Lehigh Valley Undergraduate Psychology Conference (2003)The
Effects of Visual and Auditory Stimuli from Fantasia
2000 on Mood This study investigates the effect of listening or watching a three-minute music selection from the movie Fantasia 2000 on mood. The 88 participants were females, ages 19-60, attending an all women’s private liberal arts college. Mood was evaluated using the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List designed to assess state of mood by having the participants choose from 132 adjectives describing their mood following the stimuli presentation. The three musical selections chosen for the experiment intentionally contrasted: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals, and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. This 3x2 between subject factorial design, was analyzed using ANOVA. The results indicate that the type of music presented, impacted the participants’ response. Faculty Advisor: Dr. Bonnie Green
The
Effect of Grade on Student Evaluation of Instructors The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between a student's perceived grade and the evaluation she gives an instructor. It is hypothesized that the higher the grade a student receives the higher the student will evaluate the instructor. This impact is expected to be greater in students with higher grade point averages. Students attending a private liberal arts college for women in Northeastern Pennsylvania listened to a five minute lesson on writing an abstract in APA format. The students then wrote an abstract from an assigned article. The researcher randomly assigned a grade of A or C to the abstract. The abstracts were returned to the students for brief review. The students then evaluated the instructor and completed a survey to gather their views on the evaluation process. The results of this study and its implications will be discussed. Faculty
Advisors: Dr. Kerrie Baker and Dr. Bonnie Green The
Effect of Video Games on Behaviors of Aggression Research in recent years suggests that children and adolescents spend a vast amount of their time playing video games, especially violent video games, causing great concern for parents and educators. Pairs of boys, between the ages of eight and fourteen, served as subjects in an experiment designed to assess the relationship between aggressive video games and aggressive behaviors. The child pair was randomly assigned to one of two conditions. The child pair played either an aggressive video game (NHL Hitz 2002) or a relatively non-aggressive video game (Tetris Worlds) simultaneously for fifteen minutes while being videotaped. Directly following video game play, the child pair was left to engage in free play for ten minutes while being videotaped. Behaviors were coded using an ethogram. The results and their implications will be discussed. Advisor:
Dr. Bonnie Green Effects
of Age, Achievement Motivation, and Academic Performance
on an Individual’s Attributions to Success
and Failure This
study examined the effects of age, achievement motivation,
and academic performance on an individual’s
attributions for success/failure. The subjects, 55
traditional students (ages 18 to 21) and 43 nontraditional
students (ages 22 and older) from a small liberal
arts college in northeastern Pennsylvania, read and
responded to a set of vignettes. Each vignette describes
a semester in which one’s motivation (high
vs. low amount of effort put forth into studying
and attending classes) and academic performance (high
vs. low scores in a course) varied. The mixed-subject
2 x 2 x 2 design examined the subjects’ responses
to the Revised Causal Dimension Scale and the Rotter
I/E Scale. It is hypothesized that a main effect
will be found for age, such that nontraditional students
will attribute success/failure to an internal cause
(i.e., a cause that they can control), while traditional
students will attribute success/failure to an external
cause (i.e., a cause outside of their direct control).
Several significant results were found in regards
to the difference between the Causal Dimensions Scale
and the independent variables. Faculty Advisors:
Dr. Kerrie Baker and
Memory
in Collegiate Softball Coaches and Athletes This experiment was designed to look for differences in the way that collegiate softball coaches and athletes perceive and remember information. All subjects were contacted via email asking for their participation in the study. Subjects were given a website to visit that would take them through the experiment. First they viewed a video clip of one complete inning of a college softball game. Secondly they answered a series of memory and demographic questions regarding the things they saw in the video clip. Their answers were submitted to the researcher at a different website, with no identifying information attached. All answers were then evaluated statistically to see if differences do exist in the way that collegiate softball coaches and athletes perceive and remember information. Results of this study and their implications will be discussed. Faculty Advisor: Dr. Bonnie Green
The goal of this study was to determine if training in deception detection by looking at a victim’s non-verbal behaviors would increase the likelihood of detecting deception. The participants were adult women who attend an all-women’s private college in the northeast section of the United States of America. Women were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The Training Group received a behavioral cue list of non-verbal behaviors that are commonly associated with deception such as small facial movements, no or constant eye contact, more posture shifts, etc. The Non-training Group was not provided a list of cues. Then one at a time, the participants watched a videotape of a victim who was in an automobile accident. The victim was asked a series of questions about the accident and her responses alternated between telling the truth, telling a partial truth, or telling a complete lie. Participants were then given a list of the questions that were asked of the victim and asked to evaluate whether they found each of the victim’s answers to be the entire truth, a partial lie, or a complete lie. The results of this study and their implications will be discussed. Faculty Advisors: Dr. Bonnie Green and Dr. Jane Tyler Ward |
