Undergraduate Research Day 2020

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/20158

With students involved in so many research opportunities, Undergraduate Research Day provides the perfect opportunity for them to share their work with the campus community. Held each April, Undergraduate Research Day showcases current research, scholarship, and artistic endeavors.

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Author: search.filters.author.Knoll, Sarah

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    Preschoolers negatively evaluate social excluders but do not always dis-prefer them
    (2020) Horen, Lindsay; Knoll, Sarah; Woodward, Amanda; Beier, Jonathan
    Social exclusion is harmful and leads to negative consequences in the cognitive and social domains (Wesselman & Williams, 2013). Children use strategies to alleviate the negative effects of social exclusions. One of these strategies is to behave in ways that facilitate social connection. For instance, after observing social exclusion young children sit closer to others, remember more social events, and imitate others more accurately (Marinovic et al., 2017; Marinovic & Trauble, 2018; Watson-Jones et al., 2014), tend to remember more social events, and imitate others. The current study investigated cognitive processes that may underlie children’s choices of whom to interact with after exclusion. Specifically, we examined whether 3- to 6- year old children who observed third-party social exclusion detected social exclusion, evaluated excluders negatively, and if watching exclusion influenced their play partner choices. Overall, we found that across age groups, all children detected social exclusion after it occurred (67 of 69, p< 0.01) but did not detect exclusion when it did not occur (2 of 69, p< 0.01). Children also evaluated social excluders more negatively than social includers (b= -0.06, t(67)= 3.11, p= 0.003). With age, children evaluated social excluders more negatively, but children across ages evaluated includers positively. Only 5- and 6-year-olds preferred to play with includers more than excluders. 3- and 4-year-olds did not show a preference for either character. These findings indicated that both younger and older children can detect exclusion and evaluate excluders, but only older children prefer to play with includers over excluders. Future work should examine why younger children do not show similar preferences.
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    Do preschoolers track and evaluate social includers and excluders?
    (2020) Knoll, Sarah; Woodward, Amanda Mae; Beier, Jonathan
    Exclusion leads to negative effects across the social and cognitive domains (Wesselman & Williams, 2013). Because the consequences of social exclusion can be severe, social psychologists have characterized social-cognitive mechanisms for detecting exclusion and motivating responses to mitigate its effects. Although both adults and children respond to exclusion in ways that facilitate social connection, it is unclear whether two components of a system for detecting and responding to social exclusion, tracking and evaluating a prior excluder, are present in early childhood. The current research investigates whether 4- to 6-year-old children track and evaluate social excluders. Children in both experiments played in inclusive and exclusive ball-toss games. Children then reported explicit social evaluations comparing players from each game by answering who was meaner, a better sharer, or a better play partner for a third party. In Experiment 1, four-year-olds (N=32) had mixed evaluations of the players. An exploratory analysis revealed that children who indicated that the includer was a better sharer (n= 19 of 32) viewed the excluder as meaner (18 of 19, p < .001). In Experiment 2, 96 children, ages 4 to 6 years old, participated in a similar procedure to Experiment 1—now including an explicit memory check question. Children who passed the memory check (n = 68) evaluated includers more positively (44 of 68, p = .02) excluders more negatively (46 of 68, p = .004) and recommended that a new puppet play with the includer (49 of 68, p = .003). These effects were primarily driven by younger children, as 6-year-olds did not evaluate excluders negatively. Future work should determine if children younger than 4 years old can track and detect social exclusion.