When an individual is denied his/her gender identity, a common response seen in adults is for the rejected individual to assert that identity through responding hyper-gendered to absolve the gender threat. I am exploring whether this phenomenon occurs with children in two studies. In the first study, I am testing whether 5 and 6 year old children similarly assert their gender identity when it is denied by another child. I hypothesize that the children who have their gender misidentified will respond more hyper-gendered than the children in the control group, who do not have their gender mis-identified. In the second study, I am asking if these observed patterns generalize to children who often have their identities denied - transgender and gender nonconforming children. For the second study, I hypothesize that gender nonconforming children will respond more hyper-gendered than age matched controls who are gender conforming. In both studies, I am measuring hyper-gendered responses through peer preferences (how often participants choose to be friends with children of their same gender), toy preferences, outfit preferences, and other open-ended questions (i.e. favorite color, favorite thing to play). These results will help us understand the implications of gender identity denial and how children who are frequently denied their gender identity (i.e. transgender children) may react to the gender identity threat that they face from professionals, families, and peers.
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Past research has found that the perception of brown is dependent on brightness, and can be observed over a range of target light levels. Bright background stimuli will change the hue of a target from yellow to brown, but it is not known how effective colored surround stimuli are at inducing brown into a target. We investigated how well the four traditional perceptual unique hues (red, green, blue, and yellow plus a white control) influence the range of target light levels that appear brown with no trace of yellow. We characterized this range by measuring upper and lower light-level boundaries of brown, and investigated how the target’s brown boundaries changed against different colored backgrounds. Observers adjusted the level of brightness to the highest and lowest point at which they still perceived unique brown, with higher boundaries signifying the colored background is better at inducing brown, and lower boundaries signifying a decreased effect. We found that a green or yellow colored background enhances people’s ability to see brown whereas having a red or blue background diminishes people’s abilities to see brown. These differences can be understood in terms of long-established principles of simultaneous color contrast and color mixture cancelation. This study helps us understand the conditions that induce the color brown and the effect chromaticity has on its perception.

American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) women have survived centuries of forced relocation, genocide, discrimination, and other stressors that have led to disproportionately high rates of violence in many communities. According to the National Institute of Justice, one in three AIAN women have reported being raped and two-thirds have reported physical assault, resulting in high rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Cognitive processing therapy (CPT) has been effective in reducing PTSD symptoms for survivors of violence and traumatic life events. CPT consists of 12 sessions for 1 hour once per week and homework every week. To determine the barriers and facilitators counselors face in delivering CPT with AIAN women in a tribal reservation setting. We conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews and a short survey on counselor confidence in delivering culturally adapted CPT with five counselors on the Sacred Journey Study at the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute. Interviews included questions on perceived barriers and benefits to implementing CPT with the AIAN female participants. We report findings from the qualitative data, which highlights major themes around limited resources, high need in the community, client engagement and length of treatment. We present frequency for the survey data on satisfaction and confidence scales. CPT adapted for AIAN communities was well received by the counselors and community members. Counselors need support while working with this population given the high demand on these counselors in this limited resource setting.

The goals of my honors project are twofold: to further our understanding of White-Asian race relations and to further the line of research in non-categorical race perception. Past research has done little to understand the position of Asians in America’s racial milieu. This is problematic since Asians are the majority-minority in many parts of America. As such, one aim of this study is to examine whether perceptions of threat from an Asian population will have implicit effects on race perception. To do so, this study will build off research that examines race as a non-categorical construct. Though race is commonly understood as a categorical concept (consisting of boxes such as “Black” or “White”), this does not capture the experiences of many individuals (e.g., multiracials) and recent work has pointed to the possibility of having a continuous perception of race (with people varying along a spectrum of stereotypical features). My present research examines whether an individual’s implicit categorical perception of race can shift. I hypothesize that individuals under perceived threat from Asians will implicitly see race more categorically than individuals who do not. This study could lead to a better understanding of race in America, and could also provide more evidence for the possibility of a non-categorical perception of race. Furthermore, being able to shift a person’s perception of race could indicate that it is possible to shift it in the other direction, such that an individual could see race more continuously. As these individuals would be less likely to draw upon stereotypes associated with a certain race category due to a decreased reliance on these categories, this could lead to a decrease in racial prejudice. Together, these findings can lead to the development and implementation of more suitable interventions for increased racial harmony.

It is well documented that women’s bodies face multiple forms of trauma. In the United States, for example, eating disorders affect nearly 10% of the female population and account for the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. Additionally, between 20% and 48% of women who have given birth describe the experience as traumatic. Previous studies of risk factors for intrapartum trauma and eating disorder etiology identify similar risk factors for both experiences, such as negative interpersonal relationships, lack of communication and emotional support, loneliness, powerlessness, perceived or actual loss of control, and heightened vulnerability. However, despite uniformity in conditions provoking distress related to these two experiences, the experience of having an eating disorder and of giving birth have never been compared as the purpose of any study. Because of this research gap, it is likely that many women may be significantly underserved in birth. By using a framework that engages theories regarding distress, healing, rites of passage, performance, embodiment, and feminism as they intersect in bodies at birth, this research explores how women with histories of disordered eating experience pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. Eight semi-structured oral life history interviews were conducted with women who were given clay and asked to sculpt their bodies at key moments during their life history. The life history of the researcher was also analyzed alongside the life histories of the participants in order to more holistically understand the ways in which sufferers of eating disorders experience distress and processes of healing. Analysis of the life histories and body sculptures reveals connections between the ways in which eating disorders and reproduction are experienced. This research demonstrates that while pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period have the potential to propel women into suffering related to disordered eating, these experiences also hold the potential for healing.