College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
SUMMER RESEARCH I N I T I AT I V E
June 2—July 25, 2014
Order of Events
12 :15 PM—12:30 PM
Welcome
12:30 PM—12:45 PM
Remarks
12:45 PM—1:00 PM
Presentation of Certificates
Acknowledgements Support for this program was provided by the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, the Office of the Provost, the Graduate School, and the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Maryland - College Park. Also, we thank the BSOS Dean’s Office and the Initiative presenters (too numerous to list here) for giving their time and efforts, and sharing their expertise to make the SRI a success. Finally, we thank administrative assistant, Ms. Amanda Allen, for her superb coordination of the SRI activities.
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College of Behavioral and Social Sciences Summer Research Initiative The Summer Research Initiative was created in 1999 by the Office of the Dean in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences (BSOS) and is supported by the Office of the Provost, the Graduate School, the Vice President for Research, and BSOS. This program is designed to encourage and enhance the diversity of scholars working in the behavioral, social, and economic science fields. The goals of the Initiative are to:
Increase the knowledge of, and interest in, doctoral-level training in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences;
Provide rising juniors and seniors an opportunity to learn about graduate studies and the range of research and scholarship in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences at the University of Maryland – College Park;
Provide a laboratory experience that enhances basic research knowledge and skills;
Provide lectures, workshops, didactic exchanges, etc., to enhance students’ knowledge of the graduate application process, the academic rigors associated with graduate school, and the professional and personal challenges encountered in graduate school;
Provide mentoring and networking opportunities for students to advance their training in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences.
The Initiative is part of BSOS’s longstanding commitment to increasing the diversity of students who pursue graduate degrees in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. According to data from the National Science Foundation, the University ranks 8th in the country in the number of Ph.D.’s and 13th in the number of B.A.’s awarded to underrepresented minority students in those fields. The Summer Research Initiative is an integral part of our efforts. For more information, please visit: http://ter.ps/BSOSSRI
College of behavioral and social sciences The College of Behavioral and Social Sciences is the largest college at the University of Maryland, College Park. It has more than 6,000 undergraduate students and 800 masters and doctoral students, and is comprised of 10 academic departments as well as four stand-alone research and service centers. The disciplines and fields encompassed by the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences explore issues that are central to our political, economic, social and cultural lives. At the core of these sciences is a drive to understand human beings—both individually and collectively. By studying human behavior and the relationship between behavior and the environment, we gain insight and knowledge that enhances our development as individual members of social communities and, in so doing, enhance the development of those social communities themselves.
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Romantic Surveillance and Secret Assessments: Responsiveness Monitoring Born from Insecurity in Relationships Oguerekhian Addeh, University of Maryland, College Park Faculty Mentor: Dr. Edward Lemay, Department of Psychology
The Effect of Gender and Racial Differences on High School Dropout Rates Beverly Auman, George Mason University Faculty Mentor: Dr. Odis Johnson, Jr., African American Studies Department
The Federal Debt Ceiling: The Responsibility and Vulnerability of Members of Congress Timothy Cordova, University of Maryland, College Park Faculty Mentor: Dr. Frances Lee, Department of Government & Politics
The Tortoise and the “Hair”: The Role of Media on Black Women’s Hair Aesthetics and Self-concept Jasmine Davis, University of California, Los Angeles Faculty Mentor: Dr. Rashawn Ray, Department of Sociology
Factors Influencing Subsequent Intimate Partner Victimizations Kyle Dorsey, University of Maryland, College Park Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jim Lynch, Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice
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Effects of Temporally and Spectrally Degraded Speech on Consonant Perception in Simulated Cochlear-implant Users Casey Gaskins, University of Maryland, College Park Faculty Mentor: Dr. Matthew Goupell, Department of Hearing & Speech Sciences
Supervised Classification of “Water” “Non-Water” Terrain in Peru using Landsat Modibo Haidara, University of Maryland, College Park Faculty Mentor: Dr. Matthew Hansen, Department of Geographical Sciences
Mapping Vegetated and Non-Vegetated Land Surface in Peru using Landsat Data Elvis Herrera, University of Maryland, College Park Faculty Mentor: Dr. Matthew Hansen, Department of Geographical Sciences
Fatherhood May Protect Against Depressive-Like Behavior in California Mouse Males (Peromyscus californicus) Amanda Holmes, Howard University Faculty Mentor: Dr. Erica Glasper, Department of Psychology
The Relationship between Perceived Stress and Distress Intolerance on Alcohol Consumption Celena Jenkins, Morgan State University Faculty Mentor: Dr. Carl Lejuez, Department of Psychology
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Relationship between Positive and Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia: Assessment of Racial and Gender Differences Taelor Jones, Morgan State University Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jack Blanchard, Department of Psychology
Mapping Global Water Extent: Validating the Accuracy of Landsat 30m Satellite Data Using RapidEye 5m Data Byron Marroquin, University of Maryland, College Park Faculty Mentor: Dr. Matthew Hansen, Department of Geographical Sciences
Spatial Displacement and the Great American Crime Decline: Analyzing the Crime Drop in New York City and other Metropolitan Areas Samantha Martin, Roosevelt University Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jim Lynch, Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice
The Influence of Prosody on the Interpretation of AdjectiveNoun Phrases in Noise-Vocoded Speech Ana Medina Fetterman, Ohio State University Faculty Mentor: Dr. Yi Ting Huang, Department of Hearing & Speech Sciences
Fear and Voter ID Laws: When Implicit Racism Matters and When it Doesn’t Yadira Molina, Sonoma State University Faculty Mentor: Dr. Antoine Banks, Department of Government & Politics
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I Like Big Butts, but is that a Lie?: Body Preferences of Upwardly Mobile and Professional Black Men Bryant Wesley Randolph, University of Memphis Faculty Mentor: Dr. Rashawn Ray, Department of Sociology
Forest Cover Change: Using Rapid Eye Data to Validate the Accuracy of Landsat Data in Brazil Alexandra Rodriguez, University of Maryland, College Park Faculty Mentor: Dr. Matthew Hansen, Department of Geographical Sciences
Impact of Cocaine Self-Administration on Escape-Avoidance Nishell Savory, Morgan State University Faculty Mentor: Dr. Matthew Roesch, Department of Psychology
The Effects of Floods on Education Attainment for Young Children in Bangladesh Claudia Vargas, Hunter College, City University of New York Faculty Mentor: Dr. Raymond Guiteras, Department of Economics
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Oguerekhian Addeh University of Maryland, College Park Romantic Surveillance and Secret Assessments: Responsiveness Monitoring born from Insecurity in Relationships
Biography: Ogue Addeh attends the University of Maryland, College Park. She is a junior, majoring in psychology, and she recently took on a minor in computer science. She is a member of the Honors College as well as a recipient of the Banneker/Key Scholarship. Her interests lie in social psychology, but within that field she is intrigued by many diverse topics including interpersonal interaction, stereotypes, self-concepts, the creative process, and the career choice process. However, she remains open to exploring different areas of the field. Recently, Ogue was a research assistant in the University of Maryland, College Park’s Cultural Psychology lab, where she helped with a study that explored how people react to wrong-doing within personal friend groups. In the future, she plans to pursue a doctoral degree and possibly gain employment as a research psychologist.
Abstract: Prior research on anxious attachment suggests that anxious individuals are deeply concerned about their partners’ commitment and care. Therefore, it is possible that, relative to individuals who are low in anxiety, anxious individuals process information regarding their partner’s sentiments more deeply. In particular, they may monitor their partners’ behavior for signs of affection and rejection, interpret their partners’ behavior as indicative of their feelings about them, and test their partners to glean information regarding their partners’ feelings about them. This study sought to examine whether anxious attachment had these effects on monitoring, interpretation, and testing, and also examined whether other forms of insecurity had similar effects. Romantic couples completed measures on anxious attachment, interpersonal confidence, perceived partner care, as well as new measures on monitoring, interpretation, and testing tendencies. Results suggested that only anxious attachment predicted monitoring, interpretation, and testing. Participants with low interpersonal confidence or low perceived partner care only had increased testing. These results suggest that anxious attachment is a unique type of insecurity that predicts monitoring, interpretation, and testing tendencies. Further research could examine the relationship effects of these clandestine behaviors.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Edward Lemay Department of Psychology
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Beverly Auman George Mason University The Effect of Gender and Racial Differences on High School Dropout Rates
Biography: Beverly Auman is a rising senior at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She is a double major in anthropology and economics with a minor in nonprofit studies. Her research interests include youth development and education. She recently returned from a semester abroad at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. At George Mason, she works for the Center for Social Science Research as a survey interviewer, and she is involved in the community service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega. Her career goal is to work as a university professor conducting research in improving the public education system. Beverly is specifically interested in supporting efforts to increase the quality of educational opportunities available to students living in under-resourced communities. After finishing her undergraduate degree, she hopes to attend graduate school and conduct research concerning issues for urban youth, such as societal violence, education, and poverty.
Abstract: This project synthesized the research on gender and race differences in educational attainment. The high school dropout rates of adolescents are studied to explore whether lower socioeconomic status affects one gender greater than the other. Gender, race, and income seem to be important factors of education attainment and this review analyzed how they work together. Key word searches were used to find relevant studies on this topic. Key words included: educational attainment, dropout rate, African American, Black, poverty, low income, socioeconomic, gender differences, high school, adolescent boys or males, and adolescent girls or females. The analysis of these studies revealed that African American male dropout rates are higher than their female counterparts and the gap for males tends to increase with lower socioeconomic status while for females the gap seems to level off. Black dropout rates were also higher than White dropout rates for both males and females. The literature showed a wide diversity of thought as to how low socioeconomic status, race, and gender cultural differences contribute to this gap in educational outcomes. This research is significant because it shows that gender and racial groups are affected differently by SES and this could have important implications to public policies trying to lower high school dropout rates.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Odis Johnson, Jr. African American Studies Department 9
Timothy Cordova University of Maryland, College Park The Federal Debt Ceiling: The Responsibility and Vulnerability of Members of Congress
Biography: Tim Cordova is a senior government and politics major at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a member of the Honors College as well as a recipient of the President’s Scholarship at the University of Maryland. He has been a researcher for the Center for American Politics and Citizenship for the past year and a half. His research interests are in American politics, especially in party politics and polarization in Congress. He is currently working on a research project with Dr. Frances Lee on the federal debt ceiling and how party politics has affected this crucial legislation. His goal for the Summer Research Initiative is to further develop his research skills and knowledge of statistics, which will help him prepare for a future career in academia. In the future, Timothy hopes to obtain a graduate degree to further advance his studies of political science.
Abstract: The debt ceiling is a law that limits federal borrowing. The debt ceiling does not allow an increase or cut to federal spending; it only permits the expenditure of funds already spent. Partly because of the public misunderstanding of the debt ceiling, Members of Congress (MC) are hesitant to vote to raise the debt ceiling. No Congressman wants to go on record to say they increased the national debt yet Congress must pass the bill to avoid default. This project aimed to discover if certain factors increased a MCs probability of increasing the debt ceiling. Using an original database that recorded all 76 votes taken in the House of Representatives since 1953, we discovered that MCs in a position of responsibility, such as party and committee leaders, had a higher probability of voting to raise the debt ceiling. MCs who were not in these positions or who were electorally vulnerable had lower probabilities of voting to raise the debt ceiling. Furthermore, more ideologically extreme MCs who shared the president’s party had a higher probability of voting to increase the debt ceiling than more moderate members of the president’s party. Ideological extremism did not have as big as an effect on the probability of voting to raise the debt ceiling for MCs who did not share the party of the president. These results suggests that this important legislation is constrained by partisan and electoral politics. Intense competition to gain power in Congress likely leads to more brinkmanship in regards to raising the debt ceiling.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Frances Lee Department of Government & Politics 10
Jasmine Davis University of California, Los Angeles The Tortoise and the “Hair”: The Role of Media on Black Women’s Hair Aesthetics and Self-concept
Biography: Jasmine Davis attends the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She transferred in the fall of 2012 from the University of California, Riverside (UCR) to pursue more research opportunities. She is a 5th year sociology major and a gender studies minor at UCLA. Her research interests include Black feminist theory, symbolic interactionism, African American populations, and identity formation. Jasmine participates in the UCLA Ronald E. McNair Scholar’s Program where she researches African American women’s social and economic investment in their hair and how it affects their perception of self. Jasmine presented at the National McNair Conference in Berkeley, CA., and participated in UCR’s Mentoring Summer Research Internship Program in the summer of 2012. Jasmine intends to pursue a dual doctoral degree in sociology and African American studies. She then plans to work in the government sector to increase opportunities for students of color in academia, and ultimately become a professor at a research institution.
Abstract: The cultural and social meaning of hair is significant for the Black female identity. Aesthetical representation such as hair is an easily seen marker that compromises Black women’s personal expression and dictates perceptions and treatment from others. However, hair can serve as a tool of everyday resistance that challenges mainstream notions of beauty. This study explored how college-aged Black women and their academic counterparts such as professors and administrative staff, negotiate the media’s representation of the “westernization of beauty”— straight hair, smaller body size, and lighter skin. Using the intersectionality framework, and analyzing interviews with Black women, we found that Black women’s aesthetic desires do not match their actual physical attributes. We argue that the media’s lack of representation of alternative schemas of Black women contribute to this body aesthetic mismatch. This mismatch leads to feelings of discomfort, negative social comparisons, and relative deprivation as well as affects how Black women feel about their presentation of self, which in turn affects their self-concept. However, the academic group of Black women, compared to the college-aged sample, were more likely to embrace their aesthetical representation as a negotiation process entailing accommodation, resistance, or non -association. This study highlights the ways that race, gender, and class identities are co-opted and negotiated by the saliency of physical characteristics such as hair and how the meaning of the westernization of beauty is maintained in young adulthood, and displayed and developed by marginalized groups after years of being in predominately White spaces such as the academy.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Rashawn Ray Department of Sociology
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Kyle Dorsey University of Maryland, College Park Factors Influencing Subsequent Intimate Partner Victimizations
Biography: Kyle Dorsey is from Silver Spring, Maryland, and is a spring 2014 graduate from the University of Maryland, College Park where he majored in criminology & criminal justice. His research interests include understanding what motivates individuals to commit delinquent and criminal behaviors, and what factors deter non-offenders from committing such behaviors. His goal for the Summer Research Initiative is to work closely with faculty to enhance his research skills and refine his future research focus. Kyle plans to pursue his PhD in criminal justice at the University of Maryland, College Park and then become a professor.
Abstract: Our research addressed two important issues. First, we investigated the prevalence of subsequent intimate partner violence given that a first victimization occurs. Second, we attempted to determine which aspects of the first victimization significantly influences the likelihood that subsequent victimizations will follow. We used six years of data collected from the National Crime Victimization Survey and found statistical significance between the likelihood of a subsequent intimate partner victimization and gender, race/ethnicity, and police involvement. We found that victims who took self-help measures neither increased nor decreased their risks for subsequent victimizations. Injuries acquired during the first victimization did not have a significant influence on a second victimization, as was the case with police making an arrest. It is possible that risks associated with repeat victimizations are the same for first-time offenses. More research needs to be conducted in order to determine if this is the case. It may be that for some, being victimized subsequently is a matter of chance, unrelated to their attributes or behavior. Therefore, future research should explore attributes and behaviors of the perpetrators in addition to those of the victim. Future research on this topic is important because there is a dire need to create and enforce public policies that directly address these victims’ needs. If these victims cannot rely upon the criminal justice system for protection, this kind of violence will persist.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jim Lynch Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice 12
Casey Gaskins University of Maryland, College Park Effects of Temporally and Spectrally Degraded Speech on Consonant Perception in Simulated Cochlear-implant Users
Biography: Casey Gaskins is a junior attending the University of Maryland, College Park. She is a hearing and speech sciences major and Spanish minor. She is a member of the Honors College, Primannum Honor Society, and National Student SpeechLanguage and Hearing Association at the University of Maryland. She is interested in the effects of communication disorders and hearing impairments on speech perception and daily life; specifically focusing on how the implementation of therapy and cochlear implants help facilitate functioning and effective communication. She is also interested in the varying effects of speech and hearing disorders in people of different ages. Casey plans to obtain a master’s degree in speech-language pathology and work full-time in order to use her acquired experiences and knowledge of hearing and speech sciences. Eventually she plans to obtain a doctoral degree and ultimately establish a private practice in speech-language pathology.
Abstract:
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Matthew Goupell Department of Hearing & Speech Sciences 13
Cochlear implants (CIs) can partially restore the ability to understand speech in individuals with severe-to-profound hearing loss through direct electrical stimulation of the inner ear. However, electrical stimulation of the inner ear is not precise, resulting in a degraded representation of speech. Previous studies have assessed the speech perception of CI users, but few studies have investigated the effects of age on speech perception in older CI users. We investigated the effects of spectrally and temporally degrading speech on consonant perception. Twelve young normal-hearing (YNH) listeners and seven older normal-hearing (ONH) listeners were presented with the word pair “Dish/Ditch” on a speech continuum. Stimuli were manipulated in closure duration of the silent interval between the vowel and the fricative of each word. CI processing was simulated by varying the number of spectral channels and low-pass cutoff of the temporal envelope. Listeners were asked to identify whether the sound that they heard was “Dish” or “Ditch.” Results showed a minimal effect of vocoding when there were 8 or more channels. Unlike the YNH listeners, ONH listeners had difficulty using faster temporal cues when there were less than 4 channels. Therefore, this study provides evidence that older listeners have poorer temporal processing abilities, consistent with previous research. Future work will investigate temporal processing in real CI listeners.
Modibo Haidara University of Maryland, College Park Supervised Classification of “Water” “Non-Water” Terraine in Peru Using Landsat
Biography: Modibo Haidara is a senior at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is pursuing a dual degree in Geographic Information Science (GIS) and behavioral and community health, with a minor in global poverty. Recently, Modibo was an intern at the Millennium Challenge Corporation where he was an open data intern. He served on a project to increase the access of open data in Africa as an incentive for businesses to invest in the African economical market. He is interested in the use of remote sensing to analyze environmental parameters such as precipitation, temperature, and vegetative cover to characterize malaria transmission risk in developing countries. He hopes the Summer Research Initiative will provide him additional research experience and insight to put forth his own theories as they relate to his interests. In the future he plans to pursue a master’s degree in global health, and then potentially a PhD in remote sensing as it applies to public health. His career plan is to work in the field of international development and the improvement of public health practices in developing countries.
Abstract:
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Matthew Hansen Department of Geographical Sciences
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made efforts to stabilize the level of greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere by creating guidelines for countries to follow through monitoring carbon stocks and emissions of the greenhouse gases (GHG) associated with land use change and forestry. The Ministry of Agriculture in Peru has requested to have the country’s surface mapped as a baseline for future monitoring. The objective of this project was to map water and non-water surfaces in Peru using a mosaic of Landsat 7 Satellite imagery at 30 meter pixel resolution using supervised classification training. The new water mask for 2013 is intended to be an improvement over an existing map from 2010, as it incorporates new data from the Landsat 8 sensor. The new water mask will also enable the detection of changes in surface water area, as many bodies of water in Peru meander, particularly rivers in the Amazonian lowlands. Supervised classification was the selected method to complete this task as it categorizes the pixels in the digital image into land cover classes, in this instance “water” and “non-water.” Mapping surface water, particularly its change over time, is important for many downstream science applications, including hydrological modeling, climate change assessments, natural hazards and impacts of land use change on water bodies. Future investigations to build a more comprehensive national land cover map of Peru should include the classification of other land cover themes, including but not limited to “Vegetation” “Non-Vegetation”; “Forest” “NonForest”, “Agriculture” and “Non-Agriculture.”
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Elvis Herrera University of Maryland, College Park Mapping Vegetated and Non-Vegetated Land Surface in Peru using Landsat Data
Biography: Elvis Herrera is a senior at the University of Maryland, College Park. Elvis is of Salvadorian descent but was born and raised in Falls Church, Virginia. He is a Geographic Information Science major and his area of interest is land cover. He participated in a team project through his geography class which submitted a winning proposal for economic development of a Latin American country. This proposal was granted a $10 billion grant by the Organization for Latin-American Unity (OLAU) and through this grant he hopes to continue researching more about Latin American issues. Elvis hopes the Summer Research Initiative will provide him with insight into the rigors of master’s and doctoral level studies so that he can better prepare for the graduate school experience. Elvis hopes to pursue a master’s degree in geographic information science.
Abstract:
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Matthew Hansen Department of Geographical Sciences
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made a concerted effort to stabilize the level of greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere. The IPCC has created guidelines for countries to follow to monitor carbon stocks and emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) associated with Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) activities. Following IPCC guidelines, the Ministry of Agriculture of Peru has been requested to classify the land area of the whole country. The IPCC categorize land areas into 6 categories, forest land, cropland, grassland, wetlands, and other land such as bare soil, rock, and ice. Classifying these land area are done by preprocessed Landsat 7 satellite image mosaics at 30 meter pixel resolution from 2010 to 2013, which includes improved images from Landsat 8 using supervised classification training. The method used in this project relied a decision tree classification algorithm and a comparison to the results of the Hansen et al. (2013) global forest cover change map for quality assessment. The project is still in the preliminary stages, but once finalized, information acquired through these methods can be used to calculate national-scale carbon stocks and emissions due to LULUCF.
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Amanda Holmes Howard University Fatherhood May Protect Against Depressive-like Behavior in California Mouse Males
Biography: Amanda Holmes attends Howard University in Washington, DC where she is a participant of the Howard University Minority Access to Research Careers Program (HUMARC). She is a senior psychology major and allied sciences minor originally from Sugar Land, Texas. She is interested in the intersections of neuroscience, medicine, and public health. Through her participation in the Howard MARC program, and under the mentorship of Dr. Mark Burke, Amanda has participated in neurophysiology research exploring the amygdala and pediatric SIV infection. Ms. Holmes would like to obtain an MPH in global and community health and then pursue an MD/PhD. Ultimately, she would like to be a physician scientist, with specialties in neuroscience and psychiatry.
Abstract: California mice (Peromyscus californicus) are a biparental, monogamous rodent. California mice fathers demonstrate all parenting behaviors, except nursing (Dudley, 1974). Ongoing projects in Dr. Erica Glasper’s lab demonstrate that fatherhood and offspring interaction alter both the structure and the function of the hippocampus. This project sought to determine the effects of fatherhood on depressive-like behavior, a hippocampally-mediated behavior, in male California mice (Peromyscus californicus). The forced swim task was conducted in a 30cm diameter, 43cm deep Plexiglas cylinder back-lit by an infrared light to better illuminate the animal. The cylinder was filled ¾ of the way full with 23-25°C tap water. The various experimental groups were placed into the water and observed for 5 minutes. Latency to first immobility and duration of immobility were hand-scored and used to assess depressive-like behavior. Immobility was defined as the mouse floating in the water with only slight motions of paws and head to remain afloat. Based on this study, we can conclude that fatherhood decreased depressive-like behavior, as measured by the forced swim task. Future directions include increasing the sample size and examining other hippocampally-mediated behaviors.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Erica Glasper Department of Psychology 16
Celena Jenkins Morgan State University The Relationship between Perceived Stress and Distress Intolerance on Alcohol Consumption Biography: Celena Jenkins is a senior psychology major at Morgan State University. She hopes to complete her undergraduate degree in the spring of 2015. She is a member of the National Council of Negro Women Inc., Psi Chi International Honor Society in Psychology, and Golden Key Honor Society. Her current research interests include the role of mental health in education, sexually transmitted diseases, and fitness. However, her interests continue to change as she learns more in her field. Her ultimate goal is to obtain a PhD in clinical psychology, seek employment with the Department of Juvenile Services and teach at a university.
Abstract:
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Carl Lejuez Department of Psychology
Previous research has shown that alcohol consumption among adolescents is rising every year. This creates a need for research on what predicts high levels of alcohol consumption as a gateway for preventative measures. Research has shown that when using a computer task to simulate risk-taking while participants were experiencing high levels of stress, risk-taking behavior increased (Galvan & Glennen, 2012). Studies have also found that perceived stress is associated with adolescent risk-taking behavior as (Auerbach, Tsai, & Abela, 2010). It is also important to further explore how one’s ability to tolerate that stress impacts risk behavior. This is particularly important for understanding an early emerging risk behavior such as alcohol consumption. The present study examined distress intolerance measured using a computer task, as well as perceived stress, using a survey, and its effects on alcohol consumption. We hypothesized that high levels of distress intolerance and perceived stress would interact and be associated with higher levels of alcohol consumption. We conducted a hierarchical multiple regression analysis and found partial support for our hypothesis. Only distress intolerance was found to significantly predict alcohol consumption. The results suggest that tolerance of a stressor may be more related to engagement in risk behaviors such as alcohol consumption than perception of the degree of that stressor. Future work should address limitations in this work including as its cross-sectional design by examining these relationships longitudinally. The results of this study indicate that future preventative measures should include treating stress to decrease alcohol consumption in adolescence.
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Taelor Jones Morgan State University Relationship between Positive and Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia: Assessment of Racial and Gender Differences Biography: Taelor Jones is a senior psychology major at Morgan State University. She grew up in Oberlin, Ohio. Taelor participates in several extracurricular activities including serving as the corresponding secretary of the Psychological Society. She is also a member of Golden Key International Honor Society and the Alpha Kappa Mu Honor Society. Taelor’s research interests include the impact of environmental factors on the behavior of juveniles in underprivileged families and neighborhoods. Additionally, she is interested in how these factors may lead juveniles to pursue a criminal lifestyle. Completion of the Summer Research Initiative will give her the opportunity to gain additional research experience while learning to develop her own research questions. Taelor plans to further investigate her research interests as she pursues a doctoral degree in forensic psychology.
Abstract:
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jack Blanchard Department of Psychology
Schizophrenia is a chronic and disabling disorder characterized by hallucinations and delusions (referred to as positive symptoms) as well as impairments in the ability to experience pleasure, diminished motivation, and blunted or reduced expression of emotion (referred to as negative symptoms). The relationship between these two major facets of symptomatology is important to understand. The present explored the relationship between positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia while considering the potential roles of race and gender. Specifically, we sought to determine if positive symptoms were more strongly associated with negative symptoms in African Americans with schizophrenia, and if gender influenced this relationship further. We used data from a large, NIMH-funded, multi-site study of negative symptoms in schizophrenia – the Collaboration to Advance Negative Symptom Assessment in Schizophrenia (CANSAS; Kring, et al., 2013). Our study consisted of 143 participants diagnosed with schizophrenia from four clinical outpatient sites derived from the CANSAS study. Our results showed a particularly robust correlation between positive and negative symptoms (particularly symptoms associated with deficits in pleasure and motivation) among African-American males. The results suggested the importance of considering race and gender in exploring the relationship between symptoms in schizophrenia. Future research will need to replicate this finding and examine additional racial groups while also incorporating assessments of culture beyond broad racial categorizations.
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Byron Marroquin University of Maryland, College Park Mapping Global Water Extent: Validating the Accuracy of Landsat 30m Satellite Data Using RapidEye 5m Data Biography: Byron Marroquin is a native of Silver Spring, Maryland. He is a spring 2014 graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park where he double majored in Geographical Sciences and Criminology & Criminal Justice. As a McNair scholar, he researched Hispanics, cultural space, and educational attainment in Maryland from a spatial perspective. His paper won the departmental Harper Writing Award and his research will be featured in Geograffiti, a departmental newsletter. His broad research interests revolve around environmental criminology, where crime and victimization are studied from a spatial perspective. This subfield seeks to answer the crime problem by investigating the relationship between the environments in which crime occurs and their influence on criminal activity. Byron plans to pursue a master’s degree in geography and PhD in criminology. Ultimately he plans to become a professor at a university where he can influence students through teaching.
Abstract:
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Matthew Hansen Department of Geographical Sciences 19
Remote sensing is a powerful tool for tracking changes on the Earth’s surface. An accurate depiction of water allows researchers to track issues from warming in the Artic (Carroll et al., 2011) to monitoring the dynamics of frozen ground (Trofaier et al., 2013). Past studies have been limited by the resolution and temporal frequency of their databases, using MODIS 250m and Landsat 30m data provided by NASA. BlackBridge (RapidEye), an independent German geospatial information provider, offers more accurate data at 5m resolution. The purpose of this study is three-fold: identify the location and extent of water cover; validate Landsat water cover at 30 meters versus RapidEye 5 at meters; and estimate how much water is being omitted between the two data sets–on a global scale. The study divides the Earth into 4 strata and randomly samples 35 spectral images from each stratum. RapidEye (2010-2013) images are used as reference data to visually and statistically assess the accuracy of pre-classified Landsat image composites used in the Hansen et al. (2013). Utilizing a raster-based approach, water extent was identified by employing a classification tree method (Potapov et al., 2012). Higher resolution data allows for more accurate research that can serve for multidimensional applications including resource management and sustainability, climate-risk mapping and disaster relief, to tracking impacts on ecosystems. The results of this study will allow researchers to justify the use of more accurate data to monitor the extent and change of water bodies such as lakes, rivers, streams, etc. Future studies should focus on validating higher resolution data through field work, and comparing predicative modeling results to Landsat data.
Samantha Martin Roosevelt University Spatial Displacement and the Great American Crime Decline: Analyzing the Crime Drop in New York City and other Metropolitan Areas Biography: Samantha Martin attends Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois. She is a senior sociology major with a minor in psychology. She was recently inducted into Alpha Kappa Delta, the International Sociology Honors Society. Her current research interests include inequity in education, juvenile criminalization and incarceration, and racial and ethnic relations, as they relate to the school to prison pipeline. She currently works with the Mansfield Institute for Social Justice where she helps facilitate restorative justice practices in Chicago Public Schools and is a research assistant, helping to conduct focus groups with youth who have been incarcerated, and their families. Samantha plans on developing intervention and restorative justice programs in Chicago to assist impoverished, delinquent, and gang affiliated youth in their social, educational, and professional development. Samantha has been accepted into the Accelerated Master's Program in Sociology at Roosevelt University, but ultimately plans to earn a PhD in sociology.
Abstract: Crime has declined and continues to decline in large cities like New York and Los Angeles while drops have leveled off or reversed themselves in other smaller cities. We believe this continued decline is due to a complex set of processes set in motion by the rise in real estate prices in these large cities, consequently moving high risk populations out into the immediate suburbs, and merely displacing crime. This project serves as a preliminary test to explore the nature of the relationship between housing and crime, primarily through secondary analysis of data that has already been collected by government agencies. The crime rates reflect specific trends between the principle cities and the surrounding suburbs that support our hypothesis. While crime seems to consistently go down in one of the principle cities (New York, NY), the crimes in the near end suburbs appear to be leveling out or reversing between 1999 and 2010. Furthermore, an investigation of demographic data indicates the possibility of high risk populations moving into these suburban areas. An extended study focusing on the remaining sample of principle cities is required to investigate the plausibility of these trends on a national level, as well as disaggregation of suburb classes and focus on smaller regions where public housing has moved.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jim Lynch Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice 20
Ana Medina Fetterman Ohio State University The Influence of Prosody on the Interpretation of Adjective-Noun Phrases in Noise-Vocoded Speech
Biography: Ana Medina Fetterman attends The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, where she is a junior psychology major. Her enthusiasm for learning foreign languages and studying international affairs has led to her interest in the intersection of culture and psychology. She is fascinated by the impact of societal and cultural norms on human thought processes. Of particular interest, is the influence of language acquisition on personality and identity construction. She is especially intrigued by linguistic relativity, patterns among bilingual speakers, personality shifts and multilingualism, and the effects of language learning on cognitive processes. Ana hopes to explore in-depth her many areas of interest at the University of Maryland’s Summer Research Initiative and to further refine her research skills. She is considering a future career as a clinician or in the academic sector and is planning on attending graduate school upon receipt of her undergraduate degree.
Abstract:
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Yi Ting Huang Department of Hearing & Speech Sciences
Prosody refers to the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Speakers often use prosody to evoke contrast between referents. For example, they may accent an adjective (e.g., “No, I want the ORANGE horse”) to distinguish referents within a category (e.g., horses). Since prosody involves multiple acoustic cues (e.g., pitch, intensity, duration), it has clinically-relevant implications for comprehension in listeners with cochlear implants (CIs). CIs are prosthetic devices that electrically stimulate the cochlea, providing sound perception to individuals with acute hearing loss. Critically, while CIs do not transmit pitch, they leave intact secondary cues like intensity and duration. The current research examines whether listeners can use these cues to interpret prosody in the absence of pitch. CI speech was simulated through 8-channel, noise-vocoded speech. Using an eye-tracking paradigm, we investigated whether listeners can deduce the discourse status of referents from prosodic cues. Normal-hearing participants heard sentences like “Put the pink horse on the star. Now put the ORANGE …,” while their eyemovements were measured to same-category targets (orange horse) or different-category distractors (orange fish). When all prosodic cues are available in normal speech, previous research has found preferences for targets following accented adjectives compared to unaccented ones. If listeners readily exploit secondary cues, then they should respond similarly with vocoded speech. If, however, listeners do not exploit such cues, they should look at the target just as often as the distractor regardless of the accented condition. This research provides insight into the auditory limitations of bionic hearing devices and optimizes language comprehension potential for listeners with CIs.
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Yadira Molina Sonoma State University Fear and Voter ID Laws: When Implicit Racism Matters and When it Doesn’t
Biography: Yadira Molina is a senior political science major at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California. She is currently working on a research project for the McNair Scholars Program on the Latino Vote Choice in 2008. In spring 2014, she was an Honorable Delegate at the National Model United Nations Conference in New York City. Ms. Molina's research interests include women's issues, minority rights, and the relationship between criminal and political organizations in Latin America. Ms. Molina is looking forward to working and building relationships with other faculty and students through the University of Maryland's Summer Research Initiative. She hopes that her growth at UMD will help her in serving as a Panetta Institute Congressional Intern in Washington, D.C. for the fall 2014 semester, before returning to Sonoma State in the spring of 2015 to graduate. Molina hopes to pursue a PhD in international affairs with a focus on Latin America and to work in the field of foreign affairs, ideally at the U.S. Department of State.
Abstract:
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Antione Banks Department of Government & Politics
Many have debated whether race shapes people’s views toward voter identification laws. While research has shown that explicit forms of racism drive support for such laws, in this research we focus on implicit racism and hypothesize that the fear-inducing climate surrounding voter identification laws has caused implicit racism to matter in whites’ evaluations of the policy. Participants were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk using a twowave experimental design with 1,136 participants in Wave 1, and 889 of these initial respondents returning to complete Wave 2, leaving a 78% response rate. The first wave included measures of implicit racism, explicit racism, partisanship and a series of demographic questions and the second wave involved the experimental manipulation, which was an emotion induction task. We found that 86% of whites exhibited implicit racial bias and that only fear increased the effect of implicit racism on voter ID laws and not partisanship or explicit racism. Therefore, the results suggest that implicit racism has a considerable impact on support for voter ID laws, but only in the fear condition. The findings suggest that the fear-inducing climate surrounding voter ID laws has caused whites’ implicit racial attitudes to play an important role in their willingness to support such a policy. Specifically, fear significantly pushed whites high in implicit racism to be about 15-percentage points more supportive of voter ID laws than comparable individuals in the control and anger conditions.
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Bryant Wesley Randolph University of Memphis I like Big Butts, but is that a Lie?: Body Preferences of Upwardly Mobile and Professional Black Men
Biography: Wesley Randolph is a junior psychology major and child development minor at The University of Memphis. Wesley was born and raised in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. His research interests include developmental, family, social, and cognitive psychology. He believes learning about the various functions of the brain and how individuals interact with one another is essential for overcoming adversities. Additionally, Wesley’s appreciation for fitness has recently directed him towards an interest in researching motivation and the racial and ethnic and gender differences in body image. Through the Summer Research Initiative, he hopes to grow as a researcher and an individual with the experience he gains from interacting with his SRI peers and the faculty at the University of Maryland. Wesley plans on earning a PhD in psychology and contributing as an educator at a university and as a practicing clinical psychologist.
Abstract:
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Rashawn Ray Department of Sociology
Approximately 50% of the Black female population are overweight or obese. Studies typically attribute their obesity rates to the body preferences and beauty ideals believed to be held by members of the Black community, more specifically by Black men. As a result of rejecting thinness as a quality of life, Black women are more likely to adopt unhealthier lifestyles that lead to physical and mental health issues. In a comparative analysis of the perception of female body ideals between upwardly mobile Black men and professional Black men, we explored their ideals of physical attractiveness for women. We hypothesized that the beauty ideals for women held by Black men would reveal a preference for healthier-looking women. Participants included African American members of Black Greekletter organizations at a Midwestern university and middle-class African American men living in the Washington DC metropolitan area, who are single and living alone, never married, collegeeducated, with professional occupations, and between 30-60 years of age. Most of the interviewed fraternity members were similar in describing the ideal physical features of an attractive woman to them (e.g. well-proportioned, with a thick butt and thighs, big breasts, small waist or flat stomach, etc.) whereas, professionals cited a woman’s health routine as a significant component to female physical attractiveness. Essentially, upwardly mobile and professional Black men prefer healthier-looking women that put effort towards physical maintenance.
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Alexandra Rodriguez University of Maryland, College Park Forest Cover Change: Using Rapid Eye Data to Validate the Accuracy of Landsat Data in Brazil
Biography: Alexandra Rodriguez is a spring 2014 graduate from the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland. She majored in Geographic Information Science (GIS) and computer cartography, with a minor in Spanish language and cultures. She was born and raised in Prince George’s County; specifically the small community of Langley Park. During her time at Maryland, she has interned for NOAA, National Geographic, and UMD Facilities Management. She is interested in human geography, specifically the development of Latino communities in the U.S., and integrating GIS to help improve these communities where needed. She will begin the Master of Professional Studies in Geospatial Information Sciences Program here at University of Maryland, College Park in the fall of 2014. Her goal is to better her GIS capabilities to help communities, such as Langley Park.
Abstract: Using remote sensing for forest monitoring is important for quantifying changes to this key natural resource. Brazil, for example, has been able to reduce deforestation by using remote sensing technology to track deforestation in nearreal time. Methods have also been developed to map global forest cover loss and gain (Hansen et al., 2013). Such products allow for the estimation of habitat loss, greenhouse gas emissions due to deforestation, and other important measures of environmental change. Landsat data, with a spatial resolution of 30 meters, have been the main satellite data source for forest monitoring and were used to create the aforementioned global product. More recently, Rapid Eye data, with a 5 meter resolution, have become available to researchers. Rapid-Eye derived forest cover loss, quantified at 5m, can be held as ‘truth’ in assessing the accuracy of the global Landsat 30m product in detecting and estimating area of forest cover loss. The study presented here is a preliminary comparison of Landsat- and Rapid Eye-derived forest cover loss for a number of sites over Brazil. The expected end results will prove that more accurate and precise data makes a difference in monitoring global forest change. A finer resolution will be able to provide other countries like Brazil the opportunity to improve their existing data in order to implement better policies and regulations regarding deforestation.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Matthew Hansen Department of Geographical Sciences 24
Nishell Savory Morgan State University Impact of Cocaine Self-Administration on EscapeAvoidance
Biography: Nishell Savory is a rising junior at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a native of Guyana, South America. Ms. Savory is a psychology major, member of the Psi Chi Honor Society, and member of the Golden Key Honor Society. Ms. Savory is interested in examining memory retention and understanding how one’s environment affects one’s behavior. Her interest in cognitive psychology stems from her passion to learn about how people acquire, store, and process information. She believes that participating in the Summer Research Initiative Program will enhance her analytical skills as she pursues graduate studies. Nishell plans to attend graduate school to pursue a doctoral degree in cognitive psychology.
Abstract:
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Matthew Roesch Department of Psychology
Studies show that decision-making and related brain circuits are disrupted after long term cocaine use. Even after drug use has ceased, changes in the brain and behavior persist for years, suggesting long-term disruption of key brain circuits. In this study, we used male Long-Evans and Sprague-Dawley rats to examine the importance of cortical-striatal circuit and decisionmaking after excessive use of cocaine and the ability to perform an escape-avoidance task. For 12 consecutive days, 3 hours a day, rats were given the opportunity to self-administer cocaine by pressing a lever. The goal was to get the rats to self-administer to an amount shown to produce long lasting changes to the corticalstriatal circuitry. After infusions of cocaine, the rats were then deprived of the drug for one week. They were then compared to their controls in performing an escape-avoidance task (a behavioral task dependent on a functioning cortical-striatal system). The task requires the rats to learn to avoid a shock when an auditory tone is presented. This behavior is thought to depend on formation of stimulus-response associations (i.e., hear tone jump) that are thought to underlie habit formation in addiction. Contrary to our expectations, we found that cocaine exposed rats were slightly better on avoidance trials, but only during the first couple days of training. A larger sample is needed to confirm this result. These results suggest that cocaine self-administration might increase stimulus-response encoding in the cortical-striatal system, leading to initial better habit formation during the escapeavoidance task.
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Claudia Vargas Hunter College City University of New York The Effects of Floods on Education Attainment for Young Children in Bangladesh Biography: Claudia Vargas is a senior enrolled in the BA/ MA program in economics and the BA program in math at Hunter College, CUNY, in New York. She has served as a teaching assistant for a fundamentals of macroeconomics course. She is currently a Mellon Mays scholar and participated in the Ivy Plus Conference, hosted by Harvard and MIT, where universities connect with promising students interested in pursuing a PhD. She also holds an internship with Welfare Rights Initiative (WRI), an organization that works to ensure that everybody has the right to an education. As a native of Colombia, Claudia’s research interests surround developing countries, specifically the impact of economic crises on long term educational achievement. She has researched the effects of education policy changes on high school dropout and graduation rates. Through the SRI, Claudia looks forward to gaining additional research experience and valuable insight about conducting research in developing countries. After she completes her BA/MA, she plans to pursue a PhD in development economics and international relations.
Abstract:
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Raymond Guiteras Department of Economics
Flooding is one of the costliest and deadliest natural disasters on the planet, affecting more people each year than any other disaster. South Asia is a particularly flood-prone region, with the nation of Bangladesh-situated on a delta-being especially vulnerable. Yet, the full impacts of this natural hazard are not well understood. We aim to understand what medium- and long-term impacts are associated with exposure to flooding in early life. By creating a measure of flood extent using satellite observations for all of Bangladesh in the period 2000-2013, and matching this to outcomes on education of young people, we analyze one hidden cost of natural disaster impacts in this low-lying developing country. This study is extending the analysis made for Guiteras et al. (2013) in which they studied the effects of exposure to abnormal floods at the time of birth or in utero on the physical development of infants in Bangladesh. Potential shocks on education could represent a significant extra cost associated with environmental impacts in Bangladesh and other flood-prone developing countries, one that will be exacerbated as climate change increases the frequency and severity of flooding over South Asia.
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College of Behavioral and Social Sciences University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 http://www.bsos.umd.edu/
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