Assumptions about gender and sexuality in the health care system often manifest as structural barriers to accessibility. Stakeholders, such as healthcare program managers, executive directors, practitioners, and other staff members, inform the organization’s structure, which guides providers on the service provision they provide to their LGBTQ+ patients. Thus, understanding health care staff perceptions on how current policies and programs contribute to the health care environment for the LGBTQ+ community will assist efforts for equitable service provision. Semi-structured interviews were conducted on staff from 6 health care organizations. Open-ended questions focused on their perspectives on current practices and policies, organizational areas of growth, as well as barriers, for equitable care. The purpose of the study is to discuss LGBTQ+ health within their organization to elicit staff perceptions on values and perspectives that address LGBTQ+ health disparities. Interviews were transcribed and inductive thematic analysis was done to find common benefits, viewpoints, and areas of improvements. Themes such as lack of knowledge, cultural biases, historical discrimination, and collaborative leadership, emerged. The findings of this study show gaps in delivering coordinated, patient-centered care for LGBTQ+ patients. This suggests greater importance for organizational education and training, particularly related to how historical oppression impacts bias in their setting. The overall implications of the study illustrate the relationship between the themes and organizational impact on service provision, which impacts the accessibility, safety, and quality health care environment for LGBTQ+ patients. This is crucial to giving context and describing the systematic impact on an individuals’ access to and quality of health care for the possible use in future studies.

3% of children live with Amblyopia (‘lazy-eye’), a visual disorder where acuity in one eye is poor even with glasses on. Amblyopia includes (1) reduced sensitivity in the amblyopic eye, and (2) interocular suppression, whereby the good eye suppresses the amblyopic eye. Our goal was to develop a method to efficiently characterize both mechanisms. Participants viewed a Gabor stimulus modulating between 0-100% contrast over time through a stereoscope, that presented a different image to each eye. Participants reported perceived contrast over time using a joystick. On each trial, the initial 14 s consisted of binocularly identical gratings modulating at 1/7 Hz, followed by 48 s where the gratings modulated at 1/8 Hz in one eye, and 1/6 Hz in the other. Separately, we measured visual acuity, stereoacuity, contrast sensitivity, the interocular suppression ratio. This method was highly efficient: only 30 min of data were needed to estimate monocular sensitivity and interocular suppression. Another advantage of this approach is that the stimulus is relatively naturalistic – the images in the two eyes are the same, except for the difference in contrast. This is important due to the nature of its binocularity and naturalistic conditions, as this will be the first of its kind - allowing clinicians a better way to assess those with amblyopia. 

 In this digital age, social media plays a large role in political activity. Previous studies have stated “non-disruptive” protests, which use less direct methods, for example publicity, were most effective in instilling political change. Social media plays an overpowering role in publicity today and therefore allows activist Facebook groups to function as non-disruptive social movements. However, Facebook also provides a platform for slacktivism rather than activism. Slacktivism is a term describing apolitical activities which serve to increase participants' feel-good factor as opposed to instilling real-life political change. In order to combat slacktivism on social media, researchers engineered a list of “ten premises” on how to engage activism. These ten premises have not yet been applied to Facebook activist groups run by college students. Using an open coding method, I constructed a codebook based on these ten premises which analyzes Facebook activist groups and records values quantifying  user engagement. Nine different activist groups, run from different public universities, were coded and compared to determine which groups had the highest engagement values. Their most utilized codebook categories were further correlated to group engagement values to determine which of the ten premises are most effective in engaging an active online participation. The results of my study allowed me to construct a separate guidebook compiling the observed correlations and outlining the best methods a college student run Facebook activist group can actively engage with followers online. This guidebook will help activist groups raise further awareness for their cause and become more engaged with their following.

There is a high prevalence of depression in the United States, and the impairment from depression and the impact it has on an individual’s functioning can also be severe. Thus, it is vital to examine the different causes of depression. In this study, I am investigating the effect a sense of belonging has on depressive symptoms by administering questionnaires to participants from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study and participants from the University of Washington. MIDUS is a national longitudinal study of different aspects of health and well-being. I am also investigating the moderating effect a strong ethnic identity, specifically ethnic identity for individuals of Asian descent, has on the relationship between a sense of belonging and depression through questionnaires that will be completed by participants from the University of Washington. I am predicting that individuals, both from MIDUS and the University of Washington sample, who have a higher sense of belonging will have a lower level of depressive symptoms. Additionally, I am predicting that participants who have a lower sense of belonging but a strong sense of ethnic identity will have a lower level of depressive symptoms. Regardless of the results, the findings of this study will aid in our understanding of the role of sense of belonging for individuals with depression, and will also shed light on the importance of ethnic identity for minority ethnic groups.

Marie Kondo, a Japanese organization expert, talks about objects being able to “spark joy” for those who own them. She says in her best-selling book “The life-changing magic of tidying up: The Japanese art of decluttering and organizing” that we should “keep only the things that spark joy” when advising people as they go through their decluttering journey. Given Kondo’s popularity, this phrase has influenced Western popular culture in the past few years. Still, there is no specific definition of spark joy in her books nor her Netflix show. In Japan, spark joy or tokimeki, is a common phrase that has been used since the 900s, but the phrase has been used more to describe the emotions surrounding romantic relationships rather than for objects. Previous studies on the meaning of objects (largely in the West) have indicated more focus on the self-reflection brought on by an object rather than relational reasons for seeing an object as special. For instance, objects have been found to represent self and achievement. People also give meaning to an object based on memories or identities, such as ties with ones’ family or ethnic background, suggesting some relational ties to an object. In this research, I examine what object sparks joy to people and what “spark joy” means to them. The research was conducted by interviewing people from Japan and the U.S., where popular culture has been influenced by her methods. I also had participants complete assessments of their self-construals and attachment styles. Qualitative data were examined by content analysis where I looked for relationships between self-construals and attachment styles to see if these predict the ways people give meaning to an object. This research deepens knowledge about objects and their meanings as well as provides a cultural comparison of what spark joy means to people.

The phenomenon of cognitive dissonance is described as the psychological process an individual undergoes when making a decision that involves conflicting beliefs or information. Understandings come mainly from both a biological perspective and a cognitive-behavioral perspective. Studying decision-making at an individual’s cognitive level has applications for the study of complex social processes such as political group action, modern digital communication, and religion. Understanding the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance is important to furthering our understanding of how people both obtain, retain, and replace ideologies. This literature review discusses the long-standing theories of cognitive-dissonance and then goes further to list and contrast criticisms of these paradigms as well as new data gathered on this topic. While the model of cognitive consistency, which is defined as an inherent human motivation to reduce inconsistent beliefs and ideas, is still widely accepted and used in psychology, there are now several challenges to this construct, mainly over the conception of consonance and dissonance and the subsequent processes that follow. These criticisms include the perspective that current methods over-measure processes of cognition that manifest in action, the perspective that people look outward to socially verified opinions and paradigms more than previously accounted for in current and past research, and that the choice process for decision preference is active during or already concluded by the time that subjects are self-aware of any conscious decision-making process. Methods are widely varied in this field and include fMRI, PET, behavior studies involving decision-related attitudes, and specific group case studies that include ethnography. Further research remains to be done regarding cognitive dissonance in both psycho-cultural and neurological contexts, as well as a reexamination of past literature on the topic within cognitive psychology.

Anxiety symptoms are common in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It is unknown whether the neurobiological origins of comorbid anxiety and ADHD symptoms are shared or distinct. The current study addressed this using an event related electrophysiological potential (ERP) component, the error-related negativity (ERN), which occurs after an individual makes a task error. ERN amplitude has opposite associations with ADHD and anxiety symptoms: it is weaker in association with increased ADHD, but greater in association with increased anxiety. We tested whether 1) anxiety symptoms and ADHD have separate neurobiological origins, indicated by greater anxiety being associated with increased ERN in children with ADHD or 2) anxiety and ADHD symptoms share an origin, as evidenced by no effect of anxiety on ERN in children with ADHD. The current study investigated the association between ERN amplitude and anxiety levels in a sample of 7- to 11-year-olds with ADHD (n = 98) and without (controls; n = 26). Participants completed two ERP tasks of varying difficulty. ERP data were segmented around incorrect task responses, and mean ERN amplitude was extracted. Data on child anxiety and ADHD symptoms was collected via parent report. Linear regression analysis was used to estimate the associations among ERN amplitude, severity of anxiety, and ADHD symptoms. Preliminary results (n = 73) indicated that ADHD symptom severity was associated with smaller ERN amplitude (r =.31, p =.007), but anxiety symptoms were not associated with ERN in the ADHD group. Preliminary results indicated that the ERN is not a marker of anxiety in children with ADHD to the same degree it is in controls. This is consistent with shared neurobiological etiology for ADHD and anxiety symptoms in children, which has clinical implications for conceptualization and treatment of anxiety symptoms in childhood ADHD.