The Individualizing Incentives to Maximize Recovery study utilizes contingency management to reduce alcohol use among individuals who are current heavy drinkers and have co-occurring alcohol use disorder and serious mental illness in a community mental health setting (i.e. Medicaid-eligible clients). This study analyzed self-reported housing status at baseline and week 4 (i.e. homeless vs stable housing) and drinking status (i.e. low vs high drinking, measured using a biomarker called EtG that was averaged across 8 appointments between baseline and week 4). We predicted that homeless housing status would be more likely to meet criteria for heavy drinking (EtG > 349) than stably housed status at week 4. A chi-square analysis failed the null hypothesis (p < 0.9). There was no relationship between housing status and heavy drinking found within this population, however, there were multiple limitations that could have skewed the results. Further research is needed to assess the impact of housing on recovery from alcohol use disorder.

Early home life and classroom environments are crucial to lifelong success. Family structure, opportunities for learning, and socioeconomic status (SES) influence experiences within the home. Further, SES impacts the resources that a student has access to, which can shape academic support and learning opportunities. Factors such as family climate, caregiver occupation and education, and parenting style have been shown to influence academic self-regulation and achievement. Literature has also pointed to the importance of relationships with peers and teachers on academic and social success. Few studies have examined how both of these environments impact student life into adulthood and litte research has explored social success in terms of feelings within interpersonal relationships and self-efficacy. The goal of the present study was to retrospectively explore experiences in the home and school environments throughout formative, developmental years and success later in life. Participants (n = 149) were asked about their family structure, SES, home learning environment (HLE), experiences in three separate academic eras, academic success, feelings in relationships, and self-efficacy. This study fills a paucity in the discussion of academic success by exploring a new measurement tool: the academic ladder, which examines a student's own perception of their achievement in relation to their classmates. Results confirm the impact of early experiences in the home and at school on later academic and social success. Interestingly, caregiver factors do not significantly impact students' interpersonal success as much as relationships with teachers and peers. Results also show that SES does not have an effect on opportunities for learning in the home; however, caregiver educational attainment affects those opportunities. Both HLE and caregiver variables have an effect on self-perceived academic success. Continuing to examine how educational experiences and environmental factors impact students' well-being will help develop intervention programs that best prepare youth to succeed throughout life.

Animals in the natural world rely on sensory information in order to make quick decisions to stay safe. Sometimes a stimulus is paired to a predictable outcome, allowing the animal to make the appropriate response when encountering that stimulus later. However, it seems unlikely that individuals would have to learn, de novo, those stimuli which might signal danger during the first learning opportunity. Laboratory studies of animal fear, however, have largely been done using Pavlovian Fear Conditioning; generating fear by pairing a tone or other benign stimulus with an aversive one—typically a painful footshock. This is problematic. An owl does not hoot three times before it strikes, allowing the prey to form a conditioned response. To explore this innate behavior, we developed a novel, naturalistic approach to fear conditioning that uses a pseudo-predator paired with physical pain to induce fear responses. In this experiment, I trained male and female Long-Evans rats to forage for food pellets in an open space. After training, a fake owl plunged towards the foraging rats while a shock was delivered through subcutaneously implanted wires. Certain groups were presented with a tone or light to pair with the owl and shock, while others received no other predictive stimuli. Additionally, to test the effects of environmental context on their behavior, animals were tested in two chambers that differed in size, lighting, shape, etc. Even after changing foraging contexts, some rats that were never conditioned to fear the tone fled upon its presentation. The visual cue also induced a fear response in rats that were never previously conditioned to fear the light stimulus, but only fled when the shock was presented with the owl. Experiments performed under naturalistic conditions utilizing animals’ innate behaviors will better aid in our understanding of how the brain makes decisions in complex environments

When a child is diagnosed with pediatric cancer, it puts a strain on the whole family, including the marital relationship. However, there is little consensus as to the factors that predict marital adjustment. This proposal examines the relationship between parental emotional styles and marital adjustment in the first year following a pediatric cancer diagnosis. I propose that poorer marital adjustment as well as declines in marital adjustment over the first year of treatment will be predicted by 1) emotion-dismissing philosophies in both men and women and 2) a mismatch in couples' emotion philosophies. These findings would provide insight into the factors that may put the marital dyad at risk, which could inform clinical interventions to better support the families after diagnosis.

I began this project last year as an honors student in the Psychology Department Honors program and under supervision of Dr. Lynn Fainsilber Katz and clinical graduate student, Laina Keim. I independenty discovered a gap in the literature, developed my hypothesis, performed an extensive literature review and wrote a proposal for this this honors thesis. I became a trained and reliable coder for the internationally recognized coding system that is being utilized in this study. This year I have focused on coding our data with our lab team, data analysis with Laina, and now I am writing up results. 

Homelessness rates among the adolescent population have steadily risen over the past decade, and homelessness is shown to be correlated with a variety of detrimental outcomes. Though prior studies of this population have focused on participant recruitment as well as the representativeness of samples, there has been little work regarding designing survey content to optimize participant honesty, retention, and willingness to divulge often sensitive details about themselves. As a part of a larger investigation on youth/family engagement with homelessness prevention services, this research project uses youth focus group responses to explore how, in conducting surveys, questions can be worded to increase the likelihood of obtaining an earnest and accurate response. We used data from six focus groups across two locations to gather information from housing instable adolescents. The focus groups presented example research surveys and asked participants to provide responses on whether the survey items were well-received and easy to understand, among other factors. Through a grounded qualitative analysis of the responses provided, we determined that there are topics that have a high probability of causing confusion and therefore reducing construct validity, or that may cause participants to become guarded because of their sensitive nature. To address these issues, we recommend phrasing questions to be unambiguous by being hyperspecific—for example, asking how often caretakers give praise for good deeds rather than a general question about pride in their children. We also suggest phrasing topics likely to evoke either a strong positive or negative emotional response in a more neutral manner or, when they are not strictly relevant, eliminating the questions altogether—for instance, instead of asking about whether someone is seeing a counselor directly, which could be a source of stigma and shame, asking instead about whether they have a professional that they can trust with their personal issues.

A cardinal feature of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is avoidance of trauma-related stimuli. This avoidance is implicated in the development of PTSD. Other common features of PTSD include anhedonia, a loss of pleasure, as well as anxiety, and problematic substance use. Anhedonia may impact avoidance by decreasing motivation to approach and substance use is conceptualized as a form of avoidance. Trait anxiety is defined as a predisposition to response with feelings of apprehension, dread, and tension. Higher levels of trait anxiety have been found to predict avoidant decisions. The current study investigates the relationship between self-report avoidance and anhedonia, substance use, and trait anxiety. Participants will be recruited through community advertisement as a part of a larger experimental study. Participants will complete self-reports to assess constructs of interest, including the Snaith Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS), Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire (MEAQ), the Cannabis Use Disorder Identification Test (CUDIT), the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), and the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). We hypothesize higher self-report avoidance will be associated with higher levels of anhedonia, higher substance use, and higher trait anxiety. Through their impact on avoidance, these constructs may help explain why some individuals are more likely to develop psychopathology following trauma. Targeting anhedonia, substance use, and anxiety-related cognitions after traumatic events could lead to decreased avoidance behavior and lower rates of PTSD development overall. Additionally, these constructs could prove to be important secondary clinical targets which help to attenuate avoidance behavior in those with PTSD.