Spring 2006 WKU Sigma Xi Student Research Conference
Psychology Abstracts

Christopher Brady and Katie Tate (Faculty Advisor: Kathi Miner-Rubino). Emotional and Organizational Support as Moderators of the Relationship between Workplace Incivility and Well-Being.  

Joseph Dunn (Faculty Advisor: Betsy Shoenfelt). A Realistic Job Preview for Deputy Jailers.  

A common method for reducing turnover in organizations is the implementation of a realistic job preview (RJP). Unlike typical job descriptions, the keystone characteristic of an RJP is that both positive and negative aspects of the job are presented to the job applicant before having to decide if they really want to accept the position being offered to them.  The researcher in the current study developed an RJP for deputy jailers at the Warren County Regional Jail.   With some job incumbents at the jail remaining on the job for only a few days after being hired, it was the opinion of the researcher that some incumbents were accepting the position with inflated expectations about the job.  The first hypothesis of this study was that job acceptance rates will be lower for applicants who viewed the RJP than applicants who were hired before the RJP was implemented.  The second hypothesis was that job applicants viewing the realistic job preview will be less likely to leave the organization over a 5-month period than applicants not viewing the preview during the same time frame before the RJP.

Dana Eastman  (Faculty Advisor: Kelly Madole) Social Category-Based Inferences in Children

We sought to determine whether children draw inferences about familiar social categories and whether children understand that different social categories support inferences about different attributes.   In Study 1, younger children, older children and adults saw two comparisons sets of pictures differing from one another in two social categories: race and age, race and sex, or age and sex.  A novel attribute (individual, social, or biological) was associated with each comparison set.  Participants then saw a target picture that was similar to each of the comparisons in one category and decided which attribute the target possessed. Younger children made sex-based inferences for all attribute types.  Older children made sex-based inferences for biological and individual attributes, but race-based inferences for social attributes.  Adults made sex-based inferences only for biological attributes and made race-based inferences for social attributes.   Study 2 was a partial replication of Study 1 using different attributes, and pictures emphasizing the age differences.  Children’s use of age as a basis for drawing inferences increased, but the pattern of responding revealed in Study 1 was replicated. Thus, it appears that developmentally, children come to understand that different social categories support inferences about different attributes.

Bryan Hall and John Jones (Faculty Advisor: Marty Bink). The Disadvantage of Cutting Corners:  The Influence of Prior Knowledge on Comprehension in Speed Reading. 

The majority of speed reading techniques train readers to scan a page of text by briefly fixating on words as the eye travels across a page.  The claim supporting such techniques is that readers can process information in the periphery of fixation and that information is then organized by cognitive processes to yield both detailed and conceptual information about the text.  The present experiment was designed to test two hypotheses.   First, readers who are presented with portions of a text in serial order will have higher scores on comprehension than readers presented portions of the text in random order.  This hypothesis tests the assumption that comprehension is possible when text is read in a non-serial order.  Second, comprehension scores will be greater when participants read a familiar text as opposed to a less familiar text.  This hypothesis tests the possibility that rapid reading techniques will only work when some background knowledge exists.  In the experiments, reading comprehension was assessed with a multiple-choice recognition test.  The test contained both questions about the details of each passage and general questions about each passage’s topic. Text familiarity was manipulated by presenting both male and female participants stereotypically male or stereotypically female texts.

Melinda Lalonde (Faculty Advisor: Anne Rinn). Differences between Honors Students, Honors-Eligible Students, and Nonhonors Students with Regard to Perceived Parent Relationships, Academic Self-Concept, and Academic Achievement.

The purpose of this study was to examine the differences between honors students, honors-eligible students, and nonhonors students with regard to their perceived parental relationships, academic self-concepts, and academic achievement. In the total of 302 participants, there were 53 honors students, 53 honors-eligible students, and 196 nonhonors students. Academic achievement was measured using grade point average; academic self-concept and perceived parental relationships were measured using the Self-Perception Profile for College Students (Neemann & Harter, 1986). Results indicated differences between the three groups.

Gina Leclere and Jessica Rumsey (Faculty Advisor: Anne Rinn). Gender Differences in Gifted Adolescents' Math/Verbal Self-Concepts and Math/Verbal Achievement.

The current study investigated the gender differences of gifted adolescents’ math/verbal self-concept and math/verbal ability by extending the Internal/External Frame of Reference Model (I/E Model; Marsh, 1986). The study consisted of 140 gifted adolescents, ranging from the ages of 13 to 17 years old. Gifted adolescents’ math/verbal ability was measured using their SAT/ACT scores and math/verbal self-concepts were measured by the math and verbal subscales of the Self Description Questionnaire II (SDQ II; Marsh, 1990). Using structural equation modeling, results support the I/E Model. The findings from this study can be applied to the educational setting by informing educators about gender differences among gifted adolescents in order to ensure each individual receives adequate and appropriate education, thus enabling the adolescent to thrive.

Courtney Ortz (Faculty Advisor: Sharon Mutter). Aging and Associative and Inductive Reasoning Processes in Discrimination Learning.

Previous research has shown that older adults learn probabilistic and deterministic relationships between cues and outcomes when the predictive event is the presence of a cue rather than the absence of a cue (Mutter & Pliske, 1996; Mutter & Williams, 2004; Mutter, Haggbloom, Plumlee & Schirmer, 2005).  The purpose of this study was to isolate the associative and inductive reasoning processes in feature positive (FP) and feature negative (FN) discrimination learning to better understand where the age differences occur.  Younger and older adults were asked to learn a FP discrimination in which the presence of a distinctive feature in a symbol pair predicts reinforcement and/or a FN discrimination in which the absence of a distinctive feature in a symbol pair predicts reinforcement.  They were asked to state hypotheses on each learning trial indicating the rule they thought was used to determine correct and incorrect symbol pairs.  We examined age differences in the efficiency of hypothesis testing by data examining the number of perseverations, relevant and irrelevant cue shifts, and confirmation tests.  We also investigated age differences in memory for feedback by examining the number of retained and forgotten responses.  Theoretical implications of the results will be discussed.

Anita Patnaik (Faculty Advisor: Kelly Madole). The Physical Discrimination and Possible Concept of Object Weight that Exists in Infants and Toddlers.

Young children’s attention to a variety of object features has been studied.  However, very few studies have examined young children’s understanding of object weight.  In order to investigate developmental changes in perception and categorization of weight, three tasks were given to 15 18 month old to 3 year old children.  In the first task, an object of one weight was repeatedly presented and then an identical looking object with a different weight was presented. In the second task children were presented with a series of objects varying in appearance, but with the same weight, to assess attention to weight across variation in appearance.  In both tasks, attention was assessed by measuring each child’s looking time.   The final task used a balance scale to measure understanding of weight by observing a child’s ability to pick a heavy object to make a balance scale tip.  Preliminary results showed that both younger and older children discriminate weight change even when objects vary considerably in appearance.  Thus, they can discriminate a weight change in both the familiarization and categorization tasks.  However, only older children are capable of using weight differences in a more functional way, namely to make a balance scale tip.

Neal Rikal (Faculty Advisor: Marty Bink). Remembering to Remember:  Working Memory and Motor Enactment as a Source of Prospective Memory Depletion.

Prospective memory refers to the ability to execute delayed intentions. The study included manipulation of working memory and motor enactment to investigate the encoding processes in prospective memory. The experiment dialogue asked participants to memorize an action script which was to be performed when the participant noticed a target word in a word rating task. The instructions for these activities were given while each participant was engaged in a letter-rotation task. Additionally, some of the participants were asked to physically perform the action scripts while others were to imagine performing the scripts. The combined interference from working memory load and motor enactment reduced prospective memory performance relative to other conditions. The results indicated that motor encoding is critical for binding the prospective memory target to the action in memory for later retrieval.

Brittany Sears and John Jones (Faculty Advisor: Marty Bink). Memory for Unattended Stimuli in a Flanker Task.

The flanker effect (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974) occurs when unattended stimuli (i.e., flankers) in a display affect the processing of target stimuli.  The flanker effect suggests that the unattended stimuli are being implicitly processed in real time. The issue at hand is whether the level of processing of flankers can support later explicit memory for the flanker items. The goal of the present study was to explore the degree to which unattended stimuli could be “remembered” in subsequent tests of implicit memory (lexical decision) and explicit memory (recognition).

Lindy Settle (Faculty Advisor: Anne Rinn). Effects of a Summer Program on the Academic, General, and Emotional Self-Concepts of Gifted Students.

Academic, general, and emotional self-concepts were measured among 140 gifted students at a residential academic summer program. The literature is conflicting concerning the positive (Humes & Campbell, 1980; Kolloff & Moore, 1989) and negative (Olszewski, Kulieke, & Willis, 1987) effects of the participation of gifted students in such programs. Two main hypotheses are posited: First, the academic and general self-concepts of gifted students would increase in the time spent at a summer program, but the emotional self-concepts would decrease. Second, there would be no gender differences found in the areas of academic and general self-concept, but predicted gender differences for emotional self-concept. Self-concept was measured using the Self-Description Questionnaire II (Marsh, 1990). Results were analyzed using a series of repeated measures ANOVAs. Application of the results, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

Sherri Settle (Faculty Advisor: Kathi Miner-Rubino). Gender, Occupational Position, and Incivility: The Role of Status on Rude Behaviors at Work.

This study examined the role of status (i.e., occupational position and gender) in the frequency and experience of workplace incivility. Participants were 89 university students over the age of 20 who currently were employed and completed measures assessing their experiences of incivility at work, the instigator of the incivility, and job-related outcomes (i.e., turnover intent, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment). Consistent with hypotheses, supervisors were more likely to be instigators of incivility than coworkers. Participants also reported lower job satisfaction when the instigator was a supervisor, and lower organizational commitment and higher turnover intent when the instigator was male. These results suggest that status does have some effect on the consequences of incivility.

Elizabeth Wiesemann (Faculty Advisors: J. Farley Norman and Hideko F. Norman). The Discrimination of Bending Motion.

Nonrigid motions frequently occur in nature. According to Koenderink and van Doorn (1986), bendings are "the most general class of deforming motions that permits a solution of the problem of shape from motion".  Despite this fact, bending remains essentially uninvestigated.   In our experiment, on any given trial observers viewed two bending rods, and were required to judge which rod was more elastic.  The stimulus displays were created using the methods described by Craft, Payne, and Lappin (1986).  Difference thresholds were obtained for six experiemental conditions formed by the combination of two standard elasticities and three bending planes.  The rods bent in either the fronto-parallel plane or bent in a plane that was oriented 42.5 or 85 degrees from fronto-parallel.  All observers reliably perceived the mechanisms that extract 3-D structure do not require rigidity.  The observers average elasticity difference threshold was 6.9 percent of quantitatively similar to those obtained for bending in a 2-D image.  The overall results reveal that human observers exhibit a moderately high sensitivity for detecting deviations in the elasticity of bending objects.

Sonia Windhorst (Faculty Advisor: Kathi Miner-Rubino). Workplace Incivility and the Low-Status Target.

The goal of the present research was to discover if employees in low-status social groups (i.e., women, people of color, sexual minorities, and non-Christians) experience more incivility in the workplace compared to their high-status counterparts. Data come from four different samples of working adults: employees from a property management company (N = 90), employees of a northwestern university (N = 1,843), a national sample of law school faculty (N = 1,256), and employed students from a southern university (N = 243). Participants in all studies completed measures of demographics and personal experiences of incivility at work. A series of t-tests revealed that gender and sexual orientation are most related to experiences of incivility.