Bachelor of Arts Theses, 2010
With 170 psychology majors per year, a large number of Wesleyan seniors write Honors Theses. Current abstracts are included in each volume of Mind Matters. The following are abstracts from 2010.
Religious Microaggressions Towards Muslims in the United States: Group Identity and Self-Esteem as Predictors of Affective Responses
Rayna Edwards
Microaggressions, which are commonplace behavioral or verbal actions that communicate disrespect based on one's group membership, have historically been conceptualized only in the context of race. This study examined self-investment (an aspect of identification with an important in-group), public self-regard (an aspect of collective self-esteem), and personal self-esteem as predictors of anger and dejection in response to perceived microaggressions on the basis of religious group affiliation, specifically the American Muslim community. Participants completed a survey prompting them for an experience in which they felt disrespected on the basis of their membership in the Muslim community. Results indicated that anger was felt more intensely than dejection. Self-investment served as the only significant predictor of negative emotional response to microaggressional discrimination.
Leaving Children Behind: School Culture and Inter-District School Choice
Senna Georges
One requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act is that schools identified as "needing improvement" must grant their students the opportunity to attend higherperforming schools in the same district. Recently, some policymakers have suggested that the choice program be expanded to include schools in other districts. In Massachusetts, inter-district school choice has been an option for all students, regardless of the achievement status of their schools, since 1991. The prevailing assumption of such policies is that allowing students in underperforming schools to leave will help those students to achieve better results elsewhere. But what impact does school choice have on students that are left behind, particularly in relation to student motivation? The aim of this thesis is to examine the relationship between inter-district school choice and college aspirations. Massachusetts is used as a case study to examine the effects of increased inter-district school choice on the motivation of those students that are left behind in struggling districts. The results of the correlational data analyses suggest a feedback mechanism wherein students flee failing districts, adversely affecting school culture in the districts they abandon, in turn prompting more students to transfer out and failing districts to struggle more. Whereas most of the research on school choice to date has focused on the impact upon "receiving" districts, this study suggests that further research examining the effects on "sending" districts is warranted, before any of the proposed policy changes regarding inter-district school choice are enacted.
Two's Company: Examining Children's Early Meanings of the Word "Two"
Dominic Gibson
Traditional number language research suggests children initially hypothesize that "two" means 'a set greater than one,' but research on innate number concepts and diary studies on early number language suggest that children may be able to understand the correct meaning of "two" at a younger age than previously thought. The present study measures comprehension of the word "two" in 12-to-30 month olds using the Preferential Looking Paradigm. Presented with a set of two objects and a set of three objects, participants' ages significantly predicted whether they would look longer at the set of two after hearing the set of two labeled than after hearing the set of three labeled, with the younger participants outperforming the older ones. These results provide preliminary support for an early understanding that two means a pair and motivate future studies to better explain this effect.
You Can't Teach What You Don't Know: Examining and Improving Teacher Preparation
Alex Hartley
Teachers have a major impact on the lives of children, however there is no general agreement about what constitutes a great teacher or how to prepare one. With more preparation programs being created each year, this is a crucial time for exploring how to best prepare teachers for the classroom. This thesis examines the research on teacher preparation in light of six different ways to define and measure effectiveness, concluding that research tends to emphasize teachers' attitudes and student cognition (achievement) instead of looking at teachers' behavior in the classroom or student motivation. It then uses this research to enumerate the best practices as suggested by the literature. The final section makes suggestions for further research and highlights ideas from psychology that could be useful in overcoming the challenge of providing every child a highly effective teacher.
Associations Between Eating Patterns and Clinical Correlates of Binge Eating
Kate Harvey
This thesis examined the relationship between eating patterns and obesity, eating disorders involving binge eating, and clinical correlates of recurrent binge eating. The first section of the thesis presents a review of the current research on the relationship between eating patterns and obesity, as well as eating patterns and disordered eating. The second section utilized data from 106 women with a minimum diagnosis of recurrent binge eating. Meal and snack frequencies were correlated with measures of weight, eating disorder features, and depression. The literature reviewed in Section I showed inconsistent results in terms of the relationship between meal and snack frequencies and disordered eating and obesity. This research, however, did consistently demonstrate that individuals with disordered eating and individuals who are obese are more likely to skip breakfast and consume meals and snacks later in the day. Section II found that breakfast was the least, and dinner the most commonly consumed meal. Evening snacking was the most common snacking occasion. Meal patterns were not significantly associated with clinical correlates; however, evening snacking was associated with binge eating. More research is needed to understand the relationship between eating patterns and binge eating disorders. Future studies should consider the nutritional content, types, and amounts of food consumed when examining this relationship. Additionally, researchers should examine whether eating patterns mediate the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy for binge eating disorders.
To Skip or Not to Skip? Varying Definitions of Breakfast Skipping and Associations with Disordered Eating, Obesity, and Depression
Niki Holtzman
Much of the previous research on breakfast skipping and its associations with disordered eating, obesity, and depression has been limited by the use of different definitions "breakfast skipping." The present study examines breakfast skipping and its associations with these negative health correlates in the Add Health Wave III sample of adolescents and young adults using all the definitions of breakfast skipping employed by the literature within a seven-day timeframe. The Wave III sample of Add Health is comprised of 15,197 participants; all those who responded to the breakfast consumption question were included in some portion of the data analysis. The three definitions of breakfast skipping employed in this study were missing breakfast at least once, at least four times, or at least six times during the past seven days. Statistically significant gender differences were found in breakfast skipping frequency in two of three definitions; however, small effect sizes call into question the clinical significance of these differences. The two stricter definitions of breakfast skipping were also associated with purging in women and depression in men and women. Obesity was associated with breakfast skipping in all cases. These findings suggest that stricter definitions of breakfast skipping are more useful in identifying populations susceptible to these negative health behaviors. They also indicate the need to regularize meal patterns as a means of combating obesity.
Biased Reasoning: The Influence of Group Membership on the Automaticity of Children's Assessments of Good and Bad Actions
Gwynne Hunter
Previous research has shown that by age 6, children possess detectable implicit intergroup biases. The current experiment sought to determine 1) how much group association is necessary to produce intergroup biases and 2) whether these biases affect how quickly we assess others' actions. We hypothesized that participants would react more quickly to members of their own group performing good actions and members of another group performing bad actions than their own group being bad and the other group being good. In Experiment 1 participants were placed into minimal groups, after which they watched videos of members from their group and another group performing objectively good or bad actions. Reaction times for deciding whether the actions were good or bad were recorded. Though the child results were insignificant, the reaction time trends followed predicted directions. There was a significant interaction between group and action for adults. Experiment 2 amplified the group membership component by including a competitive prime. An explicit measure was added to ensure that group bias was being elicited. Participants from Experiment 2 and in the combined data responded significantly differently to "good" videos as a factor of group, indicating that a competitive mindset strengthened implicit biases. Future studies should determine the level of group association necessary to more robustly affect children's implicit assessments of good and bad actions.
The Impact of Group Decision Making on Indecisiveness-Related Decisional Confidence
Zachary LeClair
Indecisiveness is an individual difference marked by chronic choice difficulty and delay in decision making. This study examined whether past differences between decisives and indecisives at the individual level also emerge at the group level. Ninety-seven undergraduates were identified as decisive or indecisive using Frost and Shows' Indecisiveness Scale and were then assigned to individual or group conditions. Both individuals and groups completed the same task of selecting a speaker to give a talk on campus from a set of five choice alternatives. Indecisiveness was related to post-task confidence at the individual level, but not at the group level. Process variables revealed few differences. The results suggest that past findings of differences between group and individual confidence might be due to changes in the confidence of indecisive individuals only.
The Influence of Sentence Context on Reading Times for Abstract and Concrete Words
Rebecca Loomis
One variable that affects word processing is concreteness, the degree to which a word's referent can be experienced by the senses. Concrete words tend to be processed more quickly than abstract words. The dual-coding theory states that processing is aided by image-based representations of words, whereas the context availability model holds that concrete words are processed more easily because they have stronger associated contextual information. This is the first study to test the context availability model by tracking eye movements in a reading task. Participants read abstract and concrete words in predictable and neutral sentences. The results showed a main effect of context and of concreteness. This finding contradicts the prediction of the context availability model that equivalent amounts of contextual information nullify the effect of concreteness. The results support the strategic imagery hypothesis, which states that imagery is used when it is helpful in completing a task.
Discrimination Experiences of Latinas/os: Mental Health Outcomes, Emotional Responses, and Coping Mechanisms
Leah Lucid
Previous research has shown a relationship between perceived discrimination and negative mental health outcomes, but only a handful of these studies focus on Latina/o populations. This quantitative survey study explored the experiences of relatively subtle contemporary discrimination from the point of view of 82 Latina/os living in the U.S. Using an adaptation of a scale designed specifically for Latina/os, we asked questions about our participants' discrimination situations, emotional responses, and coping mechanisms in response to discrimination. We were interested in how such perceived discrimination would interact with ingroup identification level, self-esteem, and socioeconomic status to affect depression scores. Self-esteem was the only significant predictor of depression scores. The most frequent discrimination situations were related to being treated as a threat; the strongest emotional response was anger; and the most common coping mechanism was self-affirming one's faith in God or one's hopes for the future. We found no significant sex differences for any of the measures.
The Influence of Group Membership on Preschoolers' Selective Trust
Kyle MacDonald
When children decide to trust one informant over another, what cues matter the most? Is in-group vs. out-group status more important than a previous history of accuracy or inaccuracy? In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds preferred to learn from a more accurate in-group speaker rather than from a less accurate in-group speaker only when there was a large difference between the speakers' previous records of accuracy. In Experiment 2, children did not prefer to learn from a more reliable out-group speaker over a less reliable in-group speaker. Thus, 4-year-olds' demonstrated ability to use past reliability as a cue for trustworthiness is desensitized when evaluating in-group members, and disoriented when comparing a reliable out-group speaker to an unreliable in-group speaker. These results suggest that group membership processing is privileged during young children's evaluations of trustworthiness.
The Children Left Behind: The Performance of Young Special Education Students in Mathematics, Reading, Writing, and Science
Laura Nuzzi
The objective of this study was to examine the representation of demographic groups in special education, as well as to investigate the performance of special education students on the 2009 Connecticut Mastery Test in relation to set demographics. The Connecticut Mastery Test is a standardized assessment used to determine student and school district achievement as part of the No Child Left Behind Act. The test is administered to all Connecticut students in grades 3 through 8, and assesses mastery in mathematics, writing, reading, and science. Black and Hispanic students, males, and students of lower socioeconomic status were found to be overrepresented in special education. Special education students performed significantly lower than their non-special education peers across all subjects and measures of curriculum mastery. Interactions were found between ethnicity and special education status as a predictor of reading and writing performance. Specifically, a significantly higher percentage of Hispanic children enrolled in special education met mastery in reading and writing when compared to white and black students in special education.
The Puliguous Effects of Context Length on Incidental Word Learning
Kacey Wochna
Most of the words in a person's vocabulary are acquired during the course of natural reading, through a process called incidental word learning. Incidental word learning is mediated by a number of factors concerning word, context, and reader characteristics. The current study investigated the effects of one such factor, context length, using a combination of word learning and eye-tracking methodologies. Participants read novel words embedded in either sentence or paragraph contexts while their eyes were tracked. Eye movement measures, primarily gaze duration and total time, demonstrated that novel words had longer reading times than real words, and that words in sentence contexts had longer reading times than words in paragraphs. The increased processing devoted to words in sentences may result in an increased rate of learning for novel words. This effect was not verified by the post-test vocabulary assessment, which did not find significant word learning. The low rate of learning observed in this study is attributed to the absence of any benefit from partial word knowledge, information that readers possess about words that are unknown or largely unknown. Research has shown that words are easier to learn if they are partially known. This study argues that partial word knowledge is more influential and pervasive than previously considered, and that as a result, the rates of learning reported by many incidental word learning studies may be inflated.
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