Research Projects

Dealing with large-scale societal problems, such as water scarcity, often requires changes in behavior that consumers resist. Some sustainable, cost-effective, and safe solutions are even rejected because of a psychological response of disgust, such as food produced with recycled water to supplement traditional water supplies and crickets as a replacement for water-intensive proteins like beef. Adding the “right” positive elements to a stigmatized item has been shown to mitigate disgust. However, this can be difficult and expensive to do as it requires the stigmatized object to go through a process that restores its “natural” and “pure” state. This study combines fMRI and a choice experiment to test if a behavioral intervention that emphasizes the existing, positive dimensions of a stigmatized object can lessen the weight of disgust in the decision process, mitigating its effects. Results suggest that it can. A video that promotes recycled water was shown to ameliorate consumers’ aversion to food produced with it. However, consumers’ greater acceptance of recycled irrigation water came not from overcoming whatever psychological reactions of disgust they experienced but from reweighting its importance in their decisions. This novel finding will lower the burden on farmers using recycled irrigation water, and potentially producers of other stigmatized foods.

In collaboration with Dr. Sean F. Ellis

Statistical Learning refers to the innate human ability to learn statistical regularities and discern patterns from the information-rich environment. While the relationship between statistical learning and reading abilities has been widely studied, the neural processes underlying both the familiarization and testing of auditory and visual statistical learning, as well as their connection to reading, remain less understood. In our large-scale fMRI study, we investigated the neural mechanisms involved in both the familiarization and retrieval phases of statistical learning across visual and auditory modalities. We had several behavioral measures assessing fluency in reading and speech via offline tasks outside the MRI scanner. We recently finished collecting data and also completed a few studies on anatomical/volumetric correlates, white matter microstructural correlates with DTI, and functional brain activation.

Supervisor: Dr. Jaqueline Cummine

The brainstem, despite its vital role in the nervous system, remains understudied compared to the cerebral cortex and cerebellum, largely due to its structural complexity and high anatomical variability. Currently, no fully standardized protocol exists for the complete anatomical segmentation of the brainstem. Our project aims to address this gap by developing a segmentation protocol specifically targeting the cranial nerve nuclei for CN-XII (hypoglossal nerve), CN-V (trigeminal nerve), and CN-VII (facial nerve) using T1-weighted MR images from 220 human subjects. While still in the early stages, this initiative seeks to provide more precise neuroanatomical insights into this critical region of the human nervous system enabling further studies concerned with swallowing, speech, and more.

Supervisors: Dr. Jacqueline Cummine and Dr. Daniel Aalto

Confirmation bias refers to the cognitive tendency to seek, interpret, and favor information that aligns with one's pre-existing beliefs, while giving less consideration to evidence that challenges those beliefs. While confirmation bias has been widely studied in various contexts, little is known about how increased attentiveness might influence biased information interpretation. To address this gap, we investigated the impact of attentiveness on confirmation bias, defined here as the tendency to evaluate belief-confirming arguments as more convincing than belief-disconfirming ones. We tested in an experiment whether focusing participants' attention through comprehension testing would reduce their bias when evaluating economic arguments for and against raising the minimum wage. Our findings showed that increased attentiveness marginally reduced the convincingness of belief-confirming arguments, while having no effect on disconfirming arguments, suggesting a modest decrease in overall confirmation bias.

Supervisors: Dr. Kyle Nash