The Early Childhood Emotion Project
The Early Childhood Emotion Project examines how young children’s emotion and memory develops in early childhood. More specifically, this study investigates whether children can correctly identify emotions from photographs and stories, as well as whether they can regulate their own emotions. Children’s emotion will be examined along with important cognitive and academic skills, such as working memory, math, and vocabulary. We are also interested in examining how brain wave activity and heart rate are related to these abilities during childhood. What we learn from this study will help us better understand how important both emotions and cognitive skills are in our early development.
This study is currently recruiting child (5-7 years old) participants.
The Metacognition Study
The metacognition study investigates possible factors that may put students at greater risk or protect them against negative health and academic outcomes. More specifically, this study examines links between undergraduate students’ adaptive and maladaptive metacognitive processes (cognitive processes responsible for the monitoring, evaluation, interpretation, organization and regulation of the content of cognitions), coping, and interpersonal factors, on their levels of stress and anxiety and academic achievement. Results from this study will allow us to better understand the way in which these factors can contribute to negative outcomes for students such as stress, anxiety, depression, and lack of academic achievement.
The Sleep Study
The sleep study is a longitudinal project that examines how factors such as emotional functioning, as well as internal (e.g., emotion regulation, resiliency, coping) and external (e.g., social connections) may impact students’ sleep and subsequent academic outcomes. This study uses multiple methods such as self-report inventories and actigraphy over two time points to assess the main and interactive effects of these factors on sleep and subsequent associations with first-year academic achievement. Information gained from this study may help administrators develop programs to improve sleep on college campuses and assist incoming students on how to develop appropriate sleep routines and time management skills, and to educate them on why sleep is important to their overall health and academic performance.
Personality Characteristics and Goal-Directed Behavior
Recent work (Lueke & Skeel, 2017; Lueke & Rubinow, 2019) suggests that particular personality characteristics differentially impact men’s and women’s goal-directed behavior in the achievement domain. The present study is interested in continuing this line of research by examining additional personality characteristics, mental health, and temperamental constructs that may impact information processing and goal-directed behavior across both men and women.
Personality and Sleep Study
Sleep has been studied extensively due to its prominent role in adaptive outcomes such as promoting a sense of well-being and increased quality of life (Weinberg et al., 2016). Despite the importance of sleep, college students are highly vulnerable to sleep disturbances impairing not just their sleep quantity but quality as well (Kloss et al., 2011). Therefore, investigating possible antecedents and factors associated with poor sleep outcomes among college students has been a primary focus of sleep research. Based on previous research suggesting that personality attributes may serve as predictors of poor sleep outcomes (e.g., Cellini et al., 2017), the focus of the present investigation is to further contribute to this line of research by examining how one’s attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors are related to their sleep.
Esports Attitudes and Lifestyle Study
Electronic sports or “esports” is a form of competitive sport that involves individuals and/or teams of players who compete in organized video gaming through human-computer interfaces (Hamari & Sjoblom, 2017). Similar to more traditional athletes, esports athletes are watched and followed by millions of fans worldwide, who attend live events or tune on TV or online. Although esports has become a global phenomenon in the past decade and is currently the fastest growing sport of all time (Bonnar et al., 2019), research efforts have only scratched the surface of our understanding of factors that contribute to esports athletes’ psychological well-being compared to traditional sport athletes. The purpose of the current study is to identify factors that promote psychological well-being and sleep heath in a sample of varsity and collegiate club esports athletes. Findings from this study may inform intervention programs designed to improve performance, sleep behaviors, and health in collegiate esports athletes.