Conferences

Lab Director Rachael Reavis & research assistant Karli Oxford-Jordan both went to national conferences this past week.

Rachael: I went to the Association for Psychological Science Conference in Chicago, where I presented a poster based on the adult sample of the Thoughtful Friends study. We had positive feedback and plan to explore one of our results further: young adults with higher intelligence engaged in more effective social problem-solving. More effective social problem solvers had higher quality friendships.

I also went to several sessions to learn about teaching, using psychology to help vulnerable populations, and technology. In addition, I was able to attend a brief workshop to learn more about the statistical program R.

Karli: I went to the International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS) in New Orleans. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to present any research, but I was excited to attend my first research conference. I saw a number of very interesting talks, most notably by Roy Dev, Karen Adolph, and Paul Bloom. I put myself out there and presented questions to a panel of researchers presenting related articles about shyness, and got excellent and supportive feedback.

The coordinators of the undergraduate portion of the conference also set up a networking event, where I spoke to a number of professors and principal investigators about their upcoming graduate student and lab manager positions. I got to meet a number of undergraduate researchers and quickly made friends with another group from Indiana. I was also very lucky to be paired with Ann Ellis, a professor at Grinnell College, who helped me navigate this conference.

New Orleans is a beautiful city and an exciting place to host a research conference. Lucky for us, ICIS will be hosted in Philadelphia in 2018!