Developmental Psychology Commons^™

Remote Infant Studies Of Early Learning (Rise): Scalable Online Replications Of Key Findings In Infant Cognitive Development, Rhiannon Luyster, Elena Tenenbaum1, Caitlin Stone, My H. Vu, Madeleine Hare, Kristen Gilyard, Sudha Arunachalam, Elika Bergelson, Somer Bishop, Michael Frank, J. Kiley Hamlin, Melissa Kline Struhl, Rebecca J. Landa, Casey Lew-Williams, Melissa E. Libertus, Julie Markant, Maura Sabatos-Devito, Stephen J. Sheinkopf, Jennifer B. Wagner, Kayle Park, Anna I. Soderling, Ashleigh K. Waterman, Jordan N. Grapel, Amit Bermano, Yotam Erle, Shafali Jeste

Emerson Authors, Researchers, & Creators

The current manuscript describes the Remote Infant Studies of Early Learning (RISE), a battery intended to provide robust looking time measures of cognitive development that can be administered remotely to inform our understanding of individual developmental trajectories in typical and atypical populations, particularly infant siblings of autistic children. This battery was developed to inform our understanding of early cognitive and language development in infants who will later receive a diagnosis of autism. Using tasks that have been successfully implemented in lab-based paradigms, we included assessments of attention, memory, prediction, word-recognition, numeracy, multimodal processing, and social evaluation. This study reports results …

Cultural Factors Associated With Parenting Practices And Wellbeing Among Pakistani Immigrants, Yumna Khan

Honors Program Theses

Immigrant parents experience many challenges when shifting to a new culture, such as rearing children in a culture different from the one in which they were reared. Adjusting to a new culture is associated with aspects of parental wellbeing and the parenting practices that they adopt (Murthy, 2024). This has been studied widely among immigrant parents, but not among Pakistani immigrants. The present descriptive study aimed to address the following questions among a sample of Pakistani immigrant participants (N = 61): 1) What parenting practices and values are embraced by Pakistani immigrant parents and to what extent are these values …

A Dual Process Model Perspective On Associations Between Parent And Offspring Problem Drinking, Karallyn E. Fitisone

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Parental problem drinking (PPD) is a well-established risk factor for adolescent alcohol use, yet the complex mechanisms involved remain underexplored. The present study addresses this critical gap by examining how PPD, parent emotion socialization, and emerging adult problem drinking are associated within the framework of the Dual Process Model of Substance Use. Participants were 2,036 undergraduates who completed an online survey assessing PPD, retrospective reports of parental reactions to their negative emotions in childhood, and students’ current levels of problem drinking, negative urgency, negative emotional reactivity, and emotion-regulation difficulties. Structural equation modeling was used to clarify the roles of emotion-related …

Evaluating The Credibility Of Online Websites: A Digital Information Literacy Program, Emily C. Wood, Kim P. Roberts

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The plethora of information currently available via the internet is greater than ever before. Given this, finding credible information is an exceedingly complex task for any information consumer, but especially so for children. Research shows that children have difficulty evaluating the credibility of online information and are more susceptible to believing misinformation compared to adolescents. While a growing body of research addresses children’s internet use, most research focuses on technology safety rather than the evaluation of online information. Several studies have found digital information literacy (DIL) interventions to be successful at increasing critical thinking and awareness of the criteria to …

The Boston Metco Program: Recent Alumni Experiences And Educational Equity, Maya Hernandez

Honors Theses

This project focuses on contemporary school integration practices by examining, in particular, the Boston METCO (Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity Inc) program and the experiences of its recent alumni. The METCO program, the United States’ longest-running voluntary school desegregation program, was created in 1966 to give students of color from the city of Boston better educational opportunities by busing them to the surrounding suburbs for school. To this day, it is a program meant to expand educational opportunities, increase diversity, and reduce racial isolation, by permitting students from Boston to attend public schools beyond district lines, in the suburbs. My …

The Alien Language: Game The Developmental Trajectory Of Auditory And Visual Statistical Learning, Gwen Radecki

Honors Theses

Statistical learning (SL) extends across multiple stimulus domains and modalities, including vision, audition, and touch. However, it remains to be seen whether SL is supported by a modality-general or modality-specific mechanism(s). Prior work examined this by varying the rate of presentation across modalities, finding evidence of modality-specific constraints on learning (Emberson, Conway & Christiansen, 2011). In a prior experiment, I extended this work by testing the effect of presentation rate in standardized audio and visual SL tasks. The results of this project provided evidence against modality constraints to SL, suggesting instead that the mechanism is modality-general in nature. However, SL’s …

The Demand For Educational Functions Of Study Tour Products: From Students’ Perspectives, Yaqi Yu, Azizan Marzuki

Journal of Educational Technology Development and Exchange (JETDE)

Few academic studies have comprehensively examined the actual demands of students regarding the educational function of study tours. This paper develops a demand index system based on three dimensions: cognitive, affective, and behavioral demands. A questionnaire survey was administered to 397 students. Initially, student demands were categorized using the Kano model. Subsequently, the “dependence” and “expectancy” characteristics were analyzed through the dissatisfaction index (DI) and satisfaction index (SI). The impact of fulfilling each demand on dissatisfaction and satisfaction levels was then determined. The results indicated that among the three dimensions, there were 7 must-be demands, 6 one-dimensional demands, 8 attractive …

Young Adults’ Views On Personal Death, Victor N. Soto

Anthós

Within academic discussions of death and dying, there is a deficit of qualitative studies on how young adults view personal death. This article explores young adults’ (18-24) views on personal death using inductive coding of the transcriptions of three 1:1 interviews and one focus group. Soto’s findings show that young adults view their personal death in three ways: 1) they reflect on family death experiences as frames of reference for personal death, 2) they rely on a life well- lived to ease anxiety around personal death, and 3) they use humor as a coping mechanism in thinking about and discussing …

Does The Time Spent With Same-Gender Peers Matter? Gender Segregation And Attitudes About Coercive Sex In College Students, Kourtney L. Kotvas

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Gender segregation, or the tendency to form friendships with same-gender peers, is a common phenomenon across the lifespan (Mehta & Strough, 2009). Research suggests that same-gender peer groups reinforce traditional gender norms (Leaper, 2022), which may contribute to coercive sexual attitudes, which are beliefs that justify sexual coercion. This study examined how different measures of gender segregation, peer nomination, actual time spent with same-gender peers, and ideal time spent with same-gender peers relate to coercive sexual attitudes. These attitudes were assessed through rape myth acceptance, which reflects beliefs that minimize or justify sexual violence (Canan et al., 2023), and sexual …

Do Demographics And Social Determinants Of Health Relate To Current And Anticipated Caregiving Roles?, Sarah Alison Bolling

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In 2021-22, approximately 37.1 million Americans provided care to family or friends who had an illness or disability (U.S. Bureau of Labor, 2024). These informal caregivers experience poorer mental health (Dahlrup et al., 2015) and physical health (Pinquart & Sorensen, 2003) influencing their overall well-being. Experiences in caregiving may differ across age, gender, race (Young et al., 2019). Given the effects of Social Determinants of Health (SDOH), such as financial stability, health care, and food resources (Duran & Perez-Stable, 2019), some adults may experience additional threats to health and quality of life before entering into the caregiver role. Little is …

Adolescent Attachment And Anxiety: Examining Implicit Emotion Beliefs And Emotion Regulation As Mediators, Jeanette Pool

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Anxiety is a growing issue in adolescents, with teens reporting worse and more severe symptoms in recent years (Kajastus et al., 2023; Solmi et al., 2022). There are several risk factors for developing anxiety symptoms, including cognitive, behavioral, and social factors. Effective emotion regulation (ER) has been shown to be helpful in decreasing anxiety symptom levels (Arbulu et al., 2023; Cho et al., 2019). A better understanding of precursors of ER could aid in prevention of anxiety. ER may stem from our personal beliefs about emotions (Ford et al., 2018; Schroder et al., 2015; Tamir et al., 2007) and to …

Effects Of Physical Activity And Purpose In Life In Cognitive Aging, Farima Sadeghi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Cognitive decline has become a growing public health concern with the increase in aging populations throughout the world. As Physical Activity has shown to be one of the key factors in maintaining and enhancing cognitive health in older adults, this study explores the psychological mechanisms that might underlie this relationship. Using data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, the analyses examine whether Purpose in Life mediates the relationship between Physical Activity and both cognitive abilities—Episodic Memory and Executive Functioning, whether age strengthens this effect, and whether Physical Activity itself could act as a mediator. The results showed …

Parental Behavioral Control Across Domains In Indian And Indian American Families, Avneet Batra

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Prior research literature has often found parental behavioral control to have mixed associations with varied adolescent outcomes (Bean et al., 2006; Finkenauer et al., 2005). However, a relatively lesser explored topic of research focusses on the domain specificity of this kind of control and its association with internalizing and externalizing behaviors in sample of Indian and Indian American parents (Arim et al., 2010). The current study adds to the limited literature by emphasizing the five domains of control (e.g., moral, conventional, prudential, personal and overlapping) based on the social cognitive domain theory and explores their association with adolescent adjustment outcomes …

University-Level Autism Support Services: Campus Providers’ Perspectives And Experiences, Gillian Humphreys

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This qualitative study was conducted to understand the perspectives of providers located at the main campus at the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio when asked about their experiences working with students who have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis as well as what difficulties they view students on the spectrum facing in particular. Open-ended interviews were conducted with four staff members in the Office of Accessibility and Counseling and Testing Center. This qualitative study explored the perspectives of service providers at the University of Akron who work directly with students on the autism spectrum. Through in-depth interviews and subsequent …

Parents’ Perspectives On Emotional Regulation In Their Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Diana Stewart

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The current study’s main research question was whether emotional dysregulation of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) affects parental stress levels. This project examined various negative emotional reactions, such as anger, sadness, worry, anxiety, and tantrums that were present in children with an ASD diagnosis, ages 4 to 13. The research consisted of five psychological assessments with strong psychometric properties. The whole survey was supposed to be filled out by a parent or a caregiver of a child, since children are considered a vulnerable population when it comes to research. The first assessment was the Childhood Autism Spectrum Test (CAST) …

Wiring Attachment, Alexander K. Bacon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis began with a question: can diagrams create understanding, or only reflect it? Through paintings that layer automotive wiring schematics with family photographs, I explore how the human attachment system resists easy mapping. Using digital tools like Photoshop and scanning, alongside analog methods such as papier-collé and photo transfer, I examine how systems built for clarity—like wiring diagrams—contrast with the layered, often messy realities of human relationships. Drawing from attachment theory’s empirical foundation, rather than the metaphorical leanings of psychoanalysis, my work investigates how emotional bonds form, falter, and repair over time. Material loss and layering are not flaws, …

Children's Interpretation Of Others' Faces Covered With Medical Masks, Sevval Cinar

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

How we recognize and regulate emotions is fundamental to overall health and wellbeing. Emotional recognition and understanding are key to proper communication and emotion regulation. Barriers, such as masks, might have an impact on the way children recognize and interpret others' emotions, and therefore the way they learn, communicate, and regulate their own. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated widespread mask-wearing, raising questions about its impact on children’s emotional development. Using a sample of children with varying levels of exposure to mask wearing adults (N= 13, ages 4 to 6), we investigated how prolonged mask wearing predicts emotion recognition, particularly …

Knowledge, Efficacy, And Experience In Components Of Stem Education: The Impact Of Teacher Professional Development, Emily Krysten Marilyn Spencer-Mueller

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Abstract

Around the globe, there has been a significant focus on ensuring youth receive sufficient education and training in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) domains. Education reforms often begin with educators, who are responsible for effectively implementing curriculum changes. However, in Canada, although STEM education reform is underway, teacher education and professional learning (PL) and development may not have kept pace, potentially leaving some teachers feeling unprepared to integrate these changes confidently and effectively. This dissertation introduces two studies that investigate pre-service teachers’ readiness to teach STEM domains in the classroom, as well as the impact of a PL …

Don’T Stop Believin’: Emotion Beliefs And Daily Affective Experiences Across Adulthood, Jocelyn A. Rutledge

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Emotion control beliefs reflect the extent to which people believe emotions “should” and “can” be controlled and have been linked to psychological well-being. Research has yet to examine age-related differences in these beliefs and their daily associations with affective experiences. The present study examines age differences in daily emotion control beliefs and their within-person associations with positive and negative affect. The study used 14-day daily diary data from an adult lifespan community sample (younger adults: 18-36 years old, N = 72; older adults: 66-92 years old, N = 66). The results revealed that older adults reported …

Contrasting Trajectories In Adolescent Pro-Environmentalism: Qualitative Differences Between “Engagers” And “Disengagers”, Jaida Brown

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This qualitative study extends Krettenauer and colleagues' (2024) longitudinal research by examining how different developmental contexts shape divergent trajectories in adolescents' environmental engagement. We conducted semi-structured interviews with nineteen adolescents, focusing on two distinct groups: "Engagers" who showed remarkable increases in pro-environmental behavior from ages 13 to 17, and "Disengagers" who exhibited substantial decreases inengagement during the same period. While all participants reported meaningful childhood nature experiences, supportive family sustainability practices and access to environmental information through media, their developmental paths diverged significantly. Disengagers gradually deprioritized environmental concerns as other life goals took precedence, while Engagers actively expanded their environmental …