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100 Psychology Thesis Topics for 2023

Students know the importance of developing great psychology dissertation topics for a graduate assignment. However, many don’t have the time to brainstorm ideas that meet the requirements their professors expect. We’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting and have put together a list of 100 psychology thesis topics suitable for several situations. Feel free to pick a topic and start writing your thesis proposal .

General Psychology Topics for High School

• Give five top reasons why you would want to become a psychologist.
• What kind of influence has psychology research had in other sciences?
• Why are teenagers at higher risk of developing an eating disorder?
• How are phobias developed in children under the age of twelve?
• In what ways did Pavlov’s conditioning experiment contribute to our understanding of addiction therapy?

Child Psychology Research Paper Topics

• What are the major differences between psychiatry and psychology?
• Discuss mental tools that can be used to determine when children are lying to adults.
• What were the ethical complications involve 12d in the Little Albert Experiment?
• What does research suggest is the origin of intelligence in children?
• How does emotional intelligence in children affect their learning abilities?

Cognitive Psychology Topics

• How did Alan Turing’s suggestion that the brain is an organized machine lead to computers?
• Do the “seven chunks of information” still hold through in research?
• Can we develop working memory to retain greater long-term memory?
• Can a person that has been convicted of a felony charge change into a law-abiding citizen?
• How can cognitive therapy be used to help patients suffering from emotional disorders?

Developmental Psychology Topics

• How do our perceptions of our experiences affect development in teenagers?
• What are the four levels of development and which is most important in children?
• Can a moral judgment be taught to toddlers who have latent reasoning skills?
• How are our personalities developed through the influence of others?
• Are children naturally beholden to one parent or the other?

Social Psychology Topics for College Students

• How are a person’s original opinions influenced by the opinions of larger groups?
• What psychological effects does spending too much time on social media have?
• How do social psychologists deal with aggression and violence in young adults?
• What impact has social psychology had on our understanding of online bullying?
• How do family dynamics change when a member of the immediate family dies?

Sports Psychology Research Topics

• Does aging have a bigger impact on retired athletes’ mental health than head trauma?
• How is mental health affected by long recovery schedules for serious body injuries?
• How does neuro-linguistic programming in professional athletes affect performance?
• How do professional athletes mentally prepare for competitions?
• How have approaches to sports training and preparation been affected by developments in psychology?

Controversial Topics in Psychology

• How did the Milgram Obedience Experiments of the 1960s help us understand how we view authority figures?
• How did the Stanford Experiment help further our knowledge of situational variables on human behavior?
• How did Harlow’s experiments of affection (especially the lack of affection) lead to advancements in child development theories?
• Does the implementation of capital punishment on sex offenders prevent them from committing a crime?
• What is the link between criminal acts and teenagers that were bullied?

Health Psychology Topics for College Students

• What impact do regular exercise and healthy eating have on mental health in young adults?
• How have the media’s depictions of body ideals have negatively impacted how young adults see themselves?
• What are the most effective strategies for getting people to develop healthy eating habits?
• What can local governments do to help people maintain mental health after a disaster?
• How do stress management techniques help people cope with difficult situations in the workplace?

More Controversial Psychology Topics

• What did the “lost in a mall” study lead to a better understanding of how memories are formed and stored?
• Why was were the Voodoo Correlation studies of the 1960s so controversial and what did they reveal about human behavior?
• What did showing a lack of affection in infants reveal about the need to nurture one’s young?
• What did the Kirsch Anti-Depressant reveal about the impact that harmless placebos have on humans?
• What are the potential risks of taking part in multiple health studies throughout a given year?

Great Educational Psychology Topics

• How can different technologies help students perform better at school?
• Does working in a small group help students retain more information?
• How does physical activity help students perform better on standardized tests?
• What psychological factors should teachers consider as they develop each year’s curriculum?
• In what ways do psychologists help develop confidence in students with learning disabilities?

Excellent Cultural Psychology Topics

• What are some of the most difficult cultural situations young people face?
• In what ways does developing culture roots with one’s family positively impact social behavior?
• What stresses do young people feel when they return to their native countries?
• What impact does cultural learning have on students in elementary school?
• How does family support help young people cope with difficult decisions?

Psychology Topics to Write About

• Why are adolescents more at risk of developing some type of eating disorder?
• What are the negative effects of insomnia in patients being treated in a medical facility?
• In what ways does group therapy positively impact a patient’s ability to overcome addiction?
• Why should therapists refrain from prescribing ADHD medications to children?
• What are the most effective ways of treating PTSD without using prescription medication?

Abnormal Psychology Topics

• What are the psychological effects of telling either a truth or a lie among young adults?
• What are the major causes of borderline personality disorder in teenagers?
• In what ways does the level of insanity change in patients under specific treatment?
• Why are some people more prone to suffer from personality disorders?
• Can the Oedipus complex first introduced by Freud be used in treatment today?

Developmental Psychology Research Topics

• What role does television media play in promoting violence in adults?
• What are the major psychological characteristics in a child prone to aggression?
• What are the major factors in sociopathic behavior among youth?
• What are some traditional ways of parenting that have been proven ineffective?
• What environmental factors increase the chances of child abuse by a parent?

Biological Psychology Topics

• How are cognitive diseases related to the development of certain disorders?
• How are our perceptions of the world around us affecting the way we behave?
• Can alcohol addiction and other drug-related dependencies be tied to genetics?
• Does biology prevent humans from experiencing a pure sense of free will?
• In what ways does functionalism play into biological psychology?

More Sports Psychology Topics

• What are the negative effects on the mind of exercising to lose weight?
• How is having a network of supporters important for athletic performance?
• How does the attention of PHDs affect the way people feel about sports?
• What impact do sports role models have on a youth’s development?
• Is the NCAA giving an adequate education to its student-athletes?
• What are the most effective ways of dealing with school bullying?
• What are the major causes of psychopathic tendencies in teenagers?
• How does our modern society deal with gender roles?
• What are the key characteristics that improve the abilities to learn a new language?
• Do children require a good foundation to excel academically?

Forensic Psychology Topics

• How can psychology be used to identify and put suspects on trial for certain crimes?
• How has forensic psychology assisted in the way we look at death penalty cases?
• Can psychotic disorders be reevaluated as a result of better psych understanding?
• Should mental diseases be considered in capital punishment cases?
• How would you evaluate the mitigating effects of capital cases in people?

What did you think of our list of psychology thesis topics? Our professional dissertation writers keep our list of ideas up-to-date so that students are always pushing the envelope of research in every discipline. Check back for new general psychology topics or contact us to have a list custom-made for a specific research project.

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101 Examples of Dissertation Research Topics for Psychology Students

The journey of a psychology student culminates in the all but dissertation stage and the challenging task of selecting a good dissertation topic for psychology. The decision you make at this point will set the stage for your academic and professional trajectory.

This momentous project is not just a rite of passage but an opportunity to delve deeply into a niche area of interest, contribute to a body of knowledge, and possibly even ignite a career-long pursuit. With the vast expanse of psychology stretching from the neural synapses of the brain to the complex social interactions of communities, the challenge lies not in finding a topic, but in narrowing down the multitude of possibilities!

In this article, we present an expansive list of dissertation topics for psychology students who are in the process of choosing a good dissertation topic .

The ideas provided are designed to encourage exploration of both traditional and avant-garde topics, reflecting the current trends and enduring questions that shape the evolving landscape of psychological research. From the psychological impacts of digital detox to the cognitive rehabilitation techniques for stroke survivors, these topics are designed to accommodate various interests and academic pursuits. They cater not only to a comprehensive academic challenge but also to the practical implications that such research can have on individuals, systems, and societies.

As you take a look at these suggestions, it’s important that you consider not only what interests you but also what excites you. The best dissertation topic is one that you can commit to with passion and curiosity, one that promises a journey of discovery replete with challenges and rewards.

Before we present the list of dissertation ideas for psychology students, let’s take a look at what makes a good dissertation research topic.

What Makes a Good Dissertation Research Topic for Psychology Students?

A good psychology research topic should meet several key criteria to ensure it is valuable, feasible, and has the potential to contribute to the field. Here’s an overview of the characteristics that make a research topic stand out:

• Relevance : The topic should address current issues or gaps in the field of psychology. It needs to be pertinent to contemporary debates, practices, or policies. Relevance also means that the research could have practical applications or implications, potentially informing practitioners, policymakers, or the general public.
• Originality : A good research topic brings a new perspective to a known issue or explores an understudied area. The aim is to contribute original knowledge or insights rather than replicating past studies without adding substantial value.
• Specificity : Broad topics can be overwhelming and impractical to tackle within the constraints of a typical research timeline and budget. A well-defined and focused research question allows for a more thorough and in-depth study.
• Clarity : The topic should be framed in a way that is understandable and clear. This means avoiding jargon when unnecessary and defining key terms. A clearly articulated research question guides the methodology and helps maintain focus throughout the project.
• Feasibility : This involves considering the researcher’s access to subjects, resources, and data. The research should be achievable within the given time frame and with available resources. Feasibility also concerns the ethical considerations and approval processes required for conducting research.
• Interest : A researcher’s personal interest and passion for a topic can significantly influence the quality of the research. It’s beneficial if the topic resonates with the researcher’s own scholarly interests and curiosities.
• Scope for Scientific Method : Good psychology research topics should allow for systematic investigation through accepted scientific methods. This includes the potential for hypothesis testing, operationalization of variables, and the use of statistical analysis to draw conclusions.
• Ethical Soundness : Psychology research often involves human subjects, which necessitates careful ethical consideration. A good topic should conform to ethical standards, ensuring the privacy, consent, and welfare of participants.
• Implications : Lastly, a good research topic should have clear theoretical, practical, or clinical implications. It should contribute to a greater understanding of the human mind and behavior, potentially leading to better psychological interventions or therapies.

While selecting a research topic for your dissertation is important, you should never overlook the importance of the writing and editing process. Dissertation proofreading services can help you refine your final draft and ensure it presents you in the best possible light.

101 Psychology Dissertation Ideas

• The Role of Social Media in Adolescent Mental Health: Investigate how different levels of social media use affect mood disorders in adolescents.
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Depression: Analyze the efficacy of CBT interventions in treating depression among various age groups.
• Neuroplasticity and Rehabilitation After Brain Injuries: Study how different rehabilitation techniques can affect the brain’s plasticity and recovery trajectory post-injury.
• The Psychology of Pandemics: Explore the long-term psychological impact of pandemics on different populations, focusing on coping mechanisms and resilience.
• Autism Spectrum Disorder in Adulthood: Examine the challenges and support systems available for adults with autism, including employment, social relationships, and healthcare.
• Sleep Patterns and Academic Performance: Investigate the correlation between sleep quality and academic success in college students.
• The Impact of Parenting Styles on Child Development: Analyze how different parenting styles affect a child’s emotional, social, and cognitive development.
• Workplace Psychology and Employee Well-being: Explore the effects of workplace culture on mental health and job satisfaction.
• Memory and Aging: Study the patterns of cognitive decline in memory with aging and the effectiveness of interventions to slow down this process.
• The Influence of Cultural Background on Psychological Treatment Outcomes: Research how cultural beliefs and practices affect the efficacy of psychological treatments for mental health issues.
• Psychological Resilience in First Responders: Investigate the coping strategies used by first responders to manage stress and trauma-related to their line of work.
• The Effect of Nature on Mental Health: Examine how regular exposure to natural environments influences psychological well-being and stress levels.
• Intergenerational Trauma and Healing: Study patterns of trauma transmission in families and communities and the effectiveness of interventions aimed at breaking these cycles.
• The Psychology of Fake News: Explore the cognitive biases that contribute to the belief in and spread of misinformation, and strategies for critical thinking promotion.
• Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Chronic Pain: Evaluate the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation practices in managing chronic pain and improving quality of life.
• Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Grief and Mourning: Research how different cultures process and express grief and the implications for counseling practices.
• The Impact of Bilingualism on Cognitive Development: Investigate how learning and using multiple languages from an early age affects cognitive abilities and neural plasticity.
• Social Isolation and Cognitive Function in the Elderly: Examine the long-term cognitive effects of social isolation in senior populations and potential interventions.
• Attachment Styles and Romantic Relationships: Study how early attachment patterns influence adult romantic relationships, including partner selection and relationship satisfaction.
• Cyberpsychology and Identity Formation: Investigate how online environments and social networks contribute to or disrupt the process of identity formation in adolescents and young adults.
• Emotional Regulation in High-Stress Professions: Study strategies and their effectiveness in managing emotional responses in professions such as surgery, law enforcement, or air traffic control.
• Virtual Reality as a Tool for Phobia Treatment: Explore the use of VR environments in the systematic desensitization of individuals with specific phobias.
• Influence of Dietary Patterns on Children’s Behavioral Disorders: Investigate the relationship between nutritional choices and behavioral outcomes in children with ADHD or autism spectrum disorders.
• Psychological Impacts of Climate Change: Examine the effects of climate change on mental health, including anxiety, depression, and feelings of loss or grief.
• The Role of Art Therapy in Treating PTSD: Evaluate the efficacy of art therapy interventions for veterans or victims of violence suffering from PTSD.
• Gender Identity Development in Adolescence: Research the factors that influence gender identity and expression during the critical developmental stage of adolescence.
• Cognitive Dissonance and Consumer Behavior: Study how cognitive dissonance affects purchasing decisions and brand loyalty in the retail sector.
• Psychology of Pain Management: Investigate the role of psychological factors in the perception of pain and the effectiveness of psychological pain management techniques compared to pharmacological treatments.
• Social Perception in Online vs. Face-to-Face Interactions: Compare the accuracy of social perception and formation of first impressions in online settings versus in-person encounters.
• The Impact of Social Support on Recovery from Substance Abuse: Explore how different types and sources of social support contribute to the recovery process from drug and alcohol addiction.
• Effects of Microaggressions on Workplace Performance: Investigate how subtle forms of discrimination impact employees’ job satisfaction and productivity.
• The Psychology of Financial Decision-Making in Young Adults: Explore how psychological factors influence financial literacy and decision-making in the transition to adulthood.
• The Role of Pet Ownership in Managing Chronic Mental Illness: Examine the therapeutic benefits of pet ownership for individuals with chronic mental health conditions.
• Mindfulness Interventions in Elementary Education: Study the effects of mindfulness practices on attention and emotional regulation in young children.
• Narrative Identity and Life Transitions: Analyze how personal storytelling and narrative identity evolve during major life transitions, such as retirement or career change.
• Cultural Competence in Psychotherapy: Evaluate the importance of cultural competence in therapeutic practices and client outcomes.
• Psychological Impact of Body Image Portrayed in Social Media: Explore the effects of social media on body image dissatisfaction and the development of eating disorders.
• Eco-Anxiety and Environmental Activism: Examine the psychological effects of climate change concerns on environmental activism behaviors.
• Psychological Processes in Extreme Sports: Study risk assessment, decision-making, and flow states in athletes who participate in extreme sports.
• The Effect of Music Therapy on Cognitive Decline in Dementia Patients: Research the impact of music therapy sessions on the progression of cognitive symptoms in dementia.
• Social Cognition in Virtual Teams: Evaluate how individuals understand and operate within teams that interact exclusively through digital means.
• Attachment Patterns and Social Media Usage: Investigate the connection between attachment styles and usage patterns of social media platforms.
• Psychological Safety and Learning in Academic Settings: Explore the concept of psychological safety and its impact on students’ willingness to engage in learning activities.
• Humor and Coping Mechanisms in Stressful Occupations: Analyze the role of humor as a coping strategy for professionals in high-stress fields like emergency medicine.
• Impact of Sleep Hygiene Education on Student Performance: Evaluate the effectiveness of sleep education programs in improving the sleep quality and academic performance of university students.
• Color Psychology in Marketing and Branding: Study how color influences consumer perceptions and behaviors towards products and brands.
• The Role of Psychological Flexibility in Chronic Pain Management: Explore how acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can aid individuals with chronic pain in improving their quality of life.
• Cyberbullying and Self-esteem in Adolescents: Examine the long-term effects of cyberbullying on self-esteem and identity formation during adolescence.
• Emotional Intelligence and Conflict Resolution: Investigate how emotional intelligence skills facilitate conflict resolution in personal and professional relationships.
• Digital Detox and Psychological Well-Being: Examine the psychological effects of taking regular breaks from digital devices.
• Stress Resilience in Space Exploration: Study psychological resilience strategies for astronauts during long-duration space missions.
• Language Acquisition in Mixed-Language Households: Explore how children in bilingual homes acquire and separate languages cognitively.
• The Role of Play in Child Development: Investigate different play therapies and their impact on developmental disorders in children.
• Implicit Bias and Decision Making in Jury Deliberations: Examine how implicit biases can influence the decision-making process in legal settings.
• Cognitive Effects of Chronic Sleep Deprivation: Research the long-term cognitive impacts of chronic sleep deprivation in adults.
• The Psychology of Superstitions in Sports: Study the role and impact of superstitious behaviors on athletes’ performance.
• The Mental Health Effects of Urban vs. Rural Living: Compare the prevalence and types of mental health issues in urban versus rural populations.
• Psychological Outcomes of Genetic Testing: Explore the emotional and psychological impact of undergoing genetic testing for diseases.
• Intergenerational Effects of Historical Trauma: Investigate the psychological effects across generations within communities that have experienced historical trauma.
• The Impact of Social Comparisons on Self-Esteem: Examine how individuals’ self-esteem is affected by comparisons made on social media platforms.
• Emotion Recognition and AI Interactions: Study how humans perceive and react to emotional expressions by artificial intelligences and robots.
• Personality Development in Space Colonies: Speculate on how living in space colonies might affect personality development and social dynamics.
• The Effect of Parental Leave on Child Psychological Development: Research the long-term effects of various lengths and types of parental leave on children.
• Sensory Processing Disorders and Educational Outcomes: Examine the impact of sensory processing disorders on children’s educational achievements.
• The Influence of Scent on Memory Recall: Explore the connection between olfactory cues and the accuracy or vividness of memory recall.
• Peer Influence on Risky Behavior in Adolescence: Analyze how peer groups can impact the decision-making process in teenagers regarding risky behaviors.
• The Effect of Minimalism on Mental Health: Study the psychological impact of adopting a minimalist lifestyle in a consumer-driven society.
• Psychological Mechanisms of Radicalization: Investigate the cognitive and emotional pathways that lead individuals to adopt radical ideologies.
• Multitasking and Cognitive Load: Investigate the limits of cognitive load and its impact on multitasking efficiency.
• Psychological Effects of Long-Term Spaceflight: Explore the mental challenges astronauts face during extended missions.
• Therapeutic Effects of Creative Writing: Study how creative writing can be used as a therapeutic tool for emotional expression.
• Psychology of Religious Extremism: Examine the factors that contribute to religious extremism from a psychological perspective.
• Mental Health Implications of Climate Migration: Research the psychological impact of relocating due to climate change.
• Social Psychology of Urbanization: Explore how urban living influences social behavior and community dynamics.
• Gestures and Language Development in Children: Investigate the role of gestural communication in early language acquisition.
• Technology Addiction and Family Dynamics: Study the impact of technology addiction on interpersonal relationships within families.
• Psychology of Solitude: Examine the effects of solitude on mental health and personal growth.
• Cognitive Rehabilitation Techniques for Stroke Survivors: Explore effective cognitive rehabilitation methods for post-stroke recovery.
• Impact of Prenatal Exposure to Music on Infant Development: Research the long-term developmental effects of prenatal music exposure.
• Psychological Impacts of Participatory Art: Study how engagement with participatory art can affect psychological well-being.
• Neuroethics of Brain-Computer Interfaces: Delve into the ethical implications of using BCIs in neurology and psychiatry.
• Empathy Development in Virtual Reality Training: Investigate how VR can be used to enhance empathy in professional training programs.
• Social Media and Collective Memory Formation: Examine how social media platforms influence the formation of collective memories.
• Psychological Aspects of Cosmetic Surgery: Research the motivations and outcomes of cosmetic surgery from a psychological standpoint.
• Personality Traits and Online Dating Success: Analyze how different personality traits affect success in online dating.
• Psychological Strategies in Competitive Esports: Study the mental techniques used by esports players to enhance performance.
• Attachment Security and Pet Ownership: Explore the connection between attachment styles and the bond with pets.
• Psychological Effects of Autonomous Vehicles: Investigate how trust and control issues impact the acceptance of self-driving cars.
• Mental Health Services in Rural Communities: Examine the challenges and effectiveness of delivering mental health care in rural areas.
• Cross-Cultural Communication in Global Teams: Research the psychological barriers and facilitators of communication in international teams.
• Psychology of Sustainable Behavior: Study the motivators and deterrents of engaging in environmentally sustainable behaviors.
• Impact of Witnessing Parental Conflict on Children: Investigate the long-term effects of exposure to parental conflict during childhood.
• Sleep Disorders and Emotional Regulation: Examine the relationship between sleep quality and the ability to regulate emotions.
• Trauma-Informed Practices in Education: Explore the implementation and outcomes of trauma-informed approaches in schools.
• Psychology of Menu Design: Analyze how menu layout and choice architecture influence dining decisions.
• Motivational Factors in Crowdfunding: Investigate what psychological factors motivate people to contribute to crowdfunding campaigns.
• Perception of Time in Different Cultures: Research how the cultural background affects the perception and value of time.
• Psychological Resilience in Extreme Athletes: Study the mental toughness and resilience strategies of athletes in extreme sports.
• Influence of Indoor Plants on Mood and Productivity: Explore the psychological benefits of having plants in indoor workspaces.

Each of these topics has a broad range of literature to draw from and the potential to contribute new knowledge or insights to the field of psychology. It’s important to refine these ideas further to create a specific, researchable question that can be addressed within the scope of a dissertation.

61 intriguing psychology research topics to explore

Last updated

11 January 2024

Reviewed by

Brittany Ferri, PhD, OTR/L

Short on time? Get an AI generated summary of this article instead

Psychology is an incredibly diverse, critical, and ever-changing area of study in the medical and health industries. Because of this, it’s a common area of study for students and healthcare professionals.

We’re walking you through picking the perfect topic for your upcoming paper or study. Keep reading for plenty of example topics to pique your interest and curiosity.

• How to choose a psychology research topic

Exploring a psychology-based topic for your research project? You need to pick a specific area of interest to collect compelling data. 

Use these tips to help you narrow down which psychology topics to research:

Focus on a particular area of psychology

The most effective psychological research focuses on a smaller, niche concept or disorder within the scope of a study. 

Psychology is a broad and fascinating area of science, including everything from diagnosed mental health disorders to sports performance mindset assessments. 

This gives you plenty of different avenues to explore. Having a hard time choosing? Check out our list of 61 ideas further down in this article to get started.

Read the latest clinical studies

Once you’ve picked a more niche topic to explore, you need to do your due diligence and explore other research projects on the same topic. 

This practice will help you learn more about your chosen topic, ask more specific questions, and avoid covering existing projects. 

For the best results, we recommend creating a research folder of associated published papers to reference throughout your project. This makes it much easier to cite direct references and find inspiration down the line.

Find a topic you enjoy and ask questions

Once you’ve spent time researching and collecting references for your study, you finally get to explore. 

Whether this research project is for work, school, or just for fun, having a passion for your research will make the project much more enjoyable. (Trust us, there will be times when that is the only thing that keeps you going.) 

Now you’ve decided on the topic, ask more nuanced questions you might want to explore. 

If you can, pick the direction that interests you the most to make the research process much more enjoyable.

• 61 psychology topics to research in 2024

Need some extra help starting your psychology research project on the right foot? Explore our list of 61 cutting-edge, in-demand psychology research topics to use as a starting point for your research journey.

• Psychology research topics for university students

As a university student, it can be hard to pick a research topic that fits the scope of your classes and is still compelling and unique. 

Here are a few exciting topics we recommend exploring for your next assigned research project:

Mental health in post-secondary students

Seeking post-secondary education is a stressful and overwhelming experience for most students, making this topic a great choice to explore for your in-class research paper. 

Examples of post-secondary mental health research topics include:

Student mental health status during exam season

Mental health disorder prevalence based on study major

The impact of chronic school stress on overall quality of life

The impacts of cyberbullying

Cyberbullying can occur at all ages, starting as early as elementary school and carrying through into professional workplaces. 

Examples of cyberbullying-based research topics you can study include:

The impact of cyberbullying on self-esteem

Common reasons people engage in cyberbullying 

Cyberbullying themes and commonly used terms

Cyberbullying habits in children vs. adults

The long-term effects of cyberbullying

• Clinical psychology research topics

If you’re looking to take a more clinical approach to your next project, here are a few topics that involve direct patient assessment for you to consider:

Chronic pain and mental health

Living with chronic pain dramatically impacts every aspect of a person’s life, including their mental and emotional health. 

Here are a few examples of in-demand pain-related psychology research topics:

The connection between diabetic neuropathy and depression

Neurological pain and its connection to mental health disorders

Efficacy of meditation and mindfulness for pain management

The long-term effects of insomnia

Insomnia is where you have difficulty falling or staying asleep. It’s a common health concern that impacts millions of people worldwide. 

This is an excellent topic because insomnia can have a variety of causes, offering many research possibilities. 

Here are a few compelling psychology research topics about insomnia you could investigate:

The prevalence of insomnia based on age, gender, and ethnicity

Insomnia and its impact on workplace productivity

The connection between insomnia and mental health disorders

Efficacy and use of melatonin supplements for insomnia

The risks and benefits of prescription insomnia medications

Lifestyle options for managing insomnia symptoms

The efficacy of mental health treatment options

Management and treatment of mental health conditions is an ever-changing area of study. If you can witness or participate in mental health therapies, this can make a great research project. 

Examples of mental health treatment-related psychology research topics include:

The efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for patients with severe anxiety

The benefits and drawbacks of group vs. individual therapy sessions

Music therapy for mental health disorders

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for patients with depression 

• Controversial psychology research paper topics

If you are looking to explore a more cutting-edge or modern psychology topic, you can delve into a variety of controversial and topical options:

The impact of social media and digital platforms

Ever since access to internet forums and video games became more commonplace, there’s been growing concern about the impact these digital platforms have on mental health. 

Examples of social media and video game-related psychology research topics include:

The effect of edited images on self-confidence

How social media platforms impact social behavior

Video games and their impact on teenage anger and violence

Digital communication and the rapid spread of misinformation

The development of digital friendships

Psychotropic medications for mental health

In recent years, the interest in using psychoactive medications to treat and manage health conditions has increased despite their inherently controversial nature. 

Examples of psychotropic medication-related research topics include:

The risks and benefits of using psilocybin mushrooms for managing anxiety

The impact of marijuana on early-onset psychosis

Childhood marijuana use and related prevalence of mental health conditions

Ketamine and its use for complex PTSD (C-PTSD) symptom management

The effect of long-term psychedelic use and mental health conditions

• Mental health disorder research topics

As one of the most popular subsections of psychology, studying mental health disorders and how they impact quality of life is an essential and impactful area of research. 

While studies in these areas are common, there’s always room for additional exploration, including the following hot-button topics:

Anxiety and depression disorders

Anxiety and depression are well-known and heavily researched mental health disorders. 

Despite this, we still don’t know many things about these conditions, making them great candidates for psychology research projects:

Social anxiety and its connection to chronic loneliness

C-PTSD symptoms and causes

The development of phobias

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) behaviors and symptoms

Depression triggers and causes

Self-care tools and resources for depression

The prevalence of anxiety and depression in particular age groups or geographic areas

Bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder is a complex and multi-faceted area of psychology research. 

Use your research skills to learn more about this condition and its impact by choosing any of the following topics:

Early signs of bipolar disorder

The incidence of bipolar disorder in young adults

The efficacy of existing bipolar treatment options

Bipolar medication side effects

Cognitive behavioral therapy for people with bipolar 

Schizoaffective disorder

Schizoaffective disorder is often stigmatized, and less common mental health disorders are a hotbed for new and exciting research. 

Here are a few examples of interesting research topics related to this mental health disorder:

The prevalence of schizoaffective disorder by certain age groups or geographic locations

Risk factors for developing schizoaffective disorder

The prevalence and content of auditory and visual hallucinations

Alternative therapies for schizoaffective disorder

• Societal and systematic psychology research topics

Modern society’s impact is deeply enmeshed in our mental and emotional health on a personal and community level. 

Here are a few examples of societal and systemic psychology research topics to explore in more detail:

Access to mental health services

While mental health awareness has risen over the past few decades, access to quality mental health treatment and resources is still not equitable. 

This can significantly impact the severity of a person’s mental health symptoms, which can result in worse health outcomes if left untreated. 

Explore this crucial issue and provide information about the need for improved mental health resource access by studying any of the following topics:

Rural vs. urban access to mental health resources

Access to crisis lines by location

Wait times for emergency mental health services

Inequities in mental health access based on income and location

Insurance coverage for mental health services

Systemic racism and mental health

Societal systems and the prevalence of systemic racism heavily impact every aspect of a person’s overall health.

Researching these topics draws attention to existing problems and contributes valuable insights into ways to improve access to care moving forward.

Examples of systemic racism-related psychology research topics include: 

Access to mental health resources based on race

The prevalence of BIPOC mental health therapists in a chosen area

The impact of systemic racism on mental health and self-worth

Racism training for mental health workers

The prevalence of mental health disorders in discriminated groups

LGBTQIA+ mental health concerns

Research about LGBTQIA+ people and their mental health needs is a unique area of study to explore for your next research project. It’s a commonly overlooked and underserved community.

Examples of LGBTQIA+ psychology research topics to consider include:

Mental health supports for queer teens and children

The impact of queer safe spaces on mental health

The prevalence of mental health disorders in the LGBTQIA+ community

The benefits of queer mentorship and found family

Substance misuse in LQBTQIA+ youth and adults

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50+ Research Topics for Psychology Papers

How to Find Psychology Research Topics for Your Student Paper

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Steven Gans, MD is board-certified in psychiatry and is an active supervisor, teacher, and mentor at Massachusetts General Hospital.

• Specific Branches of Psychology
• Topics Involving a Disorder or Type of Therapy
• Human Cognition
• Human Development
• Critique of Publications
• Famous Experiments
• Historical Figures
• Specific Careers
• Case Studies
• Literature Reviews
• Your Own Study/Experiment

Are you searching for a great topic for your psychology paper ? Sometimes it seems like coming up with topics of psychology research is more challenging than the actual research and writing. Fortunately, there are plenty of great places to find inspiration and the following list contains just a few ideas to help get you started.

Finding a solid topic is one of the most important steps when writing any type of paper. It can be particularly important when you are writing a psychology research paper or essay. Psychology is such a broad topic, so you want to find a topic that allows you to adequately cover the subject without becoming overwhelmed with information.

I can always tell when a student really cares about the topic they chose; it comes through in the writing. My advice is to choose a topic that genuinely interests you, so you’ll be more motivated to do thorough research.

In some cases, such as in a general psychology class, you might have the option to select any topic from within psychology's broad reach. Other instances, such as in an  abnormal psychology  course, might require you to write your paper on a specific subject such as a psychological disorder.

As you begin your search for a topic for your psychology paper, it is first important to consider the guidelines established by your instructor.

Research Topics Within Specific Branches of Psychology

The key to selecting a good topic for your psychology paper is to select something that is narrow enough to allow you to really focus on the subject, but not so narrow that it is difficult to find sources or information to write about.

One approach is to narrow your focus down to a subject within a specific branch of psychology. For example, you might start by deciding that you want to write a paper on some sort of social psychology topic. Next, you might narrow your focus down to how persuasion can be used to influence behavior .

Other social psychology topics you might consider include:

• Prejudice and discrimination (i.e., homophobia, sexism, racism)
• Social cognition
• Person perception
• Social control and cults
• Persuasion, propaganda, and marketing
• Attraction, romance, and love
• Nonverbal communication
• Prosocial behavior

Psychology Research Topics Involving a Disorder or Type of Therapy

Exploring a psychological disorder or a specific treatment modality can also be a good topic for a psychology paper. Some potential abnormal psychology topics include specific psychological disorders or particular treatment modalities, including:

• Eating disorders
• Borderline personality disorder
• Seasonal affective disorder
• Schizophrenia
• Antisocial personality disorder
• Profile a  type of therapy  (i.e., cognitive-behavioral therapy, group therapy, psychoanalytic therapy)

Topics of Psychology Research Related to Human Cognition

Some of the possible topics you might explore in this area include thinking, language, intelligence, and decision-making. Other ideas might include:

• False memories
• Speech disorders
• Problem-solving

Topics of Psychology Research Related to Human Development

In this area, you might opt to focus on issues pertinent to  early childhood  such as language development, social learning, or childhood attachment or you might instead opt to concentrate on issues that affect older adults such as dementia or Alzheimer's disease.

Some other topics you might consider include:

• Language acquisition
• Media violence and children
• Learning disabilities
• Gender roles
• Child abuse
• Prenatal development
• Parenting styles
• Aspects of the aging process

Do a Critique of Publications Involving Psychology Research Topics

One option is to consider writing a critique paper of a published psychology book or academic journal article. For example, you might write a critical analysis of Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams or you might evaluate a more recent book such as Philip Zimbardo's  The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil .

Professional and academic journals are also great places to find materials for a critique paper. Browse through the collection at your university library to find titles devoted to the subject that you are most interested in, then look through recent articles until you find one that grabs your attention.

Topics of Psychology Research Related to Famous Experiments

There have been many fascinating and groundbreaking experiments throughout the history of psychology, providing ample material for students looking for an interesting term paper topic. In your paper, you might choose to summarize the experiment, analyze the ethics of the research, or evaluate the implications of the study. Possible experiments that you might consider include:

• The Milgram Obedience Experiment
• The Stanford Prison Experiment
• The Little Albert Experiment
• Pavlov's Conditioning Experiments
• The Asch Conformity Experiment
• Harlow's Rhesus Monkey Experiments

Topics of Psychology Research About Historical Figures

One of the simplest ways to find a great topic is to choose an interesting person in the  history of psychology  and write a paper about them. Your paper might focus on many different elements of the individual's life, such as their biography, professional history, theories, or influence on psychology.

While this type of paper may be historical in nature, there is no need for this assignment to be dry or boring. Psychology is full of fascinating figures rife with intriguing stories and anecdotes. Consider such famous individuals as Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner, Harry Harlow, or one of the many other  eminent psychologists .

Psychology Research Topics About a Specific Career

​Another possible topic, depending on the course in which you are enrolled, is to write about specific career paths within the  field of psychology . This type of paper is especially appropriate if you are exploring different subtopics or considering which area interests you the most.

In your paper, you might opt to explore the typical duties of a psychologist, how much people working in these fields typically earn, and the different employment options that are available.

Topics of Psychology Research Involving Case Studies

One potentially interesting idea is to write a  psychology case study  of a particular individual or group of people. In this type of paper, you will provide an in-depth analysis of your subject, including a thorough biography.

Generally, you will also assess the person, often using a major psychological theory such as  Piaget's stages of cognitive development  or  Erikson's eight-stage theory of human development . It is also important to note that your paper doesn't necessarily have to be about someone you know personally.

In fact, many professors encourage students to write case studies on historical figures or fictional characters from books, television programs, or films.

Psychology Research Topics Involving Literature Reviews

Another possibility that would work well for a number of psychology courses is to do a literature review of a specific topic within psychology. A literature review involves finding a variety of sources on a particular subject, then summarizing and reporting on what these sources have to say about the topic.

Literature reviews are generally found in the  introduction  of journal articles and other  psychology papers , but this type of analysis also works well for a full-scale psychology term paper.

Topics of Psychology Research Based on Your Own Study or Experiment

Many psychology courses require students to design an actual psychological study or perform some type of experiment. In some cases, students simply devise the study and then imagine the possible results that might occur. In other situations, you may actually have the opportunity to collect data, analyze your findings, and write up your results.

Finding a topic for your study can be difficult, but there are plenty of great ways to come up with intriguing ideas. Start by considering your own interests as well as subjects you have studied in the past.

Online sources, newspaper articles, books , journal articles, and even your own class textbook are all great places to start searching for topics for your experiments and psychology term papers. Before you begin, learn more about  how to conduct a psychology experiment .

What This Means For You

After looking at this brief list of possible topics for psychology papers, it is easy to see that psychology is a very broad and diverse subject. While this variety makes it possible to find a topic that really catches your interest, it can sometimes make it very difficult for some students to select a good topic.

If you are still stumped by your assignment, ask your instructor for suggestions and consider a few from this list for inspiration.

• Hockenbury, SE & Nolan, SA. Psychology. New York: Worth Publishers; 2014.
• Santrock, JW. A Topical Approach to Lifespan Development. New York: McGraw-Hill Education; 2016.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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Educational Psychology Dissertation Topics

Published by Owen Ingram at January 3rd, 2023 , Revised On August 11, 2023

Finding engaging educational psychology dissertation ideas can be really time-consuming particularly if you haven’t been through this process previously. -. Every student is not particularly adept at creating a unique dissertation topic .  Educational psychology is one of the most challenging subject areas, and finding the right topic for writing a dissertation can be challenging.

Here is a list of the best educational psychology dissertation topics for you to choose from. These top educational psychology dissertation topic ideas will help you complete your dissertation on a unique and intriguing topic that would help you advance your academic career.

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List of Educational Psychology Dissertation Topics

• A comparison of the effects of college and school counselling on students’ mental health in the UK.
• University of Bedfordshire analysis of cultural differences in how people view learning.
• Study the relationship between studying time and academic performance in college students compared to university students.
• A thorough investigation of social and emotional learning in UK primary education.
• A case study compared the performance of school-age kids and teenagers in the UK according to their ethnicity, race, and religion.
• An analysis of how technology is used in classrooms and how that affects students’ learning in the UK.
• The relationship between toddlers’ social abilities and a norm-referenced theory of mind measure.
• A mixed-methods study of the UK’s university students’ subjective well-being and classroom support.
• Examine the coping mechanisms and treatment hurdles of a middle school teenager with a severe anxiety problem in the United Kingdom.
• An analysis of how teaching children arithmetic concepts early on can improve their performance in higher-level courses.
• The association between self-motivation and academic achievement at the university level in the United Kingdom.
• The investigation of the links between parental traits and the detrimental effects of classroom peer pressure on children in playgroups in the United Kingdom.
• Nonverbal communication and neurolinguistics programming in the educational process.
• The pros and cons of learning a language through immersion and communication.
• The contribution of smartphones and computers to children’s motor skill development.
• There is a connection between academic performance and the quantity of time spent studying.
• The impact of parents’ language abilities on their deaf children’s development.
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of encouraging support and acknowledgement in special education?
• What function does technology play in a classroom, and how does that impact students’ learning?
• It may affect secondary-level student achievement when parents are strict, and there is little school discipline.
• The distinction between bullying and peer aggression in practice trends may change or develop.
• Self-motivation and academic accomplishment levels are related.
• Memorization and concept building in education are two different things.
• You can research every aspect of schooling, including disparities in pupils and motivation for studying.
• Collaborative Learning with a Geometry Video Game: The Importance of Game Design and Elaboration for Learning and Motivation.

It takes a lot of time and effort to develop a dissertation topic in educational psychology. The more thoroughly you research your ideas, the easier it will be to succeed. The topic you choose must also be engaging. Your educational psychology dissertation topic should address all development difficulties, such as self-concept, self-regulation, environmental factors, motivation, knowledge, and cognitive development.

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To find educational psychology dissertation topics:

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• Identify educational challenges.
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• Consider socio-cultural factors.
• Investigate student motivation and behavior.
• Select a topic aligning with your passion and research goals.

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Look at some of the potential healthcare dissertation topics mentioned below to take an idea for starting your dissertation.

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List of 150+ Psychology Dissertation Topics and Ideas to Write About

Updated 18 Apr 2024

Starting your psychology dissertation is like unlocking a treasure trove of fascinating discoveries. Psychology, the study of how our minds work and why we behave the way we do, offers a wide array of topics to explore. However, for researchers, finding that perfect topic can be a daunting task. It's crucial to choose a dissertation topic in a subject not only of personal interest but also one where fresh insights can be gained.

To help you get started with brainstorming psychology dissertation topics, we have developed a list of the latest topics that can be used for writing your paper. We cover everything from cognitive psychology, and clinical psychology to how we think and act in social situations. This list is here to spark your creativity and help you find a topic that really speaks to you. So, let's dive into the amazing world of psychology together!

Top 30 psychology dissertation topics

• The impact of social media on body image and self-esteem.
• The effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques in the workplace.
• The role of parental involvement in children's academic achievement and emotional well-being.
• The influence of sleep quality on cognitive functioning and mental health.
• The psychological effects of chronic pain on quality of life and mental health.
• The impact of bullying on adolescent mental health and academic performance.
• The effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy in treating anxiety disorders.
• The role of emotional intelligence in leadership and organizational success.
• The impact of aging on memory and cognitive decline: Prevention strategies.
• The relationship between personality traits and coping mechanisms during stress.
• The effects of virtual reality therapy on phobia treatment outcomes.
• The influence of childhood trauma on adult psychological disorders.
• The role of genetics versus environment in the development of personality.
• The impact of exercise on depression and anxiety in adults.
• The psychological effects of unemployment on individuals and their families.
• The role of psychological resilience in overcoming adversity.
• The effectiveness of art therapy for individuals with PTSD.
• The impact of social support systems on recovery from mental illness.
• The relationship between job satisfaction and mental health among employees.
• The influence of cultural factors on the manifestation and treatment of mental illnesses.
• The role of technology in enhancing cognitive development in children.
• The impact of meditation and yoga on mental health and cognitive function.
• The relationship between stress, inflammation, and chronic diseases.
• The psychological implications of infertility on couples.
• The effectiveness of peer support groups in mental health recovery.
• The role of psychoeducation in managing bipolar disorder.
• The impact of attachment styles on romantic relationship satisfaction.
• The influence of media violence on aggressive behavior in children.
• The role of self-compassion in mental health and well-being.
• The effectiveness of online therapy platforms in providing mental health support.

Social psychology dissertation topics

There are countless possible topics that one can explore when it comes to Social Psychology Dissertation Ideas, which delve into the way individuals behave within social contexts. Some interesting areas to consider include investigating how self-esteem is affected by social media, analyzing the influence of conformity on group decision-making, or investigating how stereotype threat can impact academic performance.

• The influence of group identity on individual decision-making processes.
• The impact of social norms on environmentally friendly behaviors.
• The role of social media in shaping political opinions and activism.
• The effects of stereotype threat on academic performance among minorities.
• The psychological mechanisms behind conformity and disobedience.
• The impact of first impressions on interpersonal relationships.
• The role of empathy in reducing intergroup conflicts.
• The influence of cultural diversity on team dynamics and performance.
• The psychological effects of perceived social isolation in the digital age.
• The role of social support in the recovery process of addiction.
• The impact of parental attitudes on the development of children's prejudice.
• The influence of social comparison on self-esteem and body image.
• The role of communication in maintaining long-distance relationships.
• The psychological effects of crowd behavior and mass gatherings.
• The impact of social exclusion on mental health and behavior.
• The role of social identity in consumer behavior and brand loyalty.
• The influence of societal expectations on gender roles and identity.
• The psychological mechanisms behind altruism and prosocial behavior.
• The effects of social media on relationship satisfaction and longevity.
• The role of group dynamics in organizational change and innovation.

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Clinical psychology dissertation ideas

• The effectiveness of dialectical behavior therapy in treating borderline personality disorder.
• The role of early intervention in preventing the development of psychosis.
• The impact of therapeutic alliance on treatment outcomes in psychotherapy.
• The effectiveness of exposure therapy in treating obsessive-compulsive disorder.
• The role of family therapy in the treatment of eating disorders.
• The impact of neuropsychological assessment in diagnosing Alzheimer's disease.
• The effectiveness of cognitive remediation therapy for schizophrenia.
• The role of psychological interventions in managing chronic pain.
• The impact of attachment-based therapy on adult attachment styles.
• The effectiveness of motivational interviewing in substance abuse treatment.
• The role of psychoeducation in improving outcomes for bipolar disorder patients.
• The impact of trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy on PTSD symptoms.
• The effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions in treating depression.
• The role of psychological support in enhancing cancer patients' quality of life.
• The impact of cognitive-behavioral therapy on anxiety disorders in children.
• The effectiveness of play therapy in addressing behavioral issues in children.
• The role of lifestyle interventions in managing symptoms of ADHD.
• The impact of sleep interventions on mental health disorders.
• The effectiveness of group therapy in treating social anxiety disorder.
• The role of positive psychology interventions in enhancing well-being and resilience.

Personality psychology dissertation topics 

• The influence of personality traits on career success and job satisfaction.
• The role of resilience in coping with life stressors among different personality types.
• The impact of social media on personality development in adolescents.
• The relationship between personality disorders and criminal behavior.
• The effectiveness of personality assessments in organizational settings.
• The influence of birth order on personality traits and family dynamics.
• The role of genetics and environment in shaping personality.
• The impact of personality traits on romantic relationship satisfaction and longevity.
• The relationship between personality traits and coping mechanisms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The influence of personality on consumer behavior and marketing strategies.
• The role of personality in leadership effectiveness and team dynamics.
• The impact of mindfulness practices on personality traits and emotional well-being.
• The relationship between personality traits and academic achievement.
• The effectiveness of psychotherapy interventions in modifying maladaptive personality traits.
• The influence of cultural factors on personality development and expression.
• The role of personality in the development and maintenance of psychological disorders.
• The impact of early life experiences on adult personality structure.
• The relationship between personality traits and physical health outcomes.
• The influence of personality on social networking site usage and online behaviors.
• The role of personality in resilience and recovery from trauma.

Cognitive psychology dissertation ideas

Cognitive psychology is a sub-field of psychology that delves into mental processes, including attention, perception, memory, and problem-solving. Students looking for dissertation ideas in this area can explore topics such as the effects of cognitive biases on decision-making, the interplay between emotions and cognitive processes, and the impact of technology on cognitive development. Let's look at a few of them!

• The effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive functions and decision-making.
• The role of attention in the perception of visual illusions.
• The impact of aging on memory retention and retrieval processes.
• The effectiveness of cognitive training programs in enhancing brain function.
• The relationship between language development and cognitive growth in children.
• The influence of emotion on memory formation and recall.
• The cognitive processes involved in problem-solving and creativity.
• The effects of digital technology usage on attention span and cognitive control.
• The role of working memory in multitasking abilities.
• The impact of stress on cognitive functions and mental flexibility.
• The relationship between cognitive styles and learning outcomes.
• The cognitive mechanisms of false memories and their implications.
• The effects of bilingualism on cognitive flexibility and executive function.
• The role of perception in decision-making and judgment.
• The impact of mindfulness meditation on cognitive processes and mental health.
• The relationship between cognitive biases and social perception.
• The cognitive underpinnings of phobias and fear responses.
• The effects of music on cognitive performance and mood regulation.
• The role of cognitive dissonance in attitude change and decision-making.
• The impact of neurofeedback training on cognitive enhancement.

Dissertation topics in counseling psychology

Dissertation topics in counseling psychology investigate the psychological and social factors that influence human behavior and explore ways in which counseling can promote mental health and well-being. Common areas of focus include the effectiveness of counseling interventions, the role of diversity in counseling, and the impact of trauma on mental health.

• The effectiveness of online counseling services in reducing symptoms of depression.
• The role of cultural competence in counseling diverse populations.
• The impact of counselor self-disclosure on therapeutic alliance and client outcomes.
• The role of mindfulness in enhancing therapeutic outcomes in counseling.
• The impact of childhood trauma on adult mental health and counseling strategies.
• The effectiveness of expressive arts therapy in treating PTSD.
• The role of family counseling in addressing adolescent behavioral problems.
• The impact of grief counseling on coping with bereavement.
• The effectiveness of career counseling in improving job satisfaction and career development.
• The role of counseling in managing chronic illness and improving quality of life.
• The impact of counseling interventions on reducing substance abuse relapse rates.
• The effectiveness of marriage and relationship counseling on relationship satisfaction.
• The role of positive psychology interventions in counseling practice.
• The impact of counseling on improving self-esteem and body image.
• The effectiveness of trauma-informed counseling approaches.
• The role of counseling in supporting LGBTQ+ individuals.
• The impact of counselor training on empathy and client satisfaction.
• The effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy in counseling settings.
• The role of counseling in addressing internet and gaming addiction.

Dissertation topics in industrial psychology

Industrial psychology dissertation topics typically center around the application of psychological theories and principles in the workplace to enhance employee performance, motivation, and overall well-being. Possible subject matters may cover leadership skills acquisition, personnel training and development, job satisfaction, and achieving a healthy work-life balance.

• The impact of organizational culture on employee motivation and productivity.
• The effectiveness of leadership development programs on leadership skills and organizational outcomes.
• The role of work-life balance initiatives in reducing employee burnout and turnover.
• The impact of team diversity on innovation and performance in the workplace.
• The effectiveness of performance appraisal systems in enhancing employee performance.
• The role of psychological safety in promoting team learning and collaboration.
• The impact of employee engagement strategies on organizational commitment and loyalty.
• The effectiveness of conflict resolution training in improving workplace relationships.
• The role of organizational justice in employee satisfaction and trust.
• The impact of telecommuting on employee productivity and job satisfaction.
• The effectiveness of reward systems in motivating employee performance.
• The role of emotional intelligence in leadership effectiveness.
• The impact of workplace bullying on employee mental health and organizational climate.
• The effectiveness of training programs in reducing workplace accidents and injuries.
• The role of job design in enhancing job satisfaction and performance.
• The impact of corporate social responsibility on employee engagement and organizational reputation.
• The effectiveness of mentoring programs in career development and succession planning.
• The role of organizational change management in successful business transformations.
• The impact of technology on job satisfaction and employee well-being.
• The effectiveness of workplace wellness programs in improving employee health and reducing healthcare costs.

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Forensic psychology dissertation ideas

When it comes to forensic psychology dissertation ideas, the common themes usually involve the intersection between psychology and the criminal justice system. Prospective areas of investigation may include dissecting the psychological makeup of offenders, exploring the intricacies of eyewitness testimony and memory, delving into the psychology behind jury decision-making, and examining the evaluation and treatment of criminal offenders.

• The effectiveness of risk assessment tools in predicting violent reoffending.
• The role of psychological profiling in solving criminal cases.
• The impact of eyewitness testimony reliability on jury decision-making.
• The effectiveness of rehabilitation programs in reducing recidivism among juvenile offenders.
• The role of mental illness in criminal defense and sentencing.
• The impact of victim impact statements on sentencing outcomes in criminal trials.
• The effectiveness of sex offender treatment programs in preventing reoffending.
• The role of forensic psychology in child custody evaluations.
• The impact of police interrogation techniques on false confessions.
• The effectiveness of diversion programs in addressing mental health issues among offenders.
• The role of psychological factors in the development of criminal behavior.
• The impact of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on law enforcement officers.
• The effectiveness of restorative justice programs in victim and offender rehabilitation.
• The role of psychology in understanding and preventing terrorism.
• The impact of substance abuse on criminal behavior and legal outcomes.
• The effectiveness of psychological interventions in managing aggression in prison populations.
• The role of forensic psychology in assessing competency to stand trial.
• The impact of childhood trauma on adult criminality.
• The effectiveness of psychological support services for crime victims.
• The role of psychology in ethical issues and decision-making in forensic settings.

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Reading Sample Theses

As you prepare for your thesis, you might want to get a sense of what you can accomplish in your finished product. Reading past theses can show you the scope and nature of well-done undergraduate projects. Because theses in different areas of psychology often look quite different, it will help you to examine several in the same general area you plan to conduct your research in.

The Psychology Undergraduate Office has hard copies of several prize-winning theses from the past five years that you may sign out to see what the best undergraduate work looks like. Above, you can browse the titles of past undergraduate theses to give you an idea of the topics of theses students typically write.

Only hard copies of recent prize-winning theses are currently available.

Please note: Recent theses stored in the Social Relations Library (which recently closed) are unavailable. Inquirers needing a thesis that is not listed in HOLLIS should contact the authors of theses directly to attempt to obtain a copy.  

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College of Education and Human Development

Department of Educational Psychology

Research Topics & Ideas: Mental Health

100+ Mental Health Research Topic Ideas To Fast-Track Your Project

If you’re just starting out exploring mental health topics for your dissertation, thesis or research project, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’ll help kickstart your research topic ideation process by providing a hearty list of mental health-related research topics and ideas.

PS – This is just the start…

We know it’s exciting to run through a list of research topics, but please keep in mind that this list is just a starting point . To develop a suitable education-related research topic, you’ll need to identify a clear and convincing research gap , and a viable plan of action to fill that gap.

If this sounds foreign to you, check out our free research topic webinar that explores how to find and refine a high-quality research topic, from scratch. Alternatively, if you’d like hands-on help, consider our 1-on-1 coaching service .

Overview: Mental Health Topic Ideas

• Mood disorders
• Anxiety disorders
• Psychotic disorders
• Personality disorders
• Obsessive-compulsive disorders
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Neurodevelopmental disorders
• Eating disorders
• Substance-related disorders

Mood Disorders

Research in mood disorders can help understand their causes and improve treatment methods. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

• The impact of genetics on the susceptibility to depression
• Efficacy of antidepressants vs. cognitive behavioural therapy
• The role of gut microbiota in mood regulation
• Cultural variations in the experience and diagnosis of bipolar disorder
• Seasonal Affective Disorder: Environmental factors and treatment
• The link between depression and chronic illnesses
• Exercise as an adjunct treatment for mood disorders
• Hormonal changes and mood swings in postpartum women
• Stigma around mood disorders in the workplace
• Suicidal tendencies among patients with severe mood disorders

Anxiety Disorders

Research topics in this category can potentially explore the triggers, coping mechanisms, or treatment efficacy for anxiety disorders.

• The relationship between social media and anxiety
• Exposure therapy effectiveness in treating phobias
• Generalised Anxiety Disorder in children: Early signs and interventions
• The role of mindfulness in treating anxiety
• Genetics and heritability of anxiety disorders
• The link between anxiety disorders and heart disease
• Anxiety prevalence in LGBTQ+ communities
• Caffeine consumption and its impact on anxiety levels
• The economic cost of untreated anxiety disorders
• Virtual Reality as a treatment method for anxiety disorders

Psychotic Disorders

Within this space, your research topic could potentially aim to investigate the underlying factors and treatment possibilities for psychotic disorders.

• Early signs and interventions in adolescent psychosis
• Brain imaging techniques for diagnosing psychotic disorders
• The efficacy of antipsychotic medication
• The role of family history in psychotic disorders
• Misdiagnosis and delayed treatment of psychotic disorders
• Co-morbidity of psychotic and mood disorders
• The relationship between substance abuse and psychotic disorders
• Art therapy as a treatment for schizophrenia
• Public perception and stigma around psychotic disorders
• Hospital vs. community-based care for psychotic disorders

Personality Disorders

Research topics within in this area could delve into the identification, management, and social implications of personality disorders.

• Long-term outcomes of borderline personality disorder
• Antisocial personality disorder and criminal behaviour
• The role of early life experiences in developing personality disorders
• Narcissistic personality disorder in corporate leaders
• Gender differences in personality disorders
• Diagnosis challenges for Cluster A personality disorders
• Emotional intelligence and its role in treating personality disorders
• Psychotherapy methods for treating personality disorders
• Personality disorders in the elderly population
• Stigma and misconceptions about personality disorders

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders

Within this space, research topics could focus on the causes, symptoms, or treatment of disorders like OCD and hoarding.

• OCD and its relationship with anxiety disorders
• Cognitive mechanisms behind hoarding behaviour
• Deep Brain Stimulation as a treatment for severe OCD
• The impact of OCD on academic performance in students
• Role of family and social networks in treating OCD
• Alternative treatments for hoarding disorder
• Childhood onset OCD: Diagnosis and treatment
• OCD and religious obsessions
• The impact of OCD on family dynamics
• Body Dysmorphic Disorder: Causes and treatment

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Research topics in this area could explore the triggers, symptoms, and treatments for PTSD. Here are some thought starters to get you moving.

• PTSD in military veterans: Coping mechanisms and treatment
• Childhood trauma and adult onset PTSD
• Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) efficacy
• Role of emotional support animals in treating PTSD
• Gender differences in PTSD occurrence and treatment
• Effectiveness of group therapy for PTSD patients
• PTSD and substance abuse: A dual diagnosis
• First responders and rates of PTSD
• Domestic violence as a cause of PTSD
• The neurobiology of PTSD

Neurodevelopmental Disorders

This category of mental health aims to better understand disorders like Autism and ADHD and their impact on day-to-day life.

• Early diagnosis and interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorder
• ADHD medication and its impact on academic performance
• Parental coping strategies for children with neurodevelopmental disorders
• Autism and gender: Diagnosis disparities
• The role of diet in managing ADHD symptoms
• Neurodevelopmental disorders in the criminal justice system
• Genetic factors influencing Autism
• ADHD and its relationship with sleep disorders
• Educational adaptations for children with neurodevelopmental disorders
• Neurodevelopmental disorders and stigma in schools

Eating Disorders

Research topics within this space can explore the psychological, social, and biological aspects of eating disorders.

• The role of social media in promoting eating disorders
• Family dynamics and their impact on anorexia
• Biological basis of binge-eating disorder
• Treatment outcomes for bulimia nervosa
• Eating disorders in athletes
• Media portrayal of body image and its impact
• Eating disorders and gender: Are men underdiagnosed?
• Cultural variations in eating disorders
• The relationship between obesity and eating disorders
• Eating disorders in the LGBTQ+ community

Substance-Related Disorders

Research topics in this category can focus on addiction mechanisms, treatment options, and social implications.

• Efficacy of rehabilitation centres for alcohol addiction
• The role of genetics in substance abuse
• Substance abuse and its impact on family dynamics
• Prescription drug abuse among the elderly
• Legalisation of marijuana and its impact on substance abuse rates
• Alcoholism and its relationship with liver diseases
• Opioid crisis: Causes and solutions
• Substance abuse education in schools: Is it effective?
• Harm reduction strategies for drug abuse
• Co-occurring mental health disorders in substance abusers

Choosing A Research Topic

These research topic ideas we’ve covered here serve as thought starters to help you explore different areas within mental health. They are intentionally very broad and open-ended. By engaging with the currently literature in your field of interest, you’ll be able to narrow down your focus to a specific research gap .

It’s important to consider a variety of factors when choosing a topic for your dissertation or thesis . Think about the relevance of the topic, its feasibility , and the resources available to you, including time, data, and academic guidance. Also, consider your own interest and expertise in the subject, as this will sustain you through the research process.

Always consult with your academic advisor to ensure that your chosen topic aligns with academic requirements and offers a meaningful contribution to the field. If you need help choosing a topic, consider our private coaching service.

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Good morning everyone. This are very patent topics for research in neuroscience. Thank you for guidance

What if everything is important, original and intresting? as in Neuroscience. I find myself overwhelmd with tens of relveant areas and within each area many optional topics. I ask myself if importance (for example – able to treat people suffering) is more relevant than what intrest me, and on the other hand if what advance me further in my career should not also be a consideration?

This information is really helpful and have learnt alot

Phd research topics on implementation of mental health policy in Nigeria :the prospects, challenges and way forward.

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• Bouvé College of Health Sciences Theses and Dissertations
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• School Psychology Dissertations

School Psychology Dissertations Collection

http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20233667

Acceptability And Outcomes Of A Guided-meditation Intervention For School-age Second Language Learners

A comparison of two sight word interventions: traditional drill and wordsheets.

Effects of a class-wide positive peer reporting intervention on middle school student behavior

Enhancing the play and commenting abilities of toddlers with autism spectrum disorders through caregiver-implemented teaching of play

Evaluation of a parent-administered computer-assisted tutoring program targeting letter sound knowledge in preschool-aged children

Evaluation of the ISIS teacher rating form: reliability, validity, and classification accuracy.

Examining changes in appropriate social behaviors during school lunch using the lunchtime behavior game

Examining social development in young children within a natural play context

Examining the influence of interval and observation length on the dependability of data

An exploratory study of young bilingual and monolingual children's play in a naturalistic setting

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Digital Commons @ USF > College of Arts and Sciences > Psychology > Theses and Dissertations

Psychology Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2023 2023.

Improving the Subjective Well-Being of Autistic Youth Utilizing a Positive Psychology Intervention , Nicolette Bauermeister

An Experimental Study of Negative Performance Feedback: Consideration of a Cognitive Pathway and Individual Difference Factors , Ansley M. Bender

A Critical Analysis of the Graduate Socialization of Racially Minoritized School Psychology Students , Tatiana J. Broughton

The Influence of COVID-19 on Tobacco Racial Health Disparities: Testing the Differential Effects of COVID-19 on Smoking Motivation Variables across Black and White Smokers , Patricia F. Calixte-Civil

An Evaluation of Measurement Invariance of DSM-5 Borderline Personality Disorder Criteria Across Heterosexual, Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Adults , E. Elisa Carsten

The Development of a Behaviorally Based Mentoring Workplace Scale , Christina N. Falcon

Examining the Role of Executive Functions on the Intention-Behavior Gap of Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy Use , Becky K. Gius

The Effect of Psychopathy Trait Descriptions on Mock Juror Decision-Making , Bailey A. Hall

Context matters: Profiles of emotion regulation at work and home , Roxanne C. Lawrence

Planning to Behave Impulsively to Feel Better: An EMA Study of College Students' Nonsuicidal Self-Injury, Binge Eating, and Exercise Behaviors , Rose H. Miller

One Year Impact of the Advancing Coping and Engagement (ACE) Program on Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate Student Success , Amanda C. Moseley

The Effects of Divided Attention in Free Recall: Affecting Trace Accumulation by Dividing Attention , Anne Olsen

Investigating Risk Factors of the Development of Compulsive Exercise and Eating Disorder Symptoms in College Students , Madeline Palermo

Invisible Families, Clear Consequences: Work-Family Integration Among Employees in Same Gender Presenting Romantic Relationships , Joseph Regina

Threats to School Safety: Examining Levels of Community Violence and Its Relation to School-Related Threats , Dorie Ross

The Social Anxiety Stigma Scale (SASS): Development, Factor Structure, and Validation , Ruba Rum

Socio-emotional effects of rejection: An experience-sampling examination , Gabriella Silva

Observed Error Monitoring as an Index of Theory of Mind , Kipras Varkala

I'll Make a Man Out of You: Precarious Manhood Beliefs among Heterosexual-Cisgender Men and Queer Men , Serena L. Wasilewski

From Other and From World: Expanding the Current Model of Existential Isolation , Roger Young Jr.

Temporal and Spatial Properties of Orientation Summary Statistic Representations , Jacob S. Zepp

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Boredom, Interoceptive Ability, and Emotional Eating , Erica Ahlich

Environmental Transmission of Career Interests Through a Genetic Lens: Understanding the Confounding Around Parental Occupation , Tyler Allan

Do Suicide Attempt Survivors Have Reduced Long-Term Well-Being? A Study of Veterans Across Three Nationally Representative Cohorts , Bradley A. Brown

Depersonalized, Dysregulated, and Demanded: The Impact of Burnout on Appraisal and Emotional Events , Katrina M. Conen

Breast Health Esteem to Motivate Breast Health Behavioral Intentions: An Application of the Terror Management Health Model , Emily P. Courtney

Gender Differences in College Drinkers: The Role of Masculine Norms , Jared A. Davis

Prevalence and Predictors of Careless Responding in Experience Sampling Research , Alexander J. Denison

Perceptions of Workplace Discrimination: A Closer Look , Jeremiah Doaty

The Impact of Cannabis on Motivational Processes for Smoked Tobacco and Cigarettes , Claire M. Gorey

Outcomes of a Telehealth Adaptation of a Trauma-Based Parent Training Program , Holland Hayford

Why Don’t They Just Ask?: Barriers to Directly Requesting Affirmative Sexual Consent by Gender and Sexual Orientation , Jessica A. Jordan

Examining the Social Validity of Parent Training: Post-Participation Parent Perceptions and Reflections of Group Triple P , Nycole C. Kauk

Individual Differences in Response to Hostile and Benevolent Sexism in a STEM Interview Context: The Moderating Role of Behavioral Activation , Elizabeth Kiebel

Do Sociability Expectancies Moderate Social Anxiety Predicting Alcohol Consumption Following a Social Stressor Speech Task , Jacob A. Levine

An Object for Sexual Pleasure: Does Viewing Sexualized Media Predict Increases in Self and Partner Objectification Impacting Feelings of Sexual and Romantic Closeness? , Kaitlyn Ligman

Influences of Sentence Context and Individual Differences in Lexical Quality on Early Phonological Processing during Silent Reading , Sara Milligan

Testing the Effects of Social Exclusion on Emotional Arousal: An Examination of the Effects of Psychological Pain and Rumination , Amanda L. Peterson

Creating a Short, Public-Domain Version of the CPAI-2: Using an Algorithmic Approach to Develop Public-Domain Measures of Indigenous Personality Traits , Mukhunth Raghavan

Equitable Implementation of the Good Behavior Game , Faith D. Reynolds

Ethnic-Racial Minoritized Adolescents’ Perceptions of Cyberhate, School Connectedness, Ethnic-Racial Identity, and Life Satisfaction , Alexis Taylor

Predicting Future Well-Being Among United States Youth Who Attempted Suicide and Survived , Bingjie Tong

Approach and Avoidance Food Craving: A Dual Cue Reactivity Investigation , Christina Lee Verzijl

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

School Professional Coaching on Facilitation of Prevent-Teach-Reinforce (PTR) Model for Students with Persistent Problem Behavior , Rachel Ayres

Influencing Motivation for Alcohol through Social Bonding , Bryan Benitez

Case Studies in Applied Behavior Analysis: Using a Desensitization Procedure to Decrease Problem Behavior Towards Peers and Using a Treatment Package to Increase Time Spent in a Small Group , Mallamy I. Camargo Pena

Testing the Congruence of Espousals and Enactments Predicting Team Innovation , Rylan M. Charlton

The General Psychopathology Factor ( p ) From Adolescence to Adulthood: Disentangling the Developmental Trajectories of p Using a Multi-Method Approach , Alexandria M. Choate

An Ecological Momentary Assessment of Disordered Eating Behaviors within Alcohol Use Episodes: Determining Temporal Sequencing in Food and Alcohol Disturbance , Emily M. Choquette

The Influence of Maternal Body-Shaming Comments and Bodily Shame on Portion Size , Savannah R. Flak

Mental Health Problems, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Offending Behavior Among Persons Incarcerated in a County Jail , Lauren F. Fournier

The Adaptive, Social, Communication, and Cognitive Skills of Monolingual and Bilingual Toddlers with Autism , Marcela A. Galicia

Good Intentions Go Awry: Investigation of Unhelpful Supportive Leadership , Cheryl E. Gray

Hello Traitor: An Examination of Individual Differences in Perceptions of Technology-Related Incivility , David J. Howard

Measuring State Empathy: Exploring the Efficacy of a Film Clip Task and Examining Individual Differences in Empathic Responding , Stephanie R. Hruza

The Relationship of Hope to Goals and Psychological Outcomes in Patients with Advanced Lung Cancer: A Test of Hope Theory , Kelly A. Hyland

Decisions and How Doctors Make Them: Modeling Multilevel Decision-Making within Diagnostic Medicine , Michelle S. Kaplan

Cultural Values as a Moderator of the Emotion Suppression to Strain Relationship: A Comparison of Two Dominant Theoretical Mechanisms , Roxanne C. Lawrence

How Enduring is Global Precedence? , Jong Lee

Cool Under Fire: Psychopathic Traits and Decision-Making in Law Enforcement-Oriented Populations , Sean J. McKinley

Cognitive Ability and Ambivalence toward Alcohol: An Examination of Working Memory Capacity’s Influence on Drinking Behavior , Emily T. Noyes

The Relationship Between Parenting Stress, Attendance, and Attrition in a Group-Based Parent Management Training Program , David Rubio Jr.

Unintended Consequences? Testing the Effects of Adolescent-Targeted Anti-Vaping Media upon Adult Smokers , Leslie E. Sawyer

“Just Joking”: Women’s Cardiovascular Responses to Sexist Humor , Samantha Shepard

Negative Performance Feedback and the Self-Regulatory Benefits of Mindfulness , Jeremiah Slutsky

Examining the Potential Interactions of Expectancies and Disordered Eating Behavior , Cody B. Staples

The nature of resilience: A person-centered approach using latent profile analysis , Yuejia Teng

Evaluation of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) Fit Indices in Distinguishing between Circumplex and Other Factor Models , Andrew J. Thurston

Comparison of Parameter Estimation Approaches for Multi-Unidimensional Pairwise Preference Tests , Naidan Tu

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

The Impact of Cues on Autobiographical Memory Recall in Depression , Ena Begovic

Perfectionism, Negative Life Events, and Cognitive Appraisal: A Contextual Model of Perfectionism’s Maladaptive Nature , Ansley M. Bender

The Effect of Acute Interpersonal Racial Discrimination on Smoking Motivation and Behavior among Black Smokers , Patricia F. Calixte-Civil

Parent Coping and Sibling Relationship Quality in Pediatric Cancer: The Moderating Effects of Parental Emotion Socialization Beliefs , Esther Davila

Higher Sense of Control Predicts Long-term Well-being After Depression , Andrew R. Devendorf

Villains or Vermin? The Differential Effects of Discrimination and Dehumanization on Immigrant Cardiovascular Responses , Mona El-Hout

Alcohol Expectancy Associates as a Probe of the Motivational Processes that Lead to Drinking , Daniel C. Faraci

Features of borderline personality and related psychopathologies as a contemporaneously and temporally connected network , Haya Fatimah

Editing the Self Away: The Effects of Photo Manipulation on Perceptions of the Self , Roxanne N. Felig

Motivation Matters: The Interaction of Approach and Avoidance Alcohol Motivation and Self-Control Demands in College Drinkers , Becky K. Gius

Facilitators and Barriers to Treatment Engagement in a Behavioral Parent Training Program , Holland Hayford

Effects of Inter-Male Status Challenge and Psychopathic Traits on Sexual Aggression , Amy M. Hoffmann

If at First You Don’t Succeed...Your Coworkers Just Might Be Pleased: A Story of Workplace Schadenfreude , Kim Johnson

Motivation to Volunteer , Lendi N. Joy

Exploration of Drive for Leanness in Relation to Drives for Thinness and Muscularity, as well as their Concurrent Associations with Health-Related Outcomes , Brittany Lang

Affect and Craving: Examining the Differential Influences of Positive and Negative Affect on Inclinations to Approach and Avoid Alcohol Use , Jacob A. Levine

Threat-Induced Alterations in Cognition and Associations with Disinhibited Behavior , Julia B. McDonald

A Prospective Examination of Psychosocial Outcomes Following Gynecomastia Surgery , D. Luis Ordaz

Assessing the Impacts of Sensorimotor Stimuli and Nicotine Content on Cravings and Other Outcomes of E-Cigarette Use , Amanda M. Palmer

The Threat of Virality: Digital Outrage Combats the Spread of Opposing Ideas , Curtis Puryear

Why Are Women Leaving STEM? An Examination of Workplace Rivalry , Joseph Regina

A Fidelity-based Integration Model for Explicit and Implicit Ensemble Coding , Ke Tong

Care in Context: Constructing a Theory of Care in One Fifth Grade Classroom , Emily J. Wingate

Depression, Music Choice, and Affective Outcomes in Daily Life , Sunkyung Yoon

The Immediate Effect of a Brief Mindfulness Intervention on Attention and Acceptance , Xiaoqian Yu

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Understanding the Mechanisms Between Job Stress and Employee Sleep: A Daily Diary Study , Marijana L. Arvan

The Effects of Mortality Salience on Interest in Death (and Life) Among High Openness Individuals , Patrick Boyd

Linking Sleep and Aggression: The Role of Response Inhibition and Emotional Processing , Melanie L. Bozzay

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Biopsychology, Cognition, & Neuroscience

Eliza Alushi  - Characteristics Associated with Youth Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Stimulant Treatment in the ABCD Sample - (Mentors: Jillian Hardee & Chandra Sripada)

Isabelle Sophie Anderson - Wanting What Hurts: Motivation to Pursue Painful Stimuli and Associated Cues Using Optogenetic Stimulation of D1 Neurons in Central Amygdala - (Mentors: Kent Berridge & David Nguyen)

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Leta M. Bryan - An Exploration of the Relationships Between Sociality, Stress, and Immunity in Semi-Wild Prairie Voles (Microtus ochrogaster) - (Mentor: Ben Dantzer) 

Dominic DeBiasi - Ketamine Diminishes Attribution of Incentive Salience to Reward Cues - (Mentor: Martin Sarter)

Tao Deng   - The Impact of Psychedelic Treatment on Dendritic Spines of Midline Cortical Neurons - (Mentors: Omar Ahmed & Tyler Ekins)

Helen Leda Salij Devine  - Keep Your Friends Close and Your Phones Closer: Examining the Impact of Close Others on Compliance with Consent Requests - (Mentor: Amie Gordon)

Jad Jihad Fakhoury - From Alarm to Exhaustion: The Hair Cortisol/Cortisone Ratio and Adolescent Intracranial Brain Volume - (Mentor: Christopher Monk)

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Astrid Hurtado - How Children Learn with Artificial Intelligence: A Study of Dialogic Story Listening - (Mentors: Ioulia Kovelman & Ying Xu)

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Ashika Jayanth Kumar  - Effects of a Craniotomy Surgery on Rats' Social Behavior - (Mentor: Jill Becker)

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Samuel Harris Marchuck - Transmitted Traits: Investigating Offspring Physiology in Response to Parental High-Sugar Diet - (Mentors: Mohammed Akaaboune & Audrey Michal)

Ashna Mehra - Do people change the way they speak when they talk to you? A study of Chinese and Spanish-speakers’ perceptions of and attitudes towards Foreigner Talk - (Mentor: Susan Gelman)

Sara Frances Morehous - Change or Stay the Same? Unpacking Age-Related Variations in Gender Essentialist Beliefs and Prejudicial Attitudes - (Mentor: Susan Gelman)

Victoria Adams Murphy  - Examining the interplay between sleep, mania risk, and emotion-based impulsivity. - (Mentor: Sarah Sperry)

Aalaynah A Nathoo  - Understanding Relations Between Depression and Music-related Emotion Regulation - (Mentor: Hans Schroder)

Vidhi J Pandya - Mental Health in the South Asian Healthcare Professionals: Which Strategies Do They Use to Cope? - (Mentor: Jennifer Cummings)

Chloe Ester Saba - Attentional Control Processes Inhibit Unwanted Responses to Minimize Anticipated Distraction from Irrelevant Stimuli - (Mentor: Daniel Weissman)

Jin Shi - Using non-verbal stimuli to investigate the mechanisms of retention-interval effects. - (Mentor: Cindy Lustig)

Jane Mercier Stephenson  - Construct and Predictive Validity of Cognitive and Self-Report Measures of Adolescent Risk Behavior - (Mentor: Daniel Keating)

Eva Katherine Vogel  - The Role of Cholinergic Interneurons in the Dorsomedial Striatum in Attention Shifting and Salient Cue Response - (Mentor: Martin Sarter)

Abigail Yakam  - Uncovering the neural architecture of cognitive control in the left DLPFC - (Mentor: Thad Polk)

Christina George Zerka - In Pixels and Hugs: Friendship Quality and Closeness In The Digital Age - (Mentors: Toni Antonucci & Noah Webster) 

Dahika Ahmed  - Examining Undergraduate Students of Color’s Perceptions of their Professors’ Race-Based Empathy - (Mentor: Denise Sekaquaptewa)

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Ginger Riobella Blodgett - Disgust for Sustainable Food Alternatives: Psychological Barriers to Diet Transition - (Mentor: Joshua Ackerman)

Elizabeth Brouns  - Alzheimer’s Disease and Psychedelics as Modulators of Cognitive Flexibility in Mice - (Mentor: Omar Ahmed)

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Eric Chen  - Motor memory consolidation depends on the post-learning activity of ventral tegmental area dopaminergic neurons. - (Mentors: Ada Eban-Rothschild)

Rhea Chhoker  - Unlocking Empathy: Exploring the Influence of Video Games on Women’s Empathy for Other Women - (Mentor: Monique Ward)

Erna M. Chiu  - Kindergarten Peer Aggression as a Mediator Between Preschool-Age Risk Factors and Age 10 Behavioral Adjustment Outcomes - (Mentors: Sheryl Olson)

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Ethan Driscoll - Emotion Regulation Mechanisms in the Natural Environment - (Mentors: Ethan Kross & Kathryn Schertz)

Yiran Vivian Du - Media Pressure and Internalization of Beauty Norm: Examining the Interactions of Media Pressures and Internalization of Aesthetic Beauty Norms in Relation to Body Dissatisfaction and Disordered Eating in Asian American Women - (Mentor: Germine Awad)

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Zaida Valonde Pearson - School-Based Violence Prevention in the Bronx: A Case Study Approach to Curriculum Evaluation of the Sandy Hook Promise Know the Signs Program - (Mentors: Marc Zimmerman & Sarah Stilwell)

Lauren Kaye Penrose  - Impulsivity and Sexual Risk Behavior among College Students: The Moderating Role of Sexual Orientation - (Mentors: Craig Rodriguez-Seijas)

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Prachi Chirag Shah - Such a Fun Age?: Identity Safety Influences School Attitudes During The Transition from Primary to Secondary School - (Mentor: Priti Shah)

Anna Kay Shinohara - Feeling Watched? The Impact of Social Eyes on Self-Perception - (Mentors: Shinobu Kitayama)

Anita Virant Shubert  - Stigma, Situational Triggers, and Symptoms: How Providers Justify their Borderline Personality Disorder Diagnosis among Sexual and Gender Minority vs. Cisgender, Heterosexual Individuals - (Mentors: Craig Rodriguez-Seijas & Elizabeth Cole)

Amanda Rosemary Webster  - You are not born with hate, you are taught hate: Exploring parents' perceptions of the links between politics and race relations in the U.S. - (Mentors: Deborah Rivas-Drake & Laura-Ann Jacobs)

Kefan (Cathy) Wu  - Examining Participant Experiences in a Longitudinal Neuroimaging Study with a Predominantly Underrepresented Sample: A Qualitative Analysis - (Mentor: Christopher Monk)

Mohammad Shayaan Aqil - Sleep and self-regulation: A longitudinal analysis across adolescence. (Mentors: Daniel Keating & Edward Huntley)

Sally Berson - The associations between systemic inflammation, white matter volume, and global cognition in an older adult population. (Mentor: Laura Zahodne)

Michelle Busschots - Unequal distribution of baby care and gratitude to one’s partner. (Mentor: Robin Edelstein)

Caroline Candy - The developmental timing of material hardship and its association with ADHD symptom severity in adolescence. (Mentor: Christopher Monk)

Allison Choe - Executive functioning and treatment regimen adherence among adolescents with type 1 diabetes. (Mentors: Alison Miller & Christopher Monk)

Claire Fanning - The pediatric behavioral health nursing consultation service: Improving care delivery for youth experiencing mental health concerns and their families in a children’s hospital. (Mentors: Nasuh Malas & Daniel Keating)

Kathleen Good - Learning from the truth campaign: Can we tackle big food as we did big tobacco? (Mentor: Ashley Gearhardt)

Briana Hay – Barriers to mental health treatment seeking in older adults. (Mentor: Hans Schroder)

Michael Hicks - Investigating internal and external distraction in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. (Mentors: John Jonides & Han Zhang)

Jada Houston - Endorsement of the superwoman schema moderation effects on gendered microaggression appraisal and response. (Mentor: Denise Sekaquaptewa)

Ajay Keerthy -Sound source tracking by auditory cortical neurons. (Mentor: Gideon Rothschild)

Mack Kroll - Aversion to sucrose: Optogenetic inhibition of GABAergic neurons within the ventral pallidum. (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Abhishek Menon - Enhancing motivation: Role of ventral pallidum GABA neurons in ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’ rewards. (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Charlotte Moss - An examination of associative memory using functional near infrared spectroscopy.(Mentors: Benjamin Hampstead & Patricia Reuter-Lorenz)

Jennifer Murray - Defining multi-dimensional associations in fear conditioning: Implications for abnormal fear responses. (Mentor: Natalie Tronson)

Julia Plawker - Associations between youth exposure to community violence and brain structure. (Mentor: Luke Hyde)

Arun Rajarajan - Effects of valence and anxiety on value-directed learning. (Mentor: Cindy Lustig)

Madeline Sage - Relationships between anxiety and brain activation during extinction recall. (Mentor: Elizabeth Duval)

Gretchen Stemmler - Dissociating 'liking' and 'wanting' within the ventral pallidum: An optogenetic study. (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Sebastian Suqi - Consuming psychedelic substances: Motivation and perceived effectiveness. (Mentor: Kai Cortina)

Lucas Tittle - The role of nucleus accumbens shell corticotropin-releasing-factor in incentive motivation. (Mentor: Kent Berridge).

Sofia Urban - Cues and contexts: Measuring reactivity and memory in patients with fibromyalgia. (Mentor: Elizabeth Duval)

Augustine Vanlianuk - Fast changes during the retention intervals improve older adults' working memory. (Mentor: Cindy Lustig)

Adithi Voleti - Neuroanatomical characterization of corticotropin releasing factor projections from central amygdala to the ventral tegmental area. (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Jingqi Zhu - Early-life educational quality and brain health in diverse older adults. (Mentors: Laura Zahodne & Ji Hyun Lee)

Psychology 

James Baybas - How do we read complex words? A lexical morphology priming study. (Mentor: Iouila Kovelman)

Rachel Beiter - The effort heuristic and scientific reasoning. (Mentor: Priti Shah)

Abigail Binder - Parental attitudes about children’s gender nonconforming books. (Mentors: Susan Gelman & Shelly Schreier)

Callie Cade - How close personal relationships negatively impact witness ability to recognize subtle gender bias. (Mentor: Denise Sekaquaptewa)

Kamryn Casey - Individualized intergenerational connections reduce isolation amongst college students and older adults. (Mentor: Jacqui Smith)

Sherry Chen - Atypical beta power fluctuation while listening to an isochronous sequence in stuttering. (Mentors: Ioulia Kovelman & Soo-Eun Chang)

Nikita Daniel - “I am not sure what else I could do to help her more”:  Perceptions of partner support and relationship satisfaction in older couples living with multiple chronic conditions. (Mentors: Courtney Polenick & Robin Edelstein)

Francesca De Geronimo - The relationship  between internalizing and externalizing behavior problems and prospective selfon adolescent alcohol and marijuana use occasions. (Mentors: Daniel Keating & Sarah Stoddard)

Marissa DeLeon - The effect of witnessing and labeling gender bias on performance and behavior for men and women in STEM. (Mentor: Denise Sekaquaptewa)

JiaChen He - Are causal diagrams more beneficial for people with lower working memory capacity? (Mentor: Priti Shah)

Gautham Jayaraj - The COVID-19 college student mental health study: Three-year observational study using the Roadmap app and Fitbit wearable sensors. (Mentors: Sung Won Choi & Martin Sarter)

Carolyn Ji - Mental health help-seeking intentions & coping strategies of Chinese international students in the United States. (Mentor: Donna Nagata)

Grace Jung - Childhood precursors of hopelessness in late adolescence. (Mentor: Sheryl Olson)

Swathi Karthik - Modulation of reward behavior after the onset of fear learning. (Mentors: Christian Burgess & Natalie Tronson)

Ashley Ke – Asian Americans coping with discrimination and identity threats: Gender differences. (Mentor: Mari Kira)

Noor Khalaf – Exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on social anxiety, social behaviors, and loneliness in college students. (Mentor: Dina Gohar)

Sydney Kohrman - Adolescent depression symptomatology and alcohol use: The potential role of self-medication. (Mentor: Daniel Keating)

Barbara Lu - Demographic differences in the five factor borderline inventory short form among racial, sexual, and gender minority undergraduate students. (Mentor: Craig Rodriguez-Seijas)

Emma Morse - I know I'm stressed, but what are you?: Effects of acute stress on empathic accuracy and support transactions between cohabiting couples. (Mentor: Amie Gordon)

Sydney Phlegar - Stress and co-parenting relationships: Using language style matching as an indicator of extra-dyadic stress and team problem-solving. (Mentor: Robin Edelstein)

Michelle Ptak - Post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among intern physicians working before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: A repeated annual cohort study. (Mentors: Srijan Sen & Karina Pereira-Lima)

Nayiri Sagherian – Impacts on mental health from discrimination and trust in social networks within MENA populations in America. (Mentors: Myles Durkee & Toni Antonucci)

Aviva Satz-Kojis - Explanations for gender differences in preferences for submissive sexual fantasies. (Mentor: Terri Conley)

Manjiang Shen - Worker subjectivity under organizational control in China’s internet industry. (Mentor: Mari Kira)

Ishita Shukla - An experimental study on reducing the orgasm gap in heterosexual partnered sex. (Mentor: Terri Conley)

Nidhi Tigadi - Impacts of bicultural stress and shame on the wellbeing of South Asian college students in the United States. (Mentor: Donna Nagata)

Tyla Tolbert - A collective assessment: How the perception of HBCUs and PWIs relate to psychosocial outcomes of African American attendees. (Mentor: Myles Durkee)

Alicia Wang - I can’t tell if you’re listening: Effect of sleep deprivation on perceived partner responsiveness. (Mentor: Robin Edelstein)

Yijin Wang - Measuring critical thinking through performance assessment tasks and think-aloud protocol among college students. (Mentor: Kai Cortina)

Marley Warren - Criterion and clinician bias against sexual- and gender-minoritized individuals in the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD): Vignette experiment. (Mentor: Craig Rodriguez-Seijas)

Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience

Mikayla Bergwood - Associations between observed parent-child interactions and white matter connectivity in adolescents (Mentor: Christopher Monk)

Olivia Varney-Chang – Closer look at ethnic and racial identity: Measuring the frequency of ethnic and racial identity activation and its association with psychosocial adjustment (Mentors: Kai Cortina & Kevin Miller)

Joshua Cohen - Predictors of physical health in school-age children, testing mediating variables (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Hannah Davies – The effect of glucocorticoid receptor knockdown in corticostriatal projections on the propensity to attribute incentive value to reward-cues (Mentor: Shelly Flagel)

Taylor Gordon – The influence of yoga practice and progressive muscle relaxation practice on sleep improvement in school-age children (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Robert Hsu – The influence of altruism and empathy on the endowment effect (Mentor: Stephanie Preston)

Nickolas Interrante - Hurtful reward in the ventral tegmental area and central amygdala (Mentors: Kent Berridge & David Nguyen)

Monica Iyer - Longitudinal associations of infections with dementia: 28-Year analysis of 3.5 million New Zealand citizens (Mentor: Leah Richmond-Rakerd)

Brianna Kenar – The role of educational quality in explaining racial disparities in cognition (Mentor: Laura Zahodne)

Sarah Klausner - Visual disruptor reveals impaired attentional control in mice with the common choline transporter coding variant (Mentor: Martin Sarter)

Elizabeth Lee – The effect of working memory re-exposure on episodic memory in older adults (Mentor: Patricia Reuter-Lorenz)

Carrie Magee - Instrumental social support, social connectedness, and coping styles in adolescents with interpersonal problems (Mentors: Alejandra Arango & Cheryl King)

Eva McAlister Lopez - How do a bilingual’s two languages interact? Cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness in Spanish-English bilinguals (Mentor: Ioulia Kovelman)

Leonard Miller – The relationship between volunteering and mental health outcomes in college students during COVID-19 (Mentor: Nestor Lopez-Duran)

Kendall Mills – Patterns of aggression across despotic and tolerant species of macaque (Mentor: Alexandra Rosati)

Thiany Riddihough - Social connectedness and depression severity as predictors of mental health service use among male college students at risk for suicide (Mentor: Cheryl King)

Rachel Ritter - Are male binge drinkers more impulsive than female binge drinkers? Behavioral and neural sex differences during the go/no-go task (Mentors: Jillian Hardee & Lora Cope)

Julia Salamango – Behavioral flexibility in semi-free-ranging chimpanzees (Mentor: Alex Rosati)

Madison Salvato - Exploring the efficacy of aripiprazole and related compounds to reduce levels of toxic ATXN3 in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (Mentors: Maria do Carmo Pereira da Costa & Omar Ahmed)

Madhulika Shastry - Self-construal and systems of thought (Mentor: Shinobu Kitayama)

Jessica Stout - Brain function during face processing associated with depression symptoms in individuals with social anxiety disorder (Mentor: Elizabeth Duval)

Zoe Taswell – Is error-related negativity (ern) associated with externalizing behavior in adolescence? (Mentors: Daniel Keating & Liu Yanni)

Sally Valcarcel - Bilingual reading development & COVID-19 (Mentor: Ioulia Kovelman)

Ridge Weston - Plate-based complex implantation: A novel neurosurgical technique developed in rats (Mentors: Brendon Watson & Gideon Rothschild)

Andrea Bavikatty - TikTok, body image, and eating behavior: An analysis of college-age women (Mentor: Rona Carter)

Aissa Cabrales – “We just cried for the families”: The emotional impact of large-scale immigration worksite raids on faith responders (Mentors: William Lopez & Lorraine Gutierrez)

Kathryn Chang - The effect of reducing gender essentialism on prejudice against gender nonconforming children (Mentor: Susan Gelman)

Mason Cox – Associationsbetween risky sexual behaviors and the externalizing spectrum of psychopathology among a sample of undergraduate students (Mentor: Craig Rodriguez-Seijas)

Allyson Dobrowalski – What it means to be a “real” native: Restrictive definitions of native identity undermine well-being (Mentors: Stephanie Fryberg & Laura Brady)

Alaina Gregory – Women and the leaky pipeline to stem: Is survivorship bias impacting our understanding of the barriers to women leadership? (Mentors: MS Krishnan & Carol Holden)

Augusta Guo – The influence of self-identification on everyday microaggressions and critical consciousness in Asian individuals in the U.S. (Mentors: Mari Kira & Fiona Lee)

Max Hernand – Understanding relations between treatment failure and mental health outcomes with illness identity (Mentors: Stefanie Russman Block & Hans Schroder)

Rachna Iyer - The effects of anxiety and upliftment on their regulation on creativity (Mentor: Dina Gohar)

Ariella Kushner – To sneeze or not to sneeze: The interpersonal consequences of infectious disease concealment (Mentor: Josh Ackerman)

Ximena Mancilla Delgado - Latine parental documentation status and adolescents’ perceived discrimination (Mentor: Deborah Rivas-Drake)

Caroline Maywood – Children’s expectations and judgements of conformity to ritual activities (Mentors: Felix Warneken & Nicole Wen)

Amy Nowack - Children’s evaluations of intentions regarding violations of novel public-health measures (Mentor: Felix Warneken)

Shi Xin Ooi - Am I good enough? The role of perceived competitive climate students’ sense of belonging across cultures (Mentor: Kai Cortina)

Morgan Palmer - Correlates of cognitive strategy use among socioeconomically diverse older adults (Mentor: Laura Zahodne)

Madeline Paxson - Is cupid colorblind? Color evasion in interracial romantic relationships (Mentors: Robin Edelstein & Fiona Lee)

Jessica Pelton - Educational experience of children with and without disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic - parental perspectives (Mentor: Kevin Miller)

Talia Rubin - What elements of the kids’ empowerment program promote flow and engagement? (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Nathan Schooner – Assessing the relationship between multiracial adolescents’ friendships and ERI development (Mentor: Deborah Rivas-Drake)

Julia Smith - The impact of discouragement of educational attainment on episodic memory in later-life (Mentor: Laura Zahodne)

Gabrielle Solowiejczyk - Stress predictors and outcomes in children (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Jessica Steir - Children’s use of race in their understanding of COVID-19 transmission: The role of essentialism in parents’ and children’s explanations (Mentors: Danielle Labotka & Susan Gelman)

Yicong Sun - Comparing the prediction of college adjustment in Asian American and Asian international students: Do acculturative strategies matter? (Mentor: Donna Nagata)

Elise Whitney - Title: Retention-interval context changes increase correct rejections in working memory (Mentor: Cindy Lustig)

Tara Woodward - A modern settlement house movement: The impact of neighborhood centers on climate resilience (Mentors: Raymond De Young & Myles Durkee)

Warda Yousuf - The grass is not greener on the other side: A qualitative study utilizing psychological frameworks to understand the beliefs, attitudes, and policies that are shaping violence within Rohingya refugee camps (Mentor: Joshua Rabinowitz)

Diane Yu - Looking beyond stigma: Cultural factors associated with mental health help-seeking behavior and attitudes in Asian and Asian American college students (Mentor: Donna Nagata)

Lara Zammit - Biopsychosocial predictors of empathic accuracy in romantic relationships (Mentor: Amie Gordon)

Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience 

Natalie Antenucci - When Freedom is Constraining: Freedom Increases Perceived Constraint for Those Low in Psychological Resources (Mentor: Shinobu Kitayama)

Alyssa Asmar - Investigating the Neural and Behavioral Consequences of Noise-Induced Hearing Loss (Mentors: Gideon Rothschild & Joonyeup Lee)

Natalie Austin - The Consequences of Positive and Negative Mood on Affective Working Memory (Mentor: Patricia Reuter-Lorenz)

Kendra Beaudoin - Cocaine-Induced CFos Levels are Modulated by G Protein-Coupled Receptor-1 Activation in Male Rats (Mentor: Jill Becker)

Jason Brenner - Payoff Magnitude Affects Value Learning for Win and Loss Associations (Mentor: Patricia Reuter-Lorenz)

Samantha Cerpa - Ready for a Change? Cueing an Upcoming Modality Shift Eliminates Contextual Boundaries for the CSE (Mentor: Daniel Weissman)

Hana Chung - Do Cultural Tendencies Change During COVID-19? A Task Analysis of Implicit Independence (Mentor: Shinobu Kitayama)

Manasa Dittakavi - Health Behaviors and Compliance of Healthcare Workers (HCWs) at Risk for COVID-19 (Mentors: Sung Choi & Martin Sarter)

Lynn Freimanis - Does Expressiveness in Facial Action Potentiate Emotional Neural Responses and Subjective Ratings of Emotion? (Mentor: Shinobu Kitayama)

Hunter Glew - Perpetrators of the Acting White Accusation (AWA): Contributing Factors and Mental Health Implications  (Mentor: Myles Durkee)

Gabrielle Hooper - The Beneficial Effect of Cognitive and Creative Activity Engagement for Cognitive Functioning in Older Adulthood (Mentors: Laura Zahodne & Neika Sharifian)

Lily Johnston - Government Trust and Perceptions of Public Health Message Credibility (Mentors: Holly White & Priti Shah)

Jacquelin Kwentus - The Therapeutic Mechanisms of Neural Stem Cell Transplantation in Alzheimer’s Disease (Mentors: Lisa McGinley & Thad Polk)

Verity Lee - Behavioral Models of Neural Pleasure Circuitry: Effects of Sex Differences (Mentors: Bo Duan & Ada Eban-Rothschild)

Mengyuan Liu - The Effect of Subliminal Reward Signal on Reinforcement Learning (Mentor: Taraz Lee)

Jaden Mann Bryant - Re-examining the Divergent Aging Trajectories of Cognitive and Affective Working Memory (Mentor: Patricia Reuter-Lorenz)

Preetha Pamidighantam - Rest assured: Can Resting-State Neural Oscillatory Activity in Schizophrenia Explain Impairment in Behavioral Response to Facial Stimuli? (Mentor: Ivy Tso)

Sohini Pandit - Examining the associations between material hardship, internalizing symptoms, and white matter connectivity in adolescents (Mentor: Christopher Monk)

Sarah Payne - The Influence of Pathogen Threat on Mate Value Perceptions (Mentor: Joshua Ackerman)

Amanda Peters - Associations Between Childhood Socioeconomic Status and Neural Indices of Executive Functioning (Mentors: Pamela Davis-Kean & Elif Isbell)

Neema Prakash - Testing the Efficacy of Mood Lifters in Different Populations (Mentor: Patricia Deldin)

Rachael Rich - Childhood Maltreatment and Adolescent Rule-Breaking Behavior: The Roles of Protective Family Context and Prospective Self (Mentors: Daniel Keating & Edward Huntley)

Aleija Rodriguez - Low Overexpression of Ubiquilin-2 Exacerbates Tau Pathology in vivo (Mentors: Julia Gerson & Laura Zahodne)

Alexandra Simmons - Remote Cognitive Testing during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Validation Study of Online, Self-Administered Cognitive Assessment Tools (Mentor: Cindy Lustig)

Natalie Szlachta - The Regulation of Dscam Expression in Developing Neurons (Mentors: Bing Ye & Natalie Tronson)

Quynh Tran - Flowing into Hyperfocus: Hyperfocus and Cognition in Adults with ADHD (Mentor: Priti Shah)

Sydney Wilhoite - Mechanisms Underlying the Association Between Childhood Adversity and Later-Life Cognition (Mentor: Laura Zahodne)

Miles Camiener - Interpreting the Same News Differently: Examining Differential Policy Agreement Between Partisan News Sources (Mentor: Joshua Rabinowitz)

Aber John Espinoza - The Potential Benefits of Challenge Mindset for First-Generation College Students’ Wellbeing (Mentors: Stephanie Fryberg & Nadia Jessop)

Ibitayo Fadayomi - When loved ones transgress against us: How close relationships between transgressors and targets influence moral decisions (Mentor: Ethan Kross)

Seth Finkelstein - Evaluating Distressing Events for School-age Children (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Nicole Fraija - The Relationship Between Subjective Age and Three Episodic Memory Tests (Mentor: Laura Zahodne)

Catherine Garton - The Influence of Intellectual Humility and Moral Reasoning on Partisan Polarization (Mentor: Stephanie Preston)

Onyul Haque - Is Trusting Others Obligatory or a Preference? (Mentor: David Dunning)

Anna Hedin-Urrutia - “Invisibility of Lesbian Possibility”: Examining the influence of male partner opinions on the relationship between sapphic body image and sexual agency (Mentor: Lucretia Ward)

Valeria Hernandez - Sexual Guilt or Sexual Conservatism? An Investigation of Mosher’s Sex Guilt Scale (Mentor: Terri Conley)

Deborah Ho - Developing a Data Analysis Pipeline for Novel Bio-Logging Tools (Mentors: Matt Gaidica & Ben Dantzer)

Xiang Ting Ho - Corss-cultural Differences in Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts and Relationship Satisfaction (Mentor: Robin Edelstein)

Yun Gi Hwang - The effects of bilingualism and culture on children’s literacy and academic achievement (Mentor: Loulia Kovelman)

Ava Kaufman - Pleasure after Trauma: The Associations of Childhood Sexual Abuse and Negative Sexual Messages with Adult Sexual Satisfaction (Mentor: Terri Conley)

Sydney Kayne - Like Mother, Like Daughter: Load Sharing During Puberty (Mentor: Rona Carter)

Lucy Loch - Association of current and early life stressors with maladaptive eating behaviors: An investigation of Life Course Theory (Mentor: Ashley Gearhardt)

Ellie Maly - The Mental Health of Emerging Adults: Hostile Home Environments and COVID-19 (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Sophie Martel - Learning in a Pandemic: How Parent Child-Conversations Relate to Children’s Understanding of COVID-19 (Mentors: Susan Gelman & Danielle Labotka)

Brianna McManamon - Understanding the Association Between Loneliness and Suicidal Behaviors in Latinas: A Preliminary Examination of Hopelessness and Depressed Mood as Potential Mediators (Mentor: Edward Chang)

Ryan Rich - A Novel EEG Measure of Neural Distinctiveness: Providing Temporal Insights into Neural Distinctiveness (Mentor: Thad Polk)

Abigail Richburg - Body Image in LGBTQ+ Young Adults: Current and Developmental Influences (Mentor: Abigail Stewart)

Jian Sun - Exploring the Psychology of Environmental Senescence through fMRI (Mentor: Stephanie Preston)

Caroline Touzeau - The Role of Generational Cohort and Technology Use in Adults’ Moral Judgments of Digital Tracking (Mentors: Susan Gelman & Nicole Cuneo)

Alexis Vatterott - Emotion Socialization in Early Childhood: Factor Structure and Associations with Emotional Adjustment Between Ages 3 and 19 Years (Mentor: Sheryl Olson)

Lance Ying - Nation, Culture, and Antecedents of Perceived Organizational Support: A Comparison Study between the United States and China (Mentor: Mari Kira)

Hayley Yu - Trauma: A Risk Factor for Food Addiction? (Mentor:Ashley Gearhardt)

Elizabeth Ahearn - DHEA: Moderating Factor of Psychological and Physiological Responses to Stress (Mentor: Nestor Lopez-Duran)

Jabir Ahmed - Oral Contraceptives and the Vulnerability to Acute Stress-induced Depression and Anxiety (Mentor: Natalie Tronson)

Adrienne-Denise Bilbao - A Preliminary Study on the Relationship Between Sleep, Depression and Cardiovascular Dysfunction in a 4 Sample Population (Mentor: Patricia Deldin)

Shreya Chandra - Sleep Quality and Executive Function in Diverse Older Adults (Mentor: Laura Zahodne)

Danielle Destiny - Behavioral State-Dependent Brain Stimulation Improves Manual Dexterity (Mentors: Michael Vesia & Taraz Lee)

Anthony Edgar - Investigating the Effects of Value-driven Attentional Capture on ADHD and Control Participants  (Mentor: John Jonides)

Jordan Gregory - Sex Differences in the Acquisition of Pavlovian Conditioned Approach and Fear Conditioned Behaviors in Rats (Mentors: Jonathan Morrow & Jill Becker)

Brooke Huizenga - Main Lifetime Occupational Demands, Late Life Cognitive Functioning and the Moderating Role of Gender (Mentors: Laura Zahodne & Neika Sharifian)

Joseph Jackowski  - The Manifestation of Meaning: How ‘Generic-You’ Emerges in Military Personnels’ Writing (Mentor: Susan Gelman)

Sumrah Jilani - The Role of the Medial Amygdala in Motivation  (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

David Kamper - N400 Latency Effect in Lexical Access - A Meta-analysis (Mentor: Jonathan Brennan)

Sylvia Hyun Jee Kim - Cognitive Costs of Active Facebook Use (Mentor: Oscar Ybarra)

Anna  Kittendorf - Effects of Urbanization on the Behavior of Fox Squirrels (Sciurus niger) (Mentor: Ben Dantzer)

Sydney Kornbleuth - Impacts of Acculturative Stress and Substance Use on the Mental Health of University of Michigan Students (Mentor: Myles Durkee)

Zarin Kothari - Longitudinal Study of ERN and CRN in Children: Kindergarten to First Grade (Mentors: William Gehring & Elif Isbell)

Kyra Lipman - Understanding the Family Member Experience in the ICU: Expectations vs. Reality (Mentors: Thomas Valley & Elizabeth Duval)

Hilary Lowitz - Do Young Children Demonstrate a “Reverse” Endowment Effect? Tracking Ownership and Object Preference in Owned Toys Versus Peers’ Toys (Mentor: Susan Gelman)

Lindsey Meister - Autobiographical Memory in Older Adults: Self-Relevance and the Reminiscence Bump (Mentor: Jacqui Smith)

Charmi Patel - Comparing Cortical Excitation and Cortical Inhibition in the Orbitofrontal Cortex hotspot (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Sara Pisanelli - Functional Connectivity Between Ventral Striatum and Dorsal Premotor Cortex Is Predictive of Reward-Related Enhancement of Motor Skills (Mentor: Taraz Lee)

Emmanuel Saint-Phard - Evaluating an Academic Success Program’s Effectiveness in Promoting Sense of Belonging, Sense of Capability, and Academic Outcomes among Black Students (Mentor: Denise Sekaquaptewa)

Sarah Samsundar - Age, Gender Roles, and their Association with Mental Health (Mentors: Noah Webster & Toni Antonucci)

Tayah Schuett e - Investigating Corticotropin Releasing Factor Neuronal Circuitry in Positive and Negative Reward Motivation (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Kayla Smith - Spatial Navigation Performance Associated with PTSD and Trauma Type (Mentor: Elizabeth Duval)

Zoe Solomon - Examining the Relation Between Big Five Personality and Social Media Use Across Platforms and Populations (Mentor: Adriene Beltz)

Joshua Svinarich - Mapping the Anterior Cingulate Cortex for a Hedonic Hotspot. Effects of Optogenetic Stimulation on ‘Liking’ and ‘Wanting’ in Rats. (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Amanda Szczesniak - The Influence of Marital Commitment on Mate Guarding (Mentor: Stephanie Preston)

Jean Tyan - Revealing the Roles of Sleep-Preparatory Behaviors in Sleep Physiology (Mentor: Ada Eban-Rothschild)

Giselle Uwera - Examining Health Behavior Constructs in the Context of Low Food Accessibility (Mentor: Allison Earl)

Devin Ablow - Loneliness and Negative Affective Conditions in Polish College Students: Clarifying If and How Feeling Socially Isolated is Associated with Expecting the Worst, Not Expecting the Best, or Both?  (Mentor: Edward Chang)

Laura Brasseur - Validation Study of Cartoon-Based Visual Analogue Pain Scale Towards the Construction of a Novel Pain Scale (Mentors: Holly White & Priti Shah)

Sarah Broner - Social Support Moderates the Link Between Familial Risk for Depression and the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal-Axis Stress Response (Mentor: Nestor Lopez-Duran)

Logan Burley - Facial Gender Ambiguity (Mentors: Susan Gelman & Victor Mendoza)

Rachel Clark - Is Swiping Bad for You? Dating Application Use and Mental Health Outcomes Among College Students (Mentor: Nestor Lopez-Duran)

Michael Falbo - The Influence of Political Party Affiliation on Agreement with Political Statements (Mentor: Daniel Kruger)

Spencer Gines - How Does Brain-derived Neurotrophic Factor Relate to Ketamine Treatment for Depression and Chronic Pain? (Mentors: Patricia Deldin & Ryan Cardinale)

Sylvia  Gisler - Developing Morphological Awareness: Predictive Characteristics of Production Errors (Mentor: Ioulia Kovelman)

A bbey  Hamlin   - Social Engagement and Episodic Memory in Black and White Older Adults (Mentor: Laura Zahodne)

Stuart Hannah - Small-Group Composition Effects on Executive Function in Early Elementary School (Mentor: Frederick Morrison)

Riley Jouppi - The Great Food vs. Eating Addiction Debate: Effects on Obesity Stigma and Policy  upport (Mentor: Ashley Gearhardt)

Ameera Kamalrudin - Using Animation to Facilitate Second Language Learning (Mentor: Twila Tardif)

William Katzman - The Relationship Between Childhood Anxiety and Maternal Attachment Styles (Mentors: Kate Fitzgerald & Julie Premo)

Riley Marshall - Minority Stress and Sexual Minorities of Color: The Mediating Role of Mastery (Mentor: Ramaswami Mahalingam)

Marisa Meyer - Exploring the Role of Digital Play in Child Development (Mentors: Jenny Radesky & Shelly Schreier)

Kathleen Nelson - Investigating Relationship Between the Error Related Negativity at Ages 4-6 and Anxiety at 7-10 (Mentor: Kate Fitzgerald)

Madalyn Osbourne - Predictors of Perseverance and Optimism in the Kids' Empowerment Program  (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Akari Oya - Cardiovascular Reactivity to Interpersonal Stress: The Roles of Race and Chronic Stress (Mentors: Kira Birditt & Richard Gonzalez)

Laraine Pesheck - Together or Not at All: How Shared Interests Between Partners Encourages Stable Self-Definition (Mentor: Robin Edelstein)

Salam Qalieh - Cross-Cultural Variation in Emotional Reasoning and Behavioral Causality in Regards to Depression and Neurasthenia (Mentor: David Dunning)

Miranda Schaffer - Experience of Sexual Assault and Perfectionism as Predictors of Self-Destructive Behaviors in Female College Students: Distinguishing Between Self-Harm and Suicidal Behaviors (Mentor: Edward Chang)

Emma Schillinger - Temporal Associations Between Reasons for Alcohol Use and Alcohol Consequences in Adolescents and Emerging Adults (Mentors: Daniel Keating & Edward Huntley)

Shannon Shaughnessy - Predictors of Character Strengths for Children Participating in the Kids' Empowerment Program (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Hayley Simon - To Conceal or To Reveal: Examining What Children Understand About Revealing Their True Identity While Online (Mentor: Susan Gelman)

Allison Urban - “Achievement has no color:” Colorblind Ideologies and Race & Ethnicity Course Selection (Mentor: Fiona Lee)

Rhianna Vergeer - Do Eating Disorder Treatment Outcomes Differ for Individuals with Comorbid Substance Use? Examination in an Adolescent Eating Disorders Partial Hospitalization Program (Mentors: Jessica Van Huysse & Ashley Gearhardt)

Alexandra  Wormley - The Influence of Pathogen Threat on Traditionalism (Mentor: Joshua Ackerman)

Jiayin Yuan - Loyal Friend or Dutiful Citizen? How Culture Shapes Responses to Moral Violations (Mentor: Ethan Kross)

Yiwen Zhong - The Effect of Anecdotes on Science Evidence Evaluation (Mentors: Audrey Michal & Priti Shah)

Kiran Ajani - Decision Trees: An Effective Tool for Evaluating Generalizability of Medical Research Studies? (Mentors: Audrey Michal & Priti Shah)

Ruchica Chandnani - The Effects of How South Asian Women are Portrayed in American and South Asian Media (Mentor: Muniba Saleem)

Kendall Coden - Investigating Behavioral Cross-Sensitization Between Cocaine and d-Amphetamine in Sprague Dawley Rats Following Repeated and Intermittent Infusions (Mentor: Terry Robinson)

Elizabeth Estes - Exploring Associations Between Child Maltreatment and the Volume of the Extended Limbic System in a Population-Based Sample of Adolescents (Mentors: Luke Hyde & Melissa Peckins)

Anusha Garg - Mind Wandering in the Context of Personal Concerns and Personality (Mentors: Sripada Sekhar & Colleen Seifert)

Samantha Goldberg - Stressful Event Exposure is Related to Hippocampal Activity During Extinction Recall (Mentor: Elizabeth Duval)

Laura Huerta Sanchez - Investigating the Role of Corticotropin Releasing Factor Neurons in Motivation Using Optogenetic Inhibition (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Dora Juhasz - The Need for TLC (Tender Loving Cell Phone): Smartphones and Socialization Behaviors among College Students (Mentor: Daniel Kruger)

Zaina Khoury - Wealth Essentialism in Children and Adults (Mentors: Susan Gelman & Margaret Echelbarger)

Elizabeth Kruse - Grey Matter Markers Predicting Future Substance Use in Adolescents (Mentors: Jillian Hardee & Cindy Lustig)

Sanika Kulkarni - Children’s Inferences about Digital Tracking as a Result of Ingroup and Outgroup Differentiation  (Mentor: Susan Gelman)

Catherine Lawton - Does 100.4 Mean Exactly 100.4? Expert Interpretations of Precise Numbers (Mentor: Priti Shah)

Nathan Lwo - Neural and Behavioral Correlates of Visual Attention Cognitive Training and tDCS in Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Mentor: John Jonides)

Arushi Mahajan - Novel Attention Training Paradigm Minimizes Distraction through tDCS Enhanced Cognitive Training (Mentor: John Jonides)

Megan Mitchell - Extracorporeal Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Following Prolonged Cardiac Arrest: Predicting Neurological Outcomes in a Porcine Model (Mentors: Alvaro Rojas-Pena & Jillian Hardee)

Kelsey Owen - Anandamide and Hedonic ‘Liking’ within the Posterior Ventral Pallidum Hotspot (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Dasha Peppard - Investigating Engaged Learning and Transformational Impact in an Action Learning Program (Mentors: Mari Kira & Gretchen Spreitzer)

Mariam Reda - Influence of Trauma Type and Sex on Resting-State Functional Connectivity in Adolescents (Mentor: Israel Liberzon)

Emma St. Pierre - Type A Aortic Dissections Worsen Quality of Life and Mental Health (Mentors: Bo Yang & Bruno Giordani)

Rachel Tanenbaum - Caregiver Adaptation in Disorders of Sex Development (Mentors: David Sandberg & Jennifer Cummings)

Jessica Zhao - The Influence of Real-Time Emotion and Baseline Negative Urgency on Daily Food Consumption (Mentor: Ashley Gearhardt)

Jessica Alexa - Effects of Cognitive and Affective Distraction on Working Memory Performance (Mentors: Alexandru Iordan & Patricia Reuter-Lorenz)

Harrison Angoff - Unique Influence of Abuse and Neglect on School Behavior: An Exploratory Study (Mentor: Christopher Monk)

Diego Barcala-Delgado - Parents’ Ethnotheories of Maladaptive Behavior in Young Children: A Comparison of Spain and the U.S. (Mentor: Sheryl Olson)

Anna Bergson - Children’s Attributions of Persistence of Individual Identity Following Transformations (Mentors: Susan Gelman & Kristan Marchak)

Megan Burns - Exploring Social Class Through Decision Making Paradigms and Evaluating Social Class Measurement Systems  (Mentor: Richard Gonzalez)

Andrew Canvasser - Collaboration and Creativity: Implementation and Improvement in the Educational Environment (Mentor: Colleen Seifert)

Kristen Cross - Beyond the Sidelines: Parental Involvement in Latino/a Adolescents' Extracurricular Activities (Mentor: Rosario Ceballo)

Chanelle Davis - Racial Identity as a Moderator of the Associations Between Parental Incarceration and Psychological Functioning and Aggression Among Black Adolescents (Mentor: Stephanie Rowley)

Taylor Galdi - Unskilled, Unaware, and Influential: The Dunning-Kruger Effect in Juries (Mentor: David Dunning)

Rachel Ghosh - Father-Daughter Relationships Among College Students: Implications for Other Interpersonal Relationships and Academic Outcomes (Mentors: Rona Carter)

Keegan Giffels - The Existence of Bisexual Miscategorization (Mentor: Arnold Ho)

Michael Harrington - Improving Causal Reasoning in a College Science Course (Mentors: Colleen Seifert & Priti Shah)

Jessica Hejka - Maternal Positive Parenting and the Development of Children’s Later Empathy and Externalizing Behavior (Mentor: Sheryl Olson)

Jean Anne Heng - Examining the Effects of Effortful Control Training in Clinically Anxious Preschool Children  (Mentors: Julie Premo & Kate D. Fitzgerald)

Shannon Jajko - Gender Essentialism Measure for Children (Mentors: Susan Gelman & Arnold Ho)

Sally Kafelghazal - Relationship between Contact with Gender Non-Conforming People and Race Essentialist Beliefs (Mentor: Arnold Ho)

Hadi Katebi - Manipulating Ideological Preferences Through Exposure and Inoculation (Mentors: Joshua Rabinowitz)

Janet Kim - Slow Life Strategists Hold More Growth Mindsets (for Intelligence not Physical Attractiveness) (Mentors: Oliver Sng & Joshua Ackerman)

Daejin Kim - Motivation and Grip Strength on Young and Older Adults (Mentor: Cindy Lustig)

Alexandra Mangus - Appropriate Punishments for Perpetrators of Sexual Assault  (Mentor: Abigail Stewart)

Juliette Ni - Culture Difference in Depression and Neurasthenia: The Implication of Hypocognition in Mental Health (Mentor: David Dunning)

Rizzo Nichols - Is Consent Sexy? An Evaluation of Direct, Verbal Consent in Erotic Fiction (Mentor: Terri Conley)

Emily Olin - Intersectionality and Charismatic Leadership in Female Leaders of Community-based Organizations: A Cross-Cultural Study (Mentor: Ramaswami Mahalingam)

Shima Sadaghiyani - Finding Strength in Adversity: Exploring the Process of Postadversarial Growth among Culturally Diverse Individuals (Mentors: Mari Kira & Fiona Lee)

Rachel Atkinson - Motivational Learning Styles are not Determined by Individual Differences in Levels of FAAH (Mentors: Jonathan Morrow & Terry Robinson)

Alexandra Chloe Eastman - Adolescent Psychopathology and Substance Use: The Moderating Effect of Prospective Self (Mentors: Daniel Keating & Edward Huntley)

Maya Khalil Eter - Examining the Ability of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to Augment Working Memory Training (Mentor: John Jonides)

Penelope Clare Farris - Work-Family Conflict and Cognition among Older Adults Working Full-Time (Mentor: Laura Zahodne)

Dana Elise Feldman - The Role of the Nucleus Accumbens in Context Fear Conditioning (Mentor: Natalie Tronson)

Saheli Ghosh - Induced Human Neurons as a Model to Study the Role of Mitochondria in Alzheimer’s Disease (Mentors: Michael Uhler & Jill Becker)

Jared Benjamin Goldberg - Assessing Teacher Understanding of Student Executive Functioning and Predictions to Academic Achievement (Mentor: Frederick Morrison)

Julia Aseel Haidar - The Effects of Saturated and Unsaturated Fatty Acids on Mitochondrial Trafficking and Function in Sensory Neurons (Mentors: Amy Rumora & J. Wayne Aldridge)

Julia Charlotte Harris -  Slow-Wave Sleep Disruption in Adolescence: Brain Responses to Monetary Reward and Loss (Mentors: Laura Cope & Robert Zucker)

Michael John Hendrickson - Teacher Response to Student Misbehavior: Assessing Potential Biases in the Classroom (Mentor: Kai Cortina)

Elizabeth O'Brien Hinckley - Can Generic You Increase ‘Your’ Sense of Belonging (Mentor: Ethan  Kross)

Elizabeth Hubbard - Counteracting Nucleus Accumbens-Mediated Fear Behavior with Optogenetics (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Joshua Levi Krasney - Central Amygdala-Induced Attraction towards Aversive Shock Rod  Recruits Mesocorticolimbic Brain Circuitry (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

George Lu - Long-lasting Neuroimmune-Mediated Changes Following Peripheral Immune Challenge (Mentors: Natalie Tronson & Katie Collette)

Diana Cecilia Marino - Predicting Gun or Knife Violence Against Women Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Margarett Sha'Lisa McBride - “Do I Belong in my Community?” Latino Adolescents' Perceptions of Neighborhood Belonging (Mentor: Rosario Ceballo)

Julia Aisling Menzel-Smith - Neurological Development and Injury among Premature Lambs Supported by the Artificial Placenta (Mentors: Kent Berridge & Alvaro Rojas Pena)

Tanisha Mitra - Individual Differences in the Motivation for Cocaine and Neuronal Activity Induced by a Cocaine-Paired Cue (Mentor: Terry Robinson)

Lining Pan - Role of Ventral Hippocampus in Context Fear Conditioning in Males and Females (Mentor: Natalie Tronson)

Kevin C. Pasquale - The Identification of Microvascular Variations in Cerebral Autosomal Dominant Arteriopathy with Subcortical Infarcts and Leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) through Machine Learning Algorithms (Mentors: Michael Wang & Henry Buchtel)

Isabel Cristina Quinones - Characterization of Health Behaviors in Transgender Youth (Mentors: Jessica Van Huysse & Ashley Gearhardt)

Grecia Quiroga - Testing Associations Between Sign and Goal-Tracking and Risk Factors for Obesity in Children (Mentor: Ashley Gearhardt)

Melanie Racenstein - An Aging Study of Somatosensory and Motor Dedifferentiation using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Behavioral Measures  (Mentor: Thad Polk)

Ruby Siada - ABC Brains: Linking Early Childhood Experience to Neural Activity and Obesity (Mentor: Ashley Gearhardt)

Elisabeth Silver - Perpetrating Sexism: An Investigation into the Effects on Men’s Psychophysiology (Mentor: Sari van Anders)

Khyati Somayaji - Effect of Estrous Cycle on Severity of Sepsis in C57Bl/6 Female Mice (Mentors: Joanna Spencer-Segal & Jill Becker)

Akemi Tsutsumi Rioboo - The Effects of Spanish-English Bilingual Dominance Profile in Children’s Literacy Skills (Mentor: Ioulia Kovelman)

Annie Zalon - Exploring the Role of Alpha1-chimaerin in a Model of Cerebellar Ataxia (Mentors: Vikram Shakkottai & Brandon Aragona)

Mary Zinn - Characterizing Resiliency in Adolescence: The Role of Prospective Self in Health-Related Outcomes Associated with Childhood Adversity (Mentors: Daniel Keating & Edward Huntley)

Emma Abed - Investigating Diversity in Sexual and Gender/Sex Majorities: Interviews Using Sexual Configurations Theory (Mentor: Sari van Anders)

Zainab Ali Ahmad - Wandering Eyes: Patterns of Looking While Perambulating in a Natural Setting (Mentors: Kevin Miller & Kai Cortina)

Alexandra Bayer - Who Provides Social Support to Children Following Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence? (Mentors: Sandra Graham-Bermann & Andrew Grogan-Kaylor)

Stephanie Beaton - The Effects of Perfectionism on Objective Sleep Quality: The Role of Rumination (Mentor: Patricia Deldin)

Diana Curtis - Feminizing Fear: Investigating the Intersections of Paranoia, Empathy, and Sex (Mentors: Patricia Deldin & Sari van Anders)

Wisteria Deng - Anxiety Mediates the Relationship Between Psychotic-like Experiences and Social Functioning (Mentor: Patricia Deldin)

Sheng Dong - Affiliation Motives under Pathogen Threat Studied in Electrocortical Activity of Norm Violations (Mentor: Shinobu Kitayama)

Danielle Harrison - Subjective and Official Reports of Neighborhood Danger and Antisocial Behavior in Adolescence  (Mentor: Luke Hyde)

Natasha Heart - Does Sleep Duration Moderate the Relationship Between Adolescent Psychopathology and Health Risk Behavior? (Mentors: Daniel Keating & Edward Huntley)

Jing Hu - Spontaneous Use of Self-Distancing Online Among Healthy and Depressed Facebook Users (Mentor: Ethan Kross)

Morgan Johnson - Teachers’ Impact on the Wellbeing and Achievementof Students with ohnsonSpecial Needs in the General Education Classroom (Mentor: Fred Morrison)

Hannah Lahti - Sex Differences in Negative Affect and Symptom Severity in Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder and Bipolar Disorders (Mentor: Patricia Deldin)

Blacker Li - Post-Frog Pond: Cultural Variations in Hiring Decisions (Mentor: Stephen Garcia)

Muzi Lin - Fathers’ Experiences of Challenges and Joys During the Prenatal and Postnatal Periods (Mentors: Brenda Volling & Shawna Lee)

Katy Michon - The P300 ERP and Cognitive Bias in Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and Dysphoria (Mentor: Patricia Deldin)

Breanne Parker - Exploring the Relationship between College Student Exposure to the Model Minority Stereotype and Attributions of ADHD in Asian Americans (Mentor: Donna Nagata)

Reeya Patel - Disappointing Gift Task: Implications for Understanding Emotion Regulation Development During Early Childhood (Mentor: Sheryl Olson)

Haley Rough - Neighborhood crime and its effect on neural reactivity (Mentor: Christopher Monk)

Aiya Saad - In the Eyes of the Beholder: How Experience Can Influence Perceptions of Interest and Engagement (Mentor: Kevin Miller)

Chaewon Sagong - Influences of Positive Parenting on Adolescent Depressive Symptoms: Moderation by Levels of Physical Neighborhood Disorder (Mentor: Christopher Monk)

Zachary Schildcrout - Does Visual Attention Cognitive Training Decrease Distraction? (Mentor: John Jonides)

Jocelyn Schwartz - The Influence of Positive Affect on Food Consumption: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Analysis (Mentor: Ashley Gearhardt)

Priyanka Shanmugasundaram - Impacts of Multiple Marginality for South Asian Americans’ Mental Health (Mentor: Fiona Lee)

Julia Snider - Engagement in and Desire for Romantic and Sexual Relationships in College: Associations with Mental Health (Mentor: Nestor Lopez-Duran)

Emily Armstead - Examining Rumination and Sleep: A Transdiagnostic Approach to Depression and Social Anxiety (Mentor: Patricia Deldin)

Jane Brown - Down the Musical Garden Path: Shared Syntactic Processing in Music and Language (Mentor: Julie Boland)

Man Ting Choi - Paternal Education Attainment Moderates Associations Between Paternal Psychological Control and Preschool Children’s Internalizing Problems: A Cross-National Study in the United States and China (Mentor: Sheryl Olson)

Bailey Ferris - Differential Longitudinal fMRI Activation in Bilateral Thalamus in Substance Using Versus Non-Using Adolescents During a go/no-go Task (Mentors: Mary Heitzeg & Jillian Hardee)

Nick Gabry - Relapse: An Investigation into the Differential Modulation of Cue-Based Drug Reinstatement (Mentors: Terry Robinson & Bryan Singer)

Maia Gersten - Examining the Role of Diversification of Contingent Self-Worth on College Student Mental Health (Mentor: Nestor Lopez-Duran)

Kevin Grimaldi - The Role of Parental Involvement and Monitoring in Adolescent Health Risk Behavior (Mentors: Daniel Keating & Edward Huntley)

Sonalee Joshi - The Effects of Race on Implicit Attitudes about Social Anxiety (Mentors: Elizabeth Duval & Israel Liberzon)

Louisa Kane - Motivational-Dopaminergic versus Cognitive-Cholinergic Processing of a Pavlovian Cocaine Cue in Sign- and Goal-Tracking Rats (Mentors: Martin Sarter & Kyle Pitchers)

Kelsea Kangas - Use of Neuropsychological Evaluation Results in a VA Healthcare System Sub-Acute Geriatric Rehabilitation Clinic (Mentors: Linas Bieliauskas & Katherine Kitchen-Andren)

Alexandria Kolenda - Investigating the Relationship Between Depression, Metabolic Syndrome, and DNA Methylation of the SLC35D3 Gene Region in Psychotic Disorders (Mentor: Vicki Ellingrod)

Alyssa Marquette - The Role of the Built Environment on Adolescent BMI (Mentor: Ashley Gearhardt)

Allison Moll - Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase (eNOS), Metabolic Syndrome, and Cognition in Schizophrenia-Spectrum Disorders (Mentor: Vicki Ellingrod)

Anna Nagler - The Effect of Cognitive Impairment on Deconditioned/Debilitated Post-Acute Veterans (Mentors: Linas Bieliauskas & Stelmokas Julija)

Jeewon Oh - Emotional Word Processing in First and Second Language (Mentor: Nick Ellis)

Natalie Perkins - Examining Impoverished Neighborhoods with Google Street View: A New Tool for Assessing Ecological Settings (Mentor: Christopher Monk)

Kelly Rea - White-Matter Tract Abnormalities and Links to Antisocial Behavior Among High-Risk Young Adult Males (Mentors: Luke Hyde & Rebecca Waller)

Seonyool Song - Education Comparison between United States and South Korea with PISA Results (Mentors: Kevin Miller & Kai Cortina)

Emma Sutherland - Investigating the Association Between Screen Time and Adolescent Adiposity (Mentors: Ashley Gearhardt & Sarah Domoff)

Taylor Weeks - Direct Inhibition of the Nucleus Accumbens Shell Potentiates Eating (Mentor: Berridge Kent)

Jennifer Alpert - Children’s and Adults’ Recall of Generic and Proper Name Statements (Mentor: Susan Gelman)

Caroline Bartholomew - Parental Restrictive Feeding Behaviors and Adolescent Food-Related Self-Regulation (Mentors: Ashley Gearhardt & Megan Pesch)

Stephen Berkemeier - Law Enforcement Conformity to Masculine Norms and Myths Surrounding Male Victims of Sexual Assault (Mentors: Jamie Mitchell & Eric Fretz)

Shyryn Borgol - The Behavioral Immune System and Interoception (Mentor: Joshua Ackerman)

Emmy Carey - Forms of Intimate Partner Rape Experienced by Latinas with and without PTSD (Mentors: Sandra Graham-Bermann & Andrew Grogan-Kaylor)

Sitao Chen - Correlational Study of Childhood Activities and Executive Functions (Mentor: Priti Shah)

Xi Chen - Stereotypes and Biased Perceptions towards Foreign Currencies: An Irrationality of Market Valuations (Mentor: Stephen Garcia)

Rachel Cultice - #VocalWomen: How Does Threatened Masculinity Influence Perceptions of Women Who Confront Online Misogyny? (Mentor: Terri Conley)

Snehanjani Edupuganti - Don't Judge a Book by its Cover: The Influence of a Professor's Gender on Student's Impression and Lecture Evaluation (Mentor: Kevin Miller)

Alison Grenon - A Comparative Analysis of Body Mass Index and Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis Measurements in a Teenage Population Considering Gender, Pubertal Status, and Athletic Participation (Mentor: Ashley Gearhardt)

Inara Ismailova - Young and Distracted: Children Filter Irrelevant Stimuli Less Effectively than Adults (Mentors: Daniel Weissman & Ioulia Kovelman)

Rachel Korn - The Influence of Impulsivity on Food Ordering Behavior and Caloric Consumption (Mentor: Ashley Gearhardt)

Jerin Lee - Negative Life Events and Sexual Assault Victimization as Predictors of Negative Psychological Functioning in Female College Students (Mentor: Edward Chang)

Sai-Lai Lee - Color Outside the Lines: Perceptions of Identity Conflict and Women of Color in Leadership (Mentor: Fiona Lee)

Wanying Liu - Risk Portfolio Management: Mathematical Models and Behavioral Styles (Mentor: Jun Zhang)

Andrea Maxwell - Neighborhood Effects on the Brain: Impoverishment in Early Childhood Predicts Amygdala Reactivity to Ambiguous Faces in Young Adulthood (Mentor: Luke Hyde)

Isabel Osgood - Infectious Disease Psychology and Social Categorization (Mentor: Joshua Ackerman)

Dayna Petkov - Examining Perceptions of Moral Change of the Self and Others (Mentors: Ethan Kross & Walter Swoden)

Kaitlin Prakken - Correlates of Maternal Warmth in Latinas Who Have Experienced Intimate Partner Violence (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Manna Shintani - Executive Function and Academic Achievement: Differential Relations Across Socioeconomic Status (Mentor: Frederick Morrison)

Anna Spitz - Diversity, Pressure, and Divisions on the University of Michigan Campus (Mentors: Priti Shah & Deborah Dash-Moore)

Lara Stojanov - The Paradox of Bilingual Attentional Control Investigated Through Comparative Analytic Approaches (Mentor: Ioulia Kovelman)

Julia Swan - Associations Between Delay Discounting Performance and Reward-Related Neural Activity (Mentor: Luke Hyde)

Warren Teo - Multicultural Experience and Wisdom (Mentor: Fiona Lee)

Andrea Villafuerte - The Role of Perceived Social Support in Buffering Women Against Stereotype Threat (Mentor: Denise Sekaquaptewa)

Kali Vitek - Risky, Dramatic, and Unrealistic: Reality Television Portrayals of Pregnancy and Childbirth and Their Effects on Women's Fear and Self-Efficacy (Mentor: Lucretia Ward)

Haley Yaremych - Prosocial Development Between Siblings: The Role of Marital Quality and Parents' Emotion Socialization Practices (Mentor: Brenda Volling)

Tina Yu - Understanding the Association Between Spirituality, Religiosity, and Feelings of Happiness and Sadness Among HIV-Positive Indian Adults: Examining Stress-Related Growth as a Mediator (Mentor: Edward Chang)

Joel Adu-Brimpong - Cortisol Stress Reactivity Can be Shaped by Control, Support and Threat in Surprising Ways – Illustrating HPA Axis Complexity (Mentor: Nestor Lopez-Duran)

Bryana Bayly - This is Not a Pipe…Or is it? Children's and Adults' Appreciation for the Representational Properties of Pictures and Toys (Mentors: Susan Gelman & Natalie Davidson)

John Bell - Synaptic Interactomes and Neurological Disease:  A Closer Look at Neurexin-1α (Mentors: Gabrielle Rudenko & Natalie Tronson)

Alix Bernholtz - ‘Running in the Family’: Exploring the Causal Beliefs of At-Risk Individuals with a Family History of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (Mentors: Susan Gelman & Toby Jayaratne )

Rui Deng - Differential Effects of Oxytocin on The Motivation of Methamphetamine Self-Administration in Isolated and Pair Housed Female Rats (Mentor: Jill Becker)

Dema Fawaz - Optogenetic Inhibition of Lateral Hypothalamic Inputs into Ventral Pallidum Amplifies Aversive ‘Disgust’ (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Danielle Flanders - Structural Priming in Sentence Production (Mentor: Julie Boland)

Andrew Garton - Examining the Impact Of Cognitive Styles on Responses to Self-Relevant Failures (Mentor: Nestor Lopez-Duran)

Zoe Hawks - Memory-Control Interactions Influence the Congruency Sequence Effect (Mentor: Daniel Weissman)

Sunghyun Hong - Optogenetic Stimulation of Dopamine Afferents in Nucleus Accumbens and Central Amygdala Reveals Differential Roles in Food and Social Motivation (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Yona Isaacs - Cholinergic Highs and Lows: A Genetic Link to Attentional Function? (Mentor: Cindy Lustig)

Shaima Khandaker - Neural Correlates of Verbal Communication Using Infant Directed Speech in Language Acquisition: An fNIRS Investigation (Mentor: Ioulia Kovelman)

Lena Kremin - Predictors and Transfer of Reading Ability in Spanish-English Bilingual Children (Mentor: Ioulia Kovelman)

Danielle Leonard - Phonological and Lexical Processes in Bilingual Spanish-English Learners (Mentor: Ioulia Kovelman)

Alina Lesnovskaya - Symptoms of Depression as Indicators of Delirium in Elderly Hospitalized Veterans (Mentors: Linas Bieliauskas & Jennifer Flaherty)

Emily Lustig - Cognition and Experienced Well-Being in the Aging Population: Findings from the Health and Retirement Study (Mentor: Jacqui Smith)

Christina Naegeli - Cross-Cultural Look at Orphan Care in Brazil and the USA: Does There Exist a Difference in 'Positive' Themes in Different Methods of Child Care? (Mentors: Nansook Park & Reighan Gillam)

Eve Rosenheck - Current Trends and Predictors of Therapy Underutilization Among Asian American College Students (Mentors: Justin Heinze & Jennifer Glass)

Gabrielle Schwartz - The Influence of Power on Emotions Felt for Others (Mentor: Phoebe Ellsworth)

Adam Sitzmann - Treatment-Resistant Depression, Obesity, and Adiponectin (Mentors: Brian Mickey & Christopher  Monk)

Lawrence Tello - Beliefs Influence the Consequences of Expressive Suppression (Mentors: Shinobu Kitayama & Ethan Kross)

Linsa Varghese - Mindfulness, Emotional Well-Being, Emotional Regulation, Burnout, and Servant Leadership Among Women Social Justice Activists (Mentor: Ram Mahalingam)

Alisa Zoltowski - Using our Theory of Mind for Inferences in Strategic Reasoning (Mentor: Jun Zhang)

Monica Arkin - The Relationship Between Community Violence Exposure and Psychological Well-Being among Latino Adolescents (Mentor: Rosario Ceballo)

Pallavi Babu - The Psychometric Validation of the Military Attributions Scale (Mentor: Michelle Kees)

Amanda Balakirsky - Children’s Inferences about Relative Age as a Result of Power Comprehension (Mentor: Susan Gelman)

Jillian Bean - Impact of Weight Based Self-Ssteem and Objectification on Risk of Disordered Eating in College Students (Mentor: Nestor Lopez-Duran)

Jacob Bradburn - The N-Effect in Sales: A Field Experiment (Mentor: Stephen Garcia)

Zoe Brier - Suicidal Trajectories across the Postpartum: Risk and Protective Factors (Mentors: Maria Muzik & Katherine Rosenblum)

Rachel Carretta - Religiosity and Suicidality in Caucasian And African-American Sexual Minority Young Adults (Mentor: Cheryl King)

Shao Wei Chia - Perceived Differential Parental Expectations of Achievement: Assessing Impact on Psychological Well-Being Among College Students with Siblings (Mentors: Pamela Davis-Kean & Daniel Keating)

Melissa Durante - Everyday Scientific Reasoning: Critical Approaches Outside the Classroom (Mentor: Priti Shah)

Julia Feldman - Early Fathering Predictors of Children’s Late School-Age Peer Acceptance, Emotion Regulation, and Behavior Problems (Mentor: Sheryl Olson)

Ryan Foley - Competitive Versus Cooperative Video Game Decision Making and it’s Relationship to Problematic Video Game Play (Mentor: Frank Yates)

Rachel Forche - Children's Predictions about Future Desires:  Parent Input vs. Intuition (Mentors: Susan Gelman & Craig Smith)

Samantha Goldstein - Gender Differences in Children's Emotion Regulation from Preschool to School Age (Mentor: Sheryl Olson)

Nora Greenstein - Women’s Academic Motivation in the STEM Field: Using Group Role Models to Reduce Stereotype Threat in Group Work (Mentor: Denise Sekaquaptewa)

Roxanne Harfmann - "Don't Forget to Subscribe": Investigating the Impact of Exposure to User-Created Youtube Channels on Endorsement of Gender Attitudes and Self-Sexualization (Mentor: Monique Ward)

Youjeong Huh - Mindfulness, Emotion Regulation and Employee Well-Being Among Korean Workers (Mentor: Ramaswami Mahalingam)

Corey Jackson - Social Inclusion, Identity, & Conflict Adaptation (Mentor: Fiona Lee)

Zunaira Jilani - Relations Between Multidimensional Spirituality and Negative Affective Conditions in Adults: Examining Hope as a Potential Mediator (Mentor: Edward Chang)

Kathryn Kemp - Sleep Quality and Mood on Memory in People with and without Depression (Mentor: Patricia Deldin)

Brandon Klein - Loss of a Job vs. a Loved One: The Impact on Indulgent Consumption (Mentor: Stephen Garcia)

Jessica Koolick - Comparisons of PTSD Symptomatology in Children Across Multiple Ethno-Racial Groups (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Jie Ling Kuan - The Reading Brain: fMRI Study of Chinese (Mentor: Ioulia Kovelman)

Emily Noyes - Alcohol-Related Consequences Among Binge Drinking College Students: Exploring Positive Alcohol Expectancies and Self-Efficacy to Use Protective Strategies (Mentors: Erin Bonar & Frederic  Blow)

Stephanie Oprea - Students’ Perceptions of Creative Process Pedagogy in College Courses (Mentor: Colleen Seifert)

Miray Philips - Attitudes Towards Rape Among College Students in the US, North Africa, and the Middle East (Mentors: Rowell Huesmann & Eric Dubow)

Sarah Polk - The Effects of Restraint and Gender on Frequency of Consumption of High-Glycemic Load and High-Fat Foods (Mentor: Ashley Gearhardt)

Benjamin Rooney - Explaining Gender Differences in Emotional Reactions to Heterosexual Casual Sex Offers (Mentor: Terri Conley)

Alison Sagon - Examining the Value of Setting Communication Goals for Subjective Well-Being (Mentor: Ethan Kross)

Justin Sarkis - The Effect of Sociolinguistic Accent on the Believability of Trivia Statements (Mentor: Julie Boland)

Shaina Shetty - Reluctant Models (Mentors: Harold Neighbors & Donna Nagata)

Keima Smith - African American Parental Racial Socialization: Exploring Gender Differences (Mentors: Stephanie  Rowley & Kevin Miller)

Precious  Smith - Fun To a Point: The Positive and Negative Effects of Children’s Toys in the Household (Mentor: Stephanie  Preston )

Chloe Sosenko - Zingerman’s: Mindfulness in the Dynamic Work Environment (Mentors: Gretchen Spreitzer & Oscar Ybarra)

Chloe Sprague  - The Role of Reconstruing versus Recounting in Social Support Contexts (Mentor: Ethan Kross)

Emily Steinberg  - The Role of Age, Gender, and Father Involvement in Firstborns' Behavioral Adjustment Across the Transition to Siblinghood (Mentor: Brenda Volling)

Gladys Tan  - Behind Racial Differences in STEM Participation:  College Students’ Priorities When Choosing Majors (Mentor: J Yates)

Alyssa Tender  - Too Close for Comfort:  An ERP Investigation into The Role of Relevancy in Attention to HIV-Relevant Information (Mentor: Allison Earl)

Meaghan Thompson  - The Relationship Between Parenting Behaviors During the Preschool Period and Subtypes of Childhood Aggression in the Late Elementary Period (Mentors: Sheryl Olson & Rebecca Waller)

Tara Von Mach  - An Evaluation of Within-Session Interactions During Motivational Interviewing-Based Brief Interventions for Marijuana Misuse: A Mixed-Methods Investigation (Mentors: Maureen Walton & Frederic Blow)

Yuqi Wang  - Masculinity on Trial:  A Content Analysis of Men-Against-Men Sexual Harassment Legal Cases, 1982-2014 (Mentor: Lilia Cortina)

Chelsey Weiss  - The Roles of Early Externalizing Behavior and Prosocial Parental Discipline on Peer Rejection (Mentor: Sheryl Olson)

Alexandra Wilt  - Addictive-Like Eating Mediates the Association Between Eating Motivations and Elevated Body Mass Index (Mentor: Ashley Gearhardt)

Kaidi  Wu  - Would You Rather be a Big Frog In A Small Pond? Examining Cultural Variations in Competition Entry Decisions (Mentor: Stephen Garcia)

Carlos Yeguez  - Developing a Self-Efficacy Intervention for College Students Diagnosed with ADHD (Mentor: Priti Shah)

Chelsea Zabel  - Psychology of Selfies: Motivations for Posting Selfies and their Connections to Self-Concept (Mentor: Lucretia Ward)

Ankita Badhwar -  Measuring Prosocial Action Tendencies From Caretaking Emotions  (Mentor: Sara Konrath)

Lauren Burton -  The Effect of Chronic Phase Shifts on Melatonin Rhythms (Mentors: Jimo Borjigin & Martin Sarter)

Nathan Chesterman -  Mapping a Hedonic Hotspot in Insular Cortex (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Kathleen Duemling -  Cortisol Awakening Response and Youth Depression: The Impact of Anxiety, Age, and Sex  (Mentor: Nestor Lopez-Duran)

Paige Galecki -  Testing a Video-Chat Social Reward Learning Task to Predict Depression in Young Adults (Mentor: Nestor Lopez-Duran)

Mariam Hamid -  In Vivo Corneal Confocal Microscopy in Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy (Mentors: Roni Shtein & Patricia Reuter-Lorenz)

Rina Joshi -  Does Time Really Tell All?: The Effect of Circadian Rhythms on Emotional-Like Behavior in Rats Selectively Bred to Model Mood Disorders (Mentor: Megan Hagenauer)

Viktoria Krislaty -  The Effect of Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) on Neuropsychological Functioning in Adolescents who Suffer from Major Depressive Disorder  (Mentor: Bruno Giordani)

Kathryn Lee -  Semantic and Syntactic Priming in Infant Language Acquisition: A Comparison of English and Mandarin Speakers (Mentor: Twila Tardif)

Shoko Mori -  Regulating Negative Affect: Neurophysiological Investigation of Self-Generated vs. Externally-Provided Reappraisal (Mentors: Christine Rabinak & William Gehring)

Emily Munier -  Modality Effects in Short-Term Memory Versus Long-Term Memory within the Deese, Roediger and McDermott Paradigm  (Mentors: Patricia Reuter-Lorenz & Justyna Olszewska)

Maryam Seifeldin -  Sociolinguistic Stereotype and Syntactic Processing (Mentors: Julie Boland & Jonathan Brennan)

Erica Seifert -  Syntactic Error Processing in Bilingual Children: An fNIRS Study (Mentor: Ioulia Kovelman)

Aashna Sunderrajan -   It's a Trap! The Influence of Instrumental Manipulation Checks on Response Non-Differentiation and Gricean Norm Effects  (Mentors: Norbert Schwarz & Allison Earl)

Rachel Terry -  The Role of Orexin and Acetylcholine on 'Liking' and 'Disliking' in the Nucleus Accumbens Hedonic Hotspot (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Xiao Wang -  Examining the Relationship Between Skilled Musical Training and Attention  (Mentor: Patricia Reuter-Lorenz)

Leah Breish -  Effects of Backwards Design Lesson Planning Implementation on Non-Educator Elementary Literacy Tutors (Mentor: Frederick Morrison)

Peter Ceglarek -  A Tool for Help or Harm? Associations Between Sexual Minority Youth’s Social Networking Use and Their SocialSupport, Sexual Identity, and Mental Health  (Mentor: L. Monique Ward)

Alejandra Cuspinera -   “Go to Sleep to Get Rid of the Fright”: Colombian Youth’s Experiences with Community Violence Exposure (Mentor: Rosario Ceballo)

Hailey Dotterer -  Influences on Destructive College Drinking: The Role of Psychopathic Traits and Gender  (Mentor: Luke Hyde)

Valerie Foster -  The Relationship Between Maternal Insightfulness and Psychopathology in Women with Histories of Childhood Maltreatment (Mentors: Maria Muzik & Katherine Rosenblum)

Danielle Goldstein -  Building a Better Campus: Establishing Mental Health Services at Ukrainian Universities (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Steven Homan  - Quality of Student Discourse During Math Lessons in the United States and China (Mentors: Kevin Miller & Kai Cortina)

Emma Kahle -  Understanding How Domestic Abuse is Associated with Greater Depressive Symptoms in a Community Sample of Female Primary Care Patients: Do Loss of Belongingness or Sense of Burdensomeness Matter? (Mentor: Edward Chang)

Adam Kern -  The Effect of Watching Food-Related Television on Eating Behaviors and Cravings  (Mentor: Ashley Gearhardt)

Heejoo Kim -  The Effects of Autonomy and Relatedness on Internalizing and Externalizing During Adolescence: Concurrent and Longitudinal Effects within Family Context  (Mentors: Jacquelynne Eccles & Yi-Miau Tsai)

Adriane Kline -  The Effects of HIV/AIDS Knowledge During Adolescence: The Role of This Knowledge in Predicting Sexual Behaviors and Outcomes  (Mentors: Justin Heinze & Marc Zimmerman)

Jenny Lee -  Resilience in the Face of Betrayal: The Significance of Social Support and Spontaneous Self-Distancing (Mentor: Ethan Kross)

Jonathan Lee -  Narcissism, Frustration, and the Mediating Role of Anger (Mentor: Shinobu Kitayama)

MengZhen Liu -  The Effect of Emotional Face Cues on Response Conflict Processing (Mentor: Shinobu Kitayama)

Melissa Manley -  Is What I Do Who I Am? A Study of Romantic and Sexual Partnering and Identity  (Mentor: Sari van Anders)

Margaret McGuire -  Intimate Partner Violence: Demographic Effects on Children’s Attitudes and Beliefs After Exposure (Mentors: Sandra Graham-Bermann & Andrew Grogan-Kaylor)

Annick Odom -  Local and National Identity of Flemings and Walloons in Belgium (Mentor: Fiona Lee)

Maggie O'Reilly-Treter -  Exploring the Relations Between Caregiver-Child Communication and Psychopathology Among Bereaved Families (Mentor: Julie Kaplow)

Rebekah Richmond -  Parenting Style and Parental Self-Efficacy in the Treatment of Anorexia Nervosa (Mentors: Ashley Gearhardt & Renee Hoste)

Taylor Rothman -  (Mis)imagining Someone Else’s Life: The Role of Focalism in Feeling Envy and Pity Towards Others  (Mentor: Phoebe Ellsworth)

Mallika Sarma -  Mindfulness, Psychological Well-Being, Emotion Regulation, and Creativity Among South-Asian Americans  (Mentor: Ramaswami Mahalingam)

Thea Senger -  The Relationship Between Cumulative Risk Exposure, Family Cohesion, and Working Memory Impairments (Mentor: James Swain)

Long Shi -  Possible Selves of College Students in China and the U.S. (Mentor: Daphna Oyserman)

Christopher Shu -  Effects of Onset and Persistence of Antisocial Behavior in Adulthood  (Mentor: Brian Hicks)

Alexa Shull -  Rumination Mediates the Impact of Personality on the Development of Depression During the Transition to College  (Mentor: Nestor Lopez-Duran)

Mehgha Shyam -  The Influence of Mirth and Elevation on Local and Global Information Processing  (Mentor: Richard Lewis)

Stacey Sklepinski -  Promoting Attention to Stigmatized Health Information: The Complexity of Targeted Messages (Mentor: Allison Earl)

Hannah Tuttle -  Applying the Addiction Label to Food: Legal and Policy Implications (Mentor: Ashley Gearhardt)

Abigail Waters -  Effort, Somatization, and Self-Reported Psychological Distress in a Veteran Population (Mentors: Linas Bieliauskas & Nicolette Gabel)

Audrey Wittrup -  The Relationship Between Academic Self-Concept and Achievement in High School and Risky Sexual Behavior in College-Aged Females Over Time  (Mentors: Jacquelynne Eccles & Meeta Banerjee)

Hannah Wolfson -  Children Facing Maternal Breast Cancer: Examining Relations Between Maternal Functioning and Child Psychiatric Symptoms  (Mentor: Julie Kaplow)

Kuan Hua Wu -  Mapping a Novel Hedonic Hotspot in the Orbitofrontal Cortex  (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Elizabeth Yu -  Doubling Up on Positive Future Cognitions Associated with Lower Depressive Symptoms and Suicidal Risk in Latinos?: A Look at Hope and Positive Problem Orientation (Mentor: Edward Chang)

Mo Zhang -   Interpretation of Difficulty’s Impact on Shifting and Inhibition Ability  (Mentor: Daphna Oyserman)

Sara Alberti -  Larger Amygdala Volume Relates to Social Anxiety in Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders (Mentor: Christopher Monk)

Curtis Austin  -  Interactions Between Social and Drug Reward on Stimulated Dopamine Release  in Male Prairie Voles  (Mentor: Brandon Aragona)

Sara Bendler  - Modality Effects in Working Memory Using the DRM Paradigm (Mentor: Patricia Reuter-Lorenz)

Shannon Burke -  How Sexual is Sexual Desire? Desire and Testosterone in Women   (Mentor: Katherine Rosenblum)

Christopher Cannon  -  Conspicuous Consumption & Sexual Orientation: Are Homosexuals "Experts"?   (Mentor: Stephanie Preston)

Lauren Frisch  -  The Impact of Emotional Recognition on Prejudice and Discrimination  (Mentor: Sarah Konrath)

Yasaman Kazerooni  -  Task Related Pupil Dilation Patterns in a List Lexical Decision Task  (Mentor: Richard Lewis)

Dana Kelly  -  The Effects of Insomnia and Psychological Distress on Cognitive Performance Among Veterans  (Mentor: Linas Bieliauskas)

Elizabeth O'Donnell  - Dorsomedial Striatal Control of Cue-Directed Versus Goal-Directed Pavlovian Approach Behavior (Mentor: Terry Robinson)

Salomi Rami  - Social support, emotional well-being, and emotion regulation: A mediation model (Mentor: Oscar Ybarra)

Stephanie Romeo  -   Defendant and Juror Social Class and Age: Effects on Jurors’ Perceptions of a Crime  (Mentor: Phoebe Ellsworth)

Craig Sanders  -  Computational Models of Regressive Eye Movements in Reading  (Mentor: Richard Lewis)

Gabriel Stellman -  Investigating the roles of Fast-Spiking Interneurons and Neuronal Projections Associated with the Nucleus Accumbens as they Relate to the Production of Motivated Behaviors   (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Alexander Tereshchenko  - Convergent and Divergent Thinking Creativity in Nominal and Collaborative Groups (Mentor: Cindy Lustig)

Margaret Ugolini -  fMRI Study of Amplitude Modulation Perception: How the Brain Turns Sounds Into Language (Mentor: Ioulia Kovelman)

Michael Wilcox -  Emotional Contagion in Major Depressive Disorder (Mentor: Patricia Deldin)  

Neuroscience

Leon Averbukh -  Exploring the Link between Drug Addiction Propensity and Improper Top- Down Processing via Sustained Attention Tasks   (Mentor: Giovanna Paolone)

Mary Catherine Bender -  The Role of RGS Proteins in Modulating States of Behavioral Arousal (Mentor: Ralph Lydic)

Adam Fischer - Incentive Salience Attribution Based on Experiences of Uncertain Reward in Rats  (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Piper Keyes - Kappa-Opioid Receptors in the Nucleus Accumbens Shell Mediate the Attenuation of Amphetamine Reward Induced by Monogamous Pair Bonding  (Mentor: Brandon Aragona)

Katie Long - The Effect of Social Stress on Sign- and Goal-tracking Propensity in Selectively Bred Rats  (Mentor: Shelly Flagel)

Adam MacDonald -  Maternal Perspective-Dependent Empathy and Neural Responses (Mentors: Chris Monk, Shaun Ho, James Swain)

Nolan O'Hara  - Characterizing the Engagement of Cognitive Error-Detection and Assessment During Self-Motivated and Morally Relevant Deception: An ERP Study (Mentor: Bill Gehring)

Julia Roberts -  A Study Examining The Effects of Naps on Self-Reported Impulsivity  (Mentor: Patricia Deldin)

Michelle Wehbe -  Effect of Repeated Mild Traumatic Brain Injury on Sustained Attention Task Performance (Mentor: Giovanna Paolone)

Martha Alves -  Coercive Control and the Stay-Leave Decision: How Abusers get their Victims to Remain in a Violent Relationship (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Kathryn Beck -  Increasing Help-Seeking in College Freshmen: An Intervention Examining the Effects of Motivational Interviewing (Mentor: Joseph Gone)

Kevin Binder -  Homophobic Hip-Hop Music and Its Effect on Attitudes Toward Homosexuality  (Mentor: Lucretia Ward)

Jordan Boeve -  Child Temperament, Parental Personality, and Parenting as Related to Child Behavior After the Birth of a Sibling (Mentor: Pamela Davis-Kean)

Nancy Boulos -  Validity of the PHQ-8 and PHQ-6 During Pregnancy: A Longitudinal Study Possible Risk Factors and Screening for Antenatal Depression (Mentor: Richard Tolman)

Caroline Buck -  Changes in Maternal Mentalization, Reflectivity, and Sensitivity as Assessed through Analysis of Narratives: An Evaluation of the Circle of Security Intervention (Mentor: Katherine Rosenblum)

Max Cantor -  The road to reckless driving: Can parent alcoholism and antisocial behavior affect reckless driving in children? (Mentor: Jennie Jester)

Yun Chen -  Parent-adolescent agreement about adolescent’s suicidal ideation and behavior in relation to adolescent’s one-year depressive symptoms, and suicide-related outcomes  (Mentor: Cheryl King)

Robin Conley -  Change in Relation to Alcohol Use Disorders: A Qualitative Study Examining Motivation for Change and Changes in Early Recovery   (Mentor: Amy Krentzman)

Amanda Cooper -  Children’s Perceptions of Parental Differential Treatment as a Mediator for the Link Between Parental Differential Treatment and Sibling Relationship Quality (Mentor: Brenda Volling)

Jared Cutler -  The Effects of Gender Composition and Common In-Group Identity on Women's Desire to Participate in a Science Conference (Mentor: Denise Sekaquaptewa)

Damia December  -  Individual and Environmental Correlates of Anxiety in Parentally Bereaved Children  (Mentor: Julie Kaplow)

Jenna Dehne  - Comparing Methods to Reduce Stereotype Threat: In-person vs. On-paper Interventions (Mentor: Denise Sekaquaptewa)

Hau Dinh -  Intersecting Social Identities and Awareness of Social Justice (Mentor: Lorraine Gutierrez)

Laura Distel -  The Effects of an Evolution Exhibition on Students’ Essentialistic Thinking about Genes   (Mentor: Evelyn Evans)

Peter Felsman  - Music listening facilitates self-distancing (Mentor: Ethan Kross)

Hayley Goldenthal -  Risk Factors for Depression During the Perinatal Period: The Role of Anxiety, Trauma and Life Stressors (Mentor: Stephanie Thompson)

Joanna Gross  -  The Relationship Between Coping and Mental Health in Children Facing Maternal Breast Cancer  (Mentor: Julie Kaplow)

Lindsay Hamilton  - Sleep, Depression, and Child Behavior in Women with Histories of Childhood Maltreatment (Mentors: Maria Muzik & Kate Rosenblum)

Jessica Harper  -  Congruency Sequence Effects in Pediatric Obsessive Compulsive Disorder  (Mentor: Daniel Weissman)

Sarah Horn  - Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Children Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV): The Clinical Picture of Physiological Arousal Symptoms (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Sean Houchins -  Mechanisms and Outcomes of Metta Meditation (Mentor: Nestor Lopez-Duran)

Eunjung Kim  - Embodied Metaphors: Embodied Fishy Smell Attenuates the Moses Illusion (Mentor: Norbert Schwarz)

Christina Koch  - Counting on Executive Function: A Study of Preschoolers’ Eye Movements During a Quick Visual Search Counting Task (Mentor: Kevin Miller)

Kirsten Koseck  - Culture and Executive Functioning: The Effects of Individualism and Collectivism on Complex Reasoning (Mentor: Daphna Oyserman)

Lucas LaFreniere  -  Parentally Bereaved Children and Adolescents: Peer Support and Interaction  (Mentor: Albert Cain)

Becky Lau  - The Effects of Empathy in Intergroup Interactions when Minorities Disclose Race-Salient or Neutral Hardship (Mentor: Emily Falk)

Chung Lau  - Prevalence and Correlates of Depression and Drinking Behavior among Adolescents and Young Adults in the Suburban Emergency Department (Mentor: Frederic Blow)

Wing Tung (Vivian)   Law  - The Relationship between the Intersection of Gender and Race and Asian Americans’ Awareness of Social Justice (Mentor: Lorraine Gutierrez)

Xinyue Liu  -  Home Literacy Environments’ Influence on Language and Reading Development  (Mentor: Ioulia Kovelman)

Jordan Magat  -  Looking at Gender Differences in Preschoolers’ Self-Regulation Through Multiple Lenses  (Mentor: Frederick Morrison)

Alexander McBrairty  -  Quit, Persist, or... Switch?: Putting Lay Theories Into Context  (Mentor: Norbert Schwarz)

Kaci Parsons  - Being Single in Old Age: The Implications of Differences in Marital Status on Global and Experienced Well-being (Mentor: Jacqui Smith)

Jason Paul  - Examining Working Memory as an Underlying Mechanism in Identity-Based Motivation (Mentor: Daphna Oyserman)

Eric Peist  -  Gender Differences in Student Misbehaviors and Teacher Responses: Comparing Classrooms with Novice and Experienced Teachers  (Mentor: Kai Cortina)

Marisa Perera  - Examining for Ethnic Variations in the Interpersonal Sources Representing Socially Prescribed Perfectionism (Mentor: Edward Chang)

Carly Sheridan  -  Politeness in Conflict: Identity Management and Politeness Strategies Used During a Conflict  (Mentor: Fiona Lee)

Nora Stephens  - Intersectionality of Race/Ethnic and Gender Identities in Intergroup Dialogue (Mentor: Patricia Gurin)

Alvin Tan  -  Combining Competitive Situational Factors: N-Effect and Proximity to a Standard Interaction on Competitive Behavior (Mentor: Stephen Garcia)

Charity Tarn  - Organizations and Values: Examining Cross-Cultural Differences and Predicting Financial Performance (Mentor: Fiona Lee)

Rebecca Toback  - Effects of Identifying Strengths of Character on the Self-Esteem and Self-Efficacy of Youth in an Inpatient Psychiatric Hospital (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Palek Vani  - Understanding Young Children’s Error Processing: Connecting Brain and Behavior (Mentor: Frederick Morrison)

Yu Zhang  - The Influence of Donation Appeals on Emotions and Donation in American and Chinese Cultures (Mentor: Richard Gonzalez)

Brain, Behavior & Cognitive Science

Staci Aubry - Perspective Taking: Effect of Accessible Cultural Values on Cross-Cultural Differences. (Mentor: Daphna Oyserman)

Erica Heisel - Pain Processing in Women with Borderline Personality Disorder. (Mentors: Kent Berridge and Jon-Kar Zubieta)

Alexis Holman - Fear and Disgust: Brain Responses to Two Signals of Motivational Salience. (Mentors: Kihn Luan Phan and William Gehring)

Amanda Kleeman - Characterizing Febrile Seizure Susceptibility in Scn1b +/- Mice: A Model for Genetic Epilepsy with Febrile Seizures Plus . (Mentors: Lique Coolen and Lori Isom)

Kristin Kops - Delineating Sexual and Social Motivation in the Female Rat Using Operant Responding . (Mentors: Jill Becker and Jennifer Cummings)

Peter Kotvis - Effects of Acute Stress on Risk Taking in Financial Decision Making . (Mentor: Nestor Lopez-Duran)

Ann Kraal - Slow-Wave Sleep Disruption and Emotional Memory in Major Depressive Disorder. (Mentor: Patricia Deldin)

Melissa Levoska - The Association between Coping Strategies and Physical Function Among Adults with Symptomatic Knee or Hip Osteoarthritis. (Mentors: Susan Murphy and Elizabeth Peckham)

Sariha Moyen - The Basal Ganglia and Beat Perception in Parkinson's Disease. (Mentor: Rachael Seidler)

Mei Lun Mui - Basic Visual Functioning and Eye Gaze Processing in Schizophrenia: Relationship with Symptoms and Social Functioning . (Mentor: Patricia Deldin)

Amy Olzmann - Problem Solving and Memory: Investigating the Solvability and Memorability of Remote Associates Problems. (Mentors: Patricia Reuter-Lorenz)

Krupa Patel - Oral Health Education and Dental Patients' Attitudes, Perceptions, and Behavior: A Person-Environmental Fit Analysis . (Mentor: Marita Inglehart)

Jessica Rampton - Allopregnanolone and its Effects on Mood Modulation and Regulation. (Mentor: Israel Liberzon)

Leslie Rubin - Health and Cognitive Framing: Individual Differences in Health Orientation. (Mentors: Stephanie Preston and R. Brent Stansfield)

Mary L Ryan - Neural encoding of incentive salience during cue-controlled cocaine self-administration. (Mentors: J Aldridge and Paul Meyer)

Teague Simoncic - Facebook Depression Revisited: The Absence of an Association between Facebook Use and Depressive Symptoms . (Mentor: Nestor Lopez-Duran)

David Springstead - Is Incentive Salience Dynamically Influenced by Satiation State? (Mentors: Kent Berridge)

Carly Stone - Maternal Sleep-Disordered Breathing During Pregnancy and the Development of Autism. (Mentors: Patricia Deldin)

Yasamean Zamani - The Effects of Prenatal Testosterone Exposure on the Sexual Differentiation of Feeding Patterns and Food Motivation in Suffolk Sheep. (Mentors: Theresa Lee and Elizabeth Peckham)

Rohit Abraham - Time-course of Motor Deficits in a Rat Model of Parkinson's Disease . (Mentor: Joshua Berke)

Katherine Adams - Linguistic Markers of Emotional Elaboration in the Past and the Present in Online Blogs. (Mentor: John Jonides)

Abram Davidov - Microdialysis Delivery of the Sedative/Hypnotic Eszopiclone to the Basal Forebrain Differentially Alters Acetylcholine Release in Lean/Fit (HCR) Rats and Obese/Metabolic Syndrome (LCR). (Mentors: Ralph Lydic and Kent Berridge)

Sarah Feenstra - Pain, Sleep, and Mood in Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury. (Mentors: Claire Kalpakjian and Terry Robinson)

Michael Frank - Replacing Leptin in Leptin-Deficient Mice Restores the Antinociceptive Effects of an Adenosine A1 Receptor Agonist in the Pontine Reticular Formation. (Mentors: Helen Baghdoyan and Kent Berridge)

Yamini Jadcherla - The Effects of Postnatal Administration of Flutamide and Rosiglitazone on Mating Behavior in Suffolk Sheep with Prenatal Testosterone Treatment. (Mentors: Theresa Lee and Elizabeth Peckham)

Claire Meurice - Sex Differences in the Effects of Adolescent THC Exposure on Adult Rat Behaviors. (Mentors: Jill Becker and Emily Jutkiewicz)

Nolan O’Hara - ERN Sensitivity to Honest and Dishonest Self-Reports. (Mentor: Bill Gehring)

Andrea Plawecki - GABAergic Elicitation of Fear and Feeding Behaviors in the Nucleus Accumbens Shell are Dopamine Independent. (Mentor: Kent Berridge)

Zubin Sedghi - Examining Interactions between Kappa-Opioid Receptors and Dopaminergic Transmission in the Striatum of Socially Monogamous Prairie Voles . (Mentor: Brandon Aragona)

Romeissa Selmane - The Effects of Deep Brain Stimulation on Taste Reactivity in the Central Nucleus of the Amygdala. (Mentor: J Aldridge)

Elizabeth Anastasia - Associations Between Active and Passive Child Noncompliance Strategies with Externalizing Behavior, Effortful Control, and Parental Discipline. (Mentor: Sheryl Olson)

Anna Badalian - The N-effect and the Size of the Competitive Venue . (Mentors: Stephen Garcia)

Abby Bailin - Family Risk and Protective Factors Associated with Adolescent Suicidal Ideation: A Meditational Model. (Mentor: Cheryl King)

Gilad Berkowitz - The Effects of Social Media on High-Quality Relationships between Agents and Clients. (Mentor: Jane Dutton)

Rachel Brigell - Behavioral Outcomes for Caribbean Adolescents in an Aggression-Reducing Intervention in a Custodial Setting . (Mentor: Albert Cain)

Julia Briskin - Enabling Adaptive Social Support in a Virtual Setting: Recounting versus Re-Constructing Negative Experience. (Mentors: Oscar Ybarra)

Heather Burcham - " I Do" Want it All: Weddings, Materialism, and Marital Satisfaction . (Mentors: Norbert Schwarz)

Lauren Bush - Associations Between Sleep Measures and Neurobehavioral Functioning in Children. (Mentors: Bruno Giordani and Elise Hodges)

Xirui (Rae) Cao - Cultural Variations in Emotion Regulation Strategy: Investigation of Event-Related Brain Potential (ERP). (Mentor: Shinobu Kitayama)

Margaret Cease - The Presence of Memory: How Guided Attention Influences Recall and Recognition. (Mentor: Norbert Schwarz)

Camellia Das - African American Women and Friend Groups: The Association Between the Presence of White Friends, Body Dissatisfaction, and Disordered Eating Behaviors. (Mentor: Elizabeth Cole)

Leah Goldmann - Exploring the Social Relationship Between Cultural Mindset and Spatial Ability. (Mentor: Daphna Oyserman)

Aakash Gupta - Investigating Individual Differences in Decision-Making Styles. (Mentors: Thad Polk)

Nader Hakim - Sources of Information and Norms Regarding Sexual Issues Among Indian Male Young Adults. (Mentor: Rona Carter)

Heather Hennrick - Conjugation and Contagion: Effects of Verb Form on Judgments of Positive and Negative Contagion . (Mentor: Susan Gelman)

Abby Herringshaw - Predictors of Adjustment in College Students. (Mentor: Edward Chang)

Courtney Hsing - Alexithymia and Levels of Emotion Processing. (Mentor: Stephanie Preston)

Ka Ip - Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors of Children of Alcoholics in Heterogeneous Family Structures . (Mentors: Jennifer Jester and Robert Zucker)

Stephanie Kim - Sibling relationships, birth status, and personality: A qualitative study of Asian American College Students . (Mentor: Donna Nagata)

Dayana Kupisk - Busy Today, Better Tomorrow? Extracurriculars and Parent-child Relations as Protective Factors for Latino Adolescents . (Mentor: Rosario Ceballo)

Shaon Lahiri - Assessing the Associations between Treatment Modality and Client Characteristics on Treatment Outcome for Heroin Addiction through a Lagged Mediation Model. (Mentors: Amy Bohnert and Jennifer Myers)

Jill Mailing - Classroom Management and Self-Regulation: The Role of Teacher Perceptions in Shaping Outcomes. (Mentor: Frederick Morrison)

Kelsey Martin - The Existence of Implicit and Explicit Stereotypes about Unfemininity in STEM and the Effect of Feminine Role Models. (Mentor: Denise Sekaquaptewa)

Mara Minasian - Self-Distancing and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Homework Exercise: A Longitudinal Study Examining the Completion of Daily Worry Logs in the Third Person. (Mentor: Ethan Kross)

Leslie Monheit- How the Transition to College Affects School and Math Self Concept. (Mentor: Denise Sekaquaptewa)

Michael Moore - Believing that Gay Men are More Feminine than Straight Men: How Stereotype Threat and Identity Stability Affect Sexual Minority Men . (Mentor: Denise Sekaquaptewa)

Leslie Moreno - Father Involvement and Firstborn Adjustment to the Birth of a Sibling . (Mentor: Brenda Volling)

Lane Nesbitt - Jealousy and Competition: Imagined Partner Flirting Behavior Increases Testosterone in Partnered Women . (Mentor: Sari van Anders)

Ann Newberg - Individualized Instruction and Teachers' Perceptions of their Students Skills. (Mentor: Frederick Morrison)

Hannah Noah - Thinking About my Amazing (photos of) Vacation: On the Relationship between Cognition and Technology . (Mentors: Phoebe Ellsworth)

Devon Oosting - Effects of Child Behavior Problems on the Development of Preschoolers’ Sleep Problems: A Longitudinal Examination . (Mentors: Sheryl Olson and Barbara Felt)

Ashli Owens - Notes and Learning from Lecture . (Mentors: Kevin Miller and Kai Cortina)

Cassandra Pentzien - The Role of Cognitive Depletion from Playing Video Games in Promoting Aggression . (Mentor: L Huesmann)

Christopher Photiades - The Emotional and Pragmatic Life in Cities Under Pressure: Lessons Learned from an Ethnographic Study of Ferndale, Michigan . (Mentor: Phillip Creekmore)

Erica Podsiadly - Math Teachers’ Question-Fixation Patterns: Fair or Gender Biased?. (Mentor: Kevin Miller)

Amy Ransohoff - Examining the Relationship Between Cortical Thickness and Memory Abilities in Major Depressive Disorder. (Mentors: Scott Langenecker and Sara Wright)

Sara Schafrann - The Effect of Disruption on the Executive Functioning of Kindergartners with Typically and Atypically Developing Peers. (Mentors: Frederick Morrison)

Davia Steinberg - Desperately Seeking Support: Pregnant Women Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence. (Mentor: Sandra Graham-Bermann)

Emily Sterling - Family Perspectives on the Sibling Experience of Childhood Cancer. (Mentors: Brad Zebrack and Brenda Volling)

Steve Strycharz - Embodied Self: Using Embodied Processes to Examine the Dynamic Construction of the Self in Context. (Mentors: Daphna Oyserman)

Elise Wojewoda - Classroom Management Strategies and Executive Function Development: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Between U.S. and Chinese Kindergarten Classrooms . (Mentors: Frederick Morrison)

Courtney Zulauf - Preschool Precursors of Children's Peer Rejection during the Late School-Age Years: The Roles of Early Aggressive Behavior and Harsh Parental Discipline . (Mentor: Sheryl Olson)

Samantha Ashinoff - Functional Connectivity in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders. (Mentor: C. Monk)

Priyang Baxi - Cross-Cultural Differences in Financial Risk-taking: India and the United States. (Mentors: P. Shah & R. Mahalingam)

Cyril Bennouna - Aspects of Executive Function in Bipolar I: Mood, Duration, and Age. ( Mentor: P. Deldin)

Anita Calwas - Psychophysiological Processing of Emotional and Self-Referential Information in Schizophrenia . (Mentor: P. Deldin)

Michelle Cardinal - Scaling of Chewing Rate Variables. (G. Gerstner)

Sara Chadwich - Reclaiming Sexual Deviance as Sexual Liberality: A Study of Attitudes, Behaviors, and Testosterone . (Mentor: S. Van Anders)

Megan Davis - Fathers’ Testosterone, Marital Quality, and Fathers’ Interactions with their 12-Month-Old Infants. (Mentor: B. Volling)

Aaron Garcia - NMDA Stimulation and AMPA Blockade in the Nucleus Accumbens Shell Generate Appetitive and Fearful Motivation . (Mentor: K.  Berridge)

Amanda Gehrke - Differential Performance of Children With and Without Cerebral Palsy on Graphomotor Cognitive Processing Speed Measures . (Mentors: J. Kaufman & J. Jonides)

Rachel German - Negative Transfer of Response Inhibition: Toward Selective Fatigue of a Non-unitary Executive. (Mentor: P. Reuter-Lorenz)

Matthew Gilles - Dissonance and Disgust: An Exploratory Analysis of Differences in Musical Liking under Negative Affect. (Mentor: R. Lewis)

Anson Kairys - The Effect of Pain on Attentional Processing. (Mentors: D. Meyer & J. Glass)

Sarah Leitman - Evaluating Behavioral and Genetic Markers of Reading Ability. (Mentor: T. Polk)

Nina Massad - Hot Cognition: Effects of Emotion on Interference Resolution in Working Memory. (Mentor: P. Reuter-Lorenz)

Bianca Moiseff - At the Rhythm of Language: Neural Bases of Language-Related Frequency Perception in Children . (Mentor: I. Kovelman)

Elana Mosesova - The Donation Dilemma: Differences in Giving Behavior When Primed with Negative and Positive Economy Factors and a Working Memory Load. (Mentors: P. Shah & S. Preston)

Ana Orejuela - White Matter in Pediatric Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: a Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study. (Mentors: S. Perkins & I. Liberzon)

Jory Piglowski - The effects of male eyelid openness on perceptions of mating strategy: Ladies and gentleman, beware of the squinty-eyed guy! (Mentors: D. Kruger & D. Sekaquaptewa)

Andy Pollens - Investigating the Attentional Impairments in the Sign-Tracker: Implications for ADHD and Drug Addiction. (Mentor: T. Robinson)

Joshua Prasad - The Effects of Psychological Distancing on Working Memory Function. (Mentor: E. Kross)

Rachel Proudfoot - Eye Movements During Motivational Argument Processing . (Mentor: J. Boland)

Chelsea Schoen - The Effects of Continuous Deep Brain Stimulation on Food Consumption in Basal Forebrain Structures that Support Self-Stimulation. (Mentors: J.W. Aldridge & S. Ross)

Maria Tocco - Emotional Telescoping: Distorted Memories and Predictions of Emotional Intensity for the Events of 9/11 . (Mentor: C. Lustig)

Caitlin Vander Weele - Real-time Dopamine Transmission within the Nucleus Accumbens Core and Shell Following Morphine. (Mentor: B. Aragona)

David Bushart - Neostriatal Dopamine Modulates Motivation: Incentive Salience Generation in the Neostriatum . (Mentor: K. Berridge)

Benjamin Fensterheim - Selective Suppression of Striatal Fast Spiking Interneurons in Vivo. (Mentor: J. Berke)

Kate Gilliam - Prenatal Bisphenol-A Alters Response to Novelty In the Environment in Suffolk Sheep. (Mentor: T. Lee)

Samantha Greenberg - Effects of Social Research Methodology on Cortisol and Testosterone . (Mentors: S. Van Anders & T. Lee)

Caely Hambro - Interactions between the Dopamine and the Dynorphin/Kappa Opioid Receptor System Regulate both Positive and Negative Social Behavior in Prairie Voles. (Mentor: B. Aragona)

Morgan Kuhnmuench - Mesolimbic Dopamine and Opioid Interactions in the Regulation of Pair Bond Maintenance in the Socially Monogamous Prairie Vole. (Mentor: B. Aragona)

Mary Larijani - Investigating the Dynamic Properties of Reward Processing: A Shift in Incentive Motivation Converts an Aversive Salt Cue into an Appetitive Motivational Magnet . (Mentor: K. Berridge)

Stephanie Lazar - Systemic Administration of Dexmedetomidine Disrupts Sleep Architecture and Does Not Decrease Adenosine Levels in the Substantia Innominata of the Sprague-Dawley Rat. (Mentors: R. Lydic & K. Berridge)

Pei-Hsuan (Patricia) Lee - Examination of Novelty-Seeking Behavior in Selectively-Bred Rat Lines that Differ in Addiction Liability. (Mentors: S. Flagel & T. Robinson)

Caitlin Mallory - Sustained Attention and Associated Acetylcholine Release in Choline High-Affinity Transporter Hemizygous Mice. (Mentor: M. Sarter)

Tori Nault - Determining the Relevance of Single Prolonged Stressors in Altering Glucocorticoid Receptor Expression in the Prefrontal Cortex and Hippocampus. (Mentors: I. Liberzon & J.W. Aldridge)

Melanie Sottile - Dopaminergic Effects on Temporal Processing in Parkinson‟s Disease: A Pharmacological and Genetics Approach. (Mentor: R. Seidler)

Maria Tecos - Neurocognitive Effects of Resolving Interference for People Suffering from Bipolar Disorder . (J. Jonides)

Adam Weiner - Effect of Prenatal Testosterone Treatment on Novelty-seeking Behavior in Sheep . (Mentor: T. Lee)

Josephine Au - A Longitudinal Study Examining the Role of Social Connectedness in the Course of Depressive Symptoms: An Evaluation of Transfer and Freshman Students . (Mentor: N. Park)

Stephen Behan - Third Places and Subjective Well-Being Among College Students. (Mentors: C. Peterson & N. Park)

Katherine Billerbeck - The Development of Intersectional Awareness in Youth Dialogues. (Mentor: R. Mahalingam)

Amanda Broderick - Changes in Maternal Representations of the Mother-Child Relationship: Evaluating a Parenting Intervention Study.(Mentors: M Muzik & K. Rosenblum)

Sara Burke - Stigmatized Sources and Stigmatized Content: Liberals and Conservatives React Differently to Fat Authors . (Mentor: T. Conley)

Corissa Carlson - The Effects of Reality Television on Social Relationships in Adolescence. (Mentor: L Ward)

Zachary Ciullo - Move Your Mood: Effects on Functioning for Adolescents with Depression . (Mentors: D. Richard & C. King)

Sarah Cremer - Cluster Analysis of Eating Disorder Behaviors using EMA Technology: A Secondary Analysis of Randomized Clinical Trial Data . (Mentors: K. Stein & D. Oyserman)

Riordan D'Lasnow - High and Low Inference Test of the Teacher Gender Attention Bias Hypothesis . (Mentors: K. Cortina & K. Miller)

Veronica Diaz - Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis Deactivation as Predictor of Depressive Symptoms in College Students. (Mentor: N. Lopez-Duran)

Alanna Farber - Psychological Resiliency in Parentally Bereaved Children. (Mentor: J. Kaplow)

Michael Fialkoff - Depression and Creative Intelligence . (Mentor: R. Nisbett)

Laura Gabriel - To Go or Not to Go? Differential Activation during Response Inhibition in Major Depressive Disorder . (Mentor: S. Langenecker)

Maria Galano - Predicting Shelter Residence for Women Experiencing Recent Intimate Partner Violence. (Mentor: S. Graham-Bermann)

Alex Goldberg - Effects of a Self-Distancing Perspective on the Fundamental Attribution Error: An Attempt at De-Biasing. (Mentor: E. Kross)

Allison Gollub - Images of Identity-Congruent Action and Their Effects on Women's Possible Selves. (Mentor: D. Oyserman)

Sichen Gong - For Myself or For My Friend? Cultural Modulation of Error-Related Negativity (ERN) in Decision Making. (Mentor: S. Kitayama)

Kathleen Hlavaty - Adolescent Positive and Negative Behavior and the impact on the Transition to Adulthood. (Mentor: P. Davis-Kean)

Susannah Hope - Relationships Between Race, Generativity, Activist Identification, and Activism for Midlife Women . (Mentor: A. Stewart)

Kristin Houck - An Examination of Gender Differences in the Development of Spontaneous Language Measured by the Observation of Spontaneous Expressive Language (OSEL). (Mentor: C. Lord)

Ching Hung - Clutter in the Classroom: Distracting Effects on Novice and Experienced Teachers. (Mentors: K. Miller & K. Cortina)

Mengyin Jiang - Cultural Differences in Emotion-Regulation: Investigation of Event-Related Brain Potential (ERP). (Mentors: S. Kitayama & A. Murata)

Rebeca Kelly - Ultrasonic Vocalizations as a Behavioral Index of Cocaine-induced Contextual Conditioning in STs vs. GTs: Implications for Addiction. (Mentor: T. Robinson)

Jungsoo Kim - Parents’/Guardians’ Presence in the Operatory During their Child’s Dental Visit: A Person-Environmental Fit Analysis. (Mentor: M. Inglehart)

Tae Kim - Promoting Conceptually Sound Thinking (CST) About ADHD: An Empirical Survey. (Mentor: J. Hansell)

Heather Krieger - Conversations About Drinking. (Mentor: P. Davis-Kean)

Jocelyn Kuhn - World Language Learning and Cultural Beliefs Among Elementary Students. (Mentors: S. Gelman & M. Cooligan)

Tao Li - The Impact of Group Membership and Belief Similarity on Alexithymia and Aggression. (Mentor: S. Konrath)

Natalie Lin - Understanding the Link between Perfectionism and Adjustment in College Students: Examining the Role of Maximizing . (Mentor: E. Chang)

Madeline Lupei - Two Types of Disgust: Physical Disgust is to Fear as Moral Disgust is to Anger . (Mentor: P. Ellsworth)

Nazanin Maghsoodi - The Rey Complex Figure is Moderately Useful as a Screen for Poor Effort Among Veterans with Possible Mild Traumatic Brain Injury . (Mentor: L. Bieliauskas)

Alyson Makstein - Relationship Attachment Styles and Attachment to Food. (Mentor: P. Davis-Kean)

Elan Mendelowitz - Experiences with Bullying: Socio-emotional Predictors of Cyberbullying and Cyber-victimization. (Mentor: L. Huesmann)

Crosby Modrowski - Comparing Traumatic Symptoms at Home and in Therapy for Preschoolers Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) . (Mentor: S. Graham-Bermann)

Mira Mooreville - Maternal Warmth and Child Internalizing and Externalizing Problems: A Longitudinal Study of Risk Specificity. (Mentor: S. Olson)

Aesha Mustafa -Students’ Awakening to Privilege, Oppression, Discrimination, and Social Justice: A Quantitative Analysis of Students’ Engagement with Diverse Communities. (Mentor: L. Gutierrez)

Annalyn Ng Li-ting - Quantity vs. Quality: Individual Differences in Capacity and Resolution of Visual Working Memory . (Mentor: P. Shah)

Wai Ngan - A Cross-Cultural study of the Relations between Kindergarteners’ Skills And the Teachers’ Directional Language . (Mentor: F. Morrison)

Shardae Osuna - Intercultural Competency: An Assessment of International/U.S. Intergroup Dialogues at the University of Michigan. (Mentors: P. Gurin & J. Yim)

Yiwen Pan - Determinants of Discrimination Against Asians: Social Stereotypes and Perceived Communication Ease. (Mentor: D. Sekaquaptewa)

Jazmine Powell - Gender Effect of Parent-Child Relationships on Parental Health. (Mentor: T. Antonucci)

Jacqueline Rau - Promoting Emotion Regulation during a Current Stressful Task through Self-Distancing. (Mentor: E. Kross)

Jillian Rosati - Mom Power Intervention: Effectiveness at Increasing Maternal Sensitivity among High Risk Mother-Child Dyads . (Mentors: M. Muzik & K. Rosenblum)

Chelsea Samples-Steele - Adult Attachment as a Predictor of Touch Attitudes and Touch Behavior in Romantic Relationships . (Mentor: R. Edelstein)

Stephanie Schroder - Delinquency With and Without Substance Use: Examining the Heterogeneity of Delinquency in Adolescents. (Mentor: J. Schulenberg)

Elisha Shaw - I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair:” Wiping Away the Negative Affect Evoked by Recalling Bad Relationships. (Mentor: N. Schwarz)

Helene Simons - The Impact of Family History of Alcoholism and Depression on Sleep. (Mentors: D. Conroy & P. Deldin)

Christina Steinman - Mandarin- and English-learning Infants’ Self-Correction During Noun and Verb Matching: Implications for early word comprehension . (Mentor: T. Tardif)

Jennifer Sun - Social Integration is Associated with Influenza Vaccination in a Nationally Representative Sample of Older US Adults. (Mentors: C. Peterson & N. Park)

Rachel Throop - The Effects of Health and Marital Support on Subjective Well-being in Midlife and Old Age . (Mentor: J. Smith)

Lauren Tighe - Intergenerational Ambivalence from Adolescence to Young Adulthood: Implications for Well-being . (Mentors: K. Birditt & T. Antonucci)

Jaclyn Vansloten - Attachment Orientation and Leadership Style: From Child’s Play to Partnerships with the Person Upstairs . (Mentor: F. Lee)

Xiao Wang - Through Teachers’ Eyes: Teacher Attention During U.S. Elementary Literacy and Mathematics Lessons. (Mentors: K. Miller & K. Cortina)

Kristen Williams - Using What You Know: The Effects of Genital Knowledge and Sexual Subjectivity on Orgasm Frequency in Women. (Mentor: S. McClelland)

Alexandra Wills - The Effects of Maternal Depression and Inter-Parental Conflict on Children’s Externalizing Disorders Over Time. (Mentor: S. Olson)

Karen Wullaert - Harassment in the Workplace: Factors Relating to Discrimination in Organizations. (Mentor: L. Cortina)

Cynthia Yuen - A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Chinese and American Parental Attributions of Child Misbehavior, Discipline Strategies, and Children’s Behavioral Adjustment . (Mentor: S. Olson)

Stephen Zavitz - Adults’ Understanding of Extraordinary Mental, Perceptual, and Physical Capacities . (Mentor: E. Evans)

Brain, Behavior & Cognitive  Science

Amna Agha - The Expression of BDNF is Regulated by an Endogenous Circadian Rhythm in Rats. (Mentor: T. Lee)

Bryan Benson - Improving Motor Learning: The Effects of Rest Breaks and Mode of Instruction. (Mentor: R. Seidler)

Erin Cable - Prenatal Testosterone Masculinizes Auditory Sibling Recognition in Juvenile Sheep. (Mentor: T. Lee)

Anna Chase - The Relationship between Cardiovascular Health and Memory in Midlife and Old Age. (Mentor: J. Smith)

Li Hui Chiang - Effects of Beta-blockers on Memory in Veterans at the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Hospital . (Mentor: L. Bieliauskas)

Kathleen Darbor - Individual Differences in Creativity: How Different Processes and Mind-Wandering Influence Performance . (Mentor: P. Shah)

Nika George - Demographic Characteristics Associated with Depression Severity, Suicidal Ideation and Treatment Engagement During Pregnancy . (Mentor: H. Flynn)

Christina Hong - Error-Related Brain Activity in Anxiety Disorders: The Hyperactivity of the ERN . (Mentor: W. Gehring)

Natalie Hsiao Fang-Yen - The Effect of Spaced versus Massed Practice in Musical Skill Acquisition. (Mentor: T. Polk)

Shayna Liberman - Applying the Challenge Hypothesis to Wild, Adult Male Chacma Baboons (Papio ursinus) . (Mentor: J. Beehner)

Irene Liu - Individual Differences in Working Memory and Susceptibility to Distractor Nouns in Subject-Verb Agreement. (Mentor: J. Boland)

Amanda Markowitz - Factors that Affect Taxonomic versus Thematic Preferences in Children and Adults: The Role of Manipulability . (Mentor: S. Gelman)

Kortni Meyers - The Influence of Depression and Diabetes on Cognitive Function in Older Adults. (Mentors: E. Hodges & B. Giordani)

Kelly Reina - Neophilia in the Domestic Cat (Felis catus) . (Mentor: B. Smuts)

Andrew Rosenberg - Effects of G93A-SOD1 Expression on Zebrafish Motor Neuron Development and Efficacy of IGF-I. (Mentors: E. Feldman & R. Roth)

Surya Sabhapathy - Contributions of Genetic Variation in CHT1 to Human Attention. (Mentor: C. Lustig)

Alexandra Seal - Desire for Control, Experienced Control and Dental Fear: A Quasi-Experimental Investigation. (Mentor: M. Inglehart)

William Stone - Neural Circuitry Responsible for Regulation and Control of Self-directed Attention and Decision Making. (Mentors: C. Sripada & I. Liberzon)

Brittany Strawman - Amphetamine-Enhanced Sensation Seeking and Its Neural Correlates in the Ventral Pallidum . (Mentor: J. W. Aldridge)

Kathryn Swanson - The Impact of Narcotics on Cognitive Functioning in Patients at the Ann Arbor VA. (Mentor: L. Bieliauskas)

Alexander Taylor - Genetics of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Vulnerability through the Endophenotype of Neuroticism. (Mentors: I. Liberzon & A. King)

Halle Zucker - Multiple Memory Systems?: Serial Position Dependent False Memory Effects . (Mentor: P. Reuter-Lorenz)

Joseph Domino - Individual Differences in the Ability of a Nicotine Cue to Acquire Incentive Value. (Mentor: T. Robinson)

Pe-feng Hsieh - Comparison of the Endocannabinoid and Orexin Hedonic Hotspots for Sensory Pleasure in the Ventral Pallidum . (Mentor: K. Berridge)

Syed Shabbir - Effect of Pregabalin on Diabetic Chronic Neuropathic Pain. (Mentor: P. Paulson)

Melissa Tan - Maternal Separation as an Early Life Stressor and Its Effects on the Regulation of HPA Axis Function and Noradrenergic Activity in Rats Exposed to Single Prolonged Stress. (Mentor: I. Liberzon)

Riti Trivedi - Does Handedness Affect Interhemispheric Interactions? A Lifespan Approach. (Mentor: R. Seidler)

Mary Winters - Have Your Cake and Eat It Too: Glucose Effects on Attention and Memory. (Mentor: C. Lustig)

Andrew Wisti - The Effects of Musical Training on Bimanual Control and Interhemispheric Transfer . (Mentor: R. Seidler)

Naomi Anest - Depression, Rumination and Sleep Disturbance. (Mentor: P. Deldin)

Steven Bengal - Implicit Egotism and Decision Complexity. (Mentor: N. Schwarz)

Samuel Boas - The Effects of Social Exclusion on Attention to Vocal Tone As Measured by Event-Related Potentials . (Mentor: S. Kitayama)

Leah Boepple - The Effect of Emotion on Response Inhibition and Cognitive Flexibility in Bipolar I Disorder. (Mentor: P. Deldin)

Kevin Callender - The Effects of Parental Depression, Cognitions, and Discipline on Later Child Externalizing Behavior . (Mentors: S. Olson & C. King)

Kimberly Canter - Childhood Knowledge of Recovery from Serious and Non-Serious Illness . (Mentor: S. Gelman)

Lana Castor - The Impact of Additional Traumatic Events on Trauma Symptoms and PTSD in Preschool-Aged Children Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) . (Mentor: S. Graham-Bermann)

Patricia Chen - Yin and Yang Theory of Competition: Social Comparison and Evaluation Apprehension Reciprocally Drive Competitive Motivation. (Mentor: S. Garcia)

Jaeyeon Chung - Nationalism and Antagonism: Koreans' Purchasing Behavior towards Japanese Products . (Mentor: C. Yoon)

Andrew Fayad - The Impact of Service Climate on Promotion- and Prevention-Based Proactivity, and the Moderating Role of Individual Differences. (Mentors: G. Spreitzer & F. Lee)

Allison Fifolt - Masculinity and the Body: Body Image among White and Asian American Men. (Mentor: E. Cole)

Kate Gasparrini - Language in Autism Spectrum Disorders: An Examination of the Observation Scale of Expressive Language. (Mentor: C. Lord)

Brennan Haase - Why Are You Mad at Me? Misperception of Negative Emotions as Angry in Major Depressive Disorder. (Mentor: S. Langenecker)

Michelle Hampton - Religion, Activism, Identity and the Global Feminisms Project: A Qualitative Study of a Paradoxical Relationship. (Mentor: A. Stewart)

Jenna Hedglen - A Developmental Study of Asymmetry in Generic Meaning. (Mentor: S. Gelman)

Adam Horwitz - Coping Styles and their Relation to Depression and Suicide Ideation in Adolescents. (Mentor: C. King)

Minzheng Hou - The Nail That Stands Out Gets Pounded Down: An Analysis of Inter and Intragroup Aggression. (Mentor: S. Konrath)

Jean Kim - The Conceptualization and Assessment of the Perceived Consequences of Perfectionism. (Mentor: E. Chang)

Ryan Leclerc - Malcolm X and the Hajj: A Change in Tamed Power . (Mentor: D. Winter)

Sarah Linden - The Effects of Dyadic Social Withdrawal On Parent-Child Relationships. (Mentor: T. Conley)

Stacey McGregor - The Analysis of Personality through Language: Narcissism Predicts use of Shame-Related Words in Narratives . (Mentor: R. Edelstein)

Lolita Moss - Still in the Shadows: Representations of Black Women in Film. (Mentor: L. M. Ward)

Fiona Nowlin - Getting Beyond a Negative First Impression: Thin-Slice Judgments of Teacher Personality . (Mentor: K. Miller)

Lauren Oglevee - Locus of Control, Interpersonal Trust, and Self-Construal: Psychological Correlates of Pro-Environmental Behaviors. (Mentor: F. Yates)

Shannon Olinyk - Relationship between Body Mass Index and Depressive Symptoms. (Mentors: N. Lopez-Duran & J. Sapala)

Kathryn Osher - Sibling Jealousy as Observed in a Triadic Family Context . (Mentor: B. Volling)

Shira Oyserman - Does the Weather of the Day Influence Sentencing Lengths in Judicial Proceedings? (Mentors: J.J. Prescott & F. Yates)

David Reinhard - The Influence of Weight Cues on Product Perceptions. (Mentor: N. Schwarz)

Patricia Richardson - Infant Temperament and Perceived Parenting: Predicting Child Behavioral Outcomes at 18 months. (Mentors: M. Muzik & K. Rosenblum)

Michael Rudowski - Exploring the Effects of Brooding Rumination as a Mediator in the Relationship between Positive and Negative Perfectionism and Depressive Symptoms in a Clinical Population. (Mentor: P. Deldin)

Kirsten Schohl - Does Spousal Support Modify the Link between Psychopathology and Maternal Behavior in Mothers with Childhood Trauma? (Mentor: M. Muzik)

Alayna Schreier - Sibling interactions: The role of older siblings in the social and communication development of children with autism spectrum disorders. (Mentor: C. Lord)

Chelsea Slater - Do Gender Incongruent Careers Adversely Influence Criminal Punishment Assessment? (Mentor: P. Ellsworth)

Ryan Stringer - A Life Course Perspective on Depression after Age 50: The Role of Lifetime Traumatic Events, Negative Interpersonal Relationships, and Chronic Stressors. (Mentor: J. Smith)

Amy Taub - Parental Demand for Precision in Their Preschool Children’s Letter Writing. (Mentor: F. Morrison)

Derek Towster - F Juries! Validating an Abbreviated Pretrial Juror Attitude Questionnaire. (Mentor: D. Winter)

William Tsai - Examining the Relations Between Rumination and Adjustment: A Focus on Ethnicity. (Mentor: E. Chang)

Randy Vander Molen – A Content Analysis of Character Strengths and Affective States in Military Leaders. (Mentor: C. Peterson)

Elvina Wardjiman - Daily Interpersonal Tensions and Salivary Cortisol: The Role of Personality. (Mentors: K. Birditt & T. Antonucci)

Suzannah Wisher-Love - Prenatal and Postnatal Depression and PTSD in Mothers Surviving Trauma. (Mentor: K. Rosenblum)

Ashish Chaddha – Effects of Heat Shock Protein on Amyloid Precursor Protein Catabolism. (Mentors: I. Saluja & R. Turner)

Alayna Czuj - Dopamine Blockade by α-Flupenthixol and Its Effects on the Acquisition and Expression of Incentive Salience. (Mentor: T. Robinson)

Aaron Ducoffe - Effects of Geographic Origin and Health Status on Agonistic Behavior of Aegean Wall Lizards. (Mentors: J. Foutopoulos & J. Beehner)

Daniel Kessler - Predictive Reliability of the Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) Communicative Developmental Inventories Across Early Performance-Based Strata. (Mentor: T. Tardif)

Andrea King – Changes in Circadian Rhythms During Puberty in Rattus norvegicus: Developmental Time Course & Gonadal Dependency. (Mentor: T. Lee)

Nikhil Kurapati - Functional Connectivity in Youth at Risk for Depression . (Mentor: C. Monk)

Katherine Martin - Phonological and Working Memory and L2 Grammar Learning . (Mentor: N. Ellis)

Emily Sallen - False Working Memories: Comparison Between Semantic and Phonological Distortions.  (Mentor: P. Reuter-Lorenz)

Michael-Paul Schallmo - Papez Circuit Activation Observed with Functional Imaging During Semantic List Learning in Healthy Adults. (Mentor: S. Langenecker)

Shane Schwikert - The Effect of Ambiguous Stimuli on the Error Signal in ERP . (Mentor: W. Gehring)

Ryan Selleck - Increase in Conditioned Place Preference and Feeding After Mu-opioid Activation in the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis . (Mentor: K. Berridge)

Belinda Shih - The Effect of Prenatal Testosterone Exposure on Maternal and Sibling Vocal Recognition in Lambs. (Mentor: T. Lee)

Alexis Thompson - Unaware vs. Aware Errors: An Anti-Saccade Feedback Task. (Mentor: W. Gehring)

Wai-Ying Yau - Brain Imaging and Injury. (Mentors: M. Heitzeg & J. Zubieta)

David Altshuler - Cry2 Expression in the Cortex and Suprachiasmatic Nucleus During Puberty in Octodon degus. (Mentor: T. Lee)

Lauren Dayton -The Effects of Iron Deficiency at Infancy on Working Memory Among Preadolescents. (Mentor: C. Monk)

Casey Lwo - Effects of RFRP-3 on Luteinizing Surge and Sex Behavior in Female Rats. (Mentors: T. Lee & E. Peckham)

Katherine MacDuffie - Investigating Working Memory Distortions in Alzheimer’s Disease. (Mentor: P. Reuter-Lorenz)

Alexander Wiltschko - Opposing Effects of Amphetamine and Eticlopride on Striatal Fast-Spiking Interneuron Firing . (Mentor: J. Berke)

Emily Arnstein - Associations Between Corporal Punishment and Behavioral Adjustment in Preschool-Aged Boys and Girls. (Mentor: S. Olson)

Brittany Branand - Parental Involvement and College Academic Achievement: Parental Support, Parent-Student Relationship, and Effort. (Mentor: J. Hagen)

Kathleen Bruder – Quantitative Assessment of Autistic Symptomatology by Parents and Teachers Using the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS). (Mentors: C. Lord & S. Risi)

Pooja Desai - Sign-Tracking and Its Relation to Food-Carrying Behaviors. (Mentor: T. Robinson)

Alex Dopp - Peer Support and Emotional Adjustment of Bereaved Children Over Time. (Mentor: A. Cain)

Elizabeth Dries - Multinationalism and Performance: Does Multinational Experience Predict Competence? (Mentor: F. Lee)

Samantha Drotar - The Effects of One’s Sub-Group Identity on the Formation of a Common In-Group Identity. (Mentor: R. Gonzalez)

Michele Dunsky - How Much is Too Much? Investigating When Very High Parental Monitoring Levels Hinder Adolescent Development. (Mentor: J. Schulenberg)

Tracy Ederer - Revealing Individual Differences in Decision-Making Behavior. (Mentor: T. Polk)

Daniel Ehrmann - Sleep-Disordered Breathing, Physiological Sequelae, and the Neurobiological Relationship with Psychopathology . (Mentor: P. Deldin)

Michael Finn - Personality Traits and Relapse Rates: A Survival Analysis. (Mentors: J. Hansell & E. Robinson)

Kayla Frick - Parenting and Child Mental Health: The Role of Openness in Internationally Adoptive Families . (Mentors: K. Freeark-Zucker & K. Rosenblum)

Jamarie Geller - The Implicit Self: Comparing the Effects of Self-Kindness and Self-Criticism Priming on Symptoms of Depression. (Mentor: E. Kross)

Hannah Goldman - The Home Advantage in Elite-Level Ice Hockey. (Mentor: T. George)

Whitney Hall - Police Interrogations: A Qualitative Analysis of Police Practices. (Mentor: P. Ellsworth)

Jennifer Hartsell - Compassionate and Self-Image Goals as Predictors for Problem Discussions in Romantic Relationships . (Mentors: A. Canevello & J. Crocker)

Kathleen Hazlett - The Role of Perfectionism in Maladjustment: Cause, Consequence, or Covariate? (Mentor: E. Chang)

Laura Hieber - Early Auditory Sensory Processing Deficits in Schizophrenia. (Mentor: P. Deldin)

Ryan Hill - Predicting Continued Elevated Suicide Risk Among Adolescents. (Mentor: C. King)

Avanti Jangalapalli - Children of Alcoholics’ Physical Health Outcomes in Early Childhood. (Mentors: A. Buu & R. Zucker)

Sara Johnson-Cardona - Gender Ideologies, Paternal Involvement, Martial Relationship Quality, and Infant Attachment: Exploring Dynamics in Couples Expecting a Second Child. (Mentor: B. Volling)

Rachel Kay - Maternal Stress and Infant Outcomes: The Impact of Perinatal Anxiety on Pregnancy and Delivery Outcomes . (Mentor: H. Flynn)

Calli-Ev Kosch - Promoting Postpartum Resilience in the Face of Childhood Trauma: The Roles of Individuals and Social Traits . (Mentor: M. Muzik)

Jean Kwek - The Contribution of Activity Experience to Self-Regulation Development in Preschoolers. (Mentor: F. Morrison)

Jennifer LaCosse - Mortality Salience, Self-Regulation and Two Types of Self-Affirmation. (Mentor: J. Crocker)

Celia Li - Teacher Reactive Disciplinary Language and Preschool Math and Literacy Skills . (Mentor: F. Morrison)

Yee Lam Li - Content and Organization of the Self-Concept as Potential Moderators of the Effects of the Media on Body Dissatisfactio n. (Mentors: K. Stein & L. M. Ward)

Kristin Mannella - Fire at Will: Empathy and Aggression in First Person Shooters. (Mentor: B. Bushman)

Jennifer Morack - Do Positive Perceptions of Aging Influence Well-Being in Older Adults? Findings from the Health and Retirement Study. (Mentor: J. Smith)

Erica Ranade - The Relations Between Young Children’s Understanding of Theory of Mind and Their Understanding of Expected and Unexpected Human Behaviors. (Mentors: M. Rhodes & H. Wellman)

Katherine Rice - The Effects of Motivation on Racial Differences in Elementary Cognitive Tasks. (Mentor: R. Nisbett)

Andria Robinson - Motivation and Learning Strategies of First-Generation and Nonfirst-Generation College Students. (Mentor: W. McKeachie)

Marjorie Shapiro - Parental Education Level: Academic Involvement and Success. (Mentor: J. Hagen)

Puneet Sodhi - The Effects of Associative Strength on False Working Memory. (Mentor: P. Reuter-Lorenz)

Nora Jean Sporn - The Effects of Sex Object, Thin-Ideal, and Body Part Images on Women’s Body Image. (Mentor: L. M. Ward)

Kavita Srivastava - Conceptualization and Development of the Appearance Perfectionism Scale: Preliminary Evidence for Validity and Utility in a College Student Population. (Mentor: E. Chang)

Jenna Stein - Relationships Between Body Modifications, Motivations, and Depression. (Mentor: J. Hansell)

Toby Steinberg - Children with Disorganized Attachment in Foster Care: Facilitating Caregiver Commitment and Psychological Availability. (Mentor: J. Ribaudo)

Alyson Sularz – The Contributions of Additional Traumatic Events to Trauma Symptoms and PTSD in Women Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). (Mentor: S. Graham-Bermann)

Kelsie Thelen - Relations Between Maternal and Paternal Parenting Behaviors and Internalizing Symptoms in 3-year old Girls. (Mentor: S. Olson)

Abigail Van Bremen - Winner Take All Disputes in Legal Contexts: When Social Categories Disrupt Procedural Justice. (Mentor: S. Garcia)

Akshaya Varghese - Cultural Variation in Response to Strategic Display of Emotions During Negotiations: Comparing South Asians to North Americans. (Mentor: S. Kopelman)

Clare Wrobel - Facilitator Involvement in Fostering an Effective Intergroup Dialogue. (Mentor: P. Gurin)

Laura Yocky - Coparenting, Temperament, and Emotional Understanding: Mediating and Moderating Models Leading to the Development of Children’s Behavior Problems. (Mentor: B. Volling

Aaron Baugh - Oscine and Non-Oscine Responses to Sciurid Carolinensis Vocalizations. (Mentor: T. Bergman)

Patrick Bissett - Overcoming Interference in Memory and Responding. (Mentor: J. Jonides)

Stephen Chang - Stress and Reward: The Effects of Corticotropin-Releasing Factor on Cue-Triggered "Wanting" for Sucrose Reward. (Mentor: K. Berridge)

Alyse DeHaan - Exogenous Prenatal Androgen Exposure Alters the Development of Rank in Male and Female Suffolk Lambs. (Mentor: T. Lee)

Charlotte Gamble - Maternal Malaria and Birth Outcomes: Findings from Ghana. (Mentors: T. Lee & T. Johnson)

Lindsey Harik - Cognitive Deficits Associated with Anticholinergic Medications in Veterans at the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Hospital. (Mentor: L. Bieliauskas)

Katherine Kudyba - Psychopathology and HPA Axis Functioning in Postpartum Women Who Experience Childhood Maltreatment. (Mentors: K. Rosenblum & M. Muzik)

Atasi Satpathy - Risky Business: Differences in Financial Risk-Taking Behavior in South Asian Indians, Indian Americans, and Caucasian Americans. (Mentor: P. Shah & R. Mahalingam)

Cortney Sera - Ambiguity Resolution Using Visual Imagery for Linguistic Processing of Homographs. (Mentors: R. Lewis & J. Boland)

Jessica Koch - The Per1 Response to Light within the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus of the Diurnal Octodon Degus and the Nocturnal Rat. (Mentor: T. Lee)

Ian McLachlan - Reducing the Resistance of Recent Fear to Extinction: A Pharmacological Approach. (Mentor: S. Maren)

Sarah Na - The Extended Amygdala Modulates Food Intake and Other Associated Behaviors. (Mentor: K. Berridge)

John Wang - Neuroanatomy of Decision Making About Everyday Objects. (Mentor: S. Preston)

Sarah Williams - Cortical High Affinity Choline Uptake during Challenged Attentional Performance. (Mentor: M. Sarter)

Genevieve Aidala - Analyzing Messages About Alcohol, Motivations to Drink, and Associated Risky Behaviors. (Mentor: L.M. Ward)

Sarah Banco - Qualities of the Sibling Relationship as Risk Factors for Child Adjustment in Homes with Interpersonal Violence. (Mentor: S. Graham-Bermann)

Stephanie Becker - Marriage and Emotional Expressivity in Men and Women. (Mentor: B. Volling)

Emily Bendikas - Nature and Extent of Parental Control & Its Association with Preschool Self-Regulation. (Mentors: F. Morrison & L. Skibbe)

Stella Binkevich - The Gap in Media Usage Knowledge Between Parents and Their Children. (Mentor: B. Bushman)

Marguerite Bodem - Optimism-Pessimism and Adjustment in College Students: An Investigation of the Validity and Utility of a Domain-Specific Model of Outcome Expectancies. (Mentor: E. Chang)

Andrew Bronstein - Utilizing Diversity in College Classrooms for Educational Benefit: Student Development in Intergroup Dialogue. (Mentor: P. Gurin)

Lauren Clevenger - The Relationship of Sexual Abuse and Pain in Women with Chronic Pelvic Pain: The Mediating Role of Pain Catastrophizing. (Mentor: R. Roth)

Ciaran Considine - Unpredictability and Paranoia: The Desire to Be Unknown. (Mentor: N. Schwarz)

Mallory Cooper - The Influence of Marital Satisfaction on Paternal Involvement and Secure Attachment in Toddlers. (Mentor: B. Volling)

Daniel Davis - Cognitive Impairment in Male Incarcerated Youth. (Mentor: S. Graham-Bermann)

Belinda Feng - Asian Values Communication and Perceptions of Intergenerational Family Conflict Among Asian American College Students. (Mentor: D. Nagata)

Kristin France - Body Image, Body Composition, and Sociosexuality. (Mentor: R. Nesse)

Neisi Garcia - Individual Differences in Counterfactual Thinking and Training Effects: Implications for Jury Decision-Making. (Mentor: P. Shah)

Kristin Garrison - Expertise and Competency in Clinical Medicine: Knowing When to Stop. (Mentor: C. Seifert)

Laura Girz - The Relationship Between Parenting Practices and Attitudes Toward Dating Violence for Asian American and White College Students. (Mentor: P. Akutsu)

Rebecca Grzadzinski - Attachment Behaviors in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: An Examination of Factors Associated with Separation and Reunion. (Mentor: C. Lord)

Chanel Harris - Multicultural Content Resources in the Classroom: A Comparison and Analysis of the United States and Canada. (Mentor: L. Gutierrez)

Nicole Hermann - The Perception and Function of Perfectionism in a College Student Population: Do Lay Theories Correspond with Scientific Models? (Mentor: E. Chang)

Rachael Herrmann - Examination of Goals to Reduce Stereotype Threat on Women’s Math Performance. (Mentors: J. Crocker & Y. Niiya)

Todd Hoffman - Measuring the Extent and Nature of Variation in Storytelling Skills in 3 to 6 Year Old Children. (Mentor: F. Morrison)

Megan Hoffmann - Instructional Impacts on Literacy and Language Skills in Kindergarten and First Grade. (Mentors: F. Morrison & L. Skibbe)

Brynne Janeway - The Role of Children’s Temperament for Sibling Relationships and Empathy Development. (Mentor: B. Volling)

Karen Kao - Gender Differences of Preschoolers and its Implications for Self-Regulation and Other Developmental Skills. (Mentor: F. Morrison)

Alison Kartush - Developmental Predictors and Outcomes of Feminism: An Exploration of the Effects of Media and Family on Feminist Beliefs and Career Aspirations. (Mentor: L.M. Ward)

Holly Keilch – Children’s Reasoning about Transgressions Involving Gender, Morality, and Biology: Evidence for Domain Specific Causal Reasoning. (Mentor: S. Gelman)

Alana Knoppow - The Role of Mortality Salience in Determining the Decision for War Versus Peace Among Political Leaders. (Mentor: D. Winter)

Alissa Koloff - The Effects of Advertising on Women's Notions of Femininity and Masculinity. (Mentor: L. M. Ward)

Lisa Kowalko - Criminal and Psychiatric Recidivism in Acquittees Found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity in the State of Michigan in 1995 and 1996: A Follow-Up Study. (Mentor: C. Holden)

Melissa Maye - The Relationship Between Usage of Psychotropic Medication and Problem Behaviors Among Individuals with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. (Mentors: C. Lord & D. Anderson)

Katherine Oddi – Fathers’ Physical Punishment and Warm Responsiveness in Relation to Childhood Attention Problems. (Mentor: S. Olson)

Elise Petersen - Intersectionality and Attitudes Towards Affirmative Action. (Mentor: R. Gonzalez)

Leah Potvin - Emotional Transmission in Alcoholic Couples and its Effects on Drinking Behavior. (Mentor: J. Cranford)

Jane Rho - Rankings and Facial Expressions: It Looks Unfriendly at “the Top.” (Mentor: S. Garcia)

Brittany Ruiz - The Effects of Maternal Parenting Dimensions on Girls’ Risk for Relational Aggression. (Mentor: S. Olson)

Mallory Salerno - Spotting Authoritarianism a Mile Away: The Development of an At-A- Distance Measure. (Mentor: D. Winter)

Kimberlee Shelton - Racial and Socioeconomic Differences in Health Behaviors Among Pregnant Women. (Mentor: H. Flynn)

Lauren Szczurek - The Effects of Warm and Cold Metaphors on Object Perception. (Mentor: N. Schwarz)

Deanna Tracy - The Relationship between Sensory Behaviors and Socialization in Young Children with Autism. (Mentor: C. Lord)

Madeline Wachman - The Relationship Between Implicit Theories of Health and Health Locus of Control: Implications for Mental and Physical Health. (Mentor. R. Mahalingam)

Yen Geraldine Wai - Spirituality and Forgiveness: A Pathway to Posttraumatic Growth. (Mentor: C. Peterson)

Margie Yu Ming Wong - Schizophrenia and Religion. (Mentor: C. Peterson)

Erica Yi - Do Race and Gender Concordance Improve Patient - Provider Communication? A Survey with Adult Dental Patients. (Mentor: M. Inglehart)

Ho Lam Yiu - Executive Function and Aggression: A Study from a Sample of Incarcerated Youths. (Mentors: K. Cortina & S. Perkins)

Korie Zink - Sexual Communication Patterns in Families: An Exploration of the Effects of Birth Order and Gender on Sexual Communication Messages Received from Parents and Siblings. (Mentor: L.M. Ward)

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Student Notebook

Choosing a dissertation topic.

Graduate students may take several approaches to choosing a dissertation topic. While a perfunctory approach may hasten a degree, establishing a standard of quality will enable you to both advance the field and also evolve our own career. Eight steps are presented below to aid the graduate student in selecting a dissertation topic.

1. THE DISSERTATION TAKES PRIORITY. Following completion of comprehensive examinations and coursework, graduate students may often view their graduate education as almost over. On the contrary, the dissertation actually marks a new era of study. As a doctoral candidate, your procedural formalities are no longer dictated by faculty. Rather, you must examine the selected topic, create a timeline for its development, and alter your lifestyle to assure its completion.

2. PICK AN INTERESTING TOPIC. If your topic is simply your professor’s pet area, you should be aware the topic may lose appeal before it’s even “housebroken.” Furthermore, if your professor moves on to another interest area, you will be stranded and possibly unable to complete your work. Remember, this is a topic that should keep you engrossed and motivated for at least one to two years. Pick it as carefully as you would a new pair of dress shoes.

3. BE AWARE OF ONGOING RESEARCH. Many students may spend a year researching a topic before finally selecting one for their dissertation. You must examine current literature both specifically and generally. One way to do this is to contact key researchers to help you identify published and unpublished studies. Conduct periodic key word searches in computerized databases to identify new angles or problems associated with your topic. Keep in mind this is a daunting and interminable task, as new research is always evolving. Be sure your time is not monopolized studying new research at the expense of analyzing your own.

4. DEFINE YOUR CONSTRUCTS CLEARLY. Terms such as “memory,” “intelligence,” and “educational level” may derive different meanings among diverse psychological scientists. Evaluate your constructs and obtain references to support your construct definition. If your definition veers from the accepted literature, be prepared to defend the definitional defiance to your committee and reviewers who may later, hopefully, publish your results.

5. EVALUATE WHETHER YOUR TOPIC IS PUBLISHABLE. While reviewing the literature, determine if your completed project will “fit” the Zeitgeist of an existing journal. You should be able to place yourself in the desk of a reviewer and assess, with minimal doubt, whether or not your dissertation would enhance the integrity of a reputable journal.

6. EVALUATE YOUR TOPIC’S IMPORTANCE. Certainly your topic must be important to you, but it must also add to your field of interest. Your topic should offer additional insight into an existing problem, and offer an opportunity to demonstrate your level of expertise and quality of scholarship.

7. ESTABLISH GOOD COMMITTEE RELATIONSHIPS. Your dissertation committee will establish either a direct or de facto relationship with both you and your topic. Obtain feedback from committee members if they can offer specialized support or, if individual members have an area of interest that can be incorporated as a hypothesis subtopic, try to include a discussion of this somewhere in the dissertation. The more committee members who “own” a part of your topic, the more who will support your defense, leading you toward appropriate publication.

8. ESTABLISH A TIMELINE FOR COMPLETION. A timeline will further assist you in selecting your topic. Some projects may be completed in one year, while others may take two years or longer. Select a topic that will be manageable within the selected deadline parameter.

Of course there are many other questions not answered above: Is the project fundable? Will it pass IRB review? Should you use parametric or non-parametric statistics? What is an appropriate research design? These are all very important questions that will also require evaluation. Making a list of your questions and carving out proposed answers may prove helpful in this process.

Completing a dissertation requires careful planning and insight from choosing a topic to the final defense. Perhaps, the above suggestions will aid in not only identifying an appropriate topic, but also prompt completion of a project that will add to the field of psychological science.

APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website. Effective February 2021, you must be a logged-in APS member to post comments. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations present in article comments are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of APS or the article’s author. For more information, please see our Community Guidelines .

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About the Author

SCOTT SMITH is a graduate student in educational psychology at Texas A&M University at Commerce. His research interests include flashbulb memories, autobiographical memories, and effects of processing on cognitive tasks.

Making a Career Choice: Follow in Your Own Footsteps

In a guest column, APS Fellow Barbara Wanchisen shares observations and ideas on broadening career opportunities for psychological scientists.

Student Notebook: Finding Your Path in Psychological Science

Feeling unsure or overwhelmed as an early-career psychology student? Second-year graduate student Mariel Barnett shares advice to quell uncertainties.

Matching Psychology Training to Job Market Realities

APS President Wendy Wood discusses how graduate programs can change the habit of focusing on academic-career preparation.

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School Psychology Research Paper Topics

View the list of school psychology research paper topics. Read about the history of school psychology. Check other research paper topics for more inspiration. If you need a psychology research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our custom writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

• Academic Achievement
• Adaptive Behavior Assessment
• Applied Behavior Analysis
• Authentic Assessment
• Behavioral Assessment
• Bias (Testing)
• Buros Mental Measurements Yearbook
• Career Assessment
• Classroom Observation
• Criterion-Referenced Assessment
• Curriculum-Based Assessment
• Fluid Intelligence
• Functional Behavioral Assessment
• Infant Assessment
• Intelligence
• Interviewing
• Motor Assessment
• Neuropsychological Assessment
• Outcomes-Based Assessment
• Performance-Based Assessment
• Personality Assessment
• Portfolio Assessment
• Preschool Assessment
• Projective Testing
• Psychometric g
• Reports (Psychological)
• Responsiveness to Intervention Model
• Social–Emotional Assessment
• Sociometric Assessment
• Written Language Assessment
• Behavioral Concepts and Applications
• Behavioral Momentum
• Conditioning: Classical and Operant
• Generalization
• Keystone Behaviors
• Schedule of Reinforcement

Consultation

• Consultation: Behavioral
• Consultation: Conjoint Behavioral
• Consultation: Ecobehavioral
• Consultation: Mental Health
• Cross-Cultural Consultation

Development

• Developmental Milestones
• Egocentrism
• Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development
• Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development
• Perseveration
• Preschoolers
• Sensorimotor Stage of Development
• Theories of Human Development
• Adjustment Disorder
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
• Autism Spectrum Disorders
• Bipolar Disorder (Childhood Onset)
• Communication Disorders
• Conduct Disorder
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• Learning Disabilities
• Mental Retardation
• Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder
• Oppositional Defiant Disorder
• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
• Psychopathology in Children
• Reactive Attachment Disorder of Infancy and Early Childhood
• Selective Mutism
• Separation Anxiety Disorder
• Somatoform Disorders

Ethical/Legal Issues in School Psychology

• Confidentiality
• Ethical Issues in School Psychology
• Informed Consent
• Supervision in School Psychology

Family and Parenting

• Divorce Adjustment
• Parent Education and Parent Training
• Parents as Teachers
• Single-Parent Families

Interventions

Academic Interventions:

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• Classwide Peer Tutoring
• Cooperative Learning
• Mathematics Interventions and
• Peer Tutoring
• Reading Interventions and Strategies
• School–Home Notes
• Spelling Interventions and Strategies
• Study Skills
• Time on Task
• Writing Interventions and Strategies

Behavioral Interventions:

• Behavior Contracting
• Behavior Intervention
• Biofeedback
• Corporal Punishment
• Positive Behavior Support
• Premack Principle
• Self-Management
• Task Analysis
• Token Economy
• Verbal Praise

General Terms:

• Early Intervention
• Intervention
• Mathematics Curriculum and Instruction

Other Interventions:

• Cognitive–Behavioral Modification
• Crisis Intervention
• Evidence-Based Interventions
• Facilitated Communication
• Family Counseling
• Psychotherapy
• Psychotropic Medications
• Student Improvement Teams

Social Interventions:

• Peer Mediation
• Social Skills

Issues Students Face

• Abuse and Neglect
• Death and Bereavement
• Homelessness
• Latchkey Children

Learning and Motivation

• Cognitive Dissonance
• Learned Helplessness
• Learning Styles
• Mastery Learning
• Problem Solving
• Self-Concept and Efficacy
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Legislation

• Americans with Disabilities Act
• Individuals With Disabilities Education Act
• Individuals With Disabilities Education Act Disability Categories–Part B
• Section 504

Medical conditions

• Cerebral Palsy
• Eating Disorders
• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
• Fragile X Syndrome
• Lead Exposure
• Obesity in Children
• Otitis Media
• Phenylketonuria
• Prader-Willi Syndrome
• Seizure Disorders
• Tourette’s Syndrome
• Traumatic Brain Injury

Multicultural Issues

• Cross-Cultural Assessment
• Multicultural Education
• Friendships
• Peer Pressure
• DARE Program
• Resilience and Protective Factors
• Qualitative Research
• Single-Case Experimental Design

School Actions

• Retention and Promotion

School Psychologist Roles

• Careers in School Psychology
• Diagnosis and Labeling
• Home–School Collaboration
• Multidisciplinary Teams
• Program Evaluation
• School Reform

School Psychology Organizations

• American Board of Professional Psychology
• American Psychological Association
• Council of Directors of School Psychology Programs
• Division of School Psychology (Division 16)
• International School Psychology Association
• Licensing and Certification in School Psychology

National Association of School Psychologists

School-related terms.

• Ability Grouping
• Classroom Climate
• No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, The
• Parent-Teacher Conferences
• School Climate
• Statewide Tests
• Teacher-Student Relationships
• S. Department of Education
• Zero Tolerance

School Types

• Charter Schools
• Full-Service Schools
• High School
• Homeschooling
• Middle School
• Montessori Schools
• Special Education
• Accommodation
• Due Process
• Gifted Students
• Individualized Education Plan
• Individualized Education Plan Meeting
• Least Restrictive Environment
• Mainstreaming
• Manifestation Determination
• Resource Rooms

Statistical and Measurement Terms

• Confidence Interval
• Effect Size
• Formative Evaluation
• Goal Attainment Scaling
• Grade Equivalent Scores
• Halo Effect
• Norm-Referenced Tests
• Normal Distribution
• Percentile Ranks
• Reliability
• Standard Deviation
• Standard Error of Measurement
• Standard Score
• Summative Evaluation

Student Problematic Behavior

• Aggression in Schools
• Bullying and Victimization
• School Refusal
• Self-Injurious Behavior
• Smoking (Teenage)
• Substance Abuse
• Teen Pregnancy
• Violence in Schools

History of School Psychology

The school psychology profession that exists today was shaped over the last century by multiple factors that continue to influence current thought and practice. These foundational influences are discussed in the initial section of this research paper and are followedbyareviewofthecurrentstatusofschoolpsychology in terms of roles and services, legal requirements, employment conditions, credentialing, infrastructure (professional associations, standards, journals), demographics, and supply-demand issues. The concluding section addresses probable future developments in light of current trends.

Although much has changed over the last century in psychology and education, the core features of school psychology practice have remained remarkably stable. School psychology’s earliest practitioners were concerned with identification and interventions for students with atypical patterns of learning and development, a core mission that dominates practice today. The principal basis for initiating services was then—and continues to be—referral of children due to learning problems, behavior problems, or both, most often by classroom teachers who are frustrated because the usual classroom strategies are not working. Moreover, then as now the vast majority of school psychologists’ professional practice involved a close association with educational services to students with disabilities such as mental retardation (MR), emotional disturbance (ED) and, recently, specific learning disability (SLD).

Throughout school psychology’s history there has been a parallel concern with enhancing the educational and developmental opportunities of all children through the implementation of sound mental health practices in schools, homes, neighborhoods, and communities. Current programs to establish schools as full-service educational and health agencies are one of the contemporary reflections of the latter trend. The broader positive mental health mission has always been, however, secondary to the core role of identification and interventions with students with learning and behavior problems.

Historical Trends

The early roots, the disciplinary foundations, and the societal trends that produced modern school psychology are discussed in this section. The early roots of school psychology emerged in the late 1890s in urban settings where school attendance was increasingly expected of all children and youth. Concerns for children with low achievement soon emerged, and efforts to identify the causes and solutions to low achievement were undertaken in several urban centers at about the same time (Fagan, 1992). It is interesting to note that the same concerns dominate most of school psychology practice today.

Disciplinary Foundations of School Psychology

Multiple disciplinary foundations exist for graduate education and school psychology practice. School psychology originated in the very early practice of what became clinical psychology involving the application of psychological methods to the understanding of learning and behavior problems of school-age children and youth (Fagan, 2000). Understanding and intervening with these problems always has involved multiple disciplines, including educational psychology (especially, the learning, measurement, and child development components), psychopathology and psychology of exceptional individuals, developmental psychology, counseling, clinical psychology, applied behavior analysis, and special education. These disciplinary foundations are clearly present in the authoritative statements of the crucial features of school psychology graduate education and practice (National Association of School Psychologists, 2000; Ysseldyke et al., 1997).

Societal Trends and School Psychology

School psychology always has been responsive to societal trends. In fact, whatever the current major issue is, it will be represented prominently in contemporary exhortations regarding what school psychologists should be doing. Two examples of this pattern should suffice. During the 1980s enormous emphasis was placed on drug abuse among youth and the school’s role in preventing drug abuse. The outcome was that awareness was increased and a few really good preventive programs were developed; however, although drug abuse continues to be a huge problem, relatively little attention is paid to this problem in the current school psychology literature.

A contemporary trend involves prevention of violence in schools, undoubtedly prompted by a few highly publicized horrific incidents in American schools resulting in the loss of approximately 60 students’ lives. The emphasis on violence prevention is important but perhaps a bit disproportionate in comparison to other more common problems. For example, overall, schools are overall, safer in the early 2000s than in the 1980s in terms of the number of lives lost in schools due to violence; however, youth violence remains a serious and often-discussed issue (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001).

The persistence and impact of school psychology’s attention to immediate societal problems depends on how well interventions become embedded in typical practice and implemented successfully in schools. For example, the use of group counseling and other peer group support procedures was expanded in the 1980s and then embedded in the practice of many school psychologists working in secondary schools. These methods are now applied to many different problems, including decision making about sexual behavior, social skills training, and, of course, drug abuse.

Similarly, the current emphasis on violence prevention will have a lasting influence in school psychology to the degree that the intervention methods developed are generally useful in preventing or ameliorating a range of problems. For example, the schoolwide interventions currently being implemented in schools as part of violence prevention efforts have positive influences on overall school and classroom climate, on preventing violent incidents, and on the reduction of other problems such as disciplinary referrals and dropout rates (Horner & Sugai, 2000; Sugai et al., 2000; Walker et al., 1996). If these interventions are incorporated into standard practice, then the current attention to school violence will have a lasting and positive effect.

Compulsory Education and Educational Outcomes

Fagan (1992) documented the impact of compulsory schooling on the development of school psychology in the twentieth century. Compulsory schooling and (increasingly) the expectation of high educational achievement for all children and youth continue to influence school psychology. Exceptional patterns of development and differences in achievement became much more problematic with compulsory school attendance beginning in the early 1900s and expanding through the rest of the century. A contemporary expression of the expansion of compulsory schooling is the strong emphasis on improving school attendance and preventing school withdrawal prior to the completion of high school. School dropout after a certain age (age 14, 15, or 16) was tolerated more readily in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Today, dropout prevention is a major goal of school reform along with expectations for high achievement for all children and youth (McDonnell, McLaughlin, & Morison, 1997).

Compulsory school attendance and expectations for high achievement for all students influenced early and contemporary school psychology in many ways. More children were in public schools. Moreover, through the century it was progressively less likely that students with serious achievement and behavior problems were excluded from schools, increasing the need for school psychological services and educational accommodations for students who varied on important dimensions related to education (learning rate, cognitive functioning, behavior, etc.). Today the demand for high achievement for all students, including those with disabilities, places more emphasis on effective general and special education interventions and school psychology services that are directly related to producing better outcomes.

Exceptional Individuals and Special Education

School psychology always emphasized recognition of individual differences in learning and development. The association with special education also occurred early in the history of school psychology, and (as discussed later) the existence of school psychology has closely paralleled the development of special education funding in the states. In most states, school psychologists have had mandated roles with the development of special education eligibility and placement. Part of that role always has been measurement of individual differences, often through comparing individual performance to national normative standards, and the development of educational programs to accommodate those differences.

Child Study and Mental Health

The early child study movement in the 1890 to 1910 period was another foundation for school psychology (Fagan, 1992). Child study methods later merged with school and clinical psychology and formed the basis for the increasingly close ties of school psychology to special education. The mental health movement that emerged in the 1920s is the basis for contemporary efforts to prevent academic, social-behavioral, and emotional problems through positive parenting and responsive school programs. The mental health movement has fostered many different approaches to prevention and intervention, varying from the psychoanalytic and psychodynamic roots in the early period to contemporary, behaviorally based schoolwide positive discipline programs. The effectiveness of mental health programs always has been controversial (e.g., Bickman, 1997).

Individual Rights and Legal Guarantees

The expansion of individual rights and legal guarantees to educational services for all children and youth exerted vast influences on school psychology. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that outlawed segregation of students by race in public schools initiated a movement that continues to grow and develop. Brown and subsequent litigation and legislation established strong sanctions against differential treatment of individuals on the basis of race, sex, age, and disability status (Reschly & Bersoff, 1999). Perhaps the most pervasive effect of this movement was to change the relationship of parents and students to schools. The discretion of schools to limit access or to segregate students was changed forever. Moreover, parents and students increasingly acquired the rights to challenge the decisions of educators and to seek redress in the courts.

The greatest current influences on school psychology are the court cases and legislation guaranteeing educational rights to students with disabilities (SWD). As noted later, the expanded rights changed the practice of school psychology in significant ways and markedly expanded special education and school psychology.

Demographics and Current Practice Conditions

The current status of school psychology is discussed in this section, including roles and practices, employment conditions, personnel needs, and demographics. The characteristics of school psychology practice and practitioners have changed rapidly in a few areas while many other factors have remained stable over the last quarter century.

Numbers and Salaries

The number of school psychologists working in public school positions in the United States is impossible to know with certainty. Two methods have been used to estimate the total employed in schools—surveys of state department of education personnel and state school psychology leadership officials and the annual state reports to the Federal Office for Special Education Programs (OSEP) of personnel employed working with SWD. The results of the two methods are generally very similar in overall numbers and correlated at r  .9 or above (Lund, Reschly, & Martin, 1998). The OSEP results may be a very slight undercount because they do not include practitioners in schools not counted as working with special education programs.

According to the most recent OSEP count, over 25,000 school psychologists are employed in school settings. There are perhaps another 3,000 school psychology practitioners working in other roles in schools, such as director of special education, or in other settings, such as medical clinics, community mental health, and private practice. Other career settings for school psychologists include college and university teaching and research as well as state department of education staff. Of course, some persons with graduate education and experience in school psychology are in a very wide variety of roles such as university president, college provost and dean, school superintendent or principal, test publishing, and private consultation. The exact number of persons with school psychology graduate education and experience in the schools working in related careers or settings is impossible to determine; however, it is likely that the there are at least 30,000 such persons.

School psychology employment has grown rapidly since the enactment of the Education of the Handicapped Act (EHA; 1975, 1977), now the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; 1991, 1997, 1999). Prior to about 1975, the number of school psychologists and the ratio of students to psychologists in a state depended very heavily on whether the state had strong special education legislation and—as a part of that legislation—funding for school psychological services. Kicklighter (1976) reported an average ratio of about 22,000 students to one psychologist and a median of about 9,000 students per psychologist. The large differences between the median and mean indicate that there were enormous differences between states and regions and generally high (by present standards; see later discussion) ratios in nearly all localities (Fagan, 1988).

School psychology’s growth over the last 25 years is documented through OSEP annual reports on the implementation of EHA and IDEA since 1976 (see Figure 17.3 later in this research paper; U.S. Department of Education, 1978–2001). The number of school psychologists over that time period increased from about 10,000 in 1977–1978 to more than 26,000 in 1998–1999—an increase of more than 150%. Approximately 750 school psychologists have been added annually to the profession, severely challenging the ability of graduate programs to provide an adequate supply of fully credentialed persons (see later discussion). For example, in the most recent year for which data are available, 1998–1999 (U.S. Department of Education, 2001), 1,025 of the 26,266 psychologists reported by the states to OSEP were not fully certified as school psychologists. Moreover, the growth of school psychology is tied to school budgets. Increased growth has occurred in good economic times (Lund et al., 1998), and it is likely that less growth or perhaps even a slight contraction is currently underway. Figure 17.3 (later in this research paper) summarizes the growth of school psychology by year since 1977–1978.

Employers and Salary

The vast majority of school psychologists (85% or more) work for publicly supported educational agencies such as school districts or regional education units. Most practitioners work very closely with special education programs in which they have particularly demanding responsibilities with disability diagnosis and special education program placement (see later discussion of roles and legal influences). Most are employed on 190- to 200-day contracts. The salaries for school psychologists nearly always are determined by years of professional experience, degree level, length of contract, and—occasionally—increased by supervisory responsibilities, specialized roles, or unique strengths such as bilingual capabilities. The average beginning salary is in the low $30,000s, but the variations among districts, states, and regions are substantial. The average salary for a school psychologist with a 190-day contract, 15 years of experience, and the equivalent of specialist-level graduate education (see later section) is in the mid-$50,000s, although again, there are large regional variations (Hosp & Reschly, 2002).

Job Satisfaction

Overall, the job satisfaction of school psychologists has been positive and stable over the last two decades. Reschly and colleagues began studies of job satisfaction in the mid-1980s in response to anecdotal reports that many school psychologists were unhappy with their work and planned to leave the profession in the near future (Vensel, 1981). Contrary to the anecdotal observations that received a good deal of attention in the early 1980s, job satisfaction is generally positive. The vast majority of practitioners plan to continue in school psychology for many years or until retirement and are satisfied with their career choice (Hosp & Reschly, 2002; Reschly, Genshaft, & Binder, 1987; Reschly & Wilson, 1995).

The picture becomes more nuanced when different aspects of job satisfaction are considered. Using a five-area job satisfaction scale in a Likert scale format patterned after the fivefactor content of the Job Descriptive Index (JDI; Smith, Kendall, & Hulin, 1969), Reschly and Wilson’s (1995) national survey results indicated high and positive satisfaction with colleagues and work, moderate satisfaction with supervision, and neutral perceptions of pay, but they also reported low satisfaction with promotion opportunities—a pattern also reported by Hosp and Reschly (2002) in a more recent survey (see Figure 17.1). For many practitioners—especially those at the specialist level of graduate preparation— advancement opportunities are seen as rather limited. One of the advantages associated with doctoral-level graduate education for practitioners is greater opportunity to pursue alternative career settings or to augment the usual role with other professional activities such as teaching in a local college, private practice, or consulting. Persons engaged in these activities generally see the job advancement and promotion opportunities more positively.

Demographics

School psychology demographics have changed significantly over the last 40 years (Reschly, 2000). The greatest changes occurred in gender; the practitioner work force has changed from 40% to 70% female. This gender trend is likely to continue because today slightly more than 80% of all school psychology graduate students are women. The composition of school psychology faculty, which started at a lower proportion of women (20%) also reflects the same trend; about 50% of all faculty are female currently. The gender trends in school psychology are consistent with the increasing feminization of psychology generally—a strong trend that is apparent among undergraduate majors and graduate students in all areas of psychology (Pion et al., 1996). The proportion of women in graduate programs in many areas of psychology— including clinical and counseling—are close to the 80% figure cited previously for school psychology.

The average age of school psychology practitioners has increased from about 38–47 since 1985 (Curtis, Hunley, Walker, & Baker, 1999; Hosp & Reschly, 2002; Reschly et al., 1987). Similar age trends likely exist with school psychology faculty who were about 6 years older than practitioners in a 1992 survey (Reschly & Wilson, 1995). The advancing age of practitioners and faculty creates opportunities for greater gender representation among faculty, a trend that appears to be well underway and (perhaps) increasing diversity among all types of school psychologists. Moreover, the likely high rate of retirements over the next decade will contribute to the already healthy demand for school psychologists in both practitioner and faculty positions.

Greater diversity in school psychology is an intense need and challenge. Curtis et al. (1999) reported that approximately 5.5% of practitioners identified themselves as being in a nonCaucasian group; however, only 1% reported being African American and 1.7% were self-identified as Hispanic. Graduate program enrollments and faculty have become slightly more diverse over the last decade; minority faculty membership has increased from 11% to 15%, and minority graduate students have increased from 13% to 17% (McMaster, Reschly, & Peters, 1989; Thomas, 1998). The latter statistics on minority representation were not reported by group; hence, there is no way to determine whether the most underrepresented groups (African American and Hispanic) are increasing.Regardlessofthislastpoint,thecompositionoftheschool psychology profession is markedly different from the current U.S. public school population, which is approximately 1% AmericanIndian,4%AsianorPacificIslander,15%Hispanic, 17% African American, and 63% White. It is likely that the racial-ethnic compositions of school psychologists and students will continue to be very different far into the future.

Degree Level

One of the most controversial issues is the appropriate level of graduate education for the independent, nonsupervised practice of school psychology in schools and other settings. Degree level is the principal issue that divides the American Psychological Association (APA) and its Division 16 (School Psychology) from the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP; see this research paper’s later section on infrastructure). The degree composition of the current practitioner force is heavily at the specialist level—that is, 60 hours of graduate work in an organized program of study in school psychology with a 1-year internship. Although surveys differ slightly, about 75% of the current practitioners are at the specialist level and about 25% are at the doctoral level. Over the past 25 years there has been an enormous shift from the masters to the specialist level, and over the same period, the proportion of doctoral-level practitioners has only slightly increased. The current pattern is highly likely to continue because the vast majority of current school psychology graduate students are in specialist-level programs (75–80%), and the majority of school psychology graduate programs are located in institutions that are not authorized by their governing authorities to offer doctoral degrees in any area (Reschly & Wilson, 1997; Thomas, 1998).

The data on degree level of current practitioners and graduate students destroy the credibility of assertions in the mid1980s that school psychology was rapidly changing to the doctoral level (Brown, 1987, 1989a, 1989b; Brown & Minke, 1986). Brown predicted that “. . . by 1990 over half of the students in training will be at the doctoral level” and that “. . . a majority of graduates in the near future will be doctoral” (1987, p. 755). Others suggested a slightly less rapid progression toward the doctoral level—for example, Fagan predicted that half of all practitioners in 2010 would be doctoral (Fagan, 1986). Past and current trends make those predictions impossible to achieve. In fact, school psychology is a largely nondoctoral profession and is likely to remain so for several decades into the new century.

Roles and Services

Based on the traditional literature (Cutts, 1955; Fagan & Wise, 2000; Magary, 1967; Phye & Reschly, 1979; White & Harris, 1961), the following summary reflects the research of Reschly and colleagues on the roles of school psychologists (Reschly & Wilson, 1995, p. 69).

• Psychoeducational assessment is “evaluations for diagnosis of handicapping conditions, testing, scoring and interpretation, report writing, eligibility or placement conferences with teachers and parents, re-evaluations.”
• Interventions refer to “direct work with students, teachers, and parents to improve competencies or to solve problems, counseling, social skills groups, parent or teacher training, crisis intervention.”
• Problem-solving consultation refers to “working with consultees (teachers or parents) with students as clients, problem identification, problem analysis, treatment design and implementation, and treatment evaluation.”
• Systems-organizational consultation refers to “working toward system level changes, improved organizational functioning, school policy, prevention of problems, general curriculum issues.”
• Research-evaluation refers to “program evaluation, grant writing, needs assessment, determining correlates of performance, evaluating effects of programs.”

Using this scheme, several surveys (Hosp & Reschly, 2002; Reschly et al., 1987; Reschly & Wilson, 1995) have yielded generally consistent results regarding practitioners’ perceptions of their current and preferred roles (see Figure 17.2). The current services of school psychologists involve a heavy emphasis on psychoeducational assessment, which accounts for over half of the role (Hosp & Reschly, 2002). Approximately 35% of the time is devoted to direct interventions and problemsolving consultation, with less than 10% devoted to systemsorganizational consultation and research-evaluation. Preferred roles involve significantly less time in assessment (32%) and slightly more time in each of the other four roles.

Further information on the character of school psychology services is revealed by responses to the following item: How much of your time is spent in determining special education eligibility, staffings, follow-up on placements, and reevaluations? The average amount of time in services strongly connected to special education eligibility, and placement in 1997 was 60%. Moreover, the results of a survey on the use of different assessment instruments or approaches further supported the strong tie to eligibility determination in special education. School psychology assessment is dominated by assessment of intellectual ability and the use of other measures related to determining eligibility for special education such as behavior rating scales and projective assessment devices. The behavior rating scales are nearly always completed by teachers or parents and the projective devices used typically were the less complex variety, such as figure drawings and sentence completion tasks. A good case can be made that IQ testing for the purpose of determining special education eligibility still dominates much of school psychology practice.

Ratios and Regional Differences

The content thus far on demographics, roles, and services has been based on averages derived from national surveys of school psychologists that mask large variations between regions, states, and districts within states. Regional differences are a significant influence on the interpretation of some of these results. A good example of the large variations among regions is the ratio of students to psychologists. The national ratio is about 1900:1. That overall average masks significant regional variations that differ from 3800:1 in the EastSouth-Central states to 1000:1 in the New England states (Hosp & Reschly, 2002). Even greater variations exist among states and in some cases between districts within the same state. It is therefore difficult to generalize about school psychology practice across all districts, states, and regions. The variables discussed thus far that are most affected by regional factors are—in addition to ratio—salary (higher in the eastern and western coasts and lower in the southern and WestSouth-Central states), assessment practices (more IQ testing in the southern states and less in the Northeast; less use of projective measures in the central and mountain states), and nonassessment roles (more time devoted to them in the East and less in the Pacific states). Job satisfaction, age, gender composition, and time devoted to special education services did not vary substantially across the regions.

Legal Requirements

Legal requirements influence every facet of school psychology practice in schools and in many other settings. Public schools are creations of federal, state, and local governments. School psychology employment depends heavily on public funding—a generally secure foundation that expands or contracts at a moderate rates with economic circumstances. Varied sources of legal requirements and legal mechanisms influence the practice of school psychology (Prasse, 2002; Reschly & Bersoff, 1999).

The sources of legal requirements influencing school psychology vary from the U.S. Constitution’s 5th and 14th Amendments used in the Diana (1970), Guadalupe (1972)— both cases regarding minority overrepresentation in special education—and Pennsylvania Association of Retarded Children v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1972)—a landmark right of students with mental retardation to appropriate educational services, due process protections, and participation in normal educational environments to the greatest extent feasible—to regulations developed by state education agencies. Litigation beginning in the late 1960s continues to markedly influence school psychology practice (Reschly & Bersoff, 1999). Although litigation and constitutional protections continue to be important, the greatest contemporary legal influences come from federal statutes and regulations and state statutes and rules governing the provision of educational services to students with disabilities (Reschly, 2000).

The previously cited litigation was instrumental in the development of state and federal legislation regarding the educational rights of children and youth with disabilities. The EHA (1975, 1977) was the touchstone federal legislation that appears in an updated form today as IDEA (1991, 1997, 1999). All of the major principles of IDEA—that is, free appropriate education at public expense, least restrictive environment, individualized educational programs, procedural safeguards, and nondiscrimination and appropriate assessment—appeared earlier in the EHA. These principles and their implications for school psychology practice are summarized in Table 17.1. For example, the state and federal guarantees of a free and appropriate education for all SWD greatly increased the number of such students in the public school setting (from about 2.2 million students age 6–17 to over 5 million today), markedly increasing the number of eligibility evaluations and reevaluations.

Psychological services are defined in the IDEA regulations, but the terms school psychology or school psychologist do not appear in the IDEA statute or regulations. A broad conception of psychological services appears in the following IDEA (1999) regulations:

(9) Psychological services includes—

Administering psychological and educational tests, and other assessment procedures;

Interpreting assessment results;

Obtaining, integrating, and interpreting informationabout child behavior and conditions relating to learning;

Consulting with other staff members in planning schoolprograms to meet the special needs of children as indicated by psychological tests, interviews, and behavioral evaluations;

Planning and managing a program of psychological services, including psychological counseling for children and parents; and

Assisting in developing positive behavioral interventionstrategies.

Although the conception of psychological services in the IDEA regulations is broad and progressive, the actual effects of the close association with special education constitute a two-edged sword for school psychology. One side is that the legislation has prompted the enormous growth in school psychology over the last 25 years and provides a secure funding base in nearly all states. Strong special education funding nearly always has meant strong funding for school psychology, and vice versa. The other side is that the top service priority for the vast majority of school psychologists is to conduct eligibility evaluations and to participate in other special education placement activities, thus limiting the amount of time available for preventive mental health, direct interventions, and problem-solving consultation.

Assessment and Eligibility Determination Regulations

In addition to greater demand, the nature of school psychological services changed dramatically after 1975 and continues to change with statutes and regulations that require eligibility evaluations to meet certain standards. The regulations that have the most influence on school psychology practice appear as the Procedures for Evaluation and Determination of Eligibility section of the federal IDEAregulations (34 C. F. R. 300530 through 543). Comparable state education agency rules exist at the state level. The key regulations that have the most impact on school psychology practice are:

• A full and individual evaluation that meets certain standards must be conducted prior to determining eligibility for disability status and placement in special education.
• The evaluation must not be racially or culturally discriminatory, and it must be administered in the child’s native language unless to do so is clearly not feasible.
• Disability classification shall not occur if the tests or other evaluation procedures are unduly affected by language differences.
• The evaluation results must be relevant to determining disability eligibility and to the development of the child’s individualized educational program.
• Standardized tests must be validated for the purpose for which they are used and must be administered by knowledgeable and trained personnel in accordance with test publishers’ requirements.
• Tests and other evaluation procedures must focus on specific educational needs, not merely on a single construct such as general intellectual functioning.
• The evaluation accounts for the effects of other limitations such as sensory loss or psychomotor disabilities and does not merely reflect those limitations.
• No single procedure is used; a multifactored assessment must be provided that includes areas related to the suspected disability, including (if appropriate) health, vision, hearing, social and emotional status, general intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor abilities. All of the child’s special education and related services needs must be identified regardless of whether those needs are commonly associated with a specific disability.
• A review of existing information pertaining to the child’s disability eligibility and special education program placement must be conducted every 3 years or more often if requested by a parent or teacher. A comprehensive reevaluation may be conducted as part of the review.
• An evaluation report shared with parents must be developed.
• Eligibility and placement decisions must be based on a wide variety of information and be made by a team that includes evaluation personnel, teachers, special educators, and parents.
• In the area of SLD, a severe discrepancy must be established between achievement and intellectual ability; furthermore, cause of the SLD cannot be sensory impairment; mental retardation; emotional disturbance; or environmental, economic, or cultural disadvantage.

The discerning reader will notice almost immediately the inherent ambiguity in many regulations. For example, what does nondiscrimination or validated for a specific purpose mean? Does nondiscrimination mean equal average scores for all groups on relevant measures? Equal predictive accuracy? Equal classification and placement outcomes? Similarly, how valid is sufficiently valid to meet the legal requirement? Is a validity coefficient of r  .5 sufficient, or does it have to be higher? No answers are given in the regulations, and for the most part, these questions have not been answered in litigation. Some of the regulations regarding eligibility evaluation might be regarded best as aspirational because—given the current state of knowledge—achieving nondiscrimination in an absolute sense or attaining perfect or near-perfect validity are nearly impossible. Clearly, the regulations give notice that high-quality evaluations are required and that special sensitivity to sociocultural differences is expected.

In addition to the regulations governing the processes and procedures for eligibility evaluations, the actual disability classification criteria also exert a strong influence on the kinds of evaluations conducted by school psychologists. The IDEA regulations provide conceptual definitions for 13 disabilities. The federal conceptual definitions generally indicate the fundamental bases for each of the disability categories—for example, MR is defined in terms of intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior, but classification criteria are not provided in the federal regulations (e.g., the IQ and adaptive behavior cutoff scores to define eligibility in MR). The state education agency rules generally are the most important influences on classification criteria.

States have wide discretion in the use of disability categories and disability names and—most especially—in the classification criteria used to define disabilities. The frequent use of standardized tests of intellectual functioning and achievement by school psychologists is closely tied to the nature of these state eligibility criteria. The disability with the highest prevalence, SLD (accounting for over half of all SWD), is operationalized by classification criteria that require a severe discrepancy between intellectual ability and achievement. The exact criterion or criteria for the discrepancy varies by state with some establishing relatively less (e.g., 1 SD ) and some relatively more (1.5 or 2.0 SD ) stringent standards. The use of an IQ test, however, is nearly always required to implement the SLD classification criteria—a practice that may be changing. Likewise, in MR an IQ test nearly always is required by states to determine the child’s status on the intellectual functioning dimension of the MR disability category.

IQ testing often is done routinely as part of a comprehensive evaluation for other suspected disabilities such as emotional disturbance or autism, although the classification criteria for these disabilities rarely mention intellectual functioning specifically. For many school and child psychologists, an IQ test is an essential part of an overall evaluation (Sattler, 2001). This view appears to be changing as more emphasis is placed on accountability for child outcomes in special education legislation and practice (see this research paper’s section on future trends).

Trends in Legal Requirements

The EHA-IDEA legal requirements and their state counterparts have evolved gradually over the last 25 years, with changes primarily in the realm of further specification of requirements or inclusion of broader age ranges in the mandate to serve SWD. IDEA (1991, 1997, 1999) represented a modest break with the prior trends; the greater emphasis was on accountability for academic and social outcomes for SWD and the use of regulatory powers to focus greater attention on positive outcomes. Prior to 1997, IDEA-EHA legal requirements focused on process, inclusion, and extending services to all eligible children and youth. Compliance monitoring prior to 1997 involved checking on whether the mandated services were provided without cost to parents in the least restrictive environment feasible and were guided by an individualized educational program and an evaluation that included essential features; procedural safeguards followed rigorously. The missing element in this array of legal requirements was outcomes—that is, what tangible benefits were derived by children and youth from participating in special education and related services programs?

The greater emphasis on outcomes in special education legal requirements follows the national trends in the late 1980s and 1990s toward greater accountability through systematic assessment of student achievement (McDonnell et al., 1997). Several additions were made by Congress to the IDEA regulations (1991, 1997, 1999) to ensure greater accountability in special education. Among these requirements are the strong preference for SWD to remain in the general education curriculum, to participate in local and state assessment programs (including the standardized achievement testing that is done at least annually in nearly all states), and to have individualized educational programs that are developed around general education curriculum standards.

The effects of this legislation on SWD are not clear yet, but the accountability demands influence school psychology in a number of ways. First, evaluations must include content from the general education classroom and curriculum in order to provide the information needed for planning the special education program. More emphasis on curriculum-based measurement is highly likely (Shapiro, 1996; Shinn, 1998) along with other direct measures of classroom performance. Second, the portions of reevaluations involving progress in achieving goals must in most cases include a general education context as well as the results of the child’s performance in the school’s accountability program. These areas are becoming essential components of annual reviews of progress and triennial reevaluations of disability eligibility and special education program placement. Third, school psychologists are involved frequently in judgments about the alterations in standardized testing procedures that are needed in order for SWD to participate, without undermining the essential purpose of the assessment. Finally—and most important—the work of school psychologists is increasingly examined in relation to outcomes for children, leading to scrutiny of the value of standardized tests and other assessment procedures in facilitating positive outcomes for SWD (discussed later in this research paper; Reschly & Tilly, 1999).

IDEA (1991, 1997, 1999) also placed more emphasis on the delivery of effective interventions for social and emotional behaviors that might interfere with academic performance or that lead to placement in more restrictive education settings for SWD. A positive behavior support plan is required in every IEP if social or emotional behavior interferes with learning—a frequent occurrence for SWD. Moreover, before disciplinary action can be taken against SWD, a functional behavior analysis must be conducted with interventions implemented (Tilly, Knoster, & Ikeda, 2000), a requirement that focuses more attention on outcomes and draws heavily on the expertise that some school psychologists have with applied behavior analysis.

Summary of Legal Requirements

It is this author’s thesis that legal requirements are the greatest influence on the existence and work of school psychologists. The close association of school psychology with special education emerged in the early twentieth century, developed rapidly over the last 25 years, and continues to evolve. The legal requirements themselves are, of course, the outgrowth of societal trends that placed great value on the rights of each individual—including persons with disabilities—to educational services. Further changes in legal requirements should be expected with concomitant further influences on school psychology.

School Psychology Infrastructure

The infrastructure for school psychology includes the body of knowledge claimed by the profession, graduate programs, standards, professional associations, and credentialing mechanisms (including licensing and state education agency certification). The school psychology infrastructure grew rapidly over the last 25 years in parallel with the legal requirements necessitating the employment of school psychologists and the rapid increase in the numbers of school psychologists.

Professional Associations

School psychology professional associations exist in the United States, Canada, most nations of the European Community, and selected other nations throughout the world. There is an International Association of School Psychologists that holds an annual summer seminar, usually in Europe or North America. In addition, all states have school psychology associations, as do most Canadian provinces. The two major national school psychology organizations in the United States are discussed in this research paper. Readers interested in the international association are encouraged to consult their Web site (http://www.ispaweb.org/en/index.html).

Division 16 of the APA

The oldest national school psychology organization in the United States is Division 16 (School Psychology) of the APA (http://education.indiana.edu/~div16/). Division 16 was founded in the late 1940s when the APA was reorganized and the divisional structure was established. Many of the other divisions such as Educational Psychology (Division 15) and Clinical Psychology (Division 12) were established at the same time. Full membership in the APA requires a doctoral degree, rendering ineligible for full membership the vast majority of practicing school psychologists who have specialist-levelgraduate education. For that and perhaps other reasons the membership of Division 16 is a relatively small percentage of the overall school psychology community, dominated principally by university faculty. The membership of Division 16 is composed of 174 fellows, 1,392 members, and 226 associates (associates generally are graduate students or nondoctoral affiliates of theAPA).

Division 16 plays a vital role in representing school psychology in the broader realm of American psychology and professional psychology. Division 16 is very powerful when it can align its interests with those of the much larger APA (over 84,000 members). Major activities of this Division are publishing a journal ( School Psychology Quarterly ) and a newsletter ( The School Psychologist ), the developing of standards documents, advocating for school psychology services, and maintaining school psychology as one of the four officially recognized areas of professional psychology in APA (along with clinical, counseling, and industrial-organizational). Division 16 organizes a program at the annual APA conventions that includes awards to outstanding members, symposia, invited addresses, and poster sessions.

The NASP (http://www.nasponline.org/index2.html) was established in 1969 to represent the interests of all school psychologists, with special attention to the interests and needs of most practitioners who were at that time primarily at the master’s level of graduate preparation. The NASP admitted all persons certified or licensed to practice in a state as a school psychologist as well as graduate students in school psychology to full membership. Today NASP is the largest school psychology organization in the world with approximately 22,000 members, of whom about 5,000 have doctoral-level graduate preparation. Although it might have been accurate to characterize Division 16 and NASPin the 1970s and 1980s as representing the interests of doctoral- and nondoctorallevel school psychologists, respectively, it now is clear that about four times as many school psychologists with doctoral degrees are in NASP as in APA. NASP maintains a headquarters in the Washington, DC area and has an executive director and a growing staff that conducts the organization’s business, provides membership services, and advocates for school psychological services.

NASP publishes a journal ( The School Psychology Review ), a newsletter ( NASP Communique ), and a variety of monographs such as Best Practices (now in a fourth edition), a graduate training directory, and reports of innovative practices in such areas as intervention techniques and models (Shinn, Walker, & Stoner, 2002). NASP also publishes graduate program standards and provides a program approval service through an affiliation with the National Council on Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). NASP program approval is especially influential at the specialist level, whereas APA accreditation dominates at the doctoral level. A national credential with increasing recognition by the states was established by NASP in the early 1990s, the National Certificate in School Psychology (NCSP). Close relationships are maintained with nearly all of the state associations of school psychologists through a variety of cooperative and serviceoriented programs. Over the past decade, NASP has become increasingly active and influential in shaping federal policies that affect school psychologists—especially the IDEA(1991, 1997, 1999) legislation.

The principal disagreement between APA Division 16 and NASP is the appropriate entry level for the independent, unsupervised practice of school psychology in public and private settings. NASP advocates the specialist level, and Division 16—in line with APA policy—promotes the doctoral level. The dispute over entry level has been intense and divisive at different times in the history of school psychology (Bardon, 1979; Brown, 1979; Coulter, 1989; Hyman, 1979; Trachtman, 1981), although (with a few exceptions) it has not been a prominent issue at the national level for the two organizations in recent years. Intense struggles over this issue sometimes still occur at the state level drawing in the national leadership, but these events have been rare in the 1990s.

The outcome of the debate over entry level is relatively clear in most states. The entry level for practice in the schools is the specialist level, whereas the entry level for the private, independent practice of school psychology generally is the doctoral level. When school psychologists at the specialist level do attain the authority to practice privately without supervision by a doctoral-level professional, that practice typically is limited to a narrow range of services.

Increased cooperation on the many common interests that exist between NASP and APAhas been the prevailing pattern during the 1990s, although the official policies of the organizations continue to differ sharply on the graduate preparation required to use the title school psychologist. For reasons discussed in the next section, it is highly unlikely that school psychology practitioners will reach the doctoral level for several decades into the future. The APA and NASP cooperation is in the best interests of both organizations and consistent with both organizations’ commitment to expanding and improving psychological services for children and youth (Fagan, 1986a).

Graduate Programs

Graduate programs in school psychology have been studied with increasing intensity over the last 35 years (Bardon, Costanza, & Walker, 1971; Bardon & Walker, 1972; Bardon & Wenger, 1974, 1976; Bluestein, 1967; Brown & Lindstrom, 1977; Brown & Minke, 1984, 1986; Cardon & French, 1968–1969; Fagan, 1985, 1986b; French & McCloskey, 1979, 1980; Goh, 1977; McMaster et al., 1989; Pfeiffer & Marmo, 1981; Reschly & McMaster-Beyer, 1991; Reschly & Wilson, 1997; Smith & Fagan, 1995; Thomas, 1998; White, 1963–1964). The early studies were restricted to a listing of the available programs with meager analyses of the characteristics or the nature of the programs. Beginning with the NASP-sponsored graduate programs directories led by Brown and colleagues (Brown & Lindstrom, 1977; Brown & Minke, 1984) and then continued by others (McMaster et al., 1989; Thomas, 1998), a more complete picture of school psychology graduate education has emerged.

Two levels of graduate education are prominent in school psychology. The specialist level typically involves 2 years of full-time study in an organized school psychology program, the accumulation of 60 semester hours at the graduate level in approved courses, and a full-time internship during a third year, usually with remuneration at about a half-time rate for a beginning school psychologist. Specialist-level programs typically are designed around NASP standards for graduate programs in school psychology (NASP, 2000). Most specialist-program students complete their programs in 3 years. The overwhelming majority of specialist-program graduates are employed in public school settings as school psychologists.

Doctoral programs involve at least 3 years of full-time study on campus, followed by a full-time internship that usually is paid but at a level well below beginning salaries for psychologists, and a year for dissertation completion. Students occasionally complete doctoral degrees in 4 years, but 5–6 years is much more common in school psychology programs. Doctoral requirements typically follow APA accreditation standards (APA, 1996). Career paths of doctoral program graduates are highly variable. Many work in nonschool settings such as medical clinics or community mental health, whereas others go into teaching and research roles in universities. Perhaps 40% of doctoral graduates work in public school settings as school psychologists or as program administrators.

The specialist level dominates school psychology graduate education and practice, and it is likely to continue to do so. Specialist-level graduate students constitute about 70% of all graduate students and 80% of all graduates of programs. The latter is, of course, the most accurate predictor of the future composition of the school psychology workforce. For many reasons that are well known to students and faculty, doctoral programs require a longer period of study (5–6 years) compared to specialist programs (3 years), not to mention the all-too-common occurrence of doctoral degree candidates’ delaying or failing to complete the degree because of the dissertation. For these and other reasons, there always will be a higher proportion of doctoral students than program graduates.

The number of institutions actively engaged in school psychology graduate education has remained stable for a decade, at about 195. Surveys sometimes list as many as 210–220 institutions, but closer examination indicates that about 195 institutions have active programs that admit and graduate students each year. Approximately 90% of the institutions offer specialist-level degrees; however, only 40% offer doctoral degrees (Thomas, 1998; Reschly & Wilson, 1997). A limitation in the movement to the doctoral level is that about 60% of the institutions that offer school psychology graduate programs are not authorized by their governing boards or state legislatures to offer doctoral degrees (Reschly & Wilson, 1997). The Carnegie Foundation classifies most of these institutions as comprehensive institutions, meaning that they offer undergraduate degree programs in a wide variety of areas and master’s or specialist degrees in selected areas. They are not authorized to offer doctoral degrees, and—in the current higher education climate—it is highly unlikely that very many of them will acquire the authority to offer doctoral degrees in the future.

In a development that most professional psychologists did not anticipate, master’s-level practice of counseling and clinical psychology has strengthened over the last decade due at least in part to the influences of managed care and other factors. The strong pressure that existed from APA Division 16 in the 1970s and 1980s appears to have diminished as a result of the dominance of managed care in the private-practice market and other developments (Benedict & Phelps, 1998; Phelps, Eisman, & Kohout, 1998).

The actual graduate education of specialist- and doctorallevel school psychologists overlaps significantly—especially in terms of preparation for practice in the school setting (Reschly & Wilson, 1997). Doctoral training is different primarily in (a) domains of supervised practice in nonschool settings; (b) specialization with a particular population, kind of problem, or treatment approach; and (c) advanced preparation in measurement, statistics, research design, and evaluation. These findings suggest that doctoral-level graduates are better prepared for broader practice roles, including evaluation of treatment and program effects and provision of services in nonschool settings. It is crucial to presenting an accurate picture to emphasize a high degree of overlap between specialist and doctoral graduate education as well as the large amount of variation across specialist programs and doctoral programs.

The only development on the horizon that might lead to a change in the largely specialist-level character of school psychology practice is the recent emergence of school psychology PsyD programs at the freestanding schools of professional psychology (SPP). There are approximately 25 SPPs in the United States today that have been devoted almost exclusively to training clinical psychologists. The SPPs are noted for being expensive, for offering little student financial aid other than loans, and for graduating large numbers of students compared to more traditional university-based programs. Today these 25 schools of professional psychology graduate twice as many clinical psychologists as do the approximately 185 university-based clinical programs (How Do Professional Schools’ Graduates Compare with Traditional Graduates?, 1997; Maher, 1999; Yu et al., 1997). Clearly the SPPs have shown the capacity to train and graduate large numbers of persons. Due to changes in managed care as well as the rapid increase in the numbers of clinical psychologists—especially those from the SPPs—the market demand for doctoral-level clinical and counseling psychologists has diminished, as have the number of applications for admission to clinical and counseling graduate programs.

The SPPs are tuition driven—that is, they depend directly and primarily on student-paid tuition and fees to support the institution. They also are entrepreneurial. The weakening demand for clinical psychologists has led some of the SPPs to enter new areas of training. One of the California SPPs has initiated a teacher education program, and the SPPs in Fresno, CA and Chicago have announced plans to initiate PsyD programs in school psychology. Clearly, these announcements represent entrepreneurial efforts to maintain financial viability rather than a long-standing commitment to these new areas. If the other SPPs enter school psychology training and graduate large numbers of persons, the current supply-demand picture and the dominance of the specialist level could change over the next decade.

I am very skeptical about the SPPs’ role in school psychology training as well as their attractiveness to prospective school psychologists. An SPP graduate education is enormously expensive in view of realistic expectations for postgraduate salary levels; moreover, the typical SPP graduate acquires enormous debt. Recent conversations with training directors at several of the SPPs suggest that the average graduate school debt of 1999 graduates was in the $80,000–$100,000 range. I doubt that very many students will choose SPPs in view of the current average beginning school psychology salaries of $30,000 to $40,000.

Graduate Program Standards and Accreditation-Approval

APA and NASP provide graduate program standards and program accreditation or approval services (Fagan & Wells, 2000). The NASP standards are preeminent for specialistlevel programs, whereas the APA standards clearly dominate at the doctoral level. The NASP Standards for Training and Field Placement Programs in School Psychology (hereafter NASP Standards) first appeared in 1972, and the most recent revision was published in 2000. Copies are available at http://www.nasponline.org/index2.html. The NASP Standards are applicable to both doctoral and specialist programs; however, the main influence is at the specialist level. The specialist-level standards require a minimum of 60 semester hours, 2 years of full-time study in an organized program, coverage of essential content, a supervised practicum, and a full-year supervised internship in the 3rd year. The domains of graduate training in the NASP Standards, based on the Blueprint (Ysseldyke et al., 1997), are data-based decision making and accountability, consultation and collaboration, effective instruction and development of cognitive-academic skills, socialization and development of life skills, student diversity in development and learning, school and system organization, policy development, and climate, prevention, crisis intervention, and mental health, home-school-community collaboration, research and program evaluation, school psychology practice and development, and information technology.

Standards also are published for practicum experiences during the on-campus part of the program and forthe full-time internship (NASP, 2000). NASP Standards are implemented through a folio review process involving submission of an extensive array of documents (course syllabi, practicum and internship contracts, etc.). There is no on-site component of the program approval process, weakening the evaluation of a program’s implementation of the standards. NASP publishes a list of approved programs biannually in the NASP Communique. According to the NASP Web site cited previously, 125 institutions are approved at the specialist level of graduate education in school psychology. Overall, the NASP Standards and the program approval process have stimulated improved graduate education at the specialist level—leading to more faculty in programs, more coherent training, and improved supervised experiences. The NASP approval process could be strengthened with an on-campus site visit component.

The APA Guidelines and Principles for Accreditation of Programs in Professional Psychology (hereafter APA Standards; APA, 1996; http://www.apa.org/) are the most recent iteration of APA program accreditation services that can be traced to 1945. APA accredits doctoral-level programs only, in three of the four areas of professional psychology— clinical, counseling, and school. The fourth area of professional psychology, industrial-organizational, has never sought program accreditation. Recent APA policies permit the expansion of accreditation to new areas of professional psychology (e.g., developmental psychology), but so far no institutions with programs in the nontraditional areas have been accredited. Unlike the NASP Standards, the APA Standards are generic in the sense that they are designed to apply to all areas of professional psychology—not a single area such as school psychology.

The APA Standards require the institution to specify a training model and then organize experiences that produce the outcomes consistent with that model. Despite the appearance of a system that allows maximum freedom in the design of graduate education, the APA Standards specify essential domains in which “all students can acquire and demonstrate understanding of and competence . . .” The domains listed are biological bases of behavior, cognitive and affective aspects of behavior, social aspects of behavior, history and systems of psychology, psychological measurement, research methodology, techniques of data analysis, individual differences in behavior, human development, dysfunctional behavior or psychopathology, professional standards and ethics, theories and methods of assessment and diagnosis, effective interventions, consultation and supervision, evaluation of the efficacy of interventions, cultural and individual diversity, and attitudes essential to lifelong learning and problem solving as psychologists. Obvious overlap exists in the NASPand APA Standards; however, the NASP Standards are more specific to the training of school psychologists, whereas the APA Standards are more generic and pertain to the graduate education across areas of professional psychology.

APA has accredited graduate programs in school psychology since 1971 (Fagan & Wells, 2000). Currently there are 66 institutions with accredited programs in school psychology or school psychology and another area (combined accreditation in either school and clinical or school and counseling). The institutional location of about 80% of the APA-accredited school psychology programs is a college of education, often a department of educational psychology or a department of counseling and school psychology. The college and department profile of counseling and school psychology is almost identical. In contrast, APA-accredited clinical programs are usually located in departments of psychology in arts and sciences colleges (about 80%; Reschly & Wilson, 1997) or in freestanding SPPs. A significant proportion of the graduate education in professional psychology occurs in colleges of education, usually within a broader context of educational psychology or a context that is significantly influenced by educational psychology.

APA accreditation processes involve a self-study, submission of documents to APA, and a site visit by a three-person team over a 2- to 3-day period. The site visit is rigorous, and most programs seeking initial accreditation receive either conditional accreditation or are rejected. Most apply again and eventually gain full accreditation. It is extremely rare for a program that is fully accredited to lose its accreditation, although a few programs have managed to do so.

Clearly, APA accreditation is the oldest and most prestigious of the mechanisms whereby a school psychology graduate program is endorsed by an authoritative body. APAaccreditation is, however, available only to doctoral programs that account for less than half of all school psychology graduate programs. The recent development of the NASP approval process is a significant milestone in improving specialistlevel graduate education. It is highly likely that dual accreditation-approval mechanisms in school psychology will be needed far into the future unless an unlikely breakthrough occurs in the current APA and NASP disagreement on the appropriate level of graduate education required for independent school psychology practice.

School Psychology Scholarship

Improvements in school psychology scholarship are apparent in a number of developments over the last three decades. Over that period a significant number of books and monographs have been devoted to school psychology thought and practice. The Bibliography: for some of the most prominent contemporary resources are Fagan and Wise (2000); Reschly, Tilly, and Grimes (1999); Reynolds and Gutkin (1999); Shinn et al. (2002); and Thomas and Grimes (2002). NASP publishes monographs relevant to school psychology and cooperates with other publishers in marketing books and other materials that are relevant to school psychology. Some of the books developed by APA publications also are relevant to school psychology (e.g., Phelps, 1998).

The major U.S. refereed journals in school psychology that publish content directly or closely related to school practice are School Psychology Review (SPR), Journal of School Psychology, Psychology in the Schools, Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, and School Psychology Quarterly. Information on these journals appears in Table 17.2. SPR, published by NASP, is the leading journal in the discipline based on its circulation (approximately 22,000) and on the number of citations to articles published in the journal—that is, the number of times a particular article is cited by other scholars. The other school psychology journals have much lower circulation ( 2,500) and lower citation rates. It is important to note, however, that valuable content is published by each of the school psychology journals, and conscientious scholars need to examine the contents of each.

The Federal Department of Education, especially the Office of Special Education Programs, is the major source of funding for school psychology research and personnel preparation. Other important sources of support are the Federal Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Innovation, the National Institute of Health (particularly the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development), and private foundations. Research awards are provided by the Society for the Study of School Psychology (SSSPS), Division 16 of APA, and NASP. SSSPS provides approximately $65,000–$90,000 in small grants to school psychology investigators annually.

School psychology has grown at a rapid pace over the last three decades (see Figure 17.3). The rapid growth was tied directly to the expansion of special education legal mandates. These mandates have the most influence on the existence of school psychologists and the services they provide, and it is highly likely that the legal influences will be crucial to school psychology in the future. There are, however, a number of problems in this relationship and with contemporary practice that likely will prompt significant changes in school psychology practice in the future.

Disability Determination and Special Education Placement

As noted previously, the practice of school psychology today is closely tied to special education eligibility determination and placement. The tie to special education is supported by special education legal requirements, the federal and state requirements for the legally mandated full and individual evaluation, and current conceptual definitions and classification criteria for educationally related disabilities. The disabilities that consume the most time for school psychologists are SLD, MR, and ED. Changes in the conceptual definitions or classification criteria for any of these disabilities—especially for SLD due to the large numbers in that category—could have a significant impact on school psychology. It is likely that such changes will occur.

What happens to school psychology if the intellectual functioning requirement is removed from the SLD classification criteria? What if states and the federal government adopt noncategorical conceptions of high-incidence disabilities (SLD, MR, ED) with disability classification based on low achievement and insufficient response to high-quality interventions, as recommended by a recent National Academy of Sciences Report (Donovan & Cross, 2002)?

Recommendation SE.1: The committee recommends that federal guidelines for special education eligibility be changed in order to encourage better integrated general and special education services. We propose that eligibility ensue when a student exhibits large differences from typical levels of performance in one or more domain(s) and with evidence of insufficient response to high-quality interventions in the relevant domain(s) of functioning in school settings. These domains include achievement (e.g., reading, writing, mathematics), social behavior, and emotional regulation. As is currently the case, eligibility determination would also require a judgment by a multidisciplinary team, including parents, that special education is needed. (Donovan & Cross, 2002, p. ES-6) While an IQ test may provide supplemental information, no IQ test would be required, and the results of an IQ test would not be a primary criterion on which eligibility rests. Because of the irreducible importance of context in the recognition and nurturance of achievement, the committee regards the effort to assess students’ decontextualized potential or ability as inappropriate and scientifically invalid. (Donovan & Cross, 2002, pp. 8–23)

These changes have occurred in some states (e.g., Iowa) and in some school districts across the United States in which functional assessment—emphasizing direct measures of skills in relevant domains such as academic skills, social behaviors, and emotional regulation—are used instead of standardized tests (Reschly et al., 1999). School psychologists have flourished in the few places that have changed disability classification significantly, but large continuing education efforts were required to support those changes (Ikeda, Tilly, Stumme, Volmer, & Allison, 1996; Reschly & Grimes, 1991).

In discussing the issues related to disability determination and the likely future challenges for school psychologists it is crucial first to understand that enormous variations exist across the states in disability definitions, classification criteria, and prevalence. Table 17.3, constructed from the most recent federal child-count data, demonstrates unequivocally that there are few generalizations that can be made about disability identification other than that it varies significantly across states (U.S. Department of Education, 2001). For example, Minnesota identifies about 20 times more students as ED as does Arkansas, Rhode Island identifies three times more in LD as does Kentucky, and so on. The common denominator for virtually all SWD is significant achievement problems—often further complicated by behavior problems. The categories per se do not mean very much (Bocian, Beebe, MacMillan, & Gresham, 1999; Gresham, MacMillan, & Bocian, 1998; MacMillan, Gresham, & Bocian, 1998). Disability classification across states and districts within states is unreliable (Gottlieb, Alter, Gottlieb, & Wishner, 1994; Gottlieb & Weinberg, 1999).

An even more fundamental problem is the validity of classification in terms of the identification of groups of students with unique needs and the relationship of disability group membership to treatment or intervention decisions. There is considerable skepticism about the reliability and validity of three of the disability categories with relatively high prevalence (SLD, MR, and ED; Reschly & Tilly, 1999; Tilly, Reschly, & Grimes, 1999). These disabilities are a large part of the typical school psychology caseload.

Determining an ability-achievement discrepancy is crucial in most states as part of the SLD classification criteria and constitutes a major part of the current role of most school psychologists. The appropriateness of the discrepancy method of determining SLD eligibility is criticized with increasing stridency by persons associated with the reading disability research centers funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Lyon, 1996). The major criticisms are that IQ-achievement-discrepant and nondiscrepant poor readers do not differ in the instructional interventions needed or in responsiveness to that instruction. Moreover, the discrepancy criterion often delays treatment until third or fourth grade, when in fact the vast majority of children that will be identified later as SLD in the area of reading can be accurately identified in kindergarten with relatively straightforward measures of phonological awareness. Delaying treatment allows reading problems to worsen and causes enormous frustration for children, teachers, and parents. Fletcher et al. (1998) summarized this case:

Classifications of children as discrepant versus low-achievement lack discriminative validity. . . . However, because children can be validly identified on the basis of a low-achievement definition, it simply is not necessary to use an IQ test to identify children as learning disabled. . . . For treatment, the use of the discrepancy model forces identification to an older age when interventions are demonstrably less effective. (Fletcher et al., 1998, pp. 200–201)

Changes in the SLD classification criteria involving either the elimination of the discrepancy requirement through a noncategorical scheme or other alternative classification criteria will present enormous challenges to school psychologists. SLD accounts for over half of the disabilities identified in the public schools; it is therefore a significant part of most school psychologists’ roles. Changes in SLD will almost inevitably require acquisition of new skills and the development of competencies more related to early identification of specific skills and the design of effective treatments. Models exist for the successful transition of school psychologists to these new roles (Ikeda et al., 1996; Reschly et al., 1999; Tilly et al., 1999), but the vast majority of school psychologists are not well prepared for alternative roles that place less emphasis on assessment of intellectual functioning. Acquiring those skills and embedding them firmly in continuing education and graduate programs constitutes one of the greatest challenges to the school psychology profession.

Empirically Supported Treatments-Interventions

The empirically supported treatments-interventions movement has multiple roots. In medicine and professional psychology, it is prompted by the policies of managed care health insurance companies that restrict reimbursements to physicians, psychologists, and others to treatments that have been proven effective with specific kinds of problems and patients (Benedict & Phelps, 1998; Phelps et al., 1998). In education, empirically supported interventions are prompted more by the accountability movement that can be traced to the mid-1980s and continues with increasing force today. The educational accountability standards-based reform procedures are increasingly applied to SWD and special education programs. Questions are raised regarding the specific contribution of school psychology and special education to improving academic achievement, increasing the safety of schools, improving dropout and graduation rates, and overcoming at-risk conditions. It no longer is sufficient to simply assume that description of problems and careful conformance to legal guidelines in assessment and placement decisions is sufficient. The further requirement that positive results are demonstrated places significant pressure toward a problemsolving approach and the implementation of empirically supported interventions.

Many traditional practices in school psychology are not empirically validated in terms of a direct relationship to positive outcomes for children and youth. In fairness to traditional methods, most of these practices were never designed to have a direct relationship to interventions. For example, the most widely used measure in school psychology—one of the Wechsler ability scales—has little relationship to the design of interventions or the assessment of intervention effects (Gresham & Witt, 1997; Reschly, 1997). The Wechsler scales are useful for classification of children and youth using traditional classification definitions and criteria such as MR and SLD. The use of these categories likely will change in order to improve the delivery of effective services to children and youth.

There are several well-established problem-solving approaches (e.g., Bergan & Kratochwill, 1990; Fuchs & Fuchs, 1989; Tilly, 2002; Upah & Tilly, 2002). The best of these approaches involve a systematic, data-based series of stages that include behavioral definition of the problem(s), collection of baseline data, establishment of goals, analysis of conditions (including prior knowledge), selection of an experimentally validated intervention and development of a behavior intervention plan, progress monitoring with formative evaluation (Fuchs & Fuchs, 1986), assessment of treatment fidelity, and evaluation of outcomes. These problem-solving approaches require a different set of competencies from those stressed in many school psychology graduate programs and continuing education events. Competencies are needed in direct assessment of skills and social behaviors in natural settings, knowledge of empirically validated academic and behavioral interventions, applied behavior analysis, and consultation methods. Providing those competencies in the future will challenge school psychology faculty and practitioners for many years into the future.

Personnel Needs

School psychology personnel needs are intense. A sufficient supply of appropriately trained school psychologists has been a problem for many years, and it appears that the problem is increasing due to a number of factors (Lund et al., 1998). In 1998–1999, over 1,000 of the 26,000 school psychologists employed in U.S. public schools were not fully certified or licensed by the state in which they were employed. The number of unfilled vacancies as well as the employment of persons on temporary certificates or licenses appears to have increased in recent years. School psychology employment is affected by economic conditions, with expansion of employment in periods of economic growth and stable or slightly declining employment in recession periods (Lund et al., 1998). When this research paper was written, the United States had been in a recession for about 6 months. It is likely that school psychology employment will stabilize over the next few years, decreasing the number of unfilled vacancies and the employment of persons with temporary certificates or licenses.

Current and future shortages of school psychologists may be aggravated by the effects of the retirements of school psychologists who entered the field in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. As noted earlier, the average age of school psychology practitioners grew significantly during the 1990s. Professional employees in public schools generally retire at an age younger than that of other professionals due at least in part to plans that permit early retirement when a criterion is met that combines age and years of experience (e.g., 90 years). For example, a 60-year-old school psychologist who has worked for 30 years is eligible in many states for full retirement benefits.

The shortages of appropriately prepared school psychologists experienced throughout the 1990s are likely to continue well into the next century barring significant changes in one or more of the factors that affect the supply and demand for school psychologists. The supply of new school psychologists from graduate programs has remained stable for about 20 years. The number of programs in institutions of higher education has not changed in that same time period, and it is not likely that a substantial number of new graduate programs will be established in the future. Personnel from other fields of professional psychology in which employment conditions are not as positive—particularly from clinical psychology—may augment sources of school psychology personnel. Programs to retrain clinical as school psychologists have been discussed, and a few are offered by universities with doctoral programs.

School psychology supply and demand phenomena are not understood completely. More information is needed on school psychology career choices, attrition, and retirement, as well as demand characteristics such as the impact of state and federal legal requirements, expansion of services to new populations, and alternative delivery systems (Fagan, 1995). The current situation suggests strong demand for school psychologists through the next decade. Factors that might change this picture are significant changes in economic conditions that produce more stringent school budgets or substantial changes in legal requirements reducing the need for the services of school psychologists.

Demands for Mental Health Services

There is increasing recognition of the strong need for improved comprehensive health services for many children and youth, particularly those at risk (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001). Comprehensive services delivered at a single site such as a public school have been developed in a few settings, and many more places need these services (Adelman & Taylor, 1993, 2000). Discussions of how comprehensive services might be delivered in schools have appeared in the literatures of clinical and school psychology (Adelman & Taylor, 1993, 2000; Carlson, Tharinger, Bricklin, Demers, & Paavola, 1996; Christenson & Conoley, 1992; Cowen & Lorion, 1976; Henggeler, 1995; Nastasi, 2000; Sheridan & Gutkin, 2000).

The principal barriers to expansion of wraparound services in schools are funding and reliable evidence that such services are indeed cost-effective. The funding problems associated with health and mental health services are well known and need no further discussion here. Bickman’s (1997) controversial evaluation of comprehensive mental health services undermined the usual assumption that more of whatever service is provided by a professional association is better. In fact, more services and more comprehensive services do not necessarily lead to better outcomes—leading this discussion back again to the matter of empirically validated treatments. Questions still remain about the nature of these services and their costs and benefits. There are, however, a number of interventions that are effective in preventing later, more costly problems, and these interventions are cost-effective (Shinn et al., 2002). A major challenge to school psychology is developing expertise in these interventions and delivering them in cost-effective ways—perhaps as a replacement for part of the traditional role of special education eligibility evaluations and placements.

School psychology’s roots are long-standing and deep in American psychology. Educational psychology remains a fundamental part of those roots, and the current organization of school psychology programs usually enhances the intersection of school and educational psychology. School psychology has flourished over the last 25 years, in large part due to the legal guarantees of the educational rights of students with disabilities. These legal guarantees created the conditions for the rapid expansion of school psychology employment and the high demand for school psychology graduate programs. Changes are underway that likely will change school psychology from a heavy investment in the use of standardized tests to determine eligibility for special education disability classification and placement to greater reliance on problem solving, direct measures of performance over relevant domains of behavior, and implementation of experimentally validated interventions for problems in academic achievement, social behavior, and emotional regulation.

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Psychology Dissertations and Theses

Theses/dissertations from 2024 2024.

Faculty Mentors' Influence on Latino/a/x STEM Undergraduates' STEM Identity Development , Sandy Cerda-Lezama

Individual and Structural Contributors to Implicit and Explicit Anti-Muslim Bias in the United States , Aeleah M. Granger

The Relationship Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Juvenile Offender Typology , Aliza Beth Lipman

The Wage of Wellness: The Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status, Race, and Work Recovery , Emily Julia Ready

It Takes a Village: An Examination of Social Relationships and Mental Health , Em Francis Trubits

Theses/Dissertations from 2023 2023

Examining Factors Impacting the Service Needs of Unhoused Women , Holly Brott

Main, Mediated, and Moderated Effects of Participating in an After-School Social and Emotional Learning Program on Young Children's Development of Social-Emotional Skills , Amy L. Cordier

Who Puts the "Support" in Supportive Housing? The Impact of Housing Staff on Resident's Well-Being, and the Potential Moderating Role of Self-Determination , Kenna Estell Dickard

Motivation to Collaborate: A Qualitative Exploration of the Perspectives of Service Providers on an Alternative First Response Program , Desiree' J. DuBoise

Tell Me, Do You Feel It Too? A Meta-analysis of Dyadic Emotional Contagion in the Workplace , Stefanie Fox

Left on "Read" and All Alone: Instigated Cyber Incivility, Shame, and Experienced Ostracism at Work , Alison Lucia Hunt

Exploring Associations between Military Identity and Well-being Outcomes among Post-9/11 Veterans after Separation , James David Lee

Experiences of People with Serious Mental Illness Seeking Services at Community Mental Health Centers During the COVID-19 Pandemic , Emily Leickly

Why So Serious? Using the Belongingness Need Tenet from the Self-Determination Theory to Examine Workplace Humor and Its Outcomes , Katharine Lucille McMahon

Emotion Knowledge, Its Applications, and Their Associations With African American Children's Social Relationships With Teachers and Peers in Kindergarten and First Grade , Brielle Emily Petit

Stress-Reduction from Positive Support: Impacts of Receiving Partner Capitalization Support on Veteran Stress/Work Stress , MaryAnn Dona Samson

Diversity in Recruitment: The Role of Realistic Website Job Previews for Racial and Ethnic Minority Applicants , Jennifer Saucedo

Antecedents of FSSB: Evaluating the Demographic Basis of Support , Erika Ann Schemmel

A Daily Investigation of the Recovery Paradox: Examining the Dynamic Interplay of Workload, Recovery Experiences, and Microbreaks , Morgan Rose Taylor

Not on the Menu: Customer Sexual Harassment in the Restaurant Industry , Fernanda Wolburg Martinez

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Model.Disclose(): Examination of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Disclosure at Work , Timothy Allen Carsey

Transforming Learning Communities, Transforming Ourselves: A Qualitative Investigation of Identity Processes in a Participatory Action Research-themed Undergraduate Course , Julia Sara Dancis

Clarifying and Measuring Inclusive Leadership , Kelly Mason Hamilton

Intersections of Masculinity, Culturally Relevant Factors, and Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration Among Asian American Men , Jason Z. Kyler-Yano

Sleeping to Support: An Examination of the Relationship Between Leader Sleep and Positive Support Behaviors , Jordyn Jan Leslie

Work-Related IPV Among Latinos: Exploring the Roles of Fatherhood Status, Gendered Expectations, and Support for Intimate Partner's Employment , Adrian Luis Manriquez

Masculinity Instability and Ideologies as Predictors of IPV Perpetration: The Mediating Role of Relationship Power , Emma Christine Marioles O'Connor

The Benefits of Social Support on Health and Well-Being in Military Populations: Examining Mechanisms, Source of Support, and the Reach of a Workplace Well-Being Intervention , AnnaMarie Sophia O'Neill

Do Motives Matter? The Role of Motivation in Shaping the Impact of Mindfulness Training on Teachers' Psychological Distress and Wellbeing , Cristi N. Pinela

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

The Longitudinal Effects of a Family and Sleep Supportive Intervention on Service Member Anger and Resilience , Shalene Joyce Allen

Drug Conviction and Employment Restriction: Experiences of Employees with Drug-Related Criminal Histories , Liana Bernard

Sustaining Boys' Motivation Over the Transition to Middle School: Can Interpersonal Resources Protect Boys from Engagement Declines Across Sixth Grade? , Brandy Anne Brennan

Returning to Rejection: Outcomes and Boundary Conditions of Mental Illness Stereotypes , Stefanie Fox

Guarding Against Strain: The Moderating Role of Nonwork Experiences in the Relationship Between Work-Related Hypervigilance and Strain in Correctional Officers , Samantha Getzen

Anti-Muslim Bias: Investigating Individual Differences, Threat Perceptions, and Emotions in Islamophobic Policy Support , Aeleah M. Granger

Black Children's Development of Self-Regulation within Stressful Contexts of Parenting: Investigating Potential Buffering Effects of a Kindergarten Social-Emotional Learning Program , Eli Labinger

"Like I Was an Actual Researcher": Participation and Identity Trajectories of Underrepresented Minority and First-Generation STEM Students in Research Training Communities of Practice , Jennifer Lynn Lindwall

Claiming Miscommunication to Justify Rape: The Role of Liking the Perpetrator , Alyssa Marie Glace Maryn

An "I" for an "I" : A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Instigated and Reciprocal Incivility , Lauren Sarah Park

Parenting and Children's Academic Coping as a Dynamic System: Feedforward, Feedback, and Mediators of Changes Across the School Year , Kristen Elizabeth Raine

Does Experiencing Spousal Support and Strain Impact the Quality of Family-Based Support that Supervisors Provide to Employees? , Joseph Alvin Sherwood

"B-ing Flexible" : Examining Creativity in Bisexual Employees , Megan Jane Snoeyink

Exploring the Relationships Between Community Experiences and Well-Being among Youth Experiencing Homelessness , Katricia Stewart

Mothers' Drinking Motives , Sheila Kathleen Umemoto

An Examination of Nurses' Schedule Characteristics, Recovery from Work, and Well-Being , Sarah Elizabeth Van Dyck

Preventing Sexual Violence Through Understanding Perceptions of Sexual Offenders , Judith G. Zatkin

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

Examining Employee Needs at Work and Home: a Self-Determination Theory Perspective , Dana Anuhea Auten

Trajectories, Time Windows, and Alternative Pathways of Engagement: Motivational Resources Underlying Academic Development during Middle School , Heather Anne Brule

Examining Mindfulness Training for Teachers: Theoretical and Methodological Extensions of Intervention Effectiveness , Jaiya Rae Choles

Detecting Reinforcement Patterns in the Stream of Naturalistic Observations of Social Interactions , James Lamar DeLaney 3rd

An Investigation of the Temporal Relationship Between Agitation and Sleep Disturbances , Emily Catherine Denning

Peers' Academic Coping as a Resource for Academic Engagement and Motivational Resilience in the First Year of Middle School , Daniel Lee Grimes

Home Resources Supporting Workplace Resources: an Investigation of Moderated Intervention Effects From the Study for Employment Retention of Veterans (SERVe) , Sarah Nielsen Haverly

"It Puts a Face to All the Knowledge We've Gotten" : a Program of Research on Intimate Partner Violence Surrogate Impact Panels , Kate Louise Sackett Kerrigan

A Daily Examination of Anger and Alcohol Use Among Post-9/11 Veterans , James David Lee

An Examination of Daily Family-Supportive Supervisor Behaviors, Perceived Supervisor Responsiveness and Job Satisfaction , Luke Daniel Mahoney

Nurse Can't Even: the Immediate Impact of Incivility on Affect, Well-being, and Behavior , Katharine Lucille McMahon

Perceptions of Police Use of Force at the Intersection of Race and Pregnancy , Emma Elizabeth Lee Money

The Impact of Paternal Caregivers for Youth Who Commit Sexual Offenses , Miranda Hope Sitney

Human Energy in the Workplace: an Investigation of Daily Energy Management Strategies, Job Stressors and Employee Outcomes , Morgan Rose Taylor

Individual and Community Supports that Impact Community Inclusion and Recovery for Individuals with Serious Mental Illnesses , Rachel Elizabeth Terry

Investigating Sexual Fantasy and Sexual Behavior in Adolescent Offenders , Hayley Lauren Tews

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Integrating Work Ability into the Organizational Science Literature: Advancing Theory and Developing the Nomological Network , Grant Brady

Family Linked Workplace Resources and Contextual Factors as Important Predictors of Job and Individual Well-being for Employees and Families , Jacquelyn Marie Brady

The Role of Teacher Autonomy Support Across the Transition to Middle School: its Components, Reach, and Developmental Effects , Julia Sara Dancis

Does X Mark the Applicant? Assessing Reactions to Gender Non-Binary Job Seekers , Kelly Mason Hamilton

Urbanicity as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Stigma and Well-being Outcomes for Individuals with Serious Mental Illnesses , Emily Leickly

The Relationship Between Undergraduate Research Training Programs and Motivational Resources for Underrepresented Minority Students in STEM: Program Participation, Self-efficacy, a Sense of Belonging, and Academic Performance , Jennifer Lindwall

Perceived Partner Responsiveness, Sleep and Pain: a Dyadic Study of Military-Connected Couples , AnnaMarie Sophia O'Neill

Recruitment Marketing: How Do Wellness and Work-Life Benefits Influence Employer Image Perceptions, Organizational Attraction, and Job Pursuit Intentions? , Amy Christine Pytlovany

The Combined Effects of Parent and Teacher Involvement on the Development of Adolescents' Academic Engagement , Nicolette Paige Rickert

Examining the Development and Classroom Dynamics of Student Disaffection Over Multiple Time Periods: Short-term Episodes and Long-term Trajectories , Emily Anne Saxton

Drinking on a Work Night: a Comparison of Day and Person-Level Associations with Workplace Outcomes , Brittnie Renae Shepherd

Development and Validation of the Workplace Mental Illness Stigma Scale (W-MISS) , Nicholas Anthony Smith

Relational Thriving in Context: Examining the Roles of Gratitude, Affectionate Touch, and Positive Affective Variability in Health and Well-Being , Alicia Rochelle Starkey

Preventing Child Sexual Abuse and Juvenile Offending Through Parental Monitoring , Kelly E. Stewart

"To Call or Not to Call?" The Impact of Supervisor Training on Call Center Employee Attitudes and Well-Being , Whitney Elan Schneider Vogel

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

The Impact of Leader Race and Gender on Perceptions of Organizations in Response to Corporate Error , Nicolas Derek Brown

Impacts of Mindfulness Training on Mechanisms Underlying Stress Reduction in Teachers: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial , Jaiya Rae Choles

Student Motivation Profiles as a Diagnostic Tool to Help Teachers Provide Targeted Support , Cailin Tricia Currie

Insufficient Effort Responding on Mturk Surveys: Evidence-Based Quality Control for Organizational Research , Lee Cyr

Affirmative Consent Endorsement and Peer Norms Supporting Sexual Violence Among Vulnerable Students on College Campuses , Alyssa Marie Glace

Gendered Partner-Ideals, Relationship Satisfaction, and Intimate Partner Violence , Sylvia Marie Ferguson Kidder

Organizational Calling and Safety: the Role of Workload and Supervisor Support , Layla Rhiannon Mansfield

Bystander Intervention to Prevent Campus Sexual Violence: the Role of Sense of Community, Peer Norms, and Administrative Responding , Erin Christine McConnell

Benevolent Sexism and Racial Stereotypes: Targets, Functions, and Consequences , Jean Marie McMahon

Perceived Overqualification and Withdrawal Among Seasonal Workers: Would Work Motivation Make a Difference? , Anthony Duy Nguyen

Differential Well-Being in Response to Incivility and Surface Acting among Nurses as a Function of Race , Lauren Sarah Park

Financial Strain and the Work-Home Interface: a Test of the Work-Home Resources Model from the Study for Employment Retention of Veterans (SERVe) , MacKenna Laine Perry

Neighbor Perceptions of Psychiatric Supportive Housing : the Role of Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviors , Amy Leigh Shearer

The Role of Caregiver Disruption in the Development of Juvenile Sexual Offenders , Miranda Sitney

Intrapersonal and Social-Contextual Factors Related to Psychological Well-being among Youth Experiencing Homelessness , Katricia Stewart

Age-based Differences in the Usefulness of Resources: a Multi-Study Investigation of Work and Well-being Outcomes , Lale Muazzez Yaldiz

Pathways to Kindergarten Growth: Synthesizing Theories of the Kindergarten Transition to Support Children's Development , Rita Yelverton

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

The Force of Manhood: the Consequences of Masculinity Threat on Police Officer Use of Force , Aurelia Terese Alston

Supervisor Mindfulness and Its Association with Leader-Member Exchange , Dana Anuhea Auten

Combat Experiences, Iso-strain, and Sleep Quality Affect Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress among Working Post-9/11 Veterans , Gilbert Patrick Brady Jr.

A Study of Shame-proneness, Drinking Behaviors, and Workplace Role Ambiguity Among a Sample of Student Workers , Sarah Nielsen Haverly

Intraminority Support For and Participation In Race-Based Collective Action Movements: an Intersectional Perspective , Jaboa Shawntaé Lake

Patients and Nurses and Doctors Oh My!: Nurse Retention from a Multi-Foci Aggression Perspective , Kevin Oliver Novak

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PSYCHOLOGY THESIS IDEA HELP

I need help picking my thesis topic. This is a 25 page thesis due in April. I've narrowed down my topics to

ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and its long-term effects into adulthood

The effect of trauma work on mental health counselors

Rising Rates of Teen Depression (pre and post COVID)

What are your opinions on these topics? Which one sounds most interesting? I need to decide on one by tomorrow night :(

I really love the ACE topic but I keep getting feedback saying its too general. If I were to do the ACEs topic, how could I narrow it down and have more of an interesting angle.

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