Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Operational Drought Prediction Framework With Application Of Vine Copula Functions, Mahkameh Zarekarizi

Student Research Symposium

Early and accurate drought predictions can benefit water resources and emergency managers by enhancing drought preparedness. Soil moisture memory is shown to contain helpful information for prediction of future values. This study uses the soil moisture memory to predict their future states via multivariate statistical modeling. We present a drought forecasting framework which issues monthly and seasonal drought forecasts. This framework estimates droughts with different lead times and updates the forecasts when more data become available. Forecasts are generated by conditioning future soil moisture values on antecedent drought status. The statistical model is initialized by soil moisture simulations retrieved from …

Mindfulness Meditation As A Stress Reactivity Intervention: An Event-Related Potential Study, Jessica L. Trottier, Barry S. Oken

Student Research Symposium

The biological and neural mechanisms of stress have been extensively studied and supported, but are still unclear. Event-related potentials (ERP’s) emitted by neurons in the brain are a useful tool in measuring stress because they reflect neural response in real-time, to the millisecond, versus typical biological markers, which are typically evaluated before and after a stress test. The neurobiological relationship between ERP’s and stress originates in the anterior cingulate cortex, which in turn activates the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis; the main physiological cascade fueling the stress response and its chronically harmful symptoms. Malfunctions in the stress response, as in the cases of …

Revealing Subtle Cognitive-Linguistic Differences In Adults With Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Through Discourse Analysis, Amanda L. Weichselbaum, Sarah E. Key-Delyria

Student Research Symposium

Discourse abilities of individuals with traumatic brain injury presented at the Portland State University Student Research Symposium.

The findings of this study support the idea that discourse analysis may be a useful tool for determining subtle, cognitive-communication deficits in the TBI population that common neuropsychological tests may not detect. Such information may be important clinically for validating persisting cognitive symptoms and guiding effective therapy goals. Linguistic disruptions may reveal cognitive impairments due to diffuse damage of the brain.

The Role Of Financial Literacy Among University Transfer Students And The Impact On Perceived Social Mobility, Melissa Pyle

Student Research Symposium

This study will examine financial literacy among university transfer students at Portland State University. The main objective is to assess the financial knowledge and behaviors of transfer students and how that impacts perceived social mobility. The goal is to provide conclusions and resource implications regarding the specific needs of university transfer students through a sociological lens. In partnership with The Financial Wellness Center (FCW) at Portland State University it is hypothesized the results of this study will better equip universities and transfer students to work together to ensure both educational success, upward mobility, and fiscal responsibility.

Waiting For The Wisdom To Drop: A Photovoice Exploration Of Menopause, Delinda L. Free

Student Research Symposium

The purpose of this study was to create a women’s menopause discussion group based on the Photo Voice method, to use a narrative approach to learn what is currently relevant in the experience of menopausal women, to reveal insights about menopause as a phase of psychological development, and to bring a visual representation together with narratives to tell a story about the collective psychological themes. Participants were asked to meet and reflect on what has changed in their values, attitudes, aspirations, goals, and outlook on life. Then participants were asked to take pictures over the course of a week, and …

Individual And Group Differences In Sound Category Learning, Ben Carlstrom

Student Research Symposium

Abstract: We examined the role of procedural-, declarative-, and working-memory systems in adults learning novel sound categories. Adults have fully developed declarative-memory skills that sometimes inhibit their ability to learn implicitly/procedurally (Filoteo, Lauritzen, & Maddox, 2010). Models of impaired language like the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis suggest that procedural-memory deficits are predictive of language-learning outcomes (Lum, Conti-Ramsden, Page, & Ullman, 2011). This study tested the hypothesis that language structure is best learned implicitly/procedurally, which has implications for L2 learning and language impairment. The novel sound categories presented to participants varied along a phonologically non-native dimension, pitch, and a native dimension, vowel …

Barriers To Mental Health Service Access Among Women At A Large Public University, Auburn Beebe

Student Research Symposium

• College students are dealing with serious mental health issues, and represent an important population to access when providing mental health services.
• In particular, college women show a significant need for mental health services.
• Though most universities provide free mental health counseling services, many students are unaware or reluctant to use those services.
• Many factors contribute to this reluctance such as lack of knowledge about services and perceived stigma.
• This study seeks to add to the existing body of literature on college student mental health by identifying barriers to mental health service access at a large public university, while uniquely focusing …

Papers Please: Immigration, Enforcement, And Remittances, Jose A. Rojas-Fallas

Student Research Symposium

Immigrants are an understated agent in local economies. Whilst legal immigrants may be accounted for in the macro realm, illegal immigrants are very much an externality. Immigrant agents participate heavily in local economies, almost exclusively, due to their status and the implicit risks associated with it. Immigrants’ decision to migrate towards better economies come with the goal of achieving prosperity that more than likely would not have been possible in their location of origin. A majority of immigrants are heads of households that migrate alone seeking greater wages to support their household. They do this through remittances. These are capital …

The Minorities Within The Minority, Gloria P. Aiten

Student Research Symposium

The poster is based off of the research paper I am currently doing, it is about how in the Western Society the Asian-Pacific Islanders are categorized as one, but in reality they're two different ethnicity and how the PI are being misidentified. In other words, imagine putting a dog and a cat into one category. Yes they're both house pets, but they're two different species. That is exactly what's happening between the API community.

The Importance Of Urban Habitat Connectivity And Influence On Native Avian Species And Community Science, Kristen S. Gulick

Student Research Symposium

In what ways do small-scale urban backyards contribute to local bird abundance and biodiversity? In what ways might these yards serve as an ‘extension’ of neighboring native forest areas? This project investigates the contribution that a group of backyards, certified through the Backyard Habitat Certification Program, have in the suburb of Hillsdale, Oregon, which is adjacent to the natural area of Keller Woodland. Backyard owners functioning as citizen or community scientists assisted with conducting residential bird point-counts once a week in each backyard and the natural area. Counts were done for a total of 8 weeks during nesting season to …

Comparing The Effects Of Phonomotor Treatment And Semantic Feature Analysis On Discourse Production For Individuals With Aphasia, Kasey Graue

Student Research Symposium

Phonomotor treatment is a program designed to address anomic deficits in people with aphasia (PWA) by training speech sounds in isolation before progressing to sound combinations and single words (Kendall et al., 2013). Kendall et al. (2015) investigated phonomotor treatment in a sample of 26 PWA, reporting improved naming of untrained nouns and ultimate generalization of phonologic processing abilities. Despite emerging literature on the effects of the phonomotor treatment on single word production, research is limited at the discourse level. This study’s objective is to examine the extent that phonomotor treatment used for PWA increases the amount of correct information …

A Four Year Study Of The Effects Of Substrate Depth On The Survival Of Different Plant Species In Portland, Or, Arjun Viray

Student Research Symposium

The changes in green roof plant species composition was observed after a four year time period. Twelve plots were planted in either native or non-native species at two different substrate depths according to a 2 by 2 factorial design. The list of original species from installation was used to identify which species survived over time in their respective plots. After four years, 9 out of 12 native species and 13 out of 14 species survived. The high survival of 26 original species must be compared to the colonization of 68 new species. With minimal maintenance, new species colonized plots. Extensive …

Effect Of Spatial Influence On Endophyte Diversity Within Alnus Rubra, Sebastian L. Singleton

Student Research Symposium

Red alders (Alnus rubra) of the Pacific Northwest are characterized as actinorhizal dicotyledons; plants that possess that ability to form symbiotic relationships with endophytic organisms, which result in nitrogen-fixing nodules. In Alders of the order Fagales, such a symbiotic relationship with Frankia bacteria allows these plants to play crucial environmental roles as pioneer species able to colonize and enrich nutrient-deficient soils. This ability has a major impact on ecological succession by enabling other species to establish. Although inoculation with frankia bacteria is known to increase symbiotic nitrogen fixation capabilities of actinorhizal plants, whether they could confer the same benefit to …

Associations Between The Willingness To Exert Cognitive Effort And Smoking Abstinence, Austin A. Phanouvong

Student Research Symposium

In decision-making tasks, individuals who prefer smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed rewards (delay discounting) are less likely to quit smoking. Indeed, decision-making tasks with delayed reward costs are sensitive to many aspects of substance use disorders. However, other reward costs might also be important. Our study focused on one of these other reward costs, which was cognitive effort (CE). 22 current smokers who were anticipating quitting in the near future were recruited to validate if more CE discounting predicted shorter abstinence times in reinforced smoking lapse period. Each participant had to be over the age of 21, and smoke …

Assistive Technology For The Cognitively Impaired: A Study Of Literacy, Comprehension, And The Print Publishing Industry, Amanda Matteo

Student Research Symposium

This paper explores how the print publishing industry has developed to include and assist children with cognitive impairments. It analyzes the ways in which assistive technology and the digital market (i.e. ebooks) have promoted reading comprehension amongst this population, and discusses what further developments are in the works in regards to cognitive reading enhancements. Finally, it explores the areas in which this development is still limited and provides potential, attainable solutions.

Culture Beyond Borders: A Postcolonial Analysis Of Multicultural Education, Alex Diaz-Hui

Student Research Symposium

Using Third-World feminist and postcolonial theory, this research complicates the narrative of culture in education. While multicultural education is well intentioned, it creates caricatures of communities of color. Multicultural education also functions through an anthropological perspective of culture, one that relays on portraying communities of color through national cultures. According to Third-World feminist scholarship, particularly through the writings of Uma Narayan, national cultures do not exist but are actually constructed through distinguishing the colonizer and the colonized. Culturally responsive pedagogy provides a theoretical framework that attempts to remedy the issues of multicultural education. However, it fails to separate itself from …

Expanding Stereotype Content Beyond Warmth And Competence, Lauren S. Park

Student Research Symposium

Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, and Xu’s (2002) stereotype content model (SCM) has emerged as one of the most influential models of person perception in contemporary scholarship, and the organizational literature has begun to use this model for diversity management (Lyons et al., 2016; Martinez, White, Shapiro, & Hebl, 2016). However, data we have collected indicate that this two-factor solution may not be sufficient for all groups. Furthermore, the factor structure of the SCM items has never been examined empirically. The construct of morality, though largely ignored in contemporary Western psychology, has been proven to be the most important basis on which …