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Faculty Advisor Research Grant 2002-2003 Winners Psi Chi congratulates the faculty advisors who won this year’s competition for the Faculty Advisor Research Grants. Listed alphabetically, the 2002-2003 winning faculty advisors are:
Although the impairments related to ADHD are often most apparent in the school setting, and teachers are often intricately involved in interventions for ADHD, little is known about teachers' perceptions of the disorder and its treatment. The current study examined the hypotheses that teachers' perceptions about ADHD and its treatment vary and that these variations can be predicted by teacher characteristics. Across 14 schools, 286 teachers completed a brief questionnaire assessing their perceptions about ADHD. Although 41% of teachers attributed ADHD equally to biological and social factors, 43% perceived the cause to be primarily biological, and 16% perceived the cause to be primarily environmental. Teachers who believed that ADHD is due to environmental factors perceived psychostimulant medication to be less effective than teachers who attributed ADHD to biological factors or equally to both. However, teachers' views about the cause of ADHD were not associated with their perceptions of the importance of psychosocial treatments. In addition, being female, having children of their own, and having more years of experience at their current school predicted teachers' positive views of the effectiveness of psychostimulant medication for treating ADHD. These and other findings suggest that teachers' characteristics are associated with their perceptions of ADHD and the effectiveness of various treatments.
Often, both traditional (ages 18 to 22) and non-traditional (ages 23 and over) students can be found in college classrooms. Previous research (e.g., Harju & Eppler, 1997) suggests that students in these age groups might interpret college classroom situations very differently, and make attributions for their success or failure accordingly. In this study, traditional aged students were expected to make internal attributions when receiving positive feedback and external attributions when receiving negative feedback. In contrast, non-traditional aged students were expected to make more internal attributions in both conditions.
Stress and stress hormones, such as corticosterone, can affect cognitive brain functions such as learning and memory. Animals were trained on either delay or trace classical eyeblink conditioning to see whether elevated stress hormones would impair hippocampal-dependent learning (trace conditioning). In eyeblink conditioning, a tone and shock are delivered such that they either overlap (delay) or have a short time-gap between them (trace). When conditioned, animals give an eyeblink response that follows the tone but precedes the shock. A corticosterone or placebo pellet was implanted under the skin of 15-day old rats and eyeblink conditioning occurred at 28 days of age. Preliminary analyses suggest that corticosterone had little effect on delay conditioning, but differently affected trace conditioning in males and females. In the corticosterone trace group, males performed worse than females. Further analysis and research will determine whether corticosterone impaired hippocampal function in males or facilitated learning in females.
Cognitive processes underlying decision-making tasks were investigated. Participants rank-ordered likelihoods of three outcomes or determined the veracity of four sentences. All participants gave written descriptions of their thinking processes. Results confirmed seven of nine hypotheses: neither a logical nor a probability judgment guaranteed a correct response; a representative judgment did not guarantee an incorrect response; the "Linda problem" led to the highest error rates of all eight conditions and the expected pattern of results was obtained over conditions; within-protagonist conditions yielded higher error rates in both conjoint probability and conditional logic problems; unnatural conditions yielded slightly higher error rates than natural conditions; no sequence effects were found for either logic or probability problems; lastly, fewer errors and representative judgments were found in conditional logic compared to conjoint probability problems. Unexpectedly, more representative than statistical judgments were made in between- compared to within-protagonist conditions, and abstract conditions did not yield higher error rates than concrete ones. Implications include the importance of presentation style, suggesting that problems presented in "if-then" formats may lead to both more rational and more accurate responses than comparable problems presented in terms of probability.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between threatened belongingness needs and the ability to identify deception. A sample of 45 undergraduate students first completed a 10-item measure of the need to belong. Next, participants were randomly assigned to experience either social inclusion or rejection in a chat room interaction with two confederates. Finally, participants watched brief video clips of students who had been videotaped telling lies or the truth about various topics and rated each person in the video clips (higher scores indicated more perceived deception). Results indicated that high need to belong participants who experienced rejection tended to perceive all social interactions as equally deceptive, but those who were included accurately differentiated between lies and truths. These findings suggest that overactivated social vigilance may erode an individual's sense of trust, creating more difficulty for those who are most in need of social contacts.
Adolescents were asked to write a narrative of what constitutes stalking and about their own experiences with it. Thirty-eight percent of the women and 8% of the men reported they had personally been stalked. No gender differences were seen in terms of the relationship between the target and the stalker; 42% were stalked by a person wanting a relationship, 8% were stalked by an "ex," and 50% were stalked by a stranger. Responses to the narrative were summed so that participants received a total score for mild stalking behaviors, such as engaging in unwanted communication. Women were significantly more likely to generate mild stalking behaviors than men. College students were also more likely to generate mild stalking behaviors than adolescents. A significant interaction revealed that male students, no matter what grade, generated approximately the same number of mild stalking behaviors. However, the number of mild stalking behaviors generated by female students increased significantly between junior high/high school and college. In contrast, no significant difference as a function of gender or grade was obtained for more traditional stalking behaviors.
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Catherine L. Bagwell, PhD, is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Richmond. She received her BS in psychology from the University of Richmond and her MA and PhD in clinical psychology from Duke University. After completing her clinical internship at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in 1999, she returned to her alma mater where she teaches courses in Child Development, Developmental Psychopathology, and Research Methods. Dr. Bagwell's research interests are in the area of children's peer and friendship relations and the development of externalizing behavior problems, such as aggression and ADHD. She has served as the faculty advisor for Richmond's chapter of Psi Chi since 2000.
Kerrie Q. Baker, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She received her BS in psychology from Pennsylvania State University, and an MS and PhD in industrial/organizational psychology from Old Dominion University. Dr. Baker practiced psychology for over ten years in private and public organizations, including being a Personnel Research Psychologist for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Since coming to Cedar Crest College in 2001, Dr. Baker has taught courses in Experimental and Statistical Methods, Social Psychology, and Industrial/Organizational Psychology.
Dragana I. Claflin, PhD is an assistant professor of psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, OH. She received her BA in biopsychology from Vassar College and her doctorate in psychology, with an emphasis in behavioral neuroscience, from the University of Southern California. She received postdoctoral training in developmental psychobiology at Duke University and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency in Research Triangle Park, NC. As a NIMH postdoctoral fellow, she began the research program that is still her focus today--developmental comparisons of associative learning in rodents and humans using classical eyeblink conditioning. She is especially interested in using eyeblink conditioning to understand functional changes throughout development in brain regions necessary for associative learning. Dr. Claflin has involved undergraduates in her research for over 10 years and prepared them for presentations at national meetings. She has been advisor to Psi Chi at Wright State since 2000 and served as a reviewer of student submissions for the Midwestern regional research awards. She teaches undergraduate courses in Drugs and Behavior, Behavioral Neuroscience, and Clinical Neuroscience. She received a teaching award from the college in 2002.
Susan E. Dutch, PhD, is a full professor of psychology at Westfield State College in Westfield, Massachusetts. She completed her PhD in experimental psychology at the University of Connecticut, specializing in cognition. Dr. Dutch was the recipient of the Westfield State College Outstanding Educator Award in May of 2000. 
Laura L. Bill, EdD (candidate) currently attends American International College in Springfield, MA. She is a doctoral candidate majoring in Educational Psychology. She graduated from Westfield State College with a Bachelors Degree in Psychology. Since 2001, she has gained valuable experience as a research assistant to Dr. Susan E. Dutch and Dr. Stanley Jackson. Her interests focus on cognitive psychology, social statistics, special education, web design and multimedia development. She hopes to find a career that embraces all of her talents, preferably in a public school or university setting. 
Kristine M. Kelly, PhD, is currently an associate professor of psychology at Western Illinois University. She received her undergraduate degree from California State University, Sacramento, and her PhD from the University of Tennessee in experimental psychology with an emphasis in social psychology. She served as Psi Chi faculty advisor for the past five years. Her major areas of interest include interpersonal relationships, regulation of belongingness needs, social rejection, and mate selection. She teaches courses in Social Psychology, Research Methods, and Evolutionary Psychology. | Home | Index | Login | Contact © 2002-07 Psi Chi, The National Honor Society in Psychology |