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. Dr. Mooney recently had an article on
relationship networks published in the Encyclopedia of Adolescence.
Dr. Mooney is currently working with Julia Capestrain 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 presented some of their initial findings at the Association for Psychological Science's 24th Annual Convention in Chicago in May 2012.
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. In conjunction with Kristoffer Barrington and Andrew Hathaway, Dr. Pressley is currently conducting a research project
that examines differences in the type of attention effects based on the duration of an emotional stimulus. Preliminary data were presented at the
UIS StARS conference in April 2012.
In addition, Andrew Hathaway was awarded the CLAS Student-Faculty Creative Activities award for the research he plans to conduct next year entitled: The Modulation of Spatial Attention with Emotional Stimuli in Males Versus Females.
Finally, Dr. Pressley recently published a journal article entitled
Nonconscious Attention Bias to Threat is Correlated with Anterior Cingulate
Cortex Gray Matter Volume: A Vodel-Based Morphometry Result and Replication in the Neuroimage.
Dr. Shuang-Yueh Pui is currently working on two 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. Dr. Pui and Martha Rubio analyzed the data and presented the
results of the study
at the UIS StARS
Symposium in April
2012.
The second
research project examines the unhealthy behavior outcomes of the interaction between school and work domains among college students. This study will employ a cross-sectional design to examine the impact of work-school conflict on unhealthy eating and exercise behaviors. Jodi Fishburn has
been actively involved in analyzing the data and results were presented at the UIS StARS
Symposium in April 2012.
One of Dr. Pui’s
manuscripts was recently accepted for publication and is in press with the Journal of Business and Psychology. The title of this
article is: A comparison of a subjective and statistical method for establishing score comparability in an organizational culture survey. Dr. Pui will also be presenting two symposia at the annual Society for
Industrial-Organizational Psychology
conference in April 2012 in San Diego, CA.
Dr. Pui is co-chair and presenter in the first symposium, entitled: Being Rude Can Be
Expensive: Exploring the Incivility –
Performance Relationship. Dr. Pui is a presenter in the second symposium entitled:
Does Cyber Incivility Add Distress Beyond Face-to-Face Incivility? Finally, Dr. Pui will be presenting with Dr. Jorge Villegas (faculty in
UIS's Department of Business Administration) at the annual American Psychological
Association conference in August 2012 in
Orlando, FL on a study entitled: Do numbers make people risk-averse?
Dr. Sheryl Reminger recently completed a collaborative study
with colleagues from the Southern Illinois University School of
Medicine. The study examined fatigue, inflammation, and cognitive function in individuals with breast and endometrial
cancer. Data collection for the study was completed in the spring semester, and Dr. Reminger will
be conducting data analyses in the summer to determine if
patients’ self-reported function and inflammation-related serum
markers are predictive of
cognitive performance.
In addition, Cassandra David has been working with Dr. Sheryl Reminger and Dr. David Towers to design a research study that will use
eyetracking equipment to study how people respond to emotional
stimuli. The
eyetracking equipment can be used to study both the position of a person’s
gaze when the person looks at emotional visual images, and it
can also measure pupil dilation when a person listens to
emotional sounds. The
information provided by the eyetracker can be used to better
understand how people process emotional information and how
these processes impact behavior. During the spring 2012 semester,
Cassandra investigated how eyetracking has been used in
studies of individuals who experience social anxiety, and she was invaluable in her help
setting up the eyetracking and experimental equipment. She will
continue to assist with the project during the summer.
Dr. Frances Shen is currently working on four different research projects. The
first examines the impact of parental pressure and support, educational channeling, and internalized stereotyping on the career development of Asian American college
students. This research project is funded by the UIS CLAS
Faculty Enhancement Scholarship Grant. Lucy Parker,
Stacey Windisch, Andrew Hathaway, and Robert Torrence
have been assisting Dr. Shen with data collection since Fall
2011. Findings were presented at the UIS StARS Symposium in April 2012 and will also be presented at the
annual APA Convention in Orlando, FL in August 2012.
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 their preliminary
findings at the UIS StARS Symposium in April 2012 and will
also be presenting at the annual Asian American
Psychological Association Convention in Orlando, FL in
August 2012.
The last two projects are qualitative studies that examine the impact of
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 (faculty in Department
of Criminal Justice) are currently analyzing the data for this study. For the second
study, Dr. Shen and Rebecca Goldsborough are currently analyzing the data.
Dr. Carrie Switzer has been working with Kayla Weitekamp 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. Kayla
has been administering the study questionnaires and entering the
data that has been collected into a statistical database.
Rachel Tohme and Kaitlin Easton have been working on an additional phase of the study that is focused on collecting
information from students from underrepresented groups.
They presented their findings about racial/ethnic
differences among college students in terms of their
academic self-efficacy and motivation to attend college at
the UIS StARS Symposium in April 2012 and they won the
best Social Science Poster Award.
Dr. Marcel Yoder is currently analyzing data to investigate the effect of interaction on person perception. The purpose of his study is to determine what similarities and differences there are between our impressions depending on whether we interact with another, see a short video of that person, versus merely a photo. Kayla Weitekamp is currently assisting Dr. Yoder on this
project. Initial results demonstrate that when judging others' facial attractiveness, these judges are
related but different. Attractive persons are seen as attractive regardless of how other interact
with them, but at the same time, persons are seen as more attractive when viewed face to face than when view on video or photo.
In addition, Dr. Yoder presented on Exploring the Uses and Effects of Online Homework at the annual Sloan Consortium International Conference on Online Learning in Orlando, FL in November 2011. He also presented on Getting to Know You Without Getting to Know You: Medium of Presentation Affects Person-Perception Accuracy at the annual meeting of the Society Personality and Social Psychology in San Diego, CA in January 2012.
