Faculty Research 2012

• Dr. Nida Bikmen, with Krissy Durkin ('14), presented "Talking about power: White Americans' willingness to address inequality with Asian Americans and African Americans" at the Midwestern Psychological Association Annual Meeting in Chicago.
• Dr. Cody Brooks, Brooke M. Klebolt ('12) and Chonthicha Eve Vongchucherd ('12) presented a poster titled "Acute and Chronic Stress and Novel Pole-Maze Learning in Wistar Rats" at the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, March 2012, in Pittsburgh. The research took place as part of the requirements of the Research in Psychology of Learning course under the supervision of Dr. Brooks during the spring 2011 semester.
• Dr. Gina Dow has written a chapter for Issues in Child Development titled "Literacy and Deafness: Literacy and Spoken Language" that will be forthcoming in the next year. Dr. Dow, in collaboration with Dr. Lynn Robertson in Denison's Education Department, presented a poster titled "Elaborative co-reading affects predictive relationship between pre-emergent literacy tests and emergent literacy" at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, Washington, DC. In collaboration with DiTallianna Patterson('11), Dr. Dow presented a poster titled "Risk, resilience, and adaptation to college in ethnic minority students" at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL. The poster was based on DiTallianna's senior research project.
• Dr. Erin Henshaw, Rachel Fried ('12) and Jennifer Teeters ('12) presented posters titled "Past treatment effectiveness and prenatal depression stigma: Different relationships for public and personal stigma" and "Racial differences in illness perceptions and social responses among dysphoric perinatal women" at the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, March 2012, in Pittsburgh. The research took place as part of Rachel's summer research with Dr. Henshaw in 2011 and Jenni's directed study during the 2011-2012 academic year.
• Dr. Susan Kennedy, with Dr. Kristina Mead (Biology Department), published "Service Learning in Neuroscience Courses" in the Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education (JUNE). Also, Dr. Kennedy, along with Taylor Peace Blake ('11), presented "Neonatal Social Isolation and Methylphenidate on Anxiety in Juvenile Rats" at the Midwestern Psychological Association Annual Meeting in Chicago.
• Dr. Nestor Matthews published an empirical paper in the Journal of Vision titled "Right Hemifield Deficits in Judging Simultaneity: A Perceptual Learning Study". The paper was co-authored by Jenna Kelly ('10) and Michael Vawter ('14). The article incorporates Michael's 2011 Anderson Summer Science Research project completed under the direction of Dr. Matthews.
• Dr. Rebecca Rosenberg presented a poster titled “Extreme Featural Loss in Infants’ Object Chunking” at the XVIII Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies held in Minneapolis, MN. The research investigated the amount of featural information about individual objects that infants maintain in short-term memory when they “chunk” items into groups.

Faculty Research 2011

• Dr. Nida Bikmen published a paper titled “Asymmetrical effects of contact between minority groups: Asian and Black students in a small college” in Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. This study draws from Dr. Bikmen’s study of the process of social identity negotiation among minority students. In addition, Dr. Bikmen co-authored a chapter titled “Building solidarity across difference: Social identity, intersectionality and collective action for social change” in the book Social Categories in Everyday Experience. Following a different line of inquiry, Dr. Bikmen also presented a paper in July at the Annual Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology titled “Difficult dialogues:  Turkish students’ willingness to talk about inequality with Kurds and Armenians”.
• Dr. Cody Brooks authored an entry on "Retrieval Cues and Memory" for the Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning, edited by Norbert M. Seel, Ph.D..
• Dr. Seth Chin-Parker presented a poster titled “What Varying Category Structure and Learning Task Reveals About Inference Learning” at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society in Boston, MA. The study examined how feature prediction functions as a category learning task.
• Dr. Gina Dow and Dr. Lyn Robertson of the Education Department at Denison presented a poster titled “Co-reading affects predictive relationship between pre-emergent literacy tests and emergent literacy” at the annual meeting of the Association of Psychological Science in Washington, DC. Their research has found that interactive book reading in a school setting can help “at-risk” children develop the knowledge of expressive language they need as emergent readers.
• Dr. Harry Heft presented the paper  "What is Psychology's Unit of Analysis?"  at the meeting of the International Society for Theoretical Psychology, Thessaloniki, Greece, in late June. This historical and theoretical paper discussed some of his developing ideas about the significance of 'the situation' in which psychological processes transpire. Also, Dr. Heft completed a book review this summer for the APA publication Psycritiques. The review, called  "Loose parts of environmental psychology," was a critical examination of the book Urban Diversities - Environmental and Social Issues edited by M. Bonaiuto, M. Bonnes, A. Nenci,, & G. Carrus.
• Dr. Erin J. Henshaw and Megan Greenhouse (’11) presented a poster titled “Effect of Message Framing on Views of Postpartum Depression” at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association in Chicago, IL. The focus of their study was on how using a loss-framed message about post-partum depression increased the perceived need for treatment but also increased negative opinions about a woman suffering from depression. Dr. Henshaw also sponsored two poster presentations made by students during the Psi Chi session at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association in Chicago, IL. Melanie Warning (’11) presented her senior research titled “The Relationship Between Body Dissatisfaction, Relationship Dissatisfaction, Self-Silencing, and Depressive Symptoms in Perinatal Women” and Bethany Sabourin (‘11) presented her senior research titled “Current Status of the “Psychology-Religion Gap”: Christian Religiosity and Mental Healthcare Treatment Seeking Behaviors and Attitudes”. Dr. Henshaw then traveled across the Atlantic Ocean in order to deliver a paper, co-authored by Dr. Heather O'Mahen (The University of Exeter in the United Kingdom), at the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies. The paper, titled "Messages about Postpartum Depression: Intended and Unintended Effects of Psychoeducational Materials”, discussed an extension of Dr. Henshaw’s work on message framing to include a sample of British mothers. Dr. Henshaw had her paper “Patient Preferences for Clinician Interactional Style in Treatment of Perinatal Depression” published in Qualitative Health Research this summer. The paper was the result of collaboration with several co-authors from the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and the University of Exeter in the U.K.. Dr. Henshaw also was second author on a paper published in The Journal of Affective Disorders this summer. The paper titled “Stigma and depression during pregnancy: does race matter?” examined how stigma associated with depression affected a mother’s decision to seek treatment and how that relationship varied between Black Women and White Women.
• Dr. Sarah Hutson-Comeaux, Hillary Moore (’11), and Laurel Brabson (’11) presented a poster titled “Explanations Offered for Workplace Anger: Implications for Female Leaders’ Effectiveness” at the annual meeting of the Association of Psychological Science in Washington, DC. Their study examined several factors that influenced participants’ ratings of the effectiveness of a female in a leadership position within an organization.
• Following a line of research established by Dr. Susan Kennedy, Taylor Blake (’11), Ellen Puce (’12), Dr. Kennedy, and Dr. Gary J. Kennedy (from the Ohio State University) presented a poster titled, “Neonatal Isolation and Methylphenidate Alter Social/Play Interactions in Juvenile Rats” at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association in Chicago, IL. Their study examined how the interaction between experiencing stress as a rat pup and later exposure to a stimulant affected social behaviors of the rats.
• Dr. Nestor Matthews was involved with two posters that were presented at the annual conference of the Vision Sciences Society, Naples, FL. Dr. Matthews and Sarah Theobald ('11) presented a poster titled “Attention-Dependent Hemifield Asymmetries When Judging Numerosity”. Their research explored how several factors related to the distribution of objects across the visual field affected participants’ abilities to make judgments about the numbers of objects presented. Jenna Kelly ('10) and Dr. Matthews presented another poster titled "Attentional Oblique Effect When Judging Simultaneity: A Perceptual Learning Study". In this study, participants were asked to make judgments about objects that appeared at different locations within their visual field. Their research illustrated some of the constraints on the participants’ abilities to make those judgments.
• Dr. Rebecca Rosenberg presented a poster titled “An Exploration into the Limits of Infants’ Object Chunking” at the Seventh Biennial Meeting of the Cognitive Development Society held in Philadelphia, PA. The research examined the number of individual items infants are able to group into a single unit when chunking across multiple sets of objects in their short-term memory.
• Dr. Robert Weis, Devanshi Unadkat (’11), and Lauryn Sykes (’11) presented a poster titled “Academic and Cognitive Deficits of College Students with Learning Disabilities” at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association in Chicago, IL. They also presented a poster titled “Qualitative Differences in the Psychoeducational Profiles of College Students With Learning Disabilities” at the annual meeting of the Association of Psychological Science in Washington, DC. Their research examined the relationship between academic and cognitive ability scores of post-secondary students identified as having a learning disability. They considered how that relationship varied depending on the type of post-secondary institution the student was attending.

Seven students remained on campus during the summer to engage in collaborative research with faculty from the Psychology Department. During the 10 week session, they immersed themselves into the existing literature related to their interests, designed and implemented their studies, and then analyzed and shared their findings. At the start of the fall semester, they presented their research at a campus-wide summer science poster presentation.

• Kinsey Brayant-Lees - Gender Differences in the Range of Appropriate Emotional Expressions in an Interpersonal versus an Achievement Context
• Jeanine Cerney - Men's Hair Loss as a Factor Influencing Evaluations in Organizations with Different Cultures
• Casey Nottingham - Memory for Social and Non-social Stimuli in Children and Adolescents with and without Autism Spectrum Diagnoses
• Colleen Russo - Exposure Factors Affecting Children's Analogical Problem Solving: Does Interaction Beat Watching Television?
• Elena C. Speridakos -Psychoeducational Functioning of Community College Students with Specific Learning Disabilities
• Michael Vawter - Hastening Visual Attention with Practice: A Perceptual Learning Study
• Chonthicha Vongchucherd - Will a Cue Not Associated with Extinction Also Reduce the Relapse of Ethanol Self-Administration after Chronic Stress in Male Rats?