This year, 6 students presented research at WPUPC hosted by Allegheny College.
The links below (will be) are to the pdf versions of the poster handouts. You will need a pdf viewer (e.g., Adobe Acrobat) in order
to view these files.
Alma Hollis: Enhanced lectures and active learning sessions
link students to class material through interactions with classmates, multimedia and the teacher. These approaches have
been shown to variously increase student participation, motivation, or learning. Therefore, a device or technique that
encourages all three should also be an effective learning tool. A game that was designed to do this is called PsychOUT!
Ninety undergraduate college students were surveyed to see how valuable the game was perceived to be. Overall, PsychOUT!
was highly successful in helping students review what they learned in lecture and increased participation and
motivation. Jessica Antonini & Kellie Tinnion: Sense of smell is
important to our perceptions of taste. Reformed smokers often remark that food tastes better to them after they quit
smoking. It has been argued that this is due to improved sense of smell, rather than improvement of sense of taste. The
present study directly compares taste perception (without smell or sight) of smokers and non-smokers. Participants made
taste judgments for different foods having similar textures. If smell is a critical factor in taste perception, we expect
little difference between groups. However, if smoking does affect taste, then differences should be
observed. Lanna Horn & Donya Bernier: The autokinetic effect occurs
when a stationary point of light in an otherwise darkened room is perceived as moving. This effect can be enhanced or
guided through the power of suggestion (e.g., people can be primed to see the light move and trace out certain words). One
goal of this study was to determine if the strength of the autokinetic effect was affected by the color of the stationary
light. Another goal was to determine whether visual acuity (based on whether participants required corrected or
uncorrected vision) was related to the likelihood that participants would report movement. Andrew Russell: The term paranormal can be interpreted as
referring to anything currently unexplained by science. Historically, humans have believed in strange things (e.g., the
Earth is flat, the sun orbits the Earth). However, with today's scientific progress it would stand to reason that belief
in the paranormal would be on the decline. Three psychology classes were given the Survey of Beliefs (general psychology,
cognitive psychology, and psychology of paranormal beliefs). Surveys were scored to indicate general level of skepticism.
Class survey means and the five top and bottom scoring questions were compared.