FACULTY
Faculty Focus
Dr. Karen Mooney studies the relationship networks of adolescents and college students. Relationship networks are defined as all of the close relationships in which an individual participates. For most adolescents and college students, this includes relationships with mothers, fathers, friends, and romantic partners. She is currently working with Julia Capestrain, Nicole Landreth, and Wesley Hill on a project that examines how college students’ relationships are associated with individual adjustment (self-concept, academic performance, and various characteristics and behaviors). They have contiunued with data collection this semester and plan to present some of their initial findings at conferences in Spring 2012. Julia Capestrain is also using this
dataset to test her own hypothesis about differences in the quality of
romantic relationships for traditional and nontraditional students. She will
be presenting her findings in the spring. Dr. Mooney also has an article on relationship networks that was recently published in the Encyclopedia of Adolescence.
Dr. Karen Pressley’s research interests focus on how emotional stimuli, such as fearful faces can affect attention, and what is going on in the brain when attention is modulated. Certain types of stimuli can grab our
attention automatically, in particular faces expressing emotion. Dr.
Pressley is currently conducting a study
that examines the different viewing conditions (long versus short viewing
times) of emotional faces that will allow for this automatic and fast
grabbing of attention. Kristoffer Barrington and Millicent Schusselle have performed related literature searches and lab presentations as well as are collecting
the data.
Dr. Shuang-Yueh Pui is currently working working on three research projects.
The first research project examines the
effect of choice set size (large or small) on whether people choose to defer
their choice among indecisives and decisives. Martha Rubio is active in the data collection and data entry
stages of this study. They hope to be able to analyze the data and submit the results of the study to a conference
in the spring semester. The second research project examines the predictors and outcomes of the interaction between school and work domains among college students.
This study will employ a longitudinal,
two-wave design to examine the
personality and situational
characteristics that affect students'
work-school conflict, school, and wellbeing
outcomes. Kristen Langelier has been extensively
involved in conducting the literature
review, designing the study,
uploading the web survey, and
collecting the data for this study. They
hope to complete the data collection in
the spring semester. The third research project
investigates the relationship between work-school conflict and healthy eating
and exercise behaviors among working
college students. Jodi Fishburn has
been actively involved in conducting
the literature review, designing the study, and submitting the IRB
application for this study. They are currently preparing materials to apply to a national research grant for this study.
Dr. Sheryl Reminger was awarded a sabbatical in the fall of
2011. The sabbatical has allowed her to take time off from teaching for the
semester so that she can devote more
time to research. During her
sabbatical, Dr. Reminger completed a
paper that reported the results of a
study of cognitive function in individuals diagnosed with head and
neck cancer. She has also begun collaborating with individuals at the
Southern Illinois University School of
Medicine on a study of fatigue,
inflammation, and cognitive function
in women with breast and endometrial
cancer. Dr. Reminger will be spending
the last part of the semester at the
University of Pittsburgh Medical
Center, where she will be collaborating
on research that investigates the effects
of sleep deprivation on brain function.
Dr. Sheryl Reminger presented a
poster in July at the Mid-Year Meeting
of the International
Neuropsychological Society in
Auckland, New Zealand. The poster
was titled The Relationship Between Mood
Symptoms and Neuropsychological Function
in Breast Cancer Survivors. Molly
Meinhardt was a co-author on the poster.
Dr. Frances Shen's research
interests are in multicultural
psychology. The first research project is
a study that examines the relationship
between parental pressure and
support, educational channeling, and
internalized stereotyping on the impact
of career self-efficacy, outcome
expectations and interests among
Asian American college students. This
research project is funded by the UIS CLAS Faculty Enhancement
Scholarship Grant. Patrick Abler,
Lucy Parker, and Stacey Windisch
began working on this research project since Fall 2010, and presented the
preliminary findings from this study with Dr. Shen at the 2011 APA
Convention in Washington DC. They continue to work on completing
further data collection this year, with additional help from Andrew Hathaway, Robert Torrence, Elise Vass, and Shah Hasan.
Additional findings have been
submitted for presentation at the 2012
APA Convention in Orlando, FL, and
will also be presented at the 2012 UIS
Research Symposium in the Spring. The second research project
examines the impact of discrimination, social support, adherence to traditional
Asian values, and perceived parental
attitudes towards homosexuality on the
development of internalized
homonegativity and poor
psychological well-being among Asian
American lesbian, gay, and bisexual
persons. Rebecca Goldsborough
has been collaborating with Dr. Shen
on this project. They were awarded the
UIS CLAS Student-Faculty Creative
Activities funding and the UIS
Summer Competitive Grant for this
project. Rebecca and Dr. Shen
presented part of their preliminary
findings at the 2011 APA Convention
in Washington DC. They have since
made some modifications to this study
and continued with data collection this
year. This semester, Linden
Kovarik, Tammie Lomprez,
Ashley Pearson, and Michael Myers assisted with the data collection. The last two projects are qualitative studies that examine the impact of internalized stereotyping on
Asian American college students. The
first study focuses on the impact of
stereotyping and discrimination
experiences among Asian American
students, and its impact on their
identity development. The second
study focuses on the impact of
academic and career-oriented
stereotyping messages on the career
development among Asian American
college students. Numerous UIS
students have been involved in the
transcriptions of these qualitative
interviews. For the first study, Dr.
Shen, Dr. Shuang-Yueh Pui and
Dr. Juanita Ortiz are currently
analyzing the data for this study. The
preliminary findings were presented at
the 2011 APA Convention in
Washington DC. For the second study,
Dr. Shen and Rebecca
Goldsborough are currently
analyzing the data, and have submitted
the preliminary findings for
presentation at the 2012 APA Convention in Orlando, FL.
Dr. Carrie Switzer has been working with Katie Easton and
Nathan Harmening on the
Educational Aspirations study this
semester. This study examines the
differences between traditional and
nontraditional aged college students in
their motivation to go to college, the perceived barriers to attending college and their academic self-efficacy in
college. Katie and Nathan have been
administering the study questionnaires and entering the data that has been collected into a statistical database.
Rachel Tohme, Lucy Parker, and
Michael Stephens have been
working on an additional phase of the
study that is focused on collecting
information from students from
underrepresented groups.
Dr. Marcel Yoder is currently working with Laura Lovgren in the
data entry/analysis phase of a study
on person perception, which focuses
on how the mode of interaction (face
to face versus video versus photo)
affects our judgments of others. Dr. Yoder also presented a paper
with Dr. Karen Swan and Dr. Laurel Newman on the effect of online
homework at the 18th Annual Sloan Consortium International Conference
on Online Learning. The talk was
titled, Exploring the Uses and Effects of
Online Homework. In January, Dr. Yoder will present a poster with Dr. Laura
Ault of St. Leo University at the 13th annual meeting of the Society for
Personality and Social Psychology in San Diego in January of 2012 titled,
Getting to Know You without Getting to Know
You: Medium of Presentation Affects Person-Perception Accuracy.
