What are your areas of research? Finding like-minded people...

[L83Ste]

Hey everyone! 

 

I don't know about all of you, but I'm pretty stressed out and have been spending way too much time worrying over whether I'm going to be informed of rejection, acceptance, interview, or waitlist... I thought that if anyone is interested, maybe we can tell our research areas of interest to meet like-minded people and possible collaborators of research for the future. I'll start... 

 

I have really broad interests. I would love to study aesthetics and creativity. With a faculty member, I did research on biases in artistic preferences (particularly movies and music) and presented that at an aesthetics conference in New York. We are working on phase two of the project now looking at potential biases in critic ratings. 

 

I have several research ideas relating to aesthetics and they cover all different disciplines in psychology--social, cognitive, personality, etc. I'm also interested in creativity, although the faculty at my school do not research that, so I haven't had as much experience in that area. I would like to study artists (I'm a visual artist). I'm also a lover of evolutionary psychology and aesthetics. 

 

I have other interests that include emotion, intelligence, motivation, achievement, effort, interest, memory, stereotyping and prejudice, and so on. I have about five pages of research questions right now and I continuously add to that on a regular basis. 

 

What about all of you? Any aesthetics researchers out there? 

[psych face]

Dude, five pages. I wish. I have a whole box. It grows every day. I will die before I get to all of my ideas. It depresses me constantly.

[FantasticalDevPsych]

I like this thread idea and even though I'm not a aesthetics researcher I'm going to reply anyway!

I've applied in Developmental Psychology and currently work in a Developmental lab so I spend most of my time with 4-12 year old children!

I'm interested in studying the fantasy-reality distinction, or children's ability to distinguish what is real and what is pretend, and have become especially curious as to how the many different types of media available today (books, TV, Internet, iPads) can effect the ability to make this judgement.

I've completed my undergrad thesis with a well known prof in the area in which I compared children's ability to learn information from books and TV and their resulting belief in the reality status (is it real or not) of this information!

I also have way too many research questions than I'll ever be able to conduct and turning one into my NSF proposal wasn't even that difficult!

P.S. Hello from a fellow Ravenclaw L83Ste!

[L83Ste]

Dude, five pages. I wish. I have a whole box. It grows every day. I will die before I get to all of my ideas. It depresses me constantly.

That's fantastic! Don't let it depress you. I just started typing mine. I started emailing or texting myself ideas as I get them because I always forget if I wait too long! I hate getting to my computer and thinking..."Now, what was that idea?" Sometimes I'll go back to my ideas and think... "Wow, was I serious?" HAHA It's pretty funny...especially the "after 3 a.m." me. 

 

 

I like this thread idea and even though I'm not a aesthetics researcher I'm going to reply anyway!

I've applied in Developmental Psychology and currently work in a Developmental lab so I spend most of my time with 4-12 year old children!

I'm interested in studying the fantasy-reality distinction, or children's ability to distinguish what is real and what is pretend, and have become especially curious as to how the many different types of media available today (books, TV, Internet, iPads) can effect the ability to make this judgement.

I've completed my undergrad thesis with a well known prof in the area in which I compared children's ability to learn information from books and TV and their resulting belief in the reality status (is it real or not) of this information!

I also have way too many research questions than I'll ever be able to conduct and turning one into my NSF proposal wasn't even that difficult!

P.S. Hello from a fellow Ravenclaw L83Ste!

I'm glad you replied! I was really hoping more people from all different areas would post here. We're all in the same boat and we might be able to help each other find those interested in the same research. I'm not into developmental all that much, but I really like the idea of studying aesthetic preferences of children and even doing twin studies to see if there is a genetic component to preferences or something like that. I would also love to see how preferences or interests change over the years and biases at different ages. It would be interesting. 

 

I love the fantasy-reality ideas. I have two children (13 and 9) and it's fun to see how they view things. Peripheral persuasion kicks in at a young age... my oldest once asked me (I was 24 at the time), "Mom, are you a senior citizen? If you're a senior citizen, then you need Life Alert!" Kids! They can be hilarious. 

 

--About the Ravenclaw reference... no matter how many times I tried to be sorted, it always came down to Ravenclaw. Of course, I wanted Gryffindor for such a long time. However, I have decided that I'll accept what the sorting hat says and move on. I read the description; Ravenclaw is pretty cool. 

[Pencilvannia]

I don't study aesthetics either...or developmental psychology :/

What I do study is memory, more specifically memory related to psychology and law.

 

Most of my studies have focused on interrogations (namely false confessions) but I also have some background on jury decision-making and some (i.e., a lot less than the others) background on eyewitness memories.. Most of my work is in the cognitive field, but it does have a kick of social psych mixed in as well. 

 

Every single one of my research ideas involve memory in some way, including topics I haven't worked on yet (e.g., time perception, imagination inflation). This is probably because I'm already a graduate student, so the whole "figure out a specific area you want to go in" has been drilled in to my head constantly haha.

Compared to aesthetics and fantasy vs reality distinctions, I think my topics might be considered more boring haha.

[L83Ste]

I don't study aesthetics either...or developmental psychology :/

What I do study is memory, more specifically memory related to psychology and law.

 

Most of my studies have focused on interrogations (namely false confessions) but I also have some background on jury decision-making and some (i.e., a lot less than the others) background on eyewitness memories.. Most of my work is in the cognitive field, but it does have a kick of social psych mixed in as well. 

 

Every single one of my research ideas involve memory in some way, including topics I haven't worked on yet (e.g., time perception, imagination inflation). This is probably because I'm already a graduate student, so the whole "figure out a specific area you want to go in" has been drilled in to my head constantly haha.

Compared to aesthetics and fantasy vs reality distinctions, I think my topics might be considered more boring haha.

I don't think it sounds boring at all! I love memory. A new professor at my school studies autobiographical memory and it sounds interesting. I have several interests. False confessions and eyewitness testimony both sound fascinating! Before I decided on seeking an academic career in psychology, I considered looking into forensic psychology. It took me forever to actually decide on academia. 

[FantasticalDevPsych]

 I'm not into developmental all that much, but I really like the idea of studying aesthetic preferences of children and even doing twin studies to see if there is a genetic component to preferences or something like that. I would also love to see how preferences or interests change over the years and biases at different ages. It would be interesting. 

 

I love the fantasy-reality ideas. I have two children (13 and 9) and it's fun to see how they view things. Peripheral persuasion kicks in at a young age... my oldest once asked me (I was 24 at the time), "Mom, are you a senior citizen? If you're a senior citizen, then you need Life Alert!" Kids! They can be hilarious. 

 

--About the Ravenclaw reference... no matter how many times I tried to be sorted, it always came down to Ravenclaw. Of course, I wanted Gryffindor for such a long time. However, I have decided that I'll accept what the sorting hat says and move on. I read the description; Ravenclaw is pretty cool. 

 

Studies on storybooks in my area have used storybook illustrations, which could be modified into a possible way to look at aesthetic prefrences!

 

That is a fun part about developmental! Children's views of the world can sometimes be so different! I love stories like this! And have plenty of my own from working in my lab by now as well as on my thesis!

 

Ah ok! Well, it's a good house for academics

 

What I do study is memory, more specifically memory related to psychology and law.

 

Most of my studies have focused on interrogations (namely false confessions) but I also have some background on jury decision-making and some (i.e., a lot less than the others) background on eyewitness memories.. Most of my work is in the cognitive field, but it does have a kick of social psych mixed in as well. 

 

Every single one of my research ideas involve memory in some way, including topics I haven't worked on yet (e.g., time perception, imagination inflation). This is probably because I'm already a graduate student, so the whole "figure out a specific area you want to go in" has been drilled in to my head constantly haha.

Compared to aesthetics and fantasy vs reality distinctions, I think my topics might be considered more boring haha.

Your work also sounds interesting to me!

I'm an undergrad so my next project is an interdisplinary secondary thesis for my minor which is on crime (specifcally Slenderman)!

 

Also I along with others in my lab have been curious about children's time perception but it didn't go past an idea!

 

Even though I'm an undergrad all my ideas have to do with fantasy-reality and the media! But I'm interested in looking fantasy-reality distinctions on the Internet (inspired by Slenderman) 

[isilya]

I'm interested in online language processing & production! I'm particularly interested in how we use our abstract representations of language and item-specific representations to make predictions in real time about upcoming language stimuli (and relatedly, what happens when these representations clash). Right now I'm looking at this in a sentence processing context where we use abstract constraints but also item-specific knowledge to shape predictions about word order in binomial expressions, but I'm also interested in a variety of other contexts this happens in -- how frequency affects phonetic production, how the use of a particular construction influences our predictions about semantic & pragmatic meaning, how expectations of information density shape expectations about upcoming words, how task relevance changes what representations we use during processing, etc. Fun stuff!!!

[constant_wanderer]

Whoa, I'm a whole another bird compared to the earlier posters! I'm interested in the multifaceted aspects of early trauma (family conflict, abuse, forced or unplanned migration), the way it affects our personality, and its role in impulsivity, sensation-seeking, and criminality. There is a developmental twist to it too, because my two populations of interest are adolescents and young adults.

My work and research experiences being mostly related to sexual violence, working with both offenders and survivors, I also have a sub-interest in human sexual behaviour, although I'm more broadly interested in forensics and trauma research.

If anyone shares my interests, do get in touch: the only thing I like nearly as much as doing research is talking about research!

[cw01]

I'm also interested in language but I'm leaning more toward language acquisition and in general developmental psycholinguistics. Specifically, I'm interested how children's multiple levels of language comprehension abilities develop overtime, particularly the phonological and pragmatic level. Speech perception is an area that I will very likely be involved in for grad school. I'm curious about how children's knowledge of segmental and suprasegmental structures changes overtime and to what extent is this knowledge language-specific. Also, I'm concerned about how these perceptual abilities are related to language production, from the earliest forms of production such as babbling to more sophisticated and fluent productions, as well as social feedback from the speakers. At the pragmatic level, I'm interested in children's implicature computation and how information at this level can interact with other levels of language such as phonology (my senior thesis is looking at how prosody helps implicature understanding). 

Otherwise, I'm also interested what cognitive abilities affect language comprehension, particularly at the syntactic and pragmatic level!

Edited January 17, 2015 by charleswu.01

[Lexifer]

My area is in Social/Forensic psychology and focuses on sexual offences and offenders. My honours thesis currently focuses on sexual coercion and peer influences on sexually deviant behaviour. I am also interested in offences with multiple perpetrators. 

 

[L83Ste]

Studies on storybooks in my area have used storybook illustrations, which could be modified into a possible way to look at aesthetic preferences!

 

I love that! I have actually wanted to look into cross cultural differences of children's books and even movies. Being a Harry Potter fan you might already know this, but J.K. Rowling was instructed to change the title for American (and Canadian, I think) from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I thought that was interesting and it got me to wondering what else is different? 

 

 

I'm interested in online language processing & production! 

I would like to know more about this. A friend of mine has become recently interested in studying linguistics in a sense, but in a different way than you. He wants to look into how word usage might reinforce stereotypes or create more division of groups than intended. 

 

I love the idea of studying online language processing. This is definitely important in this day and age! 

[isilya]

I would like to know more about this. A friend of mine has become recently interested in studying linguistics in a sense, but in a different way than you. He wants to look into how word usage might reinforce stereotypes or create more division of groups than intended. 

 

I love the idea of studying online language processing. This is definitely important in this day and age! 

I agree! It's starting to become apparent that prediction plays a central role in cognition in all sorts of different contexts, language is just one. Specifically I'm looking at English binomial expressions (like "alive and well"). We hear "alive and well" all the time but almost never hear "well and alive", and in online processing studies you can show that people process "alive and well" faster than "well and alive". From all of these instances of different binomials, though, we end up forming abstract representations of what orders tend to be more accepted based on different cues (e.g., the more perceptually salient thing tends to be the first in the expression, the thing that comes first in time tends to be first, etc.) And we can show that in brand-new binomials that people haven't heard before, like "bishops and seamstresses", they preferentially process the order predicted by these abstract ordering constraints. But then, what happens if we keep exposing participants to a new binomial in the "wrong" order? Do they eventually start processing the more frequent order faster? Or do they stick with their abstract ordering constraints? Or some combination of both? This is my thesis work on a more general level though, I'm just super interested in how people use their experience with language to constantly predict upcoming language stimuli and then update these predictions when they get to a later stream in the input. Sorry for the rambling, it's just fun to talk about

[FantasticalDevPsych]

I like how this thread has now turned into more of a conversation now!

I love that! I have actually wanted to look into cross cultural differences of children's books and even movies. Being a Harry Potter fan you might already know this, but J.K. Rowling was instructed to change the title for American (and Canadian, I think) from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I thought that was interesting and it got me to wondering what else is different? 

Just thought I'd share that when I thought of it! I'm interested in studying Fantasy Reality distinctions and the effect different media can have so I think about different aspects of media a lot! That would be very interesting just a little further from what I'd want to focus on in grad school! Yes I did know about that! All the differences I've discovered are from differences in UK vs US English!

I'm interested in online language processing & production!

Thanks for elaborating on this! It sounds interesting!

And yes, it's always fun to talk about your research area!

[TXInstrument11]

My area is in Social/Forensic psychology and focuses on sexual offences and offenders. My honours thesis currently focuses on sexual coercion and peer influences on sexually deviant behaviour. I am also interested in offences with multiple perpetrators. 

 

Your research sounds very interesting and something I'd like to read. I am interested in studying aggression and violence, particularly bio factors contributing to aggression. My undergrad thesis is on road rage. 

[L83Ste]

I agree! It's starting to become apparent that prediction plays a central role in cognition in all sorts of different contexts, language is just one. Specifically I'm looking at English binomial expressions (like "alive and well"). We hear "alive and well" all the time but almost never hear "well and alive", and in online processing studies you can show that people process "alive and well" faster than "well and alive". From all of these instances of different binomials, though, we end up forming abstract representations of what orders tend to be more accepted based on different cues (e.g., the more perceptually salient thing tends to be the first in the expression, the thing that comes first in time tends to be first, etc.) And we can show that in brand-new binomials that people haven't heard before, like "bishops and seamstresses", they preferentially process the order predicted by these abstract ordering constraints. But then, what happens if we keep exposing participants to a new binomial in the "wrong" order? Do they eventually start processing the more frequent order faster? Or do they stick with their abstract ordering constraints? Or some combination of both? This is my thesis work on a more general level though, I'm just super interested in how people use their experience with language to constantly predict upcoming language stimuli and then update these predictions when they get to a later stream in the input. Sorry for the rambling, it's just fun to talk about

That is really cool! I wonder how long it takes the incorrect order to become the new way of speaking? Not only that, but once it takes hold, how would that change social beliefs? For example, we always say it's not just "black and white" but we never say "white and black". Why do we do it that way? I like these ideas! I don't mind rambling by the way. I respect passion within one's work! It's inspiring. 

[cw01]

I agree! It's starting to become apparent that prediction plays a central role in cognition in all sorts of different contexts, language is just one. Specifically I'm looking at English binomial expressions (like "alive and well"). We hear "alive and well" all the time but almost never hear "well and alive", and in online processing studies you can show that people process "alive and well" faster than "well and alive". From all of these instances of different binomials, though, we end up forming abstract representations of what orders tend to be more accepted based on different cues (e.g., the more perceptually salient thing tends to be the first in the expression, the thing that comes first in time tends to be first, etc.) And we can show that in brand-new binomials that people haven't heard before, like "bishops and seamstresses", they preferentially process the order predicted by these abstract ordering constraints. But then, what happens if we keep exposing participants to a new binomial in the "wrong" order? Do they eventually start processing the more frequent order faster? Or do they stick with their abstract ordering constraints? Or some combination of both? This is my thesis work on a more general level though, I'm just super interested in how people use their experience with language to constantly predict upcoming language stimuli and then update these predictions when they get to a later stream in the input. Sorry for the rambling, it's just fun to talk about

Interesting! So I wonder if a violation of the order would cause a P600 or N400 in ERP? I guess this is more a question of whether it's syntactic violation or semantic, or neither since it's more idiomatic?

[Impatiently Waiting]

This is a fairly broad description, but I'm interested in how social media and Internet impacts people's behavior both on and off-line. (For example, my thesis focused on why people are sometimes so quick to disclose personal information online.) I also focus on how people interact with technology, and how it can be made more user-friendly and accessible to new learner's.

[Lexifer]

Your research sounds very interesting and something I'd like to read. I am interested in studying aggression and violence, particularly bio factors contributing to aggression. My undergrad thesis is on road rage. 

 

Thank you! Most people (like my family) just think it is weird  Your research area sounds interesting too! 

[isilya]

That is really cool! I wonder how long it takes the incorrect order to become the new way of speaking? Not only that, but once it takes hold, how would that change social beliefs? For example, we always say it's not just "black and white" but we never say "white and black". Why do we do it that way? I like these ideas! I don't mind rambling by the way. I respect passion within one's work! It's inspiring. 

Yeah, I'm hoping to look at this! With all the Google n-gram data free and easily accessible, it's probably pretty easy to do analyses of when a particular order reached some critical threshold and became the dominant order, and look at what was going on culturally at the time (particularly for those loaded phrases like "black and white"). I'm getting so many research ideas from this thread

 

Interesting! So I wonder if a violation of the order would cause a P600 or N400 in ERP? I guess this is more a question of whether it's syntactic violation or semantic, or neither since it's more idiomatic?

I've thought about this a bit, and it's really intriguing because the very, very frequent phrases like "alive and well" are sort of idiomatic, while the infrequent ones like "bishops and seamstresses" are very clearly not. So you might expect to see differences in prediction mechanism between those! And another interesting thing is that the abstract ordering constraints aren't all semantic -- some of them are phonological, or purely perceptual (like, more salient things come first), so I wonder if you would see an N400 or if you would see a difference prediction-y component like the P300. Now I want to do this study, lol!

[VulpesZerda]

Cool thread! My research is essentially a social psychological approach to public health issues. I want to specifically study preventing HIV and cancer, focusing on social influence. Truly, I would be happy studying the prevention of just about any disease that has a behavioral component, but I knew I had to narrow it down for grad school.

[nuih]

This is a fairly broad description, but I'm interested in how social media and Internet impacts people's behavior both on and off-line. (For example, my thesis focused on why people are sometimes so quick to disclose personal information online.) I also focus on how people interact with technology, and how it can be made more user-friendly and accessible to new learner's.

 

That's very interesting! I wanted to examine similar stuff to your little description here, but I got a little distracted with other topics. Good luck with your applications! 

[L83Ste]

Cool thread! My research is essentially a social psychological approach to public health issues. I want to specifically study preventing HIV and cancer, focusing on social influence. Truly, I would be happy studying the prevention of just about any disease that has a behavioral component, but I knew I had to narrow it down for grad school.

That's a very cool and helpful topic to study! I did a few papers relating to cancer before my husband actually had it twice. This is a topic that is very important. 

 

Man, there are so many cool things to study! It's easy to have too many interests! 

[TenaciousBushLeaper]

I'm interested in a few things, although at the moment I study the basic processes involved in word reading.  I use behavioral methods as well as fMRI to try and delineate where and how people process different "types" of words and non words in the brain, primarily using a lexical decision paradigm .   

Edited January 19, 2015 by TenaciousBushLeaper

[Impatiently Waiting]

That's very interesting! I wanted to examine similar stuff to your little description here, but I got a little distracted with other topics. Good luck with your applications! 

 

Thanks! What did you end up focusing on?