1 High-Risk Sexual Behavior in Cocaine-Using Older Adults Madeline Finkel, Sumati Gupta 1 Risky Business: A Story of Supervision Jessica Gruenstein, Erica Johnson, and Danielle Lovich, Tovah P. Klein 2 Effect of Temporal Interposition on Auditory Perceptual Organization Emilia C. Naranjo, Mariah C. Marrero, Alya A Al. Sager, and Andrea A. Willimetz, Robert E. Remez 2 Children’s Spontaneous Focus on Space Krishana Raghubeer and Hea Jung Lee, Koleen McCrink 3 "I am transgender and I am beautiful": Exploring Empowerment and Community Development among Transgender Vloggers on YouTube Samantha Perlstein, Chana Etengoff 4 Operational Momentum in Preschool Children and Adults Nicole Bernstein, Hannah Dunn, and Hea Jung Lee, Koleen McCrink 4 Parent Perception of Why Children Play and the Benefits of Play Elif Coker, Christine Kim, and Cheryl Smerling, Tovah P. Klein 5 Effects of Facebook Vs. Tetris on Food Cravings Sara Fruchter, Sumati Gupta 5 Making Implicit Learning (Partially) Explicit Ariella Salimpour, Patricia D. Stokes 6 Are Children Curious? The Growth of Curiosity-Seeking Behaviors in Children Maria Awwa and Avital Jacobson, Koleen McCrink 6 Come Play with Me!: Parents’ Accounts of Involvement in Their Children’s Play Alyssa Blackman, Rachel Mulholland, and Nina Plotnikov, Tovah P. Klein 7 Effect of Intrinsic Temporal Distortion on Perceptual Organization Lauren Beltrone, Mariah C. Marrero, Alya A Al. Sager, and Andrea A. Willimetz, Robert E. Remez 7 Investigating the Role of Personality Traits in the Relationship Between Exercise Frequency and Alcohol Consumption Kate Magnuson, Sumati Gupta 7 Prior Task Difficulty Level Effects Resolve, Confidence and Difficulty Choice of Current Task Hijo Byeun and Jinhee Bae, Lisa Son

8 The Ideal Child: Motives Behind Parental Regulation of Play Carina Gupta, Erin McDonald, and Kate Magnuson, Tovah P. Klein 8 What Do Parents Recall from Their Childhood Experiences of Play and How Does it Influence their Children’s Play? Dilia Barboza, Kate Howard, and Alya Al Sager, Tovah P. Klein 9 The Relationship Between Childhood Trauma and Cognition in Psychiatrically Healthy Adults Taylor Zar, Sumati Gupta 9 The Relationship Between Veganism and Eating Disorders Remy Park, Sumati Gupta

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Title: High-Risk Sexual Behavior in Cocaine-Using Older Adults Author: Madeline Finkel Faculty Mentor: Sumati Gupta Abstract: Substance use has been implicated in potentiating participation in risky sexual behavior (RSB) among adolescents and young adults. The personality trait of impulsivity has been examined as a correlate using self-reported measures with said relatively young population. The current study explored whether existing measures of impulsivity traits could be applied to an older adult (Mage = 49.19, SD = 7.46), cocaine-using population to replicate and extend previous findings with adolescents. We hypothesized that there would be little if any association between impulsivity and RSB with cocaine use among older adults, unlike previous findings with younger adults, given the disparity between the populations used to validate said measures (undergraduate or young adult populations) and the current sample (older adults). This hypothesis was supported insofar as no statistically significant correlation was found between these measures of impulsivity and RSB for which cocaine use took place prior. The next phase of the current experiment replicates the study with Columbia University undergraduate students to further consider the relationship of demographic to impulsivity measures regarding RSB and cocaine use. Title: Risky Business: A Story of Supervision Authors: Jessica Gruenstein, Erica Johnson, and Danielle Lovich Faculty Mentor: Tovah P. Klein Abstract: 36 parents of toddlers participated in an open-ended play questionnaire online. Parents discussed a number of themes, including the benefits of play and the parent’s childhood play experience. As supervision emerged as a key theme in our discussion, we coded the theme of physical risk-taking with regard to supervision across three categories: Active Supervision, Active Distance, and a Combination of Active Supervision and Active Distance. Parents spoke of their decisions to supervise their children in different degrees across different contexts. In particular, parents spoke of their anxiety concerning their child’s risk-taking, and how it influences these decisions. Parents also used the environment (i.e. the city) as a factor in how they supervised their child’s “risky” behavior.

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Title: Effect of Temporal Interposition on Auditory Perceptual Organization Authors: Emilia C. Naranjo, Mariah C. Marrero, Alya A Al. Sager, and Andrea A. Willimetz Faculty Mentor: Robert E. Remez Abstract: When a talker speaks, linguistic components are expressed in a serial order. The listener receives these constituents, which in a typical sentence is a series of 180-200 ms syllables that, together, last 2 or more seconds. Nonetheless, the trace of each auditory sample fades rapidly, perhaps as quickly as 100 ms. In order to find and follow the auditory contour of an utterance, a perceiver must track the evolving pattern ofspectrotemporal variation. To probe this integrative function, we calibrated the perceptual tolerance of normal hearing English speakers for utterances exhibiting temporal perturbation. Listeners heard sine-wave samples with intrinsic temporal interpositions of 25 ms, 50 ms, 75 ms; and, natural speech samples with intrinsic temporal interpositions of 25 ms, 50 ms, 75 ms, 100 ms, 125 ms, 150 ms, 175 ms, and 200 ms. Intelligibility of sine-wave speech (72.5%) declined to 1.6% at an intrinsic distortion of 75 ms, reflecting the fragility of intelligibility when natural qualities are stripped from speech. Intelligibility of natural speech (99.9%) declined to 58.5%, at an intrinsic distortion of 175 ms. This finding indicates that the natural qualities of speech, like vocal timbre, allow listeners to compensate for the loss of temporal continuity even as the effects of distortion increase. Title: Children’s Spontaneous Focus on Space Authors: Krishana Raghubeer and Hea Jung Lee Faculty Mentor: Koleen McCrink Abstract: Previous work on children’s Spontaneous Focus on Number (SFON) has shown the value of measuring children’s spontaneous attention within naturalistic interactions. SFON is marked by children’s attentiveness to the number of items in front of them, and their ability and willingness to count out exactly “how many” items there are. This measure predicts later math skills above and beyond general cognitive factors, such as working memory and inhibitory control. The utility of SFON suggests that a parallel construct for space is a worthy pursuit; spatial cognition underlies many of our mathematical skills, especially as we are first learning these skills. In this study, we develop a measure of children’s Spontaneous Focus on Space (SFOS), and study its relation to parental interaction and children’s ability to reason about the important spatial-numerical concept of proportions, and children’s general linguistic ability. 30 3-6-year-olds (Mage= 4.8 years) were tested at a local children’s museum in New York City. They completed a Lego construction task with their parent, to elicit and measure parent spatial talk. The children then participated in tasks designed to measure their spontaneous focus on space. Finally, the children participated in a task that measured their ability to reason about spatial proportions, such as a jar that is three-quarters full. Results indicate that as children grow older, their spontaneous focus on space becomes more complete, their error rates when measuring spatial proportions decrease, and their parents use less – not more – spatial language with them. These findings suggest that parents use more spatial language with younger children who require guidance, whereas with older children, parents speak less and allow their child to work more independently. They also suggest that spatial awareness is rapidly increasing in the preschool years, alongside their spatial-numerical proportional reasoning.

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Title: "I am transgender and I am beautiful": Exploring Empowerment and Community Development among Transgender Vloggers on YouTube Author: Samantha Perlstein Faculty Mentor: Chana Etengoff Abstract: Research in the area of transgender video blogging (transvlogging) on YouTube has recently begun to highlight the power of transvlogging, in not only establishing personal trans identities and narratives, but also in developing online transgender communities (Raun, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2015; Horak, 2014; & O'Neill, 2014). Utilizing empowerment theory (Rappaport et al., 1984) and sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978) the present paper seeks to expand upon the literature of transvlogging and investigate the transvlog as it relates to psychology empowerment and the development of online community support networks. Through a qualitative analysis the content of two transvloggers vlogs (1 MtF, 1 FtM, M Ages= 23; N videos= 26, M videos= 13) were coded following Rappaport’s (1984) definition of empowerment, which stresses actual and perceived control, and interactions between vloggers and viewers. The present paper found that the vloggers spoke of successes and conflicts to achieving control over their transitions (successes ranged from managing desired body changes through hormones to accessing resources from other vloggers via YouTube, while challenges consisted of financial constraints, body image concerns, and problems accessing healthcare resources). Furthermore, this paper argues that transvlogging is an interpersonal activity that builds online community through indirect and direct connections. The vloggers studied provided both support and resources to their viewers and in return received both actual and perceived support. Due to the unique interactions created by transvlogging future research should examine the efficacy and acceptability of collaborations between social justice campaigns and transvloggers that target and aid trans youth.

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Title: Operational Momentum in Preschool Children and Adults Authors: Nicole Bernstein, Hannah Dunn, and Hea Jung Lee Faculty Mentor: Koleen McCrink Abstract: Due to predispositions in neurological architecture and culture-specific experiences, individuals conceptualize numerical magnitudes based on a spatially organized horizontal continuum, known as the mental number line (MNL). Individuals who read and write from left-to-right show a preference to associate small numbers with the left side of space, and large numbers with the right side of space. As a consequence, when adding, subtracting or ordering quantities, adults compute an estimated outcome that is larger or smaller, respectively, than the actual outcome, a bias referred to as operational momentum (OM). They also tend to choose presented answers that lie on the right side of space for adding, and the left when subtracting. However, limited evidence related to OM during toddlerhood and early childhood casts doubt as to whether there is developmental continuity within the underlying mechanisms governing representations of numerical transformations. The current study tests whether English speaking 3- and 4- year-olds, and college-aged adults, exhibit OM biases when performing the arithmetic operation of ordering. The participants generated an outcome after seeing a sequence of three numerical quantities, which either doubled in size (in the Order block) or simply repeated (No-Order block). Participants were asked “what comes next?” Both children and adults demonstrate OM when performing these non-symbolic ordering operations. For both groups, OM was associated with a spatial bias. Children were more likely to select answer choices appearing on the right side of the screen after viewing an ascending operation, compared to when they previously viewed a non-ordered sequence. Adults were more likely to select outcomes on the right side of the screen when they viewed a series of ordered operations prior to non-ordered sequences (i.e. Order block of trials came prior to No Order block). Adults also exhibited an overestimation bias, preferentially selecting an overestimated outcome over an underestimated outcome after viewing an ordered sequence as opposed to a non-ordered sequence. The results further highlight the spatial underpinnings of OM, and the preferred bias to operate along a mental number line during non-symbolic ordering operations. The results also shed new light on the developmental trajectory of OM. For preschoolers, the results imply that an OM-related spatial bias develops prior to an OM-related overestimation bias. For adults, the results indicate that OM is context-dependent, and that within an ordering task, the frame of mind established during initial computations influences performance on subsequent operations. Title: Parent Perception of Why Children Play and the Benefits of Play Authors: Elif Coker, Christine Kim, and Cheryl Smerling Faculty Mentor: Tovah P. Klein Abstract: The present study explores parents’ perceptions of why children play and what benefits they believe children can get from playing. Data was collected from a questionnaire administered to 36 parents who had their children enrolled in the Barnard College Toddler Center. The transcripts were coded for reasons children play and developmental benefits of play. The overall findings show that parents expressed that they believe play enables children to develop socially, cognitively and emotionally. Children engage in social interactions in which children can develop a sense of others, learn to resolve conflicts, and realize their roles in a larger community. Through creative thinking and problem solving, children develop cognitive tools to navigate the world around them. Children develop emotionally by solidifying a sense of self and independence as they experience enjoyment and process emotions during play.

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Title: Effects of Facebook Vs. Tetris on Food Cravings Author: Sara Fruchter Faculty Mentor: Sumati Gupta Abstract: Background: Previous literature has found that Tetris, a visuospatial task, can significantly reduce food cravings. Craving a food and playing Tetris both utilize the visuospatial sketchpad of your working memory system which has a limited capacity. Thus, when you play Tetris, you have less cognitive resources available to actively crave the desired food item. Facebook usage, which has been found to correlate highly with disordered eating symptoms and body image concerns, has never been studied in relation to food cravings. Methods: The current study aimed to compare how tasks that can be performed on a cellphone, playing Tetris and going on Facebook, would affect craving experiences amongst college undergraduates. The experimenter began with a chocolate craving induction protocol for 1 minute and then participants engaged in a 7 minute experimental condition (either the control group, Tetris group or Facebook group). Results: Analyzing all the participants scores together, Tetris reduced cravings the most, followed by Facebook and then followed by the control. However, Tetris was not found to be significantly different from Facebook in its ability to reduce cravings. Moreover, when analyzing the scores of participants who scored high for disordered eating/ binge eating symptoms, different results were found. The control condition increased food cravings amongst these participants, while Tetris and Facebook had a slightly greater ability to reduce cravings in this group. Conclusions: No significant differences were found between the Tetris and Facebook conditions which countered the researcher’s hypothesis. Future research can further explore the relationship between Facebook and food cravings to analyze how it affects cravings. Perhaps, the way in which people are utilizing Facebook (pictures, videos, messaging etc.) affected the results since this aspect was not controlled for. While the Eating Pathology participants were found to have an increase in cravings in the control condition and greater reductions in the Tetris and Facebook conditions, the sample size was small. A future study can explore how tasks such as Tetris and Facebook affect people who experience disordered eating symptoms compared to people who do not experience these symptoms. Title: Making Implicit Learning (Partially) Explicit Author: Ariella Salimpour Faculty Mentor: Patricia D. Stokes Abstract: The purpose of this research was to see if an implicit task can be structured so that subjects can explicitly state what was learned. Sequential tasks have been shown to involve implicit knowledge – that is, participants learn how to do something, but cannot explicitly express what they have done. To see if sequential learning could be made explicit, a set of tasks were designed that could be mastered via: 1) a sequence of exits from a computer generated maze 2) a rule for structuring the sequence and 3) a consistent pattern of paths to the exits. We found that the answer was yes, for subjects who mastered the first triplet early in the game.

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Title: Are Children Curious? The Growth of Curiosity-Seeking Behaviors in Children Authors: Maria Awwa and Avital Jacobson Faculty Mentor: Koleen McCrink Abstract: Developmental studies have examined the effects of exploratory behaviors, which can influence how children learn about the world. The present study aims to examine children’s spatial attention as it relates to discovery and exploration through the use of pattern, as patterning is a measure of children’s ability to encode spatial information (Collins and Laski 2015; Rittle-Johnson, Fyfe, Loehr, and Miller 2015). We predicted that older children will perform better on patterning tasks, as it has been shown that as children’s experience with patterns increases, their ability to encode and analyze them increases as well (Rittle-Johnson and Fyfe 2013). The study also seeks to examine how spatial attention develops across the critical period of 4-5 years old. We hypothesized that older children will be less exploratory when compared to younger children, due to their stronger drive to create and experience uncertainty. In the experiment, 30 4- and 5-year-old children were given a patterning activity in a children’s museum setting. The program began with two touchscreen shape training trials to get used to the task and computer, then six patterning trials, and finally nine exploration trials of which children could select the difficulty level of the pattern they were to receive. In all trials, participants were asked to select the correct shape that would complete the pattern presented in front of them. The results suggest that neither age nor gender plays a factor in the exploratory behaviors of children within the limited age range tested, though there was a trend for older children to be more exploratory than younger children. Older children were also more competent at choosing the correct answer to the pattern than younger children, reflecting a higher level of spatial and mathematical awareness. Future research should aim to examine the same phenomenon of exploratory behaviors in a school setting to understand if it differs from the results found in a museum context, given that museums tend to be a place where exploratory behavior is highly encouraged. Ways in which to encourage discovery behavior should also be explored. Title: Come Play with Me!: Parents’ Accounts of Involvement in Their Children’s Play Authors: Alyssa Blackman, Rachel Mulholland, and Nina Plotnikov Faculty Mentor: Tovah P. Klein Abstract: This study examined how parents describe their participation when playing with their child. Transcripts of semi-structured interviews consisting of 34 questions regarding parents’ perceptions of their child’s play were collected and coded. Transcripts in which parents explicitly or implicitly stated that they played with their child were categorized into two themes: 1. Child-directed play, which had subcategories of pretend play, imitating adult actions and hands-on play and 2. Parent-directed/guided play, which had subcategories of parental desire/want, location and structure/rules. The results showed that the majority of parents described their involvement in child-directed play rather than parent-directed/guided play, indicating that parents view their child’s play as free from rules imposed by adults.

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Title: Effect of Intrinsic Temporal Distortion on Perceptual Organization Authors: Lauren Beltrone, Mariah C. Marrero, Alya A Al. Sager, and Andrea A. Willimetz Faculty Mentor: Robert E. Remez Abstract: Why do you look at the talker when you listen? According to recent research, multimodal speech perception may be more tolerant of temporal distortion than unimodal perception. This experiment aimed to test this conjecture by attempting to disrupt perceptual organization in order to deduce the integration of auditory and visual sensory samples. Subjects with normal vision and hearing listened to sine-wave speech samples while watching video recordings of a talking face. In the first condition, the auditory sensory samples underwent intrinsic temporal distortions of 30 ms, 60 ms, or 90 ms. In the second condition, the visual sensory samples underwent intrinsic temporal distortions of 30 ms, 60 ms, or 90 ms. In the third condition, the auditory and visual sensory samples remained unperturbed temporally. Intelligibility of unperturbed speech was 45.2%. Any type of auditory distortion rendered its contribution to multimodal integration useless or nearly so. However, distortion of the visual component was tolerable at 30 ms. At 60 ms and 90 ms of distortion, the visual component still contributed to integration. This show the differential contribution of each sensory modality to audiovisual integration. Title: Investigating the Role of Personality Traits in the Relationship Between Exercise Frequency and Alcohol Consumption Author: Kate Magnuson Faculty Mentor: Sumati Gupta Abstract: Recent studies have found a positive relationship between exercise frequency and alcohol consumption. Only one study has analyzed potential mediators of this positive relationship. The present study seeks to replicate the relationship between exercise frequency and alcohol use as well as test the ability of narcissism, obsessiveness, and impulsivity to mediate this relationship. A population of 129 undergraduate students participated in this study. Results indicated a strong, positive relationship between exercise frequency and alcohol consumption. None of the personality traits mediated the relationship. However, through multivariate regression with an interaction effect, we found that higher levels of impulsivity strengthened the effect that exercise frequency has on alcohol consumption. From this finding, we concluded that impulsivity moderated the positive relationship between exercise frequency and alcohol consumption. These findings are congruent with past research and reaffirm the findings of these relationships in an undergraduate population. Furthermore, these aforementioned findings have clinical implications for the treatment of alcohol dependence and abuse. Title: Prior Task Difficulty Level Effects Resolve, Confidence and Difficulty Choice of Current Task Authors: Hijo Byeun and Jinhee Bae Faculty Mentor: Lisa Son Abstract: Is that your final answer? Participants were presented with trivia and then given one target question, which varied in difficulty level. For every question, they rated their confidence level. Each experiment was conducted twice to measure (A) confidence rating at target task and (B) choice of difficulty level for the target task. Results showed that the level of prior experience impacted both confidence and choice of difficulty in target task, especially when prior and target tasks were closely related.

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Title: The Ideal Child: Motives Behind Parental Regulation of Play Authors: Carina Gupta, Erin McDonald, and Kate Magnuson Faculty Mentor: Tovah P. Klein Abstract: Past studies have suggested that unstructured play helps develop a child’s social and emotional skills, while caregiver overregulation can impede growth of creativity and leadership. The current study seeks to understand what caregivers tell us about why they regulate their child’s play, using in a sample of 40 parents. Parents completed an online survey, and these transcripts were evaluated to develop codes that detail parent motives for regulating play. Based on the information provided, codes were defined as parental ideals, safety, conflict and aggression, and parents’ benefit. Analysis of these codes indicated that parental ideals were a major motivation behind regulation of play. Findings support that parental ideals can mold the way their children play. Further research should focus on the impact of parental ideals on unstructured play. Title: What Do Parents Recall from Their Childhood Experiences of Play and How Does it Influence their Children’s Play? Authors: Dilia Barboza, Kate Howard, and Alya Al Sager Faculty Mentor: Tovah P. Klein Abstract: Play is a multidimensional construct that varies in meaning across time, culture, and contexts (Cohen, 2006). During toddlerhood, parents play a central role in constructing children’s perception of themselves, their engagement with others, their understanding of their role in society, and their overall view of the world around them. Children’s contrasting developmental trajectories are heavily influenced by play. Thus, due to the critical role each parent possesses in early childhood, their varying conceptualizations of play will determine the platform for what each child internalizes and manifests as “play.” This study illustrates the ways in which parents’ varying experiences of their own play ultimately governs their decisions to either emulate or alter such experiences in their children’s play.

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Title: The Relationship Between Childhood Trauma and Cognition in Psychiatrically Healthy Adults Author: Taylor Zar Faculty Mentor: Sumati Gupta Abstract: Considerable work suggests that exposure to trauma during childhood is a highly significant risk factor for a range of psychiatric issues (DeBellis and Zisk, 2014). Thus, individuals exposed to such trauma who do not develop overt psychiatric symptoms are typically viewed as “resilient”. Resilience refers to the ability to sustain a stable trajectory of healthy functioning despite a disruptive event such as trauma exposure (Bonanno, Papa, and O’Neill, 2001). However, although childhood trauma may not necessarily result in the development of a psychiatric disorder in some, whether or not such trauma is associated with other, perhaps less overt, long-term effects such as cognitive deficits is largely unknown. In patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), findings suggest that exposure to trauma, rather than the symptoms of PTSD themselves, may negatively impact cognition (McGloin and Widom, 2001). Considering this research, the present study aimed to investigate cognitive functioning in adults with a history of trauma during childhood who do not meet criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis. Healthy adult volunteers (n=301) were administered the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) to assess the presence and severity of childhood trauma and a batter of neuropsychological assessments were used to measure cognitive functioning. Based on prior research in this area we initially hypothesized that childhood trauma severity would be negatively correlated with working memory capacity. Contrary to our hypothesis, our results indicated that there were no significant correlations between scores derived from the CTQ and any of the cognitive measures we examined. Although the present hypothesis was not supported, these finding may provide support for the notion that good cognitive function may serve as a protective factor against the development of trauma-related psychiatric symptoms. Title: The Relationship Between Veganism and Eating Disorders Author: Remy Park Faculty Mentor: Sumati Gupta Abstract: The relationship between veganism and eating disorders was examined in this study. Previous research suggests that limitations of vegetarian and vegan diets can serve as gateways to anorexia, increase risk for eating disorders (Bas, 2005, McLean, 2003, Charles, 2014) or serve as an excuse or cover for eating disorders (Martins, 1999). There is little research examining benefits of a vegan diet in decreasing eating disorder symptoms and many previous studies failed to properly operationalize veganism, or strictly categorizing participants. We hypothesized that we will not find a relationship between veganism and eating disorders and expect to see veganism may even aid eating disorder recovery. We examined participants’ eating disorder scores against a variety of factors and compared motivations for going vegan between individuals at different stages of eating disorders. We found no significant differences in motivations for going vegan in participants with eating disorder histories and those without. There was no significant correlation between eating disorder scores and time spent vegan, nor significant differences between motivations for going vegan in individuals with and without eating disorder behaviors. The lack of findings suggests veganism does not have an effect on eating disorder risk or scores and veganism may contribute positively to eating disorder recovery. We suggest that veganism is a safe diet to promote for all individuals, even eating disorder individuals.