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4 Paws for Ability
Kathleen Schumacher
4 paws is a nonprofit organization that trains and places service dogs with children to increase the independence of the child and assist the families.
Why Does This Work Matter? Without volunteers, 4 Paws would be unable to operate as an organization. Kids like the boy to the left who at the age of three was diagnosed with autism and struggles with communication, anxiety, and wandering off would not be able to seek comfort in a service dog.
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Behind the 2020 Delhi Riots: History of Hindu-Muslim Conflict in India
Piper Sereno
Though a major aspect of Hinduism is ahimsa, or non-violence, and Islam also admonishes violence, there is often religious conflict in any area that has people of more than one religion. There is an underlying tension between Muslims and Hindus that goes further than just differences in beliefs.
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Mission of Mary Cooperative: Community Engagement Project
Rachel Veneman
Mission of Mary Cooperative consists of 6 urban farming plots in the Dayton area. It runs a community supported agriculture program that provides access to fresh produce to people living in the food desert of Dayton. The organization focuses on fostering experiential learning, engaging the community in processes of agriculture and food production, and installing gardens in backyards to allow people to grow their own food.
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Religion's Role in Immigration in a Multiculturalist Context
Jack Willerton
Modern society is more diverse than ever before. This is especially the case in the United States and Europe, where there is a blend of different cultures, ethnicities and religions. One of the toughest issues facing both of these regions is immigration. Immigration, legal and illegal, had led to a host of responses from many different groups of people from different backgrounds. In particular, religiously affiliated groups have had differing responses to the issue of immigration, especially in the United States.
This project is an investigation on how these religious groups view the issue of immigration. On top of my own research, I have also conducted an interview with Dr. Neomi De Anda, a UD Religious Studies professor who has spent some time working in communities on the US-Mexico border. After conducting my research, I have found that religious affiliation plays a massive role in people's attitudes towards immigration.
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Effectiveness of an Adaptive Magnitude Comparison eBook at Home
Zachary Yurich and Mary Wagner Fuhs
Finding effective technology is important for children’s learning during the pandemic, as families may not have quick access to sufficient high-quality, classroom-like resources.
This project is part of a larger evaluation of the effectiveness of adaptive magnitude comparison eBooks for improving preschoolers’ math skills.
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Impact of Environmental Decline on Disadvantaged Persons in India and Thailand
Setharerk Apiwatthananugool, Kuldeep Kujur, Isaac Minj, Sarawut Singyai, Petbun Thanpongprai, and Chatpong Yawong
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Liar Liar: Gender Differences in Deception Detection
Jake Avendano, Kelly Boris, and Faith Plummer
The present study explores the relationship between social awareness, type of questioning, gender effects, and deception detection. Following are important definitions of concepts and tools used in this research:
- We can bias someone's perception of another person by the way a question is worded (Questionnaire design; Ulatwski, 2013).
- Direct Question: An explicit measure of deception detection. Direct questions focus on personality characteristics associated with deception (DePaulo, 2018).
- Indirect Question: Lie detection does not access implicit knowledge but focuses the perceiver on more useful cues. Indirect questions focus on biases, and verbal and body language (Street & Richardson, 2015).
- Deception Detection Experts: People who are naturally adept, who have undergone extensive training, or who are professionally experienced at recognizing and interpreting behavioral signals of deception (Levine et al., 2014).
- Social Awareness: Mental events in which one forms a mental representation of either oneself or another person (Sheldon, 1996).
- Social Awareness Inventory (SAI) assesses individual differences in social awareness of emotion demonstrated by others (Sheldon, 1996).
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Cross Validation of the Environmental Attitudes Inventory: Plans to Assess Attitudinal Changes in Workers at a Shelter Farm in a Food Desert
Amanda Barry and Alea Albright
Within the context of an ongoing participatory community action research project that implements behavioral activation in homeless shelters, an urban farm was implemented. Behavioral activation provides opportunities to engage in productive activities that yield response-contingent reinforcement, which increases productive behavior and leads to improvements in a sense of mastery, quality of life, mood, and cognition.
The project represents a collaboration between Dr. Roger N. Reeb (Professor of Psychology) and St. Vincent de Paul. Among our many community partners, we developed a collaboration with the Ohio State University Agricultural Extension of Montgomery County in 2017 to establish an urban farm on the grounds of the Homeless Shelter for Men in a food desert. We harvested nearly a ton of produce each of the first two seasons to enhance nutrition of shelter residents.
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Stress Reduction After Visiting Cats in a Cat Café
Nicole L. Beasley
Research has attempted to induce stress and has been unsuccessful at demonstrating the efficacy of stress reduction. This may indicate that animal interaction is more beneficial when reducing longer-term stress rather than short-term stress, like what has been studied in the past. Additionally, animals may be more effective at reducing life stress as opposed to artificially produced stress.
Past research has limited the time participants may spend interacting with the study animals. The current study will allow participants to spend as much time as necessary with the café cats.
The present study will record a physiological marker of stress and measure perceived stress before and after interacting with cats at a local cat café with the aim of increasing clarity regarding the underlying stress reduction mechanism.
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The Effect of Therapy Dogs and Meditation on Student Stress
Nicole L. Beasley
Students experience many stressors throughout the semester. Student stress may arise from various facets of academic life (e.g. academics, financial, and relationship) (Dusselier et al., 2005). Most students report chronic stress (Pierceall & Keim, 2007).
Therapy dogs may lessen student stress. However, research on how therapy dogs reduce stress is mixed. Some research suggests therapy dogs only reduce psychological perception of stress while other research suggests physiological stress reduction.
Barker et al. (2016) measured stress with both psychological tests and physiological markers in students. Interacting with therapy dogs reduced the perceived stress but did not change the physiological markers of stress.
Crump & Derting (2016) measured stress with both psychological and physiological markers in female freshmen students. Interacting with therapy dogs reduced perceived stress and systolic blood pressure, but not diastolic blood pressure or heart rate.
Other studies indicate a lack of heart rate or blood pressure reduction when interacting with personal pet dogs (Grossberg et al., 2015)
While the Barker et al. (2016) study supported mainly psychological stress reduction, the ability of Crump et al. (2016) to demonstrate a physiological stress reduction suggests further inquiry is necessary to gain a complete understanding of the stress buffering capabilities of therapy dogs.
This study utilizes a different physiological stress measurement: heart rate variability (HRV). In a resent meta-analysis, HRV was demonstrated effective at indicating changes in stress. This is a significant advantage over heart rate and blood pressure measurements (Kim et al., 2018)
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The Correlation between Children's Executive Functioning and Their Academic Performance and Social Competence
Melissa Budisch and Erin Collins
We want to see if there is a positive association with Conscious Discipline, or Social-Emotional Learning, and improved EF skills in children.
Composure: The adult provides children with techniques, such as active calming, to regulate their emotions. (Brain Smart Start and Safe Place)
Adult Assertiveness: The adult is assertive, which provides the structure a child needs to be successful. We would argue that if an adult is assertive and give5 concrete instructions to the children, it can help them better understand self-control and how to effectively achieve a goal. (Visual Routines, Visual Daily Schedule, and Time Machine)
Choices: When a child is an emotional state, the teacher or adult can provide two choices for the child to choose from, or when the child is in a more controlled state, the child may be asked what his or her choices are. The children will also see desirable behaviors posted around the classroom. These can help a child to think about their options and regulate their own behaviors and emotions before deciding what their next action will be. (Picture Rule Cards)
Consequences: The adult uses natural consequences to teach children new social skills and uses logical consequences to motivate a child to utilize the skills that they are learning in the classroom. If a child becomes upset by the consequences, the adult teaches them how to effectively regulate those emotions while also working towards rectifying their behavior.
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Christian NGO's Support for Child Workers
Terachai Charonesomran, Apisit Ngamwong, Thanapoom Saiprom, Amit Surin, Pitar Tirkey, and Nattanon Udomech
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Christian and Muslim Responses to Climate Change
Jittisak Dandongmuang, Chanayut Hatsarat, Patiphan Jekokkruad, Chayakorn Kotchajun, George Soreng, and Victor Xaxa
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Associations Between Decision Making and Hedonic Responses to Odor
Madison E. Degnan
Olfaction, or the sense of smell, is facilitated by specialized sensory cells, called olfactory sensory neurons, which are directly connected directly to the brain.
The limbic system is a set of brain structures located on both sides of the thalamus.
The limbic circuitry supports a variety of functions, including emotion, behavior, motivation, long-term memory, and olfaction.
The olfaction bulb is connected to the amygdala and the hippocampus.
The anterior limbic and related structures including the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala are involved in emotion, reward valuation, and reward-related decision-making (but not memory), with the value representations transmitted to the anterior cingulate cortex for action-outcome learning. (Rolls, Edmund T. 2015)
Olfaction and executive measures have a common neural substrate in prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex, and suggest that olfaction might be a reliable cognitive marker in psychiatric and neurologic disorders. (Fagundo, A. B. 2015)
Activation of emotional neural substrates might alter the dual cognitive dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and emotional orbital prefrontal cortex circuits that interact during decision-making. (Overman, W.H. 2011)
Sex-related performance differences on this task: males perform significantly better than females on decision-making in the Iowa Gambling Task. (Reavis and Overman, 2001)
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Halloween, Superstition, and Black Cat Bias
Brianna Gavin
Black Cat Bias (BCB): “Cats with black coats are viewed more negatively, adopted less often, and euthanized more often than lighter colored cats” (Jones & Hart, in press)
Shelter records of 2170 cats showed black cats stay in shelter about one month longer than non-black cats (Kubesova, Voslarova, Cecerek, & Vucinic, 2017)
Length of stay in shelter positively correlated with risk of contracting URI (Dinnage, Scarlett, & Richards, 2009) and coronavirus (Pedersen, Sato, Foley, & Poland, 2004)
Jones and Hart (in press) found black cats were perceived as more aggressive and less friendly than non-black cats
Jones and Hart (in press) found that black cat bias (friendliness, aggressiveness, willingness to adopt) was predicted by superstitious behaviors, but not religiosity nor racial attitudes
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Sex Differences in Relation to Affect and Social Versus Non-Social Stress on Olfactory Functioning
Sahar Kaouk
Olfaction, or the sense of smell, is highly related to various psychological processes. There are sex differences in olfactory functioning: females are more sensitive to odorants (Doty & Cameron, 2009), better at labeling odors (Larsson et al., 2004), and rate odors as more unpleasant and intense compared to males (Doty & Cameron, 2009).
Findings have shown emotional state, especially negative states, affects human odor perception (Chen & Dalton, 2005, Pollatos et al., 2007; Zald & Parado, 1997) and odor also influences affective state ((Walla & Deecke, 2010; Royet, Plailly, Delon- Martin, Kareken, & Segebarth, 2003).
Social stress has been shown to induce distress as well as decrease olfactory functioning (Hoenen et al., 2017).
There are also differences in how males and females react to stress: males are more distressed from intrapersonal stress, while females are more distressed from interpersonal stress (Kogler, Gur, & Derntl, 2015; Hoenen, Wolf & Pause, 2017).
To date, no studies have compared the effects of social stress and non-social stress and their association with negative affect and olfactory functioning.
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Questions About Videos: How Virtual Reality Helps Us in Determining Deception Detection
Colin Lamb and Owen Boyle
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Measuring Gender Equity at UD Among Faculty, Staff, and Leadership
Mary McLoughlin and Josh Segalewitz
The purpose of this report card is to be transparent around the representation of women across the UD workforce and in leadership roles.
Our goal is to annually evaluate progress toward increasing institutional diversity and promoting equity for women-identified staff and faculty. In doing so, the report identifies areas where progress is being made and areas where more work is needed.
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Internships, Public Service, and Vocation
Matthew Mittelstaedt, Patrick Munhall, Jake Neff, Maggie Ward, Rachel Carr, Emma Kapp, Sean Newhouse, Sophia Donati, Nicole Lawless, Delali Nenonene, Bryan Borodkin, Tyler Clogg, and Blair Elmore
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Problems of the Girl Child in India and Thailand
Matthew Mullangi, Prakapat Phumphuang, Worrawut Thaworn, Chakrit Udompet, and Livens Peter Xalxo
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Gender Differences in Rates of Anhedonia and the Effect of Menstrual Cycles in University Students
Arianna Rueda
Anhedonia is the lack of experiencing pleasure from pleasurable experiences (D'haenen, 1996) and is associated with the reward pathway in the brain (Langvik et al., 2016). Anhedonia can be further broken down into physical or social (Martino et al., 2018).
- Physical anhedonia is the absence of pleasure from eating, drinking, or physical touch.
- Social anhedonia is a lack of pleasure derived from social experiences.
Previous research has looked at gender differences in anhedonia with conflicting results.
- One measure of anhedonic subtype of depression found a relation with positive affect and gender differences more than other measures of anhedonia (Langvik et al., 2016).
- One study found no gender differences in anhedonia (Langvik et al., 2016).
The associations between menstrual cycle and anhedonia have not been fully investigated yet.
Anxiety and depression have a high comorbidity rate, and anhedonia is may differentiate anxiety and depression symptoms (Langvik, Hjemdal, & Nordahl, 2016).
Anhedonia may be present in those with depression as well as nonclinical groups (Langvik et al., 2016). Healthy individuals can still experience varying levels of anhedonia.
The higher prevalence of depression in women (Langvik et al., 2016) suggests that women will experience more anhedonia as well (Srisurapanont et al., 2017), but today there is no strong body of research to support this hypothesis.
The items in this collection were presented at the annual Raymond A. Roesch, S.M., Social Sciences Symposium.
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