Does cleft palate repair surgery restore normal neural processing for infant faces?

Francesca Messina, Psychology Graduate Student

College of Professional Studies

Infant faces readily capture our attention and elicit enhanced neural processing, likely due to their importance in facilitating bonds with caregivers. Cues of poor health are associated with a lower degree of parental investment and facial malformations have been shown to negatively impact early infant-caregiver interactions, possibly due to altered perceptual processing of these faces compared to unaffected infant faces. The current study used eye tracking and electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate responses to infant faces before and after cleft palate repair surgery.

Does cleft palate repair surgery restore normal neural processing for infant faces?

Rachael Kee, Psychology Graduate Student

College of Professional Studies

The current study used electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate adults’ processing of infant faces with cleft lip/palate before and after surgical repair. We found enhanced N170 responses for faces pre-repair surgery compared to post-repair surgery, suggesting that cleft lip/palate repair surgery may restore a more “normal” N170 response. Additionally, the P200 was smaller for the pre-repair surgery faces compared to post-repair surgery, which likely reflects the P200 responding to “typicality” for face stimuli as the post-repair surgery faces would appear more face-typical.

Does Having Siblings Affect Caretaking Responses to Infants?

Joshua Worthington, Psychology Graduate Student

College of Professional Studies

Because siblings often fulfill a caregiver role in the home, this study investigated whether having siblings, and younger siblings in particular, impacts the reward value of and perceptual sensitivity to the ‘baby schema’. Participants completed a cuteness sensitivity rating task and an effort-based keypress task to measure the reward value of cuteness. They also reported whether they had siblings, and if so older vs younger siblings. Contrary to our hypotheses, having siblings did not influence the reward value of or perceptual sensitivity to ‘babyschema’.

Does Having Siblings Affect The Recognition of Children’s Emotional Displays?

Nathan Boone, Psychology Graduate Student

College of Professional Studies

The present study investigated the relationship between sibling caretaking experience and the ability to recognize emotions in children’s faces. Accuracy for recognizing emotional displays in children's faces was compared among individuals with younger siblings, older siblings, and no siblings. We did not find any evidence that having siblings impacts sensitivity to emotional displays in children's faces. We did, however, find evidence that some emotions are more easily assessed than others regardless of sibling status.

Does lexicality or phonemic predictability affect cross-modal identification of monosyllabic items?

College of Professional Studies

Speech is both auditory and visual. Both modalities can carry the same underlying (articulatory) information. This relationship serves cross-modal matching abilities in a variety of conditions, but to what extent is cross-modal matching ability mediated by abstract, cognitive processes, representations, and linguistic experience (e.g. lexicality or phonemic predictability)?

Does the Thatcher Effect Extend to Infant Faces?

Adnan Alyna, Psychology Undergraduate Student

College of Professional Studies

You will spend more time looking at faces than any other type of object in your lifetime. Because faces are such an important social signal, humans have developed a perceptual expertise for faces. Decades of research on the mechanisms of face processing have demonstrated we more heavily on configural processing strategies when viewing faces due to this expertise. However, this work has been done using almost exclusively adult facial stimuli. The current study uses a well-established configural disruption known as the Thatcher Effect to investigate the use of configural processing for infant faces. We find evidence that infant face processing may be less reliant on configural information.

Does the Thatcher Effect extend to infant faces?

Adnan Alyan, Psychology Graduate Student

College of Professional Studies

You will spend more time looking at faces than any other type of object in your lifetime. Because faces are such an important social signal, humans have developed a perceptual expertise for faces. Decades of research on the mechanisms of face processing have demonstrated that although faces contain both featural and configural information humans rely more heavily on configural processing strategies when viewing faces. However, this work has been done using almost exclusively adult facial stimuli. The current study uses a well-established configural disruption known as the Thatcher Effect (TE) to investigate the use of configural processing for infant faces.

Does Women’s Interpersonal Anxiety Track Changes in Steroid Hormone Levels?

College of Professional Studies

Previous studies have suggested that women’s interpersonal anxiety will track changes in progesterone during the menstrual cycle. There have been few direct tests of this hypothesis. The present study used a longitudinal design to investigate whether interpersonal anxiety tracked changes in steroid hormones during the menstrual cycle. Women reported greater interpersonal sensitivity and anxiety in the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle compared to the follicular phase. More recent work did not replicate this effect of cycle phase on anxiety. Given results for attachment anxiety and progesterone, we predicted that women would report greater anxious jealousy when progesterone was high.

Don't get caught with a CAUTI

Jill Williams, School of Applied Health Undergraduate Student

College of Professional Studies

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are the 5th most common healthcare-associated infection. Of hospital-acquired UTIs, 75% are associated with urinary catheters. 12-16% of people hospitalized require a urinary catheter. There is a 3-7% increased risk of a UTI each day the catheter is in. The negative effects of catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) are pain and discomfort, as well as longer hospital stays, increased cost, complications like secondary infections and mortality (estimated 13,000 deaths/year). The proposed outcomes of are after 1 year, there will be a 50% reduction in CAUTI rates and after 1 year, there will be a 2-day reduction in length of hospital stay.

Early Intervention for Young Children in Improving Future Outcomes

College of Professional Studies

The project is based on a review study being done to understand different types of early interventions (0-8 years) that are available to help young children and their families in improving the future outcomes of the children. In this paper, I define early intervention, present different areas and formats, list various programs available in the Humboldt County, and make recommendations for parents and professionals who work with them.