Category: Faculty Partner Research

Laura Elenbaas – Despite the benefits to children, intergroup peer interactions make some parents uncomfortable. Drawing on social identity theory and an integrated stereotyping framework, this study investigated how US parents’ discomfort with their children’s potential intergroup interactions might differ by child and peer group gender, race, and social class.

Nasreen Lalani – Black/African American women with breast and gynecologic cancers face stark end-of-life (EOL) inequities rooted in structural racism, gendered oppression, and financial toxicity. Despite abundant evidence of outcome gaps, theory-driven guidance for equitable, culturally responsive EOL care is limited.

David Purpura – Developmental and cognitive theories posit varying relations among skills across age and ability level. Differentiation hypotheses propose skills become less correlated across development in the childhood years (age differentiation) and as abilities increase (ability differentiation).

Cordelia Running – Sweetness plays a powerful role in food preferences due to its innate, hedonic appeal even in the womb and infancy. However, although data consistently indicate sweetness triggers reward pathways in the brain, the practical measurement of “sweetness liking” shows wide variability.

Leanne Nieforth – What if the wag of a tail or a comforting purr could do more than make your day, it could help save your life? That’s the compelling idea behind a recent scoping review published in Healthcare, exploring whether pets might influence suicide risk. With suicide remaining a global health crisis, claiming over 700,000 lives annually, the search for effective prevention strategies has never been more urgent.

Sooyeon Jeong – Natural and idiomatic expressions are essential for fluent, everyday communication, yet many second-language learners struggle to acquire and spontaneously use casual slang despite strong formal proficiency. To address this gap, we designed and evaluated an LLM-powered, task-based role-playing game in which a GPT-4o-based Game Master guides learners through an immersive, three-phase spoken narrative.

Xinran Lehto – This article offers a critical reappraisal of contemporary research at the intersection of aging, technology, and travel, drawing on tourism studies and interdisciplinary advancements in assistive technology, human factors engineering, and public health. It identifies key conceptual gaps in how tourism and hospitality have addressed the evolving needs, capacities, and aspirations of older travelers.

AJ Schwichtenberg – Sleep is a common concern raised at well-child visits, which may stem in part from parental uncertainty around what is expected for toddler sleep. Despite recent attempts to classify normative sleep using large samples, there are notable gaps in existing studies and how they inform parental sleep expectations.Sleep is a common concern raised at well-child visits, which may stem in part from parental uncertainty around what is expected for toddler sleep. Despite recent attempts to classify normative sleep using large samples, there are notable gaps in existing studies and how they inform parental sleep expectations.

Arielle Borovsky – We tested the hypothesis that Parkinson’s disease (PD) impairs verbs’ event structures and/or sensory-motor semantic features, as suggested by theories of grounded cognition. Nineteen participants with PD and 16 age-matched Controls produced verbs and used a Likert scale to rate verbs’ event-based association with instruments (e.g. fork – eating versus bathing) and locations (e.g. airport – waiting versus singing).

Sooyeon Jeong – While the efficacy of social robots in supporting people in learning tasks has been extensively investigated, their potential impact in assisting students in self-studying contexts has not been investigated much. This study explores how a social robot can act as a peer study companion for college students during self-study tasks by delivering task-oriented goal reminder and positive emotional support.