Coe College

Culver-Stockton College

Eureka College

Knox College

Monmouth College

St Ambrose University

Upper Iowa University

Western Illinois University

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

Errors in sentence structure are found to be resistant to change (Pinker, 1999; Hillocks, 1986).  Giving students rules of grammar only taps declarative knowledge and may not be sufficient to influence a well-established procedure in their writing.  Instead, having participants abstract the grammar rule by studying correct and incorrect exemplars might mimic more closely the way we naturally acquire language.  Thirty participants were randomly assigned to one of two types of training and completed a pretest and a posttest that also gathered confidence ratings. Both groups studied three common errors (dangling modifiers, misplaced modifiers, and run-on sentences).  The only difference between the groups was whether the grammar rule was given or abstracted. The results were consistent with our hypothesis, except in run-on sentences which had no significant difference.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

 The purpose of the present study is to test cross-race recognition by removing hair cues and forcing participants to attend to facial features. We hypothesize that without cues for categorization, the cross-race recognition rate will be similar to the same-race recognition rate.  Psychology undergraduates performed the timed discrimination task consisting of 4 Black males, 4 Black females, 4 White males and 4 White females. The results differ from previous studies. We found gender differences between subjects in reaction time and correct response.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

This study examined effects of chronic amphetamine administration in an avian species that has exhibited atypical responses to acute amphetamine.  Chicks received d-amphetamine (0.0, 0.4, 0.8, or 1.6: ip) daily and subsequent activity and vocalizations produced over a 20-minute period compared in a 5-day study of response over time.  With acute exposure on day 1, d-amphetamine produced a decrease in overall activity.  As days increased, activity of controls decreased. D-amphetamine groups remained the same.  By day 5 there was no difference between the groups.  Effects may reflect tolerance or interference with habituation.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

This is a study on a continuation of an experiment we did last semester on voice as a predictor of how successful a person will be in life.  This time we used pictures and voice to test, which one has more of an impact on whether a person will be perceived successful in life.  The experiment consisted of male and female Culver-Stockton college students in psychology classes.  Voices and pictures were normed by the experimenters as attractive and unattractive.  The volunteers filled out a questionnaire for each of the voices and pictures that differed in attractiveness.  The questions were based from previous research that used scales measuring success in life, success in interpersonal relationships, and perceived attractiveness.  Results indicated that pictures were better predictors than voices as measures of success in all three areas.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

 As a society, we have become more aggressive than our  predecessors from generations past. We know this to be true simply by  watching the news at night. The purpose of this study was to determine if a connection exists between playing aggressive sports, such as football  and wrestling, and behaving aggressively in life. The results of the study  were much different then anticipated. Each test subject completed a PRF-E  personality inventory. Men who play aggressive sports generally score much  lower on the aggression portion of the test. Men who do not play a sport  and both women who do and do not play,  scored high on the aggression  scale. This could be indicative of female aggression and frustration over current and historical gender differences and expectations and males use  these sports as an outlet for aggressive feelings.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

The purpose of this study was to test the effect of  distraction on accuracy and speed of participants completing a task. The participants consisted of 88 undergraduate students at Culver-Stockton College that received extra credit for their participation. Each were given a passage to read, questions to answer, and received one of three levels of distraction:  high, low, or none. The results showed a main effect of time (time to read the passage and answer questions), which was monotonic with the level of distraction, but no effect of distraction was found on the number of errors people made on the questions.  A proposal to test the levels of distraction on various age groups was discussed.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

The purpose of this study was to test for differences between recall and recognition of incidental information by gender.  Fifty Culver-Stockton students participated in this study.  Participants were told to solve difficult and simple anagrams during the time that vocal incidental information was being played.  The type of anagrams they received were counterbalanced to control for order effects.  The results showed that both females and males performed significantly better in the recall of incidental information  while doing difficult anagrams as opposed to doing simple anagrams.  The results support Hasher and Zachs (1984) claim that people would recall more incidental information when given a difficult task instead of a simple task.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

Sperling (1960) discovered that with a partial report procedure participants could recall about 9 items from iconic memory; Darwin et al. (1972) found that subjects could recall about 5-6 items from echoic memory.  Perhaps echoic recall is worse because the participant perceives the items in the array all at once; in a sense they overlap each other.  I created an iconic partial report procedure where 12 items in an array were overlapping each other as they would in an echoic partial report procedure.  The results showed that iconic partial report decreased from 9 items to 2 items, on average.  The theoretical implications will be discussed.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

Stereotypic behavior is most commonly known as a symptom of several disorders, like autism, but also occurs in the general population.  These behaviors may come about through the depletion of a cognitive control mechanism called executive functioning (E-F), which under normal circumstances would inhibit stereotypy.  This study investigated the role of E-F and personality factors in the production of stereotypic behaviors in a sample of 32 college students by depleting E-F.  Stereotypic behaviors were especially high in introverted subjects and when E-F was depleted; further, these two variables interacted to produce especially high levels of stereotypy.  We suggest that introverts may produce more stereotypy due to a higher level of internal arousal, thus increasing their susceptibility to E-F depletion.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

Theoretical work suggests that positive illusions, as defined by Taylor and Brown (1988), are not directly linked to positive well-being.  In a study, Asian subjects failed to display positive illusions the way North American subjects did.  This lack of positive illusions also failed to predict poor mental functioning the way it did in North American subjects.   Instead, research evidence suggests that feelings of belongingness to ones culture, whether collectivist or individualistic, will dictate the link between positive illusions and well-being.  In this study, students filled out 4 questionnaires measuring individualism/collectivism, positive illusions, cultural authentication and depression.  A comparison of means showed no support for this theory. Instead, students high in collectivism and high in positive illusions were positively correlated with low depression.  Though this goes counter to previous research, it is possible that subjects from collectivist countries who have been integrated into an American academic community fail to be qualified as simply collectivist individuals from a collectivist society.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

In the research analysis of my study I conducted three paired-samples t-tests that compared the mean recall for brand names, characters, and slogans in the commercials presented in visual mode with the mean recall of these aspects in the commercials presented in auditory-visual mode.  The results from the t-tests show statistical significance (tobt.>tcrit. (|2.059|>|2.021|), tobt.>tcrit. (|2.344|>|2.021|), and tobt.>tcrit. (|4.862|>|2.021|), respectively) suggesting that the students’ memory of brand names, characters, and slogans for the commercials is better in the auditory-visual presentation mode than in the visual mode.  The means of the scores for the correctly recalled items show the same differences.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

Thirty-two undergraduate students participated in this study.  Subjects watched a videotape of a job interview and filled out a questionnaire designed to assess their perceptions of various aspects of the interview.  Prior to seeing the video the subjects were given instructions, which included a manipulation of the interviewer’s expectations about the applicant.  The study was designed examine whether or not the subjects would create self-fulfilling prophecies that would affect their assessments of the interview.  No significant differences were found between the means in any of the conditions.  As such, subjects did not appear to create self-fulfilling prophecies about the interview that would have influenced their interpretations of them.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

When a couple is legally wed, they conform to heterosexual standards. The marriage union creates a new aspect of identity, especially for women.  Transformation from bisexual identity to spousal identification is investigated by coding Ani DiFranco’s song lyrics. It is hypothesized that heterosexuality references will increase and non-heterosexuality references will decrease after her marriage to Andrew Gilchrist. Blind coders used a system based on 4 dimensions of sexual orientation to code 51 songs. The increased heterosexual references hypothesis was unsupported, while decreases in non-heterosexuality was significant. Future studies may want to consider variety in song content, placement of life-relevant transitional points, and the distinction between heterosexuality and non-heterosexuality more carefully.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

The hypothesis for this research was that individuals with a low stimulus screening ability are more likely to believe in the paranormal than high screeners.  There tends to be a lack of research in the area of paranormal beliefs.  Past studies have tended to focus on depressive attributional styles and reasoning skills as correlates of paranormal beliefs.  With this research, I hoped to show that an individual’s ability to filter out extraneous stimuli has an effect on the likelihood that he/she will believe in the paranormal.  The results showed that the correlation between paranormal beliefs and stimulus screening were very close to being significant.  To determine whether or not there is a relationship between these two variables, further research needs to be done.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

Studies have shown that music can aid in remembering. It can also be distracting if aspects of the music change.  This changes the cues at encoding and retrieval.  Studies have shown that musicians or people with a background in music do better on memory tasks.  Subjects were told to read a story.  Group 1 listened to classical music, Group 2-none (control) and Group 3-rap.  After studying the story subjects were asked to reproduce the story.  A survey was given, assessing subject’s musical background.  The hypothesis was that musicians would do better by remembering more than non-musicians.  It was not supported.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

Previous studies have shown that there is a trend for youth to drop out of religious activity some time in their teen years. This exploratory study examines parental and pastoral impact on youth group satisfaction.  The study also includes variables such as, religious alienation, church involvement, and influence of peers.  Results indicate that the three variables with the largest impact on youth group rating are alienation from religion, church involvement, and the level of interest the pastor takes in the youth. These findings may be used to alter church programming to keep youth attending and growing spiritually.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

Using the Interpersonal Perception Task The Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT) examines both nonverbal communication and social perceptions (Archer, Akert, & Costanzo, 1995). The IPT challenges the person to identify the right answer to each question with focusing in on the verbal and nonverbal cues of communication present in each of the scenes (Archer, Akert, &Costanzo, 1995).  The 15 scenes include three examples of each of the five different scene types: Status, Intimacy, Kinship, Competition, and Deception. This researcher wanted to investigate gender differences with accuracy in the performance on the IPT.  This experiment tested two hypotheses: 1) that women would be more accurate at detecting different social perceptions then men and 2) the elderly participants would be less accurate at detecting the interactions of others than the younger participants. A 2 x 2 ANOVA, which consisted of the participant’s age and gender against the 5 different subscales, computed the data from the answer sheets

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

Social norms within Computer-Mediated Communication were investigated within the naturalistic context of an online website. The main purpose of this experiment was to investigate two possible norms, the use of emoticons and status, which may have been established within cyber-societies. This was accomplished by observing changes in message interpretation caused by the manipulation of these norms. It was found that both status and the use of emoticons had an effect on how individuals were perceived within computer-mediated correspondence. It was concluded that further research is necessary in order to further investigate this relatively new area of psychological inquiry.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

Current research in cynomolgus monkeys has demonstrated a link between status in the social dominance hierarchy, dopamine functioning, and sensitivity to cocaine, with subordinate monkeys being the most sensitive to the reinforcing effects of cocaine (Morgan et al. 2002). The purpose of this current study was to determine if there is a relationship in humans between social dominance or status and drug use, with it being predicted that subjects reporting lower social status or lower perceived dominance would show higher rates of substance use as measured by a questionnaire containing items pertaining to cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, and heroin use.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

Although past research has analyzed accuracy perception in interpersonal tasks, few studies have investigated situations where participants use deception freely at their own discretion (DePaulo, Kirkendol, Tang, & O'Brien, 1988; Kenny & Albright, 1987; Swann, 1984). In this experiment, 40 students volunteered to play the card game "I DOUBT IT". The researcher analyzed how accurate other players were at detecting lies, how often players correctly called other players on their bluff, and what verbal and non-verbal cues were associated with deception.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

Research indicates people express biases towards individuals with depression.  This study investigated how knowledge of an individual's depression affects willingness to work with that person.  Researchers hypothesized that participants would show increased empathy and less bias towards individuals with depressive symptoms due to a shared event, specifically September 11th.  Seventy participants were told they might be working with a partner.  Participants were randomly assigned to read a description of a fictitious partner who either gave no indication of depressive symptoms or expressed depressive symptoms in one of three situations (symptoms no perceived cause, symptoms perceived cause-individual event, symptoms perceived cause-shared event). Participants completed a questionnaire about perceptions of the person as a work partner and willingness to work with this person.  Results showed no significant differences between the four conditions (all p's > .14). However, correlational analyses found a negative relationship between empathy and bias.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

Research has shown that college athletes are perceived as healthier than non-athletes, despite the fact that other research has shown that college athletes actually tend to engage in less healthy behaviors than non-athletes do. Based on this inconsistency, this study tested the hypothesis that college athletes will be perceived as more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors compared to non-athletes. However, athletes would be perceived as being more "healthy" than non-athletes. Two-hundred sixty participants were given a brief description of a male or female college student, non-athlete or athlete, and asked to rate their perceptions on several dimensions, including the overall health of the target, and the likelihood of the target to engage in various health behaviors. Results will analyze the four conditions of male or female college student, non-athlete or athlete for differences in the dependent measures.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

Many who work with grade school and high school students today generally describe these students as unmotivated and/or alienated.  This presentation will seek to explain why this may be so.  A four-stage model will help  explain why many teachers and students are moving further apart, rather than closer together.  I will also discuss why some groups of students, more so than others, are becoming more unmotivated and/or alienated.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

As outsiders looking into the lives of exceptional children, we form our own perceptions about their self-concepts, but are we on target?  In my presentation, I will review research studies that have addressed the interpersonal and intrapersonal perceptions and attitudes of these children and their peers.  Additionally, I propose to familiarize the attendees with an assessment tool, the Personal Attribute Inventory for Children, and how it has been used to gain insight into those perceptions and/or the perceptions of others.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

Though students in our nation’s schools may be taught the three R’s (i.e., reading, (w)riting, & (a)rithmetic), it seems that they are not learning the ABC’s that count the most, i.e., it’s “All ‘Bout Connectedness.”  Therefore, this presentation will seek to provide those in attendance with several different strategies for teachers and other ancillary personnel who might wish to more effectively “connect” or “reconnect” with students as they teach by example regarding how to interact, communicate, and connect better with others.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

For all of us, stress plays a role in our lives.  Of course, there are many other sources of stress, ranging from competition with others to non-acceptance by others, and many more in-between (e.g., money shortages, medical problems, death of a loved one). But even Shakespeare would have to agree that “To be or not to be [really] is not the question.”  Rather, most of our stressors actually originate from “What we expect it to be.”  In other words, the pictures in our minds regarding what we need or want, if set too high, will often needlessly create various forms of stress and frustration for us.  In this presentation the focus will be upon how we often tend to create stress for ourselves (and others too), as well as some things we can do to reduce stresses and enhance successes as we seek to modify our own pictures, plays, and personal thermostats as we seek to find the best, and will not settle for anything less.  The findings summarized here are in keeping with William Glasser’s “Choice Theory,” which generally states that you, and only you, are responsible for your own stresses and successes, but then shows you how you can change your life through some simple changes in one’s attitudes and behaviors.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

This presentation will focus on the use of the Love/Hate Checklist as a psychological assessment instrument that should provide important insights into how people perceive their actions, and/or the actions of others, in terms of their lovingness or hatefulness.  Basically, the findings from several studies will be summarized in order to show how this instrument has been used in the past, and then comments will be offered regarding how this instrument may prove to be more beneficial in the future.  Truly, the Love/Hate Checklist has been found to be a very reliable and valid scale that is easy to use and provides quick glimpses into what problems might exist in individuals’ interpersonal interactions, as well as helpful ideas regarding how to remediate these problems too.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

Who’s “at-risk?” and why are they “at-risk?” are very important questions currently being asked about many of the students in our nation’s schools.  In other words, teachers, parents, and others are genuinely concerned regarding the need to identify students who are considered to be at-risk, so that they might provide them with the services that they might need in order to help them become more likely to succeed.  This presentation will therefore seek to describe various inventories (e.g., The Potential Dropout Checklist, The Personal History Inventory, & The Personal History Inventory for Children) that have been created in order to more effectively ascertain those who are “at-risk” of failing in one or more ways.  Substantial research has already demonstrated that each of these inventories is reliable and valid, and that they should prove to be beneficial as we seek to help those in need to more likely succeed.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

The lives of the mentally ill have been shuffled around for hundreds of years.  With all of the advances of human comforts within our society, it could be said that we have stagnated in our development of resources for the housing of the mentally ill.  I will review research studies that have addressed the rising mentally ill prison population in the United States.  As suggested by Sigurdson, “we have essentially turned the clock back 200 years” by housing our mentally ill within the prisons of our society.  We will explore various perspectives for the societal changes that brought about this phenomenon.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between alcohol use and academic performance in college students.  Participants consisted of undergraduate students who were asked to fill out a questionnaire that pertained to their drinking lifestyle and their academic achievement, along with some demographic questions.  Results indicated that gender and age were not related to problem drinking, but a marginally significant relationship was found between grade point average and problem drinking.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

According to David Buss's evolutionary theory of mate preference, men prefer physically attractive women because attractiveness is an index of health which is important for the conception, delivery, and raising of children.  The purpose of this research was to test the hypothesis that men believe that attractive women are more healthy, fertile, and capable of bearing children than unattractive women.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

The purpose of this theoretical presentation is to integrate the hero stages of Joseph Campbell with Erik Erikson' psychosocial stages.  The hero quest is a cyclical pattern of stages that the hero must complete.  The cycle has three main stages: separation, initiation, and return.  This pattern seems consistent with Erikson's stages.  The cyclical stages of the hero could be the developmental stages that occur between the psychosocial stages.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

According to Martin Seligman optimists attribute successes to personal causes and failures to impersonal causes and pessimists do the opposite.  Thus in a romantic relationship optimists should attribute relationship successes, like watching an enjoyable movie together, to themselves and relationship failures, like watching a boring movie together, to their partners.  Taking credit for good outcomes and blaming the partner for bad outcomes may lead to partner resentment, conflict, and the end of the relationship.  Although optimism has generally been found to be more adaptive than pessimism in most areas of life, it may be detrimental to romantic success.  The purpose of this research was to test the hypothesis that optimists take credit for relationship successes and blame their partners for relationship failures and that this leads to overall relationship failure.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

The purpose of this study was to examine men's and women's mate selection strategies by analyzing the characteristics offered and desired by men and women in personal ads.  A total of 40 online personal ads (20 from men and 20 from women) were analyzed.  Only individuals seeking heterosexual romantic relationships were used. Advertisements were categorized by characteristics desired and characteristics offered for men and women separately.  Each advertisement was coded for the specific characteristics offered and desired (e.g., height, weight, age, personality).  Results of a descriptive analysis indicated that while men's and women's ads did have several similarities, they also differed in terms of characteristics offered and characteristics desired in a potential mate.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between Myers-Briggs personality types and academic performance and motivation.  The participants were 271 undergraduate  college students who were enrolled in introductory psychology courses. They completed a questionnaire consisting of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Need for Cognition Scale, and demographic questions (including gender and grade point average).  At the end of the semester the students' final grades in introductory psychology were recorded. T-tests were conducted to examine personality differences associated with grade point average, final course grade, and need for cognition.  Results indicated that the personality dimensions were differentially related to academic performance and motivation.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

This study examined jurors' sentencing decisions as a function of the status of the defendant and the victim.  Participants were 57 undergraduate students who read a scenario depicting a defendant who, while driving drunk, hit and killed a pedestrian.  The scenario varied by status of the defendant (insurance agent vs. janitor) and status of the victim (architect vs. gangster).  After reading the scenario participants indicated how long they would sentence the defendant to a prison term and also rated their liking for both the defendant and victim.  Results of a series of 2-way ANOVAs indicated that status of the defendant and the victim differentially influenced sentencing and likeability ratings, but none of the interactions were significant.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

The detrimental effects of fetal alcohol syndrome have been well studied, however, much less is known about fetal alcohol effects (FAE).  Both fetal alcohol syndrome and FAE are defined by problem behaviors, such as substance abuse, hyperactivity, impulsivity, disinhibition, poor socialization and poor communication (Mattson et al., 2001).  The main difference between the diagnoses is in the between the severity of the symptoms, presumably due to the degree of alcohol exposure.  The current study uses an exposure protocol that simulates moderate alcohol exposure late in fetal development.  This procedure has produced anatomical malformations of brain areas associated with learning (Goodlett et al., 1990b) as well as behavioral deficits.  The present study however does not find differences in signaled instrumental conditioning in rats exposed to late fetal, binge-type exposure.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between athletic participation and college students' academic achievement and motivation.  Participants included 30 female college students (10 Division I basketball players, 10 intramural basketball players, and 10 non-athletes) who completed a questionnaire.  The questionnaire measured grade point average, hours of participation in a sport per week, hours of studying per week, and academic motivation. Results indicated that athletes and non-athletes did not differ in academic performance, but relationships were found between hours participation in sports and academic motivation as well as perception of academic achievement and academic motivation.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

In the present study we examined men's self-perceived attractiveness and how this predicted their willingness to engage in short-term relationships with a target woman.  Participants included 32 heterosexual men.  Self-perceived attractiveness was assessed through body mass index, grade point average, and scores on two mate value scales. Participants were shown a photograph of an attractive woman and asked to rate their willingness to engage in a one-night stand and a short-term dating relationship with her.  Results of two multiple regression analyses indicated that the attractiveness measures differentially predicted likelihood of engaging in a one-night stand and a short-term relationship with the woman.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a relationship between the quality and quantity of sleep and the grade point average of college students.  There were 33 college students who participated (10 men and 23 women ranging in age from 20 to 35).  They completed a questionnaire that included questions from the Sleep Quality Index and Sleep Habits Inventory as well as grade point average. Results of a correlational analysis revealed that sleep quality was not related to GPA, but a marginally significant relationship was found between sleep habits and GPA.

Title:

  Author:

Faculty Sponsor:

According to David Buss's evolutionary theory of mate selection, men prefer women who are sexy and physically attractive and women prefer men who possess high status and resources.  The probability that the partner will be lost to a rival and that therefore the individual will experience jealousy are greatest when the individual lacks gender specific desirable characteristics and the partner possesses gender specific desirable characteristics.  Two hypotheses were tested:  First, men are most jealous when they lack status and resources and their partners are sexy and attractive.  Second, Women are most jealous when they are not sexy or physically attractive and their partners possess status and resources.

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor:

Title:

  Authors:

Faculty Sponsor: