Psychology Commons^™

Assessing Genetic And Environmental Predictors Of Infant Reflexive Attention, Rebecca Lundwall

Journal of Undergraduate Research

My students and I have been very productive during the two funding years of this grant. Together, we have published three peer-reviewed papers (one in an undergraduate research journal) and submitted six papers that are now under review (one in an undergraduate research journal). In addition, I have mentored student submissions of eight poster presentations at local, regional, and national conferences. These papers and presentations have involved 25 students as co-authors.

Measuring Uncertainty In Assessments Through Mouse Tracking, Dr. Ross Larsen, Dr. Jeff Jenkins, Dr. Charles Graham

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Several developments during data collection caused some of our methods to change. For example, we ended up using Multiple Regression rather than Confirmatory Factor Analysis to understand the relationships between the mouse tracking metrics and self-reported uncertainty. Nevertheless, we had success in making a predictive model and have presented our findings at the Americas Conference on Information Systems (Jenkins, Larsen, Bodily, Sandberg, Williams, Stokes, Harris, & Valaicich, 2015). The full paper can be seen in Appendix A. We have not spent all of our research funds so we are taking the next steps in researching mouse tracking as described below.

Avicenna’S Astrolabe, Peter Rich

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The goals of this project were to bring students from various disciplines across campus to create a digital game for beginning Arabic learners. The initial expectation of the project was to implement the game in an Arabic 101 classroom on BYU campus and evaluate it for further development. An initial conceptual prototype was evaluated in a summer Arabic course (Star Talk Arabic Language Camp). Due to changes in client expectations, an advanced prototype of the game was then created for online users. Dr. Rich worked with Matthew Bird, an IP&T doctoral student, who in turn mentored students in several disciplines …

Chronic Intermittent Ethanol To Establish Dependence, David Matthews, Scott Steffensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Excessive alcohol consumption in the United States is costing hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States alone. Addiction is a corrosive disease whose impact spreads across a broad spectrum including monetary damages, social disruption, health concerns, and life-ending decisions. Trailing a path of 88,000 alcohol-related deaths annually, government studies in 2006 reported that costs of excessive alcohol consumption reached $223.5 billion (Bouchery et al., 2011). In addition to monetary cost of alcohol abuse, the impact of this addiction can be devastating to personal and family life. Furthermore, addiction alters neural circuitry and becomes a self-absorbed behavior that robs …

Meth Causes Expression Of 8-Ohg In The Addiction Pathway And Leads To Increased S-Glutathionylation Of The Vesicular Monoamine Transportor Via The Sigma Receptor, Taylor Hyde, Scott Steffensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Methamphetamine (METH) is a highly addictive drug of abuse and which results in serious financial, societal, and individual consequences in the United States. In 2005, METH abuse costs the country billions dollars each year. Societal and individual costs as a result of METH use are also high. Knowing how METH acts in the brain is a significant step in developing a pharmocotherapeutic treatment for METH addiction.

An Investigation On The Neural Correlates Of Testing Encoding And False Memories, Seth Spencer, Brock Kirwan

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Memory is an essential component for day to day living. Recognition memory in the brain has been associated with specific neural structures such as the medial temporal lobe (MTL), including the hippocampus and the adjacent MTL cortex [1]. The hippocampus is known for its ability to encode and retrieve memories through the distinct processes of pattern separation and pattern completion [2]. Pattern separation is the process of separating two similar stimuli to create distinct memories (i.e. discerning which of 2 similar toothbrushes belongs to you). Pattern completion is the retrieval of an old representation given a noisy or degraded cue …

Comparing The Effects Of Tredmill Desks And Cycling Desks On Cognitive Performance, Nicholas Randall, Michael Larson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Sedentary lifestyle and obesity are growing concerns that are responsible for at least 300,000 premature deaths and $90 billion spent on health care per year in the United States (Manson et al., 2004). Many jobs today contribute to a sedentary lifestyle by requiring prolonged periods of sitting. Recent studies show that breaks in sedentary time results in less metabolic risk and a smaller waistline (Healy et al., 2011). Treadmill desks (desks that enable individuals to walk at a slow speed while working) along with cycling desks (workstations where individuals can cycle at a slow speed while working) have been shown …

Oxytocin And Infant Development: A Study Of The Genetic Underpinnings Behind Social Behavior In Rhesus Macaques, Spencer Waters, James Dee Higley

Journal of Undergraduate Research

It is widely accepted that the neuropeptide oxytocin helps mediate pro-social behavior and bonding between humans as well as other primates. Current genetic research has shown a link between variants in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) and measures of social skills in humans. Demonstrating a link between oxytocin genotype and sociality, implies biological underpinnings for social bonding and affiliation in both human and nonhuman primates, suggesting that neurophysiological mechanisms may function to modulate a wide variety of social behaviors.

Role Of Sigma Receptors In Low-Dose Methamphetamine Modulation Of Dopamine Release In The Nucleus Accumbens, Gilbert Marchant, Scott Steffensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Methamphetamine (METH) is an addictive drug of abuse and METH use is a growing problem in the United States. The current dogma states that psychostimulants such as METH attack the mesocorticolimbic dopamine (DA) system, leading to abnormally high DA release when drugs of abuse are taken (Volkow et al., 2004). A key target area of the mesocorticolimbic system is the nucleus accumbens (NAc). Specifically, DA release in the NAc has been associated with reward and motivation (Oleson et al. 2012).

Effects Of Relationship Quality On Daily Ambulatory Blood Pressure, Kyle Eversole, Wendy Birmingham

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Positive spousal support and relationships that are high in positivity are beneficial in terms of health-outcomes, including lower clinical and ambulatory blood pressure, an indicator of cardiovascular disease risk. Such positive relationships have been associated with lower mortality and morbidity. Conversely, relationships with more negative social interactions have been shown to cause high stress. This stress can cause both psychological and physiological problems, including higher resting and ambulatory blood pressure. In fact, some studies suggest that remaining single is more beneficial than a negative marriage or relationship. However, most marriages are not strictly positive or strictly negative, but rather, a …

Assessing Diagnostic Capacity Of Event-Related Potentials In Mild Alzheimer’S Disease, Jack Silcox, Bruce Brown

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that always results in death. Unfortunately, the death that eventually comes is preceded by vicious symptoms. A patient with the disease slowly begins to lose memory and other cognitive abilities, robbing a person of their mind and life.

Alzheimer’s disease is becoming a major public health problem (Blennow, de Leon, & Zetterberg, 2006). In 2006, it was estimated that about one quarter of people of above the age of 85 years suffer from Alzheimer’s disease (Ferri, Prince, Brayne, Brodaty, Fratiglioni, Ganguli,… Scazufca). Because of how destructive this disease is to individuals, families and …

Effects Of Tetrabenazine On Basal Methamphetamine, Taylor Tribett, Scott Steffensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

It is easy to see how much METH hurts the lives of its users and leads to high costs for society. Methamphetamine abuse is linked to higher healthcare costs, child abuse, and higher rates of theft and incarceration (Dobkin & Nicosia, 2009). Additionally, prescriptions for amphetamines (which are theorized to work by the same mechanisms) almost doubled in the United States between 2006 and 2011 (Sembower, Ertischek, Buchholtz, Dasgupta, & Schnoll, 2013). As the presence of these drugs becomes more widespread, the number of those at risk for abuse and addiction increases as well. In order to develop pharmacological treatments …

Habituation To Electronic Security Warnings, Corinne Devault, Brock Kirwan

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Habituation is the phenomenon that exhibits itself after repeated exposure to a stimulus; the brain response to it is decreased. This is seen in many different mediums, like tastes, touch, sound, etc., and thus could be observed in experiencing electronic security warnings as well. The brain needs constant vigilance when seeing warnings because large amount of personal information are saved on computers and other forms of technology. Ignoring a warning after it has appeared once or twice could result in a huge breach of information. Thus, it is important to study patterns of habituation of security warnings. There have been …

S-Glutathionylation Of Vmat By Acute Methamphetamine, Spencer Mccarthy, Scott Steffensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Methamphetamine (METH) has long been regarded as a potent addictive drug and psychostimulant. The addictive effects can be localized to the VTA, specifically activity of dopaminergic neurons in the nucleus accumbens (NAc). Overactivity of these neurons results in the pleasurable and addictive of METH. Various theories have been proposed as to the mechanism of this excess dopamine release; including a role for reactive oxygen species. In a recent publication, our lab has already demonstrated that METH induces the formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the axon terminals of dopaminergic neurons in the nucleus accumbens and that blocking the formation …

The Role Of Peripheral Mechanisms On Da Enhancement In The Rodent Brain, Christian Carr, Scott Steffensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Dopamine is an important brain neurotransmitter regarding brain disorders such as substance abuse, Schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS). Dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and substantia nigra (SN) are inhibited by DA via DA D2 autoreceptor (D2R) activation (Adell and Artigas, 2005). D2R expression in the brain is a well-known biomarker for brain DA levels, drug abuse, and dependence. Many previous studies have demonstrated that D2R expression is directly proportional to DA levels in the brain. Thus, D2Rs are highly responsive to brain levels. This provides an aid in diagnosing …

Mri Tissue-Based Intensity Standardization For Multi-Site Neuropsychological Outcome Studied: Problems And Potential Solutions, Trevor Huff, Erin Bigler

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In this era of the human connectome, automated image analysis techniques, and large scale multi-site neuroimaging databases examining neuropsychological outcome across a broad spectrum of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders, there is a particular need to address how to combine neuroimaging studies that use different volumetric sequences or Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) studies performed on different platforms. Currently, there is a large volume of studies that utilize data from multiple scanning locations. This data, while important, cannot reliably be used for comparisons without taking into account the various differences that exist between MRI equipment. The purpose of this study is to …

The Role Of Dopamine In Vasocontricting Cytokines And Restless Leg Syndrome, Jared Peterson, Scott Steffensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) is characterized by strong and often unpleasant urges to move ones legs while at rest and affects approximately 10% of the U.S. population1. The exact cause of RLS is not known, and the mechanism by which the urges are generated is poorly understood. One theory proposes that decreased oxygenation of tissues caused by increased levels of vasoconstricting cytokines may be the cause of these urges. The purpose of this project was to investigate the role that blood dopamine (DA) plays in this mechanism.

Women’S Autonomy And The Effect On Family Planning In Nepal, Margo Anderson (Taylor), Scott Sanders, Renata Forste

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In 2010, maternal death rates globally reached as high as 210 per 100,000 (United Nations, 2013) and resulted in part from a lack of maternal health services. Maternal health services like family planning play a critical role in improving women’s reproductive health in developing countries (Bhatia and Cleland, 1995). Today there are an estimated 225 million women in developing countries that would choose to delay or stop childbearing but are not using any method of contraception (World Health Organization [WHO], 2015). Linked to low contraceptive use, women in these regions also have low levels of autonomy. These male-dominated regions place …

Primed For Porn, Investigating The Nuanced Relationship Between Problematic Pornography Consumption And Impulse Control, Celeste Hook, Scott Braithwaite

Journal of Undergraduate Research

As pornography becomes infinitely more accessible through the internet, the number of consumers increases at a rapid rate. Pornography abuse is shown to be a subcategory of hypersexuality (Grubbs, Volk, Exline, & Pargament, 2015), which is defined in the DSM-V as “a repetitive and intense preoccupation with sexual fantasies, urges, and behaviors, leading to adverse consequences”. Hypersexual behaviors have been linked to poorer impulse control (Miner et al., 2009; Prause, Steele et al., 2015; Reid, Cooper, Prause, Li, & Fong, 2012), and poorer impulse control has been related to many addictive behaviors such as substance abuse (Hardy, Steelman, Coyne, & …

Mnemonic Mechanisms For The Mundane: A Longitudinal Approach, Athena Howell, Brock Kirwan

Journal of Undergraduate Research

My project focused on the neural activity associated with memory consolidation, particularly the role of pattern separation and pattern completion over an extended period of time. Pattern separation occurs when the brain successfully encodes similar experiences into distinct memories (Deng et al. 2003); for instance, pattern separation allows you to correctly remember what you had for dinner last night as opposed to the night before last. Pattern completion, on the other hand, occurs when you reconstruct a memory from a partial memory (e.g. when asked what you ate last Wednesday night, you respond with the meal you consumed last Tuesday …

What Happens When Remember The Wrong Thing: The Effects Of False Recognition On Memory Performance, Amanda Ellgen, C. Brock Kirwan

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Our long-term memory system has the impressive ability to form unique representations of events and later retrieve those distinct events with minimal interference from similar events. For example, you may park in the same parking lot everyday, but in a different spot each time. Most days, you can remember specifically where you are parked even though each encounter is very similar and thus might interfere with all the others. Computational models of brain functioning propose that this ability depends on the complementary processes of pattern separation and pattern completion. Pattern separation is the process whereby overlapping representations (of, for example, …

The Effect Of Chronic Ethanol On Vta Gaba Neurons, Stephanie Bair, Scott Steffensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The current accepted model for addiction in the brain is the dysregulation of dopamine (DA) in the mesolimbic pathway, which begins in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and projects to the nucleus accumbens (NAc). DA neurons originate in the VTA and project to the NAc where they release DA. Dopamine neurons are typically regulated locally by inhibitory gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) neurons in the VTA. Because GABA neurons in the VTA regulate DA neurons, we conclude that changes in VTA GABA neurons will affect DA release in the NAc underlying addictive behaviors, especially reward seeking.

The Need For An Aural Memory Test Baseline, Eric Brighton, Brock Kirwin

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Visual pattern separation is the ability of an individual to correctly distinguish between images that they have already seen, images that are very similar but not identical, and novel images. Over the last eight years visual pattern separation has come to be well accepted as a measure of an individual’s ability to form long-term memories. Studies have been conducted to see the effects of aging, exercise, depression and anxiety among other things on their ability to do the pattern separation task (Shelton et. al 2013) (Holden et. al 2013). This has been a very useful metric so far, but by …

Acute Effects Of Exercise On Aggregate Appetite Hormones, Aaron Miller, Chad Jensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Leptin and ghrelin are two hormones involved with suppressing satiety and meal initiation. The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of acute exercise duration of 30 and 60 minutes on the total levels of leptin and ghrelin.

An Open Source Function Utilizing Random Field Theory For Mri Analysis, Zachary Christensen, Erin D. Bigler

Journal of Undergraduate Research

When looking at an MRI scan of the brain one is actually viewing millions of voxels (three dimensional pixels) that represent individual groups of signals produced by the MRI machine. Therefore, each voxel is representative of the brains composition at that point in three dimensional space or metabolic activity (as is the case in functional MRI). These qualities are utilized in research to give anatomically meaningful comparisons of the brain between individual test subjects. Doing so involves the process of mass univariate testing and produces a single statistical value at each voxel representing the univariate test (i.e. a tvalue). However, …

Methamphetamine-Induced Melanization In Dopamine Cell Culture, Rebecca Oliphant, Scott Steffensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Dopamine (DA) neurons are at the core of many highly-researched diseases. Dopaminergic neuronal degeneration has been linked to oxidative stress, a state that occurs when high levels of normally-occurring reactive oxidative species (ROS) are formed. Depending on the location of such degradation, the result could be either Parkinson’s disease or the very common state of addiction and withdrawal.

Neuromelanin is a dark polymer pigment found on some catecholaminergic neurons and contains a stable radical that is able to inactivate ROS and possibly protect DA neurons from degradation. The mechanism for spontaneous melanization is unknown, but an understanding of this process …

The Impact Of Ambivalent Relationship Quality On Married Couples’ Health, Spencer J. Nielson, Wendy Birmingham

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Marriage has been positively associated with better physiological health outcomes, although the specific pathways by which this occurs remains somewhat elusive. Additionally, the quality of marriage appears to influence the health benefits derived from marriage. Marital partners, like other social relations, can be sources of support and understanding but can also be sources of criticism, conflict, and jealousy. Research has shown varying degrees of both positivity and negativity co-occurring within close relationships (i.e., ambivalence) and may provide a more accurate representation of marital processes. Cardiovascular outcomes and marital quality have been linked (think “fight or flight”), and one physiological pathway …

Mindset And Resilience In High-School Cross Country Runners, Anna Lisa Ward, Ben Ogles

Journal of Undergraduate Research

One debate found in the psychological field is one of nature vs. nurture. Those agreeing with the nature side of this argument would state that we, as individuals, come into the world knowing everything we will ever know. We are ‘born’ with the genes, brain structures, etc. that will make us who they are, while those on the nurture side of the argument would say we come into the as a blank slate and our environment determines who we are. Through research and scientific discovery the consensus has been reached that both nature and nurture influence who we are, we …

We Need To Text Patterns Of Cummunication Channel Use In Emerging Adult Romantic Relationships, Samuel Jackson, Scott Braithwaite

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Communication in romantic relationships is changing. Partners today increasingly choose to communicate via technology¹, and use a mix of communication channels ranging from purely verbal formats (e.g., text messaging) to those rich in nonverbal expression (e.g., video chats). Despite this, theories about romantic communication tend to assume or focus on only face-to-face interactions, or lump all computer-mediated channels into a single category². These limitations harm the study of modern relationships. Expanding scientific knowledge about how young people use various media in their relationships can greatly benefit the future study of romantic communication and mate selection, and …

Functional Mri: The Future For Neurocognitive Assessment, Daniel Sands, Erin Bigler

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Americans suffer an estimated 3.2 million concussions per year. Concussions are known to cause notable and long-lasting deficits in cognitive functioning in some individuals. This creates the need for new assessment tools and technology to facilitate assessment and treatment. This study will advance research in the use of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) as an assessment tool in clinical neuropsychology. In recent years, cognitive tests have been adapted for administration in an MRI environment to enhance patient evaluation. However, meaningful interpretation of these test results requires normative data of healthy persons for individual patient comparison. In this project, we develop …