Psi Chi would like to thank Allyn & Bacon Publishers for sponsoring the 2006-07 research award competition. Cash awards were provided by Allyn & Bacon to the winners as follows: $1,000 for first place, $650 for second place, and $350 for third place. Psi Chi congratulates these 2005-06 winners of the Allyn & Bacon Awards and wishes them continued success in their education and careers.

Read abstracts of these award winning papers here.


Heather Lander recently graduated from Elizabethtown College with honors in the discipline of psychology (May 2007). During her senior year, she was fortunate enough to work with Dr. Catherine Lemley on a study investigating attentional aspects of synesthesia. She presented her research at the 2007 APS Convention in Washington, DC. While attending Elizabethtown, she was a member of APS, Psi Chi, the psychology club, and the women's tennis team. Ms. Lander is currently serving as an AmeriCorp member at Western Maryland. She plans to attend graduate school for either clinical or school psychology.

Kelly Jones, a 2007 summa cum laude graduate of Elizabethtown College, is a first year PhD student in the clinical neuropsychology program at Drexel University (PA). As an undergraduate, she received a Psi Chi Regional Research Award for a project involving romantic relationships among emerging adults. With the help of Dr. Catherine Lemley, her senior thesis, which was also the project for this award, earned her Honors in the Discipline and is currently under review for publication. Additionally, she had the opportunity to research the cognitive deficits of Parkinson’s disease under the mentorship of Dr. Amanda Price. She has presented research at the annual meetings of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, EPA, and APS. Ms. Jones’ current research interests are in the area of neuropsychological assessment of patients with traumatic brain injury or brain tumors.

Candace Marie Gross was raised on a farm in South Dakota. As a first generation college student, she recently graduated from Northwestern College in Orange City, IA, with a BA in psychology. In the fall, she began graduate school at the University of South Dakota for school psychology. This study was conducted for her senior thesis under the supervision of her advisor, Dr. Laird Edman. She presented the paper at the annual APS Convention and received the Outstanding Conference Paper Award at the Siouxland Undergraduate Social Science Research Conference. Last summer, Ms. Gross participated in an REU at Western Kentucky University and worked with Dr. Anne Rinn. Her research focused on the relationship between gifted adolescents’ overexcitabilities (innate supersensitivity to stimuli) and self-concepts. She presented the paper at the AERA Annual Meeting and the manuscript was published in Roeper Review this summer.