Fetal Alcohol Disorder, ADHD, and Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum: Behavior Comparisons
Glenda L. Andrews, PhD
Northwest Nazarene University (ID)

Diagnosis and treatment of children with prenatal exposure to alcohol (PEA) is a challenge. Andrews and Porter (2004) found the Behavioral Trait Survey (BTS) total scores differentiated participants diagnosed with FASD from participants with agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC). The current study found participants diagnosed with FASD and ADHD inattentive scored significantly higher on the BTS. Those in the control group or with a diagnosis of ADHD hyperactive scored significantly lower than those with FASD and were not distinguishable from participants with ACC. Comparisons between groups were evaluated with the Achenbach Behavior Checklist (ABC; Achenbach, 2001) resulting in a lack of clear differentiation between the groups with this scale. These results suggest there are behavioral differences between people with PEA from those with some forms of ADHD and ACC. They add support for the use of the BTS as a screening tool for possible FASD.

Glena L. Andrews, PhD, completed a BA in psychology at Northwest Nazarene University. She completed a MA in psychology at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs while working as a psychological assistant in neuropsychology. Following the completion of her MA, Dr. Andrews moved to Pasadena, CA and began working on her PhD in clinical psychology at Fuller Graduate School of Psychology. During her time at Fuller, she worked as a lab assistant for Dr. James Marsh at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA. In 1987, she completed an MA in theology at Fuller Theological Seminar, and in 1988, completed her PhD in clinical psychology with an emphasis in neuropsychology. She is near completion of a post-doctoral MS in clinical psychopharmacology through Alliant International University (formerly CSPP).
     Dr. Andrews began her teaching career at Eastern Nazarene College (ENC) teaching statistics, research methods, and physiological psychology. While at ENC, Dr. Andrews helped to establish the Psi Chi chapter. In 1992, she accepted a post-doctoral fellowship at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Denver, Colorado concentrating on research and treatment of PTSD. Dr. Andrews is currently a professor of psychology at Northwest Nazarene University. She is faculty advisor for Psych Club and Psi Chi. She supervises junior/senior student research, organizes the Annual Psychology Research Forum, and regularly involves students in her professional research. Her current research projects include continuing evaluating behavior differences in persons with prenatal effects of alcohol (FASD), agenesis of the corpus callosum, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. She is also engaged in research involved in visual decision-making processes, evoked potential and interhemispheric transfer time in adults with attention deficit disorder, and children and adults with fetal alcohol syndrome. She has also been involved in research on stress and PTSD in nurses and female Vietnam Veterans.

Coping With Social Stress: A Longitudinal Study of the Transition to Middle School
Jennifer Connor-Smith, PhD
Oregon State University

Relations between temperament, stress-reactivity, coping, and emotional and behavioral problems were explored in 165 sixth-grade students, who completed measures at the beginning and end of the school year. Levels of stress and emotional problems decreased from the beginning to the end of the school year. Students also showed improved coping skills with the ratio of engagement coping strategies to involuntary stress-reactivity shifting toward higher levels of engagement coping. Temperament predicted coping development, with temperament traits similar to conscientiousness predicting an increase in beneficial engagement coping, and traits similar to neuroticism predicting a shift toward less effective disengagement strategies. Coping mediated relations between temperament and emotional and behavioral problems, with distraction, acceptance, and positive thinking proving most helpful. These results suggest that coping may partially explain the link between temperament and risk for emotional and behavioral problems.

Jennifer Connor-Smith, PhD, is an assistant professor of psychology at Oregon State University. She received her BS in psychology from Duke University and her PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Vermont. She did postdoctoral work in treatment outcome research at UCLA, comparing cognitive-behavioral therapies for depression and anxiety to usual care, and developing a video-guided depression prevention program for teenagers. Her primary research interests involve the ways in which coping and involuntary responses to stress influence risk for anxiety and depression, and exploration of cross-cultural differences in the coping process. She has been an advisor for the Psi Chi chapter since it was first established at Oregon State University, and typically has at least four undergraduate Psi Chi members involved in her research. Last year, six Psi Chi members from her lab were authors on posters presented at the WPA convention.

Treating Trauma-Related Nightmares
Joanne L. Davis, PhD
University of Tulsa (OK)

Nightmares and sleep disturbance are fundamental concerns for victims of trauma. This study examined the efficacy of a cognitive behavioral treatment for trauma-related nightmares in a randomized clinical trial with a 6-month follow-up. Twenty-seven participants completed the treatment. At the follow-up assessment, 84% of participants reported an absence of nightmares in the previous week and 79% reported an absence of nightmares in the previous month. Significant decreases were also reported in symptoms of depression, posttraumatic stress, poor global sleep quality, fear of sleep, and number of sleep problems. Significant increases were reported in both the quality and quantity of sleep. The number of individuals diagnosed with PTSD decreased from 53% at pre-treatment to 21% at the 6-month followup. The present study adds to the growing literature indicating this brief cognitive behavioral therapy as a first line treatment for individuals with trauma-related nightmares.

Joanne L. Davis, PhD, is an assistant professor of clinical psychology and codirector of the Center for Community Research and Development at the University of Tulsa in Tulsa, OK. She received her doctorate from the University of Arkansas, completed her internship at the Medical University of South Carolina, and did a two-year National Institute of Mental Health funded postdoctoral fellowship at the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center in Charleston, South Carolina. Her research interests include the assessment, treatment, and prevention of interpersonal violence and its effects. With the assistance of the Psi Chi Faculty Advisor Research Grant, Dr. Davis was able to complete a randomized clinical trial of a cognitive behavioral treatment for trauma-related nightmares. She is continuing this work and is currently conducting a randomized clinical trial to determine the physiological impact of this treatment with her colleague, Dr. Jamie Rhudy. Dr. Davis has been the faculty advisor of Psi Chi since 2002.

The Effects of Meaningfulness on Proper Name Retrieval in Young and Older Adults
Lori E. James, PhD
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

Age-related declines in memory are well documented, but only a very small body of research has explored the mechanisms underlying age differences in memory for proper names. In this experiment, young and older participants named pictures of familiar cartoon characters, some with descriptive names (that express an aspect of the character's personality or appearance; e.g., Snow White, Pink Panther) and others with non-descriptive names (e.g., Scooby Doo, Garfield). Percent correct name responses were analyzed in a mixed factorial ANOVA. There were main effects of age (young adults outperformed older adults overall) and descriptiveness (more descriptive names were recalled than non-descriptive names). Results also revealed an interaction: Older adults were particularly impaired in retrieving nondescriptive names. This research adds to our understanding of the causes of age-related declines in name retrieval ability, a problem of great concern to older adults.

Lori E. James, PhD, is an assistant professor in the psychology department at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Dr. James earned her PhD in cognitive psychology from the Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, California, and then held a postdoctoral position at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. James teaches undergraduate courses in cognitive psychology and research methodology, and graduate courses in cognitive psychology and aging.
     Dr. James' primary research areas are memory, language, and age-related changes in these abilities. Her program of research has two goals: elucidating the mechanisms involved in memory and language function, and identifying areas of improvement, stability, and decline in cognitive performance in older adulthood. Dr. James' current projects include many experiments testing learning and memory for proper names, comparisons of young and older adults' communication abilities, and an exploration of the ability to detect and describe errors across adulthood. Dr. James teaches undergraduate courses in cognitive psychology and research methodology, and graduate courses in cognitive psychology and aging. She has served as her department's Psi Chi chapter faculty coadvisor for three years.

Infants' Perceptual and Cognitive Physical Knowledge
In-Kyeong Kim, PhD
La Sierra University (CA)

This infant study investigated developmental changes of acquisition, structure, and process of representation, and association and dissociation of implicit and explicit commonsense physical knowledge. Previous research showed implicit perceptual knowledge was superior and available at an earlier age than explicit and descriptive knowledge during childhood.
     This research involved objects and their motions that were governed by natural law of gravity. Participants were 3-month to 9-month-old infants, and they were tested with habituation and dishabituation tasks for their sensitivity to the effects of gravity on object's falling motion. The visual stimuli were computer graphic animations, and the study was run with a new computer program of habituation in a newly established infant lab (supported by Psi Chi Faculty Research Grant).
     Results showed participants did not make any significant difference. They did not look longer for the unnatural events of fall and sudden stop motion of the falling objects. This was mainly due to the low power, and low numbers of participants. It is, however, possible that perceptual and cognitive representations may be undifferentiated and have a convergence stage in infancy and diverge in childhood as previous research showed. Further research will demonstrate the nature of interrelation and interdependency between implicit and explicit knowledge representation and developmental stages that follow the mechanisms of knowledge abstraction and explication. 

In-Kyeong Kim, PhD, graduated from Cornell University in 1990, with a PhD in psychology specializing in human experimental psychology. She also has an LLB in law and a MA in psychology from Ewha University (Seoul, Korea). Her research interests include perceptual and cognitive development, infant perception, origins of physical knowledge, naive theories, memories from different perspectives, and children's eyewitness memory. She recently established an infant lab, and expanded her physical knowledge research into younger age groups.
     Dr. Kim teaches developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, psychology and law, perceptual and cognitive development, psychology of music, quantitative psychology, eyewitness memory, sensation and perception classes.
     Currently, she is an associate professor of psychology at La Sierra University, Riverside, CA. She is a founding faculty advisor of La Sierra University Psi Chi Chapter established in 2000, and has been a faculty advisor since then. La Sierra University has 25 acting members and continues to grow.

Assessment of Underemployment Experiences as Predictors of Employee Turnover
Douglas C. Maynard, PhD
State University of New York at New Paltz

In the present study, several types of underemployment were examined as potential predictors of an employee's decision to turnover, or voluntarily leave his or her job. Underemployment includes such experiences as overqualification, holding a part-time or temporary job when one would prefer a full-time or permanent one, and being underpaid relative to one's peers. Surprisingly, no previous research had examined whether underemployment predicts actual turnover behavior. Recent alumni of a medium-sized public college (N = 565) completed the first of two Internet surveys, which measured underemployment (i.e., involuntary part-time work, involuntary temporary work, perceived overqualification, underpayment, and employment outside one's area of education), job attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction, work values, and organizational commitment), and turnover intentions and job search behavior. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that underemployment experiences predicted both intentions to leave one's job and active job search behavior (e.g., sending out resumes, completing job applications, and interviewing), even after controlling for demographic variables and job attitudes. Of the various types of underemployment, perceived overqualification emerged as the most consistent predictor of turnover intentions and job search behavior, particularly among employees who highly valued skill usage in a job. These results suggest that an individual who holds a job that does not satisfy one's preferences or values is likely to engage in turnover-related thoughts and actions. In the fall of 2005, participants who completed the first survey will complete a second survey to determine whether these results translate into higher rates of actual turnover behavior for underemployed individuals.

Douglas C. Maynard, PhD, is an associate professor of psychology at SUNY at New Paltz, where he has been teaching courses in industrial and organizational psychology, psychological testing, statistics, and research methodology since 1998. He received his BA in psychology from the University of Connecticut and his MA and PhD in industrial and organizational psychology from Bowling Green State University. He helped to create the Psi Chi chapter at SUNY at New Paltz in 2000, and has been the faculty advisor since that time. His research interests include the risks of employee overqualification and underemployment, early (e.g., high school-age) work experiences and attitudes, and the role of expectancies in organizations.

Predictors of Consistent Condom Use in Adolescent Girls
Diane M. Reddy, PhD
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Although prior research suggested important determinants of condom use in women, few studies had identified predictors specific to female adolescents. This study identified predictors of consistent condom use in a statewide sample of females, 17 years of age or younger, seeking care at 33 family planning clinics. An 85% response rate was achieved, yielding 950 completed surveys. Discussing condom use with a new sexual partner was the strongest predictor. Carrying condoms, perceiving pregnancy susceptibility, and perceiving experiential barriers and interpersonal benefits to condom use also predicted consistency of condom use. These findings are important because new attempts are being made to mandate parental involvement for obtaining prescribed contraceptives. The predictors identified provide an empirical foundation for developing targeted condom use interventions to prevent the expected increases in unintended pregnancy and STDs that may result from limiting female adolescents' access to confidential care for prescribed contraceptives (Reddy, Fleming, & Swain, 2002).

Diane M. Reddy, PhD, is the director of Health Psychology and associate chair of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), where she has taught since 1983. She received her PhD in medical psychology from Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and her BA in psychology from the University of Hartford. A major emphasis of her research examines social and behavioral correlates of health and related prevention and intervention strategies in individuals who have been underserved by research. Her awards include a Searle Research Award from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, her university's Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award, and her college's Martine D. Meyer Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. In 1997, as faculty advisor for Psi Chi, she helped the chapter develop the first peer mentoring program at UWM for psychology majors. The chapter was awarded the UWM Alumni Association Distinguished Service Award (first place) in 1999.