2007 Student Research Forum Posters
 

In the Research Proposal category, first place went to Jessica Williams for her presentation "The Dog Doctor: The Effects of Animal-Assisted Therapy on Battered Women Residing in Shelters." Derek Lippincott won second place with "Living with Homophobia: A Student's Perspective."

In the Completed Research category, first place was awarded to Rosanna Vaccaro for "Behavior in Schizocosa bilineata." Second place went to Amanda Hayes for "Scaling of Tooth Size against Body Size in Chiroptera."

Research Proposals

Student: Burt Angle
Title: Juvenile Body Condition to Adult Traits: More Food, More Tuft?
Faculty Sponsor: Dr. J. Andrew Roberts (EEOB)

Male brush-legged wolf spiders, Schizocosa ocreata, have tufts of dark bristles on their forelegs that play a critical role in signaling to females. Females prefer males with larger, more symmetric tufts (reviewed in Uetz 2000; Uetz and Roberts 2002). Males develop these tufts of bristles in their final molt to maturity (penultimate instar to adult instar) with tuft size and symmetry then fixed for the duration of adulthood.  Logically, then, feeding history during the juvenile period has the potential to directly impact an adult signaling trait.  Uetz et al (2002) suggest that in this species, feeding history determines adult condition, tuft size, and tuft symmetry, however they found that tuft size and symmetry are unrelated to adult body condition regardless of feeding history.  The goal of this study is to explore the relationship between penultimate body condition of male spiders and the size and symmetry of their foreleg tufts as adults.  Male spiders were collected as penultimates in the field.  They were brought to the lab, digitally photographed, and weighed to determine body condition as in Uetz et al (2002).  These individuals were allowed to mature in the lab and adult males were euthanized and preserved for tuft measurement in the Baker Biology Lab using a Zeiss stereomicroscope/Canon Digital SLR apparatus.  We predict that males with better penultimate body condition (likely reflecting superior feeding history) will have larger, more symmetric tufts as adults than males with poor penultimate body condition.

Student: Gloria Brown

Title: Are Middle Grades Children Who Study Music Smarter?

Faculty Sponsor:  Dr. Diane Erchick (Education)

Children are no longer getting the music education they used to get before funding was cut. Many times teachers pick students to participate in arts programs based on one-time auditions, written tests, videotaped auditions, and teacher nominations alone.  All of these ways lack in validity and reliability on choosing students who are gifted in the arts.  Many times lower-ability students do better when they have the arts.  The arts can provide valuable information about the strengths, interests, and learning styles of the students (Oreck, Owen, and Baum, 2003). I want to set up simple tests in math, science, and spelling/grammar techniques and give them to junior high age children in schools throughout Ohio.  The students will be given a questionnaire asking questions such as, “Do you take private lessons in music” or “Have you had music education in school?”  These questions will help me categorize the students.  After having the students fill out the questionnaire there will be a one page test with math questions, another one with science questions, and yet another one with spelling/grammar questions.  My prediction is that students who have taken private lessons will have the highest scores on the three tests.  Students who have had some music background in school or at home will also do fairly decent.  Students that have little or no music knowledge will do poorly on the tests.  I also feel that schools that are highly dedicated to music programs will do better on the tests than schools that are not very highly dedicated.

Student: Shannon Hutchison

Title: Creativity and Positive Psychology

Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Christine Charyton (Psychology)

Positive Psychology is the study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals to thrive. With depression being one of the most common illnesses in the world today, researchers have brought their attention toward positive psychology and how it can be used to help treat depression. In this study we want to investigate the relationship among positive psychology measures to student’s levels of creativity and overall mood. Participants will be male and female undergraduate psychology students. They will be tested using an online survey. First, participants will be given a demographic questionnaire. Next, they will be asked to fill out the Creative Personality Scale (CPS) of the Adjective Checklist (ACL) (Gough,1979). They will then fill out the Creative Temperament Scale (Gough, 1992) adapted from the California Psychological Inventory (CPI). Then participants will complete the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R). There will be three groups.  The first group will be the control group. The second group will receive a mindfulness intervention (Germer, 2005). The third group will receive an intervention exercise to capitalize on their strengths (Charyton, 2005). Following the completion of the interventions participants will have ten minutes to write a creative poem describing themselves. After completing the poem participants will fill out the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) (Watson & Clark). We anticipate finding that participants who have experienced one of the positive psychology interventions will have higher levels of creativity and overall positive or enhanced mood than participants in the control group.

Student: Derek W. Lippincott

Title: Living with Homophobia; A Student’s Perspective

Faculty Sponsor: Elizabeth Weiss (Psychology)

The attitudes of adolescents toward GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered) peers, behaviors, and issues are an area much in need of study. Existing research on homosexual identity development and social issues surrounding the increased visibility of GLBT individuals has been limited to studies of at-risk youth populations, adults who work with GLBT teens, and GLBT teens themselves. However, little research exists that involves GLBT students as well as their peers. This study aims to develop a measure of social and educational variables related to attitudes toward GLBT individuals and issues. The proposed measure will include social, educational, and personal components. We expect to find that significant social and demographic variables (i.e. race, GPA, religious affiliation) correlate with attitudes toward GLBT students and issues, and that students will report a connection between the presence of GLBT peers in the classroom and their perceptions of the educational environment.  The eventual goal of this research is to assist educators and administrators in effectively handling GLBT issues in their schools and classrooms, and to help create a positive learning and developmental environment for all students.

Student: Berae McClary

Title: Product Preference and Attention to Social Comparison

Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Sara Staats (Psychology)

When faced with a choice between products of approximately equivalent size, price, quality and features, what is the deciding factor? This research will seek a correlation between attention to social comparison and style preference in household products. (Fiell, 1999) Participants will select and rate household objects of varying styles of sleekness and ornamentation. Following this, affect and their attention to social comparison will be measured using the Likert-type scale "attention-to-social-comparison-information-test", (ATSCI) (Bearden & Rose, 1990). Individuals with a more negative affect and higher attention to social comparison are expected to prefer sleeker products. The varying degrees of awareness of social comparison will be effective in predicting product preference to be used in market segmentation, product design, and product differentiation.

Student: Anita Santamaria-Cohen

Title: Shape Bias vs. Color, Texture or Size Bias

Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Julie Hupp (Psychology)

People learn nouns using the shape bias. If a new object is given a novel name, the individual will decide that another object with the same shape shares the same name. Smith (2006) states that “among early learned noun categories, artifacts tend to be rigid, angular, solid things in categories organized by shape” (p. 1339). However, if there is no other object with the same shape, what other information will the individual use to extend the object name? Will they depend on color? Texture? Size? In this study, participants will be shown an unfamiliar object with a novel name (e.g., Dax). The participants will then be asked to find another object with the same name. However, since shape is the first thing that the individual will seek, the differences will only be in color, texture and size. Which property information will the person depend on most often? This research will be conducted on undergraduates using 25 sets of unfamiliar objects. Each set will consist of a target object with a novel name, and 3 test objects. Each test object will match the target objects in shape and one additional property (color, texture or size). The question is: to which property will participants most often extend an object label if shape is not an option? This study is preliminary to future work testing the same principle with children to study language learning across development. It is hoped that these findings will better assist in finding and treating language delays.

Student: Jessica Williams

Title: The Dog Doctor: The Effects of Animal-Assisted Therapy on Battered Women Residing in Shelters

Faculty Sponsor: Deborah Miller (Psychology)

Animal-assisted therapy (AAT) is a new idea for research. A majority of the studies have been conducted on children and elderly residing in medical care facilities. There has also been some research on the human-animal bond, and the affects of a pet in the home of battered women. However, little research has been conducted on the effects of AAT on battered women residing in domestic violence shelters. I suspect that the presence of a therapy dog will have a positive impact on the treatment and outcome of the treatment. This study will be take place at The Center for New Beginnings, in Newark, Ohio, over a six-month time span. The participating women will be divided into two groups of 25 each. The experimental group will have a therapy dog from Angel Paws in their therapy sessions, while the control group will have the same therapy without the presents of a dog. The individual women, the therapist and the shift workers on duty will all have questionnaires to fill out in order to monitor each individual’s behaviors, attitudes, and progress. The demographics and other extraneous variables will be considered from the intake files kept on each resident. With this study, we hope to open the door to the theory that animal-assisted therapy may also be a positive influence on populations other than physical trauma patients. 

Student: Heather Young

Title: Personalized Prison Programs

Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Janice Mclean (Psychology)

Recidivism of criminals can be reduced if individualized programs are created for the inmates entering prison. Current recidivism rates are staggeringly high; the percentage of people being rearrested for a felony or serious crime is approximately 70% (Criminal Offender Statistics). This research will create personal programs based on the needs and personality traits of the participants. The programs will address self-esteem, job interviewing skills, and problem-solving skills, social and emotional development.  The population will include participants who are in prison and have been there for less than a year. The participants will not be serving a life sentence and will have less than a twenty year sentence of incarceration. The participants will include violent and non-violent offenders of both sexes and various ethnicities. Arrangements will be made with the institution in order to obtain the participants for the research. The methods that will be used to determine the individualized needs of each participant will be conducted through analytic and descriptive surveys, questionnaires that contain multiple choice, Likert-type scales, open-ended, and yes-no questions, personal interviews, and achievement, aptitude and personality tests. This study will be conducted as a longitudinal research project with follow-up analysis after participants are released by using similar methods to test the individual qualities and to determine if recidivism has occurred since release. The expected results of this research will be a decrease in recidivism among the participants who have had a personalized program created for them to follow during their incarceration.

Completed Research

Student: Kim Basham
Title: Gender Differences in the Attitudes, Preferences and Risk Tolerance for Creativity
Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Christine Charyton (Psychology)

The purpose of the research was to investigate gender similarities and differences in general creativity constructs with their preferences for eminent persons.  Data were collected from male (n=75) and female (n=12) engineering students, male (n=7) and female (n=17) psychology students with a psychology major, male (n=16) and female (n=35) psychology students with a major other than psychology, male (n=9) and female (n=21) English students, and male (n=26) and female (n=29) music students from  both Columbus and Newark Campuses of Ohio State University.    Participants completed measures of general creativity (creative personality, creative temperament and cognitive risk tolerance) and a demographic questionnaire with the request to list 10 creative persons and their given field.  Results indicated that males and females tended to have similar levels of general creativity, yet tended to select more male eminent persons.   Females also selected more female persons than the male participants.  Results were analyzed based on at least 10 participants selecting the creative person.  Creative person selections were in both the sciences and the arts, with the top three eminent persons being in the science domain.  Furthermore, all creative person selections were Caucasian males. 

Student: Clayton Caroon

Title: Intersections: Writing Center Theory and Second Language Teaching Methodologies in America and Abroad

Faculty sponsor: Dr. Elizabeth Weiser (English)

Academic writing theorists and writing center directors have developed a variety of theories and methods for writing center employees to apply during writing consultations.  However, the work of writing centers could be further enhanced by utilizing theories from the field of Second Language Studies. Themes central to writing center theory can be recognized within two contemporary second language teaching methodologies- Communicative Language Teaching and Cooperative Language Learning, which are applied widely in English language education throughout America, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. This presentation will examine my recent ethnographic research in these regions which recognizes that an awareness of the inherent themes and uses of these methodologies acts to empower writing center consultants and the writers they meet within university writing centers.

Student: Anna Hagley

Title: Honesty and Heroes: A Positive Psychology View of Heroism and Academic Honesty

Faculty Sponsors: Dr. Sara Staats & Dr. Julie M. Hupp (Psychology)

Academic honesty is an under researched virtue in the midst of many studies of academic dishonesty or misconduct. Character erosion associated with dishonest behavior is one particularly disturbing but probable outcome of student life for many college students. Given increasing technological opportunities, modeling, rewards and low probability of punishment, we argue that it takes considerable character strength to maintain a positive minority position of academic virtue. Students who do not engage in academic misconduct may be thought of as everyday heroes. We consider heroes as persons who are courageous, have empathic concern for others and also a high degree of honesty.  The two reported experiments were designed to address this issue.  Students from a regional Midwestern Campus completed survey packets including questions pertaining to honesty, empathy, and courage.  Experiment 1 established that courage, honesty and empathy in combination reliably predicted various aspects of academic honesty, and Experiment 2 replicated these findings and also indicated that these characteristics of academic heroism were correlated with real life past and anticipated cheating behaviors.  In combination, these experiments have constructed an effective working model of heroism within the context of the academic environment.

Student: Amanda Hayes

Title: Scaling of Tooth Size against Body Size in Chiroptera

Faculty Sponsor: Dr. John Hunter (EEOB)

In mammals, teeth generally scale with isometry (i.e., exhibit size in proportion with body size). True isometry is rare in nature as structures rarely function in exactly the same way in small and large organisms. One hypothesis to explain isometric scaling of mammal teeth is that isometry results from a balance between the need in larger animals for proportionally larger tooth surface areas (predicting positive allometry) with the lower per-mass metabolic requirements of larger animals (predicting negative allometry). Scaling of tooth size has not been studied in the Chiroptera, a group that ranges in size from shrew-size insect eaters to monkey-size fruit eaters; it is unknown whether bats conform to the general mammalian pattern. Aspects of bat biology (e.g., high longevity in all species, seasonal torpor in some species) could result in departures from typical scaling relationships. Since starting the project, teeth of 92 individual specimens from seven different bat species have been measured, including length, width, and height measurements on eight upper and lower tooth positions. These bat species span the body size range of the group, and thus provide a reasonable view of scaling relationships that will likely be found in a more complete dataset. In this preliminary dataset, the teeth of bats, like those of other mammalian groups that have been studied, scale with approximate isometry; first molar size tracks body size more closely than other tooth positions. Future work will focus on expanding the dataset on bats to include medium-sized species and comparisons to the scaling relationships in other mammalian groups.

Student: Kristin Hayes

Title: Discovering the Stories of Native Ohio

Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Richard Shiels (History) 

Analysis of Native American Oral Histories and Population Data: Discovering the Stories of Native Ohio focuses upon the oral histories of 63 Native American Indians in Ohio that have been collected by students and faculty at the Newark Earthworks Center (NEC). My research consists of a content analysis of these video interviews. In addition, I have compared the demographic representation in these interviews to the Native American population of Ohio according to census records. The comparison then can be used to shape future collection efforts of the archive at the NEC. The results of my research show that Ohio’s Native American population today consists of people coming from a variety of tribal backgrounds.  This is largely because of the relocation process of the 1950s.  My research also shows that there was a significant jump in the number of people identifying as Native American in the 1960s.  This is largely because of the American Indian Movement, which resulted in a greater appreciation for Native American culture and a willingness of more Native Americans to embrace their own culture without fear of discrimination.  Lastly, my research reveals another significant jump in Ohio’s Native American Indian population in 2000.  This is not necessarily because more Native Americans were moving to or being born in Ohio, but because the wording of the 2000 census allowed for people to identify with more than one racial background. 

Student Name: Ashley Stalling

Title: Effects of Light Color and Intensities on Larval Salamander Growth

Faculty Sponsor: Shauna L. Weyrauch (EEOB)

Light is important for the growth of most organisms. We conducted experiments in 2005 and 2006 to observe the growth of spotted salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) larvae under different colors and intensities of light. In 2005, we reared 30 salamander eggs/larvae in the lab in individual 15cm X 15cm boxes containing aged, aerated tap water. Half were randomly assigned to transparent purple lids and half to clear lids. After nine weeks, the average length of larvae reared under purple lids (29.1mm) was significantly greater than larvae reared under clear lids (27.2mm; p=0.016). In 2006, we expanded our experiment by rearing 54 spotted salamander eggs/larvae, 18 each under transparent purple, transparent grey, and clear lids. Grey transparent lids were used as a control for the purple lids’ effect on light intensity. Grey and purple lids blocked approximately the same amount of light (55% and 60% respectively).  After ten weeks, the lengths of salamanders reared under purple (25.5mm) and grey (25.8mm) lids were slightly larger than those under clear lids (25.1mm), but not significantly so (p=0.26). While no larvae died in 2005, eight died in 2006, likely due to a problem with the food source.  In 2006, we also conducted a behavioral experiment to determine if the salamanders preferred light through purple, grey, or clear lids. These data are currently being analyzed.  Taken together, our data from 2005 and 2006 are suggestive of an effect of light color or intensity on salamander growth.  We plan to conduct further experiments to investigate this relationship.

Student: Rosanna Vaccaro

Title: Behavior in Schizocosa bilineata

Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Andrew Roberts (EEOB)

In the spring of 2006, we began a survey of wolf spider species on the Newark Campus.  A unique research opportunity arose when we discovered a number of males in the collection belonging to the species Schizocosa bilineata, first described by Emerton (1885). Males of this species bear dark tufts of bristles on their forelegs that likely play a role in mate selection as in other Schizocosa species.   Though it belongs to a well studied clade of wolf spiders (Stratton 2005), the behavior of S. bilineata was unknown (Stratton personal communication).  We collected additional male and female individuals, set them up in the lab, and collected silk from females to stimulate male courtship behavior.  Using digital video we recorded 15 minute segments of male behavioral response to female pheromones on silk.  Based on analysis of these videos we describe two new male courtship behaviors that have not previously been seen in this clade.  We tentatively name these “quick tap” and “robot arm” and find evidence that these new behaviors are performed individually and in combination.

Student: Heidi Wallace

Title: Pet Ownership Reasons

Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Sara Staats (Psychology)