LIFE Fall Academy 2024

Session

Dissertation research talks

Oct 13, 2024, 3:05 PM

5. Value-based remembering across adulthood: A multi-day field study

Jasmin Brummer (University of Zurich)

10/13/24, 3:05 PM

Across adulthood, motivational orientation tends to shift from prioritizing gains to prioritizing the prevention of losses. This motivational shift also affects cognition, including declarative memory. In the present research, we investigated value-directed remembering for gain- or loss-related information in a sample of younger (18-30 years), middle-aged (31-59), and older adults (60 – 85)...

30. (Un)published: The scope of publication bias in two large German socio-economic panels

Caroline Poppa (Share Berlin)

10/13/24, 4:35 PM

Publication bias is the prioritized and selective reporting of scientifically significant results. In contrast to the widespread assumption that this bias arises primarily from editorial desk-rejections, recent research indicates that authors themselves decide much more frequently not to publish or submit their insignificant results. This can mean that a) researchers only submit significant...

14. Interpreting individual differences in declarative and procedural brain network function during grammatical processing among elementary-aged children

Analia Marzoratti (University of Virginia)

10/13/24, 5:15 PM

Long-term memory is conventionally separated into distinct, interacting subsystems: declarative (DM) and procedural memory (PM). The declarative-procedural (DP) model of language learning posits a neurocognitive shift from reliance on explicit DM retrieval to more efficient, automated PM retrieval for language processing as mastery is achieved, particularly for rule-based grammatical content....

11. Spatial navigation and memory in preschool to high school age

Lydia Brundisch (MPIB)

10/14/24, 10:20 AM

The maturation of spatially tuned cells in the hippocampus has been reliably linked to the development of superior navigational strategies and spatial memory in rodent models. However, evidence for a corresponding maturation process in humans lags behind due to methodological limitations. So far, we adapted a virtual 3-D spatial navigation task for children and adolescents and conducted a...

17. Educational expansion and changes in the social origin composition of tertiary graduates: Comparing cohorts born 1948-1992 in six countries

Kevin Schoenholzer (University of Zurich)

10/14/24, 4:30 PM

This study examines how educational expansion has impacted the social origin composition of tertiary graduates across Australia, Great Britain, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland, and the United States. Using harmonized longitudinal data from six long-running household panels via the Comparative Panel File for cohorts born between 1948 and 1992, we investigate changes in parental education...

4. Using computational modeling to formalize an integrated psychosocial theory of loneliness

Emma Toner (University of Virginia)

10/14/24, 5:10 PM

Chronic loneliness is an urgent public health crisis associated with a range of mental and physical health consequences. Though treatments for loneliness exist, they are associated with only modest reductions in loneliness, and loneliness has continued to rise in recent decades. To more effectively treat and prevent loneliness, we need a clearer understanding of why loneliness develops and...

7. Moral judgments of concealers of infectious illness

Savannah Adams (University of Michigan)

10/16/24, 10:20 AM

Current concealment literature focuses on how people may conceal identity-relevant features (e.g., sexual orientation) to avoid moral judgments and stigma, but recent research demonstrates people also conceal non-identity-relevant features, such as infectious illness. We investigated this unique concealment context by conducting multiple studies where participants read scenarios describing...

16. Educational contextual factors on developmental trajectories of emotion regulation and executive function from preschool to kindergarten

Kenn Dela Cruz (University of Virginia)

10/16/24, 1:15 PM

Significant shifts in educational contextual factors occur as preschool children transition into kindergarten (Rimm-Kaufman & Pianta, 2000). The kindergarten environment has a greater emphasis on explicit goals for literacy, numeracy, and socialization as compared to preschool settings (Haines et al., 1989). Given this qualitative shift from preschool to formal schooling, understanding how...

23. Assessing pre-service teachers’ motivational messages with a large language model

Olivia Metzner (University of Potsdam)

Theoretical Background:
Recent research has examined the relation between teacher motivational messages, teacher motivation, and student learning, primarily using student self-reports (Putwain & von der Embse, 2018; Symes & Putwain, 2016). This approach is problematic due to the susceptibility to biases in research findings (Howard, 1980; Rosenman et al., 2011). Alternative methods, such...

22. Heart-brain interactions across the lifespan and the role of the locus coeruleus

Agata Patyczek (MPIB)

The heart and brain are bidirectionally connected, integrating autonomic functions such as heart rate and blood pressure with cognitive and emotional processing. At the interface between the two lies the locus coeruleus (LC), a primary source of norepinephrine in the brain with connections to the autonomic nervous system. However, the LC is particularly vulnerable to neurodegeneration even in...

20. The savanna hypothesis: Shared vs individual environmental preferences

Elena Isenberg (MPIB)

In 1980, Gordon Orians suggested that all humans have an innate positive emotional response to savanna landscapes. The reasoning was that the savanna was the most beneficial biome for our survival in our evolutionary past. This idea was henceforth referred to as the "savanna hypothesis". The savanna hypothesis was tested in 1982 by John Balling and John Falk with images from six different...