Psychology Honors Program
The University of Alabama
The Honors Program in Psychology is designed to afford qualified majors the opportunity to participate in activities preparatory for graduate training. The two-year program is research-oriented and involves interactions with selected faculty and peers in an enriched and accelerated academic environment.
Completion of the program is contingent upon the submission of an independently conducted research project equivalent in quality to a master’s thesis.
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After a competitive interview process with over 40 applicants, I was chosen for the program along with 20 other students in the 2022-2024 cohort. To date, 12 of those students remain in the program.
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This experience has been instrumental to the development of my current research skills and abilities. Through this program, I have gained experience in multiple domains of developing a research study, from coming up with a research question, writing literature reviews, contributing to IRB submission, manuscript preparation, poster presentations, and grant proposals. In my final two semesters, I expect to gain further experience in collecting observational data, writing coding scripts, conducting statistical analyses, compiling a results section, and writing a discussion section for my project.
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I am beyond thankful for my mentor, Dr. Kelsey West, and my research supervisor, Ramya Manikkan, whom I have learned so much from during these past two years. As the first undergraduate student in the Bama Baby Lab, I have had the opportunity to be involved in many aspects of developing a new lab, observed and collaborated with first- and second-year doctoral students, and been entrusted with mentoring and coordinating undergraduate research assistants, including first-semester honors program students. I am excited to finish developing my honors thesis with Dr. West and continue to work with the Bama Baby Lab in publishing my thesis and potential future collaborations.
Why I applied to the program
I wanted to join the Psychology Honors Program because I want to continue conducting research as part of my graduate education and career. I saw the Honors Program as an opportunity to learn and establish the skills needed to elevate the level of work I produce after my undergraduate studies. Further, I wanted to use my time in college to not just learn about psychology and development through my coursework but also take an active role in expanding our knowledge in both fields by conducting research through the honors program. Finally, I saw my participation in the program as an essential step in connecting my community work with a formal program of study of the dynamics of development and social interactions.
Overview of Thesis
Research Questions:
RQ 1) How does vocal turn-taking differ among autistic and neurotypical infants?
RQ 2) How does caregiver stress relate to patterns of communication among autistic infants and their caregivers?
Hypothesis 1: Caregivers and autistic infants engage in conversational turn-taking differently than caregivers and neurotypical infants.
Hypothesis 2: Caregivers of autistic infants report higher levels of parental and caregiver strain than caregivers of neurotypical infants.
Hypothesis 3: Higher caregiver strain co-occurs with reduced and varied vocal turn-taking quality between caregivers and infants.
Fall 2023
Data Collection & Analysis
Approval from the IRB to conduct in-home data collection has not yet been received. However, we have access to in-home neurotypical participants from prior work completed in Dr. Karen Adolph's lab at NYU. We plan to use this data to initially assess the coding procedure and develop scripts for data processing. We may also use this data to supplement our neurotypical participant pool, if necessary based on the time constraints of the program.
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Related Projects
This semester, I am also focused on finalizing the study protocol and coding manual. I will be learning how to write scripts in Datavyu to automatically code interpersonal pauses and simultaneous speech, following the manual transcription process.
I will also be preparing abstracts for presentation submissions to the UA Undergraduate Research and Creativity Activity Conference in March 2024 and submitting grant proposals for ASSURE funding and the ICIS travel award.
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Additional Work
While we await IRB approval, I will be developing a methods brief that looks at the importance of micro-coding in transcription practices. This will involve coding offsets [the end of vocalizations] in pre-coded transcription data and observing the impact on interpersonal communication measures. This methods brief will be submitted for publication following its completion. I also intend to present the findings of this research at the UA Undergraduate Research and Creativity Activity Conference in March 2024 and the International Congress of Infant Studies in Glasgow, Scotland in June 2024.
Spring 2023
In the second semester, I was guided in the preparation of a written research proposal that was developed under the supervision of my faculty supervisor, Dr. Kelsey West, and the department chair, Dr. Thompson Davis.
Written Products
I completed the introduction and methods section of my manuscript by writing a literature review and the proposed research methodology and data analysis of my study. Through this process, I thought critically to synthesize past research and theories, composed coherent, logical, and carefully edited prose, applied the use of APA 7 writing style, and developed strong skills at editing and revising scientific writing.
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I received a 96/100 on the 1st draft of my literature review and a 100/100 on the 1st draft of my methods section.
At the end of the semester, I submitted a revised version of my literature review and methods sections and received a 100/100.
Presentations
I led two discussions on the development of my research proposal during the semester. The first focused on the development of the research idea and detailed the relationship between prior research and the developing hypotheses. The second focused on the development of the research method and detailed the relationship between the research hypothesis and the research method. I discussed each of my measures, participant recruitment criteria, and procedure in detail.
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I received a 98/100 on my first presentation and received a 100/100 on my second presentation. I presented to my cohort and the Psychology department chair, Dr. Thompson Davis. The presentations were graded by Dr. Davis.
Introduction Presentation
Method Presentation
Dissemination
I presented a poster on my research project at the University of Alabama Undergraduate Research and Creativity Activity Conference in April 2023.
Grants
I completed a grant proposal to fund participant compensation. I was awarded a $1000 grant from the Arts & Sciences Support for Undergraduate Research (ASSURE), a unit of the College of Arts and Sciences, that provides funding for undergraduate research and creative activity.
Fall 2022
The first integral step for students in the program was finding a mentor to supervise an independent research project equivalent to a master’s thesis.
Finding a Mentor
The main activity in class this semester was listening to presentations given by faculty members in the Psychology department who were accepting honors thesis students. As I considered each presentation, I developed qualities I was looking for in a mentor:
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Able to devote time to train me as an independent researcher
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Willing to provide professional development support
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Excited to discuss research and expand to potential future projects
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Willing to provide candid and constructive feedback
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Encouraging and challenging
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I found that Dr. Kelsey West was the best fit for me as a mentor.
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Development of the Research Project
Dr. West, Ramya Manikkan, and I worked together to formulate a research question that would incorporate our shared interests.
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Dr. West's research is motivated by the concept of developmental cascades. When considering the vast array of skills that are developed within the first years of an infant's life, the Bama Baby Lab seeks to understand how infants' development across domains may be related. Dr. West's program of research uses laboratory experiments and "day-in-the-life" style observations of infants at home to document how: (1) Infants actively construct their own learning environments; (2) New skills—like learning to point, walk, or say “yes” and “no”—influence many other domains of infant learning; (3) Delays or difficulty in one domain can affect infants’ other emerging skills. The research in the Bama Baby Lab focuses on variability in developmental processes in neurotypical infants, autistic infants, and infants with language delay.
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While my research interests have become more refined over the past year, I was interested in how parental interactions were associated with infant learning. Specifically, I wanted to investigate how caregivers' attitudes toward language affected and were affected by children's language development. In addition, I was motivated by a goal of testing the effectiveness of potential interventions in improving interactional dynamics. Even though the current project is observational, rather than experimental, this goal allows me to motivate future research directions as my graduate studies expand into translational work.
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We developed a study that combined my interest in caregiver attitude and interactions with Dr. West's program of research focusing on language development in infants. We wanted to assess the development of vocal turn-taking, including interpersonal pauses, simultaneous speech, vocalization frequency, and general frequency. Specifically, we wanted to study how caregiver stress and role strain impacted this development in autistic and neurotypical infants. We know that vocal turn-taking is an important precursor to later language development. Additionally, this work has important implications for clinical services. Not only should we attend to the development of the infant, but we also need to include support and resources for their entire family system.