear to what degree these programs produce generalized effects beyond improvement on the trained skills. To determine the size of generalized training effects, we conducted a meta-analysis of existing training studies that used plasticity-focused practice regimes. Studies were included if they sampled adults aged 50 and older, participants had no cognitive impairment, and they had a control group. This led to a final sample of 32 studies. Preliminary results suggest a small-to-moderate overall effect size. In addition, we found that the effect size declined along the near-to-far transfer continuum as assessments become more dissimilar to training type, and with the sample size of the study. Particularly surprising is the fact that the effect size is negatively correlated with duration of the practice regimen. For far-transfer outcome measures with large sample sizes and long durations of practice, the effect size approaches zero. These results raise doubts about the promise that plasticity-related training regimes effectively counter the broad effects of cognitive aging.

Disease and Space: An Historical Epidemiology Study Investigating Northern Paiute Cultural Patterns Pre and Post Reservation

Presenter: Madeline Weissman

Mentor: Kevin Hatfield

Oral Presentation

Major: Psychology/Spanish

I chose to study the effects of disease on the Northern Paiute from the 1700’s through present day for a 10 week Honors College Colloquium. I chose this topic due to my ongoing interest in public health and the ways diseases correlate with cultural and social factors. This study is a historical epidemiology, combining biological information on the components of epidemic diseases such as the flu, malaria, smallpox, and measles with geographical information on the Pacific Northwest as well as cultural information on the lifestyle of the Northern Paiute. I investigated the
onset of epidemiological diseases in relation to movement onto reservations. This study focuses on the interaction between disease and the idiosyncratic cultural patterns of the Northern Paiute, such as location, movement, isolation, and traditional medicinal practices. Methods for my research included finding primary sources such as government documents obtained via microfilm and handwritten letters available through the UO Library’s Special Collections. Additionally, I conducted three oral interviews with four tribe members and referenced secondary sources obtained through the UO library catalogue. Approximately half of my research comes from primary sources and half from secondary sources. Through my research, I found that diseases such as the flu, malaria, smallpox, and measles only started to affect the Northern Paiute once they were forced onto reservations and continue to have devastating population repercussions on the existing tribe.

Beyond Depression: Mothers with Comorbidity Differ in Neural Response to Infants’ Cry

Presenter: Heidi Martinez

Mentor: Heidemarie Laurent

Oral Presentation

Major: Psychology 

Past research has illuminated how the functioning of the subcortical and prefrontal regions of the brain is affected by a major depressive disorder, and how this in turn affects the maternal response to infant stimuli. In past behavioral studies, mothers who had both major depression and an anxiety disorder, a prevalent comorbidity in the clinical population, showed significantly more intrusive behaviors with their infants than mothers without anxiety. The current study explores how comorbid anxiety disorders impact specific patterns of maternal response. We hypothesized a difference in neural response to infant cries in mothers who are comorbidly diagnosed in comparison with mothers who suffer from depression without anxiety and in comparison to mothers with no diagnosis. This hypothesis was tested in a group of 22 high risk mothers exposed to their own infant’s cry sound during functional neuroimaging. Group comparisons of neural response to own infant cry (vs. a control sound) were examined. Fixed effects analysis revealed greater activation in several areas, including those associated with speech-related auditory processing and empathy, for those mothers with depression and anxiety as compared to mothers with depression and no anxiety disorder. Areas of emotion regulation and motivation showed greater activation for mothers in the control group. These neural activation patterns suggest that mothers with a comorbidity could benefit from therapies targeting the need to regulate their attention; an inhibition task, as compared to mothers with depression only who need to direct their attention as well, involving both behavioral activation and inhibition systems.

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.

Accessing Long-Term Memory—What Pupil Dilation Can Tell Us About Learning and Memory

Presenter: Marina Gross

Mentor: Nash Unsworth

Oral Presentation

Major: Psychology 

Our study investigated the role of pupil dilation in long-term memory through a delayed free recall task. Studying attention levels during learning and retrieval of memories might shed light on cognitive deficits typical in ADHD and other attention disorders. Previous studies have shown the validity of pupil dilation as a proxy for attention and effort. For the first time, this study used pupillometry to investigate encoding and retrieval processes as well as the primacy effect—a phenomenon that describes superior recall of the first item on a list. Participants learned 7 lists of 10 words each for later recall. Using eye tracking, we analyzed pupil size during both learning as well as retrieval. Results revealed a close relationship between pupil dilation and recall behavior. When pupil was large, participants recalled words rapidly and to a higher degree. Furthermore, attention during encoding, indicated by pupil size, peaked at the first item only to decrease over the course of each trial. These findings are consistent with primacy-gradient models. Additionally, we provide new evidence on the primacy effect. Pupil dilation during the first item on each list was much larger and followed a different pattern than any other item during encoding. Our data suggest that besides rehearsal, increased attention to the first item on the list might play a role in its superior recall.