Office of Undergraduate Research

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Emphasizing equitable and inclusive access to research opportunities, the University of Maryland's Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) empowers undergraduates and faculty to engage and succeed in inquiry, creative activity, and scholarship. This collection includes materials shared by undergraduate researchers during OUR events. It also encompasses materials from Undergraduate Research Day 2020, Undergraduate Research Day 2021, and Undergraduate Research Day 2022, which were organized by the Maryland Center for Undergraduate Research.

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Subject: search.filters.subject.Child Psychology

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Exploring the Impact of Prenatal Drug Exposure on Brain Development: Data Collection Framework
    (2024) Sare, Perfect; Jones, Morgan; Chi, Zehua; Riggins, Tracy
    Understanding brain development is a critical area of neuroscience requiring comprehensive research. Numerous factors, including prenatal drug exposure (PDE), significantly influence both pre- and postnatal brain development. The HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study is a longitudinal study that aims to explore these impacts and advance our knowledge of early brain and child development. It utilizes multiple, carefully curated methods to obtain physiological data from participants, including diverse patient recruitment, biospecimen collection, and various MRI scans. This poster will address these methods of data collection and how they will contribute to future research. 2
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    Age-related Differences Regarding Spontaneous Reasoning about Social Exclusion
    (2024) Moore, Sophia V.; Holloway, Hannah J.; Rumberger, Jonquil; Forbes, Marley B.; Kilby, Elena; Killen, Melanie
    Developmental science research has demonstrated age-related changes in children’s use of social and moral reasoning in contexts of intergroup social exclusion. Intergroup social exclusion refers to rejecting someone because of their group identity such as gender, race, and SES. Prior research has identified these patterns by individually interviewing children about their evaluations of different forms of social exclusion. What has not yet been examined is how children spontaneously reason about intergroup social exclusion in classroom-wide discussions. The present study addressed this gap by audio-recording teacher-facilitated classroom discussions that followed the use of an online tool depicting hypothetical intergroup exclusion scenarios once a week for eight weeks. Participants were ethnically and racially diverse 8- to 11-year-old elementary school students attending U.S. public schools in the Mid-Atlantic region, N = 522, N = 30 classrooms. The present study uses a smaller subset of the original sample, N = 6 classrooms. Three reasoning categories were analyzed for this project: moral (fairness, equity), group identity (ingroup preferences, group functioning) and psychological (personal choice). Preliminary analyses suggest age-related differences in children’s reasoning during discussions about race-based exclusion. Fifth graders referenced psychological reasons more often than third graders, who referenced mostly moral reasons. Quantitative analyses will elaborate further on these findings in the poster. These novel findings have broader implications for reducing prejudice and improving intergroup relations in childhood using school-based interventions.
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    The Relation Between Early Childhood Behavioral Inhibition and Language Outcomes
    (2024) Trout, Makena; Fox, Nathan; Shin, So Yeon
    Behavioral inhibition (BI) is a temperament classified as fearful reactions or withdrawal from unfamiliar situations. BI can be detected as early as four months, and it has been found to lead to many negative developmental outcomes. Children who exhibit BI tend to have limited formative interactions, which could hinder development. There is a significant amount of research regarding how early BI can predict socioemotional outcomes, such as social anxiety disorder; however, there is less information on how early BI may affect other developmental processes, such as language development. To address this gap in research, this project assessed the relation between BI at age 3 and language outcomes at ages 3 and 7. The data for this research project were obtained through the Temperament Over Time Study (TOTS), a longitudinal study investigating the individual and environmental factors associated with social development from infancy through childhood. Correlation matrices were performed to analyze the relation between the reported levels of BI at age 3 and the language scores from the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory at age 3 and the Woodcock-Johnson-IV at age 7. The results from these analyses indicated a statistically significant correlation between BI and Sentence Complexity scores at age 3, which suggests a potential relation between BI and expressive language outcomes in the short term.
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    Exploring Sleep-Dependent Memory Consolidation in Preschoolers
    (2024) Erkan, Cansu; Freisinger, Leah; Karan, Anna; Sharan, Rishita; Riggins, Tracy; Ratliff, Erin
    Sleep is important for memory. This may be especially true in early childhood, when sleep demands are high. In fact, previous research has shown that, when preschool children who typically nap are prevented from doing so, their learning and memory suffers. However, the specific benefits of sleep for memory and the neural mechanisms associated with these benefits are still unclear. For example, does sleep benefit memory generally or certain kinds of memory (e.g., memory for specific details vs memory for general items). Does sleep simply “protect” memories or can it ”enhance” them? To begin to address these questions, we are investigating how sleep impacts memory in early childhood. We will investigate the impact of an afternoon nap and subsequent overnight sleep on memory performance. The study will (eventually) enroll 180 preschool-aged children (3.0-5 years) who are habitual nappers (children who nap at least five times a week). Each child will complete the Mnemonic Similarity Task (MST) to evaluate precision and generalized memory across a wake condition, nap condition and overnight sleep condition. The MST is a variant of a traditional recognition memory task that includes perceptually similar examples of studied items as lures. This task will allow us to explore the types of memories that are impacted by sleep and the type of impact made. For data analysis, the Lure Discrimination Index (LDI) will be calculated from the MST data in order to measure precision memory performance. We will compare LDI to standard metrics of memory, such as corrected recognition scores, which measure general memory. From this investigation we hope to further understand the impact of sleep on memory in young children. To date, 7 participants have provided data, and data collection is still ongoing with an estimated sample size of 20 by the time of this presentation.
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    Understanding the Relationship Between Theory of Mind and Anxiety in Autistic and Typically Developing Children
    (2020) Stadler, Ryan; Redcay, Elizabeth
    Anxiety disorder can be especially difficult to deal with for children and adolescents. Previous literature has indicated a relationship between anxiety and theory of mind ability. Theory of mind (ToM) is the ability to understand the beliefs, emotions, and intentions of another person and acknowledge that these mental states may differ from their own. Previously, individuals diagnosed with social anxiety disorder demonstrated lower ToM ability than their peers. However, these studies used a limited number of tasks and a sample of only typically developing (TD) adults. The relationship between anxiety and ToM is less understood when the presence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is considered. Understanding anxiety in children with ASD is important because they are diagnosed with anxiety disorder at a higher rate compared to their TD peers. To explore this relationship in both ASD and TD samples, data was collected using the Strange Stories Task and the Screening for Child Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED) questionnaire for 44 participants ages 7-14 years old. 22 participants had an ASD diagnosis and 22 did not. Strange Stories assesses ability to accurately use ToM to answer questions about characters’ mental states in fictional stories. The SCARED questionnaire is completed by parents to evaluate how much anxiety is typically experienced by the child. From these data, the correlation between ToM accuracy and total anxiety score will be examined. Differences in ToM and anxiety scores between groups will also be investigated. The results could allow for better understanding of ToM and anxiety in children with and without autism.