A ‘most impressive showing’

Last year, Lawrence High School senior Krishna Raghubeer presented a research paper at a regional psychology convention. This year the school will surpass that achievement, as seven seniors will offer original behavioral science research at the 25th annual Association for Psychological Science convention in Manhattan in May.
Jessica Beyer, Kelly Broshears, Brianna Curra, Victoria DiCeglio, Cheong Mi Hwang, Jennifer Kendal and Joseph Padilla will present their findings on a range of topics, including the psychology of women and families as well as educational, developmental, social and cognitive psychology.
The four-day conclave is one of the two largest gatherings of professional psychologists in the world, bringing together several thousand people to share the latest research. The Lawrence students’ projects were selected through a blind judging process in which experts in their fields of psychology knew neither the names nor the levels of education of those who submitted the research.
Dr. Stephen Sullivan, the Lawrence High social studies teacher who mentored all seven students, said that their work was judged superior to that of dozens of upper-level college undergraduates and even grad students from across the U.S. and the world. “This is undoubtedly the single most impressive showing ever by high school behavioral researchers at a scholarly symposium open to adults,” Sullivan said.
In Room 329 of the high school, nicknamed the Projects Room, the students worked independently on their research, but not alone. “We would stay after school until 9 p.m.,” said Kendal, a North Woodmere resident whose project focused on whether children of divorced parents were more likely to suffer low self-esteem. “We would help each other out so we would stay on course and not get distracted.”
Sullivan suggested topics to some of the students, while others chose subjects that interested them. Broshears, who lives in Inwood and wants to be a kindergarten teacher, examined the relationships between various perceptual tasks, such as face recognition, in grade-school-aged children.
“I like kids, and wanted to do this project,” she said. “It was interesting seeing the students take the gender face test and how the second-graders couldn’t tell the difference, but fourth-graders could.”
Beyer’s research gauged the importance of growing up in a culturally and racially diverse community — like the Lawrence School District. “The results were very promising, as it showed that diversity helped people break free of stereotypes,” said Beyer, who lives in North Woodmere. Asked about her project’s selection for the convention, she added, “Hard work pays off.”
DiCeglio focused on students who had some knowledge of government and law to learn whether there were correlations among levels of anger, disgust and moral outrage when survey subjects were shown photographs of offensive crimes. She found that those who viewed the photos were no more likely to connect those emotions than those who did not.
“It opened me up to behavioral science,” said DiCeglio, an Atlantic Beach resident who wants to study business in college. “I am ready for college,” she added, referring to all the work and late hours she and her peers put into their projects.
Padilla, extending the pioneering work of Korean researchers, explored the concept of using human-like figures in public-service advertising. He found that anthropomorphic trash cans and trees were found to be more effective in motivating teenage girls than boys. “Dr. Sullivan said, ‘Let’s do this,’ and there was a lot to do, and it got interesting,” the Inwood resident said.
Hwang, who lives in Woodmere, is the only member of the group who has decided on a college — Wellesley, in Massachusetts, one of the top liberal arts colleges in the nation. In her research, she discovered that reporting good news using social media or in-group messages was substantially less effective in maintaining friendships than face-to-face communication. “I plan on pursuing psychology in college, and this research opened me up to the field of psychology,” Hwang said.
Following up on the work of University of Nevada-Las Vegas psychologist Cortney Warren, Curra, a Lawrence resident, found that so-called “fat talk” among teenage girls was an “independent predictor” as a threat to female body image, while stress affected younger teens more.
Sullivan said that APS President Alan Kraut was so impressed with the students’ work that he wants to have a “cup of coffee or tea with the amazing youngsters who will someday be the future of psychological science.” “I just think that high school students are better than we think they are,” Sullivan said. “When they go to college they’ll know how to do some things that the other kids in their class don’t do.”

Lawrence High School student psychology projects

Student                           Project title

Jessica Beyer                    Justifying Atrocities: Moral- Disengagement, Rationalization                                        & Retrieval-Induced Forgetting

Kelly Broshears                 Hemispheric Lateralization of Grade School Children

Brianna Curra                   Fat Talk, Stress Levels, and Body Image Concerns among                                        Adolescent Girls

Victoria DiCeglio               Mock Juror Decisions and Presentation Format

Cheong Mi Hwang             Sharing Positive Events: Individual Factors in Bragging,                                          Capitalizing, and Mass-Sharing

Jennifer Kendal                 Is Family Conflict Debilitating for Adolescents? Psychological                                        Adjustment and Family Structure