Dr. Cervone (dcervone@uic.edu) in the Department of Psychology has two opportunities that would be a good context for senior capstone projects. Please use the contact information at the end of this message. Serious inquiries only.
Iconic memory:
This is a project that would make sense for someone interested in basic research in psychology; it's a laboratory study on a long-standing classic finding that recently has taken an interesting twist. Everybody learns in intro psychology that humans have visual sensory memory, or iconic memory. Somebody recently discovered that features of this memory vary depending on whether the stimulus materials are threatening or not. This means that emotional significance is, somehow, playing a role in information processing all the way down to iconic memory. A graduate student affiliated with the project has programmed a study that follows up on this interesting finding. She is just starting to run the study, and in all likelihood it will continue, and maybe take some additional novel turns, in the next academic year. Someone participating in this project would have a very active role in running participants and taking part in data analysis.
STEM education:
If anyone were interested in psychology and educational processes, and especially in the challenges surrounding the participation of women and minorities in science and engineering education, they might be interested in the second project. Dr. Cervone will be taking part in a study of students' perceptions of the educational environment within STEM education, and of their personal abilities to cope with challenges in this setting. This could be a highly involving capstone project, since there would be quite a lot of direct contact, in-depth, with the students who will be in the study (much more than a simple questionnaire).
It would be helpful for an interested student to be available for an informational interview to get a sense of what the projects are like. Any interested person could contact Dr. Cervone and Kendal Wong <km.epng1213@gmail.com> for the memory project or Dr. Cervone and Lara Mercurio who is working on the STEM project <lara.mercurio@gmail.com>
Serious inquiries only! It would be beneficial to include a CV, research resume, relevant course list or statement of interest in your email introducing yourself and your intentions.
