Faculty Advisor Research Grant 1999-2000 Winners
Psi Chi congratulates the faculty advisors who won the 1999-2000 Faculty Advisor Research Grants competition. The purpose of this program is to recognize and reward faculty advisors who have committed their time and talents to their Psi Chi chapters by helping to defray the direct costs of a research project. Listed alphabetically, the 1999-2000 winning faculty advisors are:
Glena L. Andrews, PhD, Northwest Nazarene University, Rocky Mountain Region.
"The Effects of Handedness and Sex Differences on P1 and N1 Evoked Potential Measures."
Abstract, Bio
Victoria A. Kazmerski, PhD, and Dawn G. Blasko, PhD, Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, Eastern Region.
"Electrophysiological Evidence of Aging Effects on Metaphor Processing."
Abstract, Bios
William F. McDaniel, PhD, Georgia College & State University, Southeastern Region.
"Visual Categorical Perception by Rats With Temporal, Striate, or Sham Ablations."
Abstract, Bio
Linda J. Skitka, PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago, Midwestern Region.
"Moving From the Laboratory to Testing Psychological Hypotheses "In the Wild": Moral Mandates and the Elián González Case."
Abstract, Bio
Elizabeth Soliday, PhD, Washington State University Vancouver, Western Region.
"Behavioral and Cognitive Effects of Steroids on ALL Maintenance Therapy."
Abstract, Bio
The Effects of Handedness and Sex Differences on P1 and N1 Evoked Potential Measures
Glena L. Andrews, PhD
Northwest Nazarene University
Handedness and sex differences influence on cerebral hemisphere functioning were examined. Adult participants (n = 26) included 15 men and 11 women; 12 were left-handed and 14 were right-handed. EP recordings were measured from midline (Pz), right (P4), and left (P3) parietal locations while participants responded to 2 groups of stimuli, letters and dot patterns, presented via a computer screen. Participants determined whether the stimuli were matching or nonmatching and recorded their responses using keyboard strokes. Latency differences occurred more frequently for the letter-matching task, whereas more amplitude differences were found for the pattern-matching task. Significant differences occurred for handedness and sex differences on both latency and amplitude measures. Women had shorter interhemispheric transfer time (IHTT) than men did, and left-handed participants had shorter IHTT than right-handed participants for the letter-matching task. These results lend support for lateralization and specialization of brain functioning for specific tasks.
Glena L. Andrews, PhD, completed a BA in psychology at Northwest Nazarene University. She completed an MA in psychology at the 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, Calif., 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 Seminary, and in 1988 completed her PhD in clinical psychology with an emphasis in neuropsychology. Dr. Andrews began her teaching career at Eastern Nazarene College, teaching statistics, research methods, and physiological psychology. While at ENC, Dr. Andrews help to establish the college's Psi Chi chapter. In 1992 she accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Denver, Colo., concentrating on research and treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Dr. Andrews is currently a professor of psychology at Northwest Nazarene University, also serving as faculty advisor for the 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 work on stress and PTSD in nurses and female Vietnam veterans, and evoked potential and interhemispheric transfer time in adults with attention deficit disorder and children and adults with fetal alcohol syndrome.
Electrophysiological Evidence of Aging Effects on Metaphor Processing
Victoria A. Kazmerski, PhD
Dawn G. Blasko, PhD
Pennsylvania State University Erie, The Behrend College
Metaphors abound in everyday life, and we take for granted the ease with which our minds seem to make these mental leaps. We investigated the brain processes involved in this meaning making and how the characteristics of the receiver and the message interact in understanding. One question is whether metaphor understanding is automatic. If you are asked to judge literal truth, you should find it easy to say "no" to meaningless sentences like "divorce is a cartridge," but you might have more trouble saying "no" to metaphorical sentences like "divorce is a nightmare." This pattern is called the metaphor interference effect (MIE). Because working memory declines with age, we decided to compare the processing of older and younger adults. We found that when matched on IQ, both older and younger adults showed the MIE. Interestingly, however, their brains appeared to use different areas and processes to come to the same conclusions.
[right] Presenting their research at the meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research in San Diego, California, are (from left) Psi Chi chapter president Banchiamlack Desselegn, Dr. Dawn Blasko, Psi Chi member Athena Farantzos, and Dr. Victoria Kazmerski.
Victoria A. Kazmerski, PhD, earned her PhD with a biopsychology focus from SUNY Stony Brook in 1992. She is currently an associate professor of experimental psychology at Penn State Erie. Her research has focused on cognitive processing in normal and clinical populations. She worked as a research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute where she studied implicit memory in patients with Alzheimer's disease. She teaches courses in research methods and biopsychology as well as introductory psychology and exceptional children. At Behrend, Dr. Kazmerski is using event-related potentials to study nonliteral language processing. She is also interested in age-related cognitive changes and cognition as applied to science instruction. She involves students in all aspects of research and is coadvisor of the Psi Chi chapter.
Dawn G. Blasko, PhD, is an associate professor of experimental psychology at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. She received her BS degree in psychology from Marywood College and her MA and PhD from SUNY Binghamton in 1994. She benefited from the small school environment and close faculty student relationships in her undergraduate years and wanted to make that same opportunity available to her students. She has been a Psi Chi and Psych Club coadvisor almost since her arrival at Penn State Erie and has the opportunity to involve many talented students in her own research. She has several research interests, including the psychology of language and the use of mental imagery in visioning and spatial visualization. She enjoys collaborative work and has been fortunate to work with faculty in fields as diverse as business and engineering.
Visual Categorical Perception by Rats With Temporal, Striate, or Sham Ablations
William F. McDaniel, PhD
Georgia College & State University
Rats were trained to discriminate a 0º stripe from a 90º stripe in a 2-choice water maze. They were prepared with either Te2/3, partial striate (PS), or sham lesions and retrained on the preoperative discrimination. In 2 separate experiments, excellent savings was observed for all groups. Next, trials were administered with novel stripe orientations defined as either between- or within-category problems. Performance accuracy eroded rapidly for all groups in the first experiment, and no between-group differences were observed. In the second experiment, each session with categorical stimuli was preceded by 4 reminder trials with the original stimuli. This improved accuracy for all groups, but it was found that animals with PS lesions, not animals with Te2/3 lesions, were impaired on between-category judgments. The impairment was not secondary to a disruption of basic visual sensory processing or significantly larger lesions relative to the Te2/3 group. As is the case for monkeys, accuracy with within-category stimuli was inferior to between-category stimuli for all groups. Possible reasons for this interspecies difference are discussed. [Note: A manuscript reporting these results is currently under review by the editors of a neuroscience journal.]
William F. McDaniel, PhD, earned his BS degree with a major in psychology from Duke University in 1973, his MA degree with a major in general theoretical psychology and a minor in biology from Appalachian State University in 1974, and his PhD in biopsychology from the University of Georgia (UGA) in 1977. He joined the Department of Psychology at Georgia College & State University (GC&SU) as an assistant professor in 1977 and rose through the faculty ranks to professor. He served as department chair from 1991-99, and he has enjoyed teaching more than ever since resigning from his former administrative post. In 1989 Dr. McDaniel re-sumed his education as a postdoctoral student and developed an expertise in clinical neuropsychology. In addition to his academic duties and interests, as a licensed psychologist, he serves as a consultant at Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, Ga., and Washington Regional Medical Center in Sandersville, Ga. Dr. McDaniel maintains active programs of research in several different areas of inquiry, including: (a) the functional neuroanatomy of the neocortex, (b) enhancement of cognitive recovery from brain injury through administration of neurotrophic and pharmacological agents, (c) procedures for the neuropsychological evaluation of individuals with mental retardation or severe dementia, and (d) the development of instruments for the determination of "dual psychiatric diagnoses" in individuals with mental retardation. He has published more than 50 articles and chapters within these areas of research interest, most coauthored with one or more of his students. More than 60 of his research students have gone on to receive advanced degrees in psychology or related fields (e.g., neurobiology or neuroscience). He has been the recipient of a number of honors, including the Zimmerman Award for showing greatest research promise as a doctoral student at UGA, the Distinguished Faculty Award by GC&SU in 1987, the Excellence in Teaching Award by GC&SU in 2001, and the Excellence in Research and Publication Award by GC&SU 12 times since the honor was initiated in 1984. Dr. McDaniel's favorite nonacademic activities include swimming for exercise (he was a competitive swimmer through high school and college) and white-water kayaking with his 15-year-old son Justin.
Moving From the Laboratory to Testing Psychological Hypotheses "In the Wild": Moral Mandates and the Elian Gonzalez Case
Linda J. Skitka, PhD
University of Illinois at Chicago
What role do moral values and standards play in how people reason about fairness? Current justice theories emphasize the notion that social identity concerns lead fair treatment and procedures to the most important factor shaping how people decide whether something is fair or unfair. We tested the hypothesis that people's personal identity concerns (i.e., their need to express and defend internalized moral standards) also influenced fairness reasoning by assessing reactions to the Elian Gonzalez case as it unfolded over time (preraid, postraid, and then postresolution of the case). Results supported the hypothesis that people's moral mandates influenced their perceptions of fairness. Moral mandates, but not preraid judgments of procedural fairness, predicted postraid and postresolution judgments of fairness. In addition, threats to moral mandates led people to respond to the raid with moral outrage (i.e., vilifying of the source of threat, anger, even violent protest) and reaffirmation of moral beliefs.
Linda J. Skitka, PhD, earned her BA at the University of Michigan in 1983, completed her masters and PhD work in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1989. She is now an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and is the program head for the Personality and Social Psychology Division of the Department of Psychology. In addition to teaching courses in social psychology, Dr. Skitka teaches advanced undergraduate- and graduate-level statistics. She has been recognized for excellence in teaching through numerous awards, and has been the faculty advisor for Psi Chi at UIC for seven years. Dr. Skitka served on the Psi Chi National Council in 1993-95 and won a regional faculty advisor award in 2001. The UIC Psi Chi Chapter won the Ruth Hubbard Cousins National Chapter award in 1997, and the Midwestern Regional Chapter Award in 2001. Dr. Skitka's primary research interests are exploring how people reason about fairness and the psychological role that fairness plays in people's lives, and understanding the psychological underpinnings of political ideology and ideological differences. She has published many articles with her undergraduate and graduate student collaborators, and is committed to providing students with op-portunities to gain research experience.
Behavioral and Cognitive Effects of Steroids in Children on ALL Maintenance Therapy
Elizabeth Soliday, PhD
Washington State University Vancouver
This study examined cognitive and behavioral effects of steroids in pediatric cancer patients. Parents of children on maintenance therapy for acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) completed questionnaires on family functioning, parental depression, and their children's behavior before a course of steroids, during a steroid course, and again after steroid treatment. Children with ALL and their siblings completed measures of neuropsychological functioning (memory and attention). Visual inspection of graphed data provided partial support for hypotheses: scores on 1 measure of child behavior problems increased from baseline to steroid administration and decreased in the steroid-free period, and similar patterns resulted for parental depression and a child-completed verbal memory task. Attention scores improved in siblings but remained stable in children with ALL. Findings are discussed as they relate to a period of increased risk for difficulties in children with ALL.
liizabeth Soliday, PhD, is an associate professor of psychology at Washington State University Vancouver. She received her BS and PhD in psychology from the University of Kansas. She is a clinical psychologist specializing in the psychological needs of children and families affected by chronic illness. Before moving to Washington State, she provided clinical services to in- and outpatient pediatric patients at the University of Kansas Medical Center and at the University of Miami (Florida) Medical Center. Dr. Soliday currently conducts her research and clinical activities with colleagues across the mighty Columbia River in several pediatric subspeciality clinics at Oregon Health Sciences University. Dr. Soliday teaches courses in Child Development, Childhood Behavior Disorders, Child Assessment, and Health Psychology. She involves a large team of undergraduate students in just about all her research activities so they learn the ups (and downs!) of research and clinical work with pediatric populations. She started WSU Vancouver's Psi Chi chapter five years ago, and the organization now boasts over 100 members.