Category: Faculty Partner Research

Leanne Nieforth – The current global mental health crisis highlights a need for a focus on culturally relevant and accessible mental health and education services. One such sector is incorporating horses into mental health and learning interventions.

David Purpura – Findings from previous work show that caregivers’ math anxiety moderates the positive association between caregiver–child math activities and child math outcomes. Most of this research, however, has focused on elementary school children, primarily White populations, and used mainstream measures.

Ellen Ernst Kossek – MEN’S JOURNAL – For millions of workers in corporate America, benefits are often the decisive factor when it comes to deciding between jobs. Some jobs offer more comprehensive health coverage, while others provide employees with the opportunity to further their education at a reduced cost.

Breanya Hogue – First Opinion: White Symbols of Hope or Threats to Black Youth’s Self-Perception. Toni Morrison. The Bluest Eye. The Bluest Eye is set in the 1940s following the Great Depression and captures the raw experiences of African American characters (past and present) in the midwestern and southern regions during the twentieth century.

Kimberly Updegraff – This pre-registered randomized clinical trial examined the efficacy of a prevention program on parenting of siblings and sibling relationships among Latinxs. Families were randomized to Siblings Are Special or an alternative academic skills program. Significant effects were detected for sibling-focused parenting in the expected direction for authoritarian control and non-intervention in sibling conflicts, but there were no effects for sibling relationship quality. Implications of COVID-19 and future directions are discussed.

Jorge Banda; Kelsie Muller; Libby Richards – Drawing upon the socio-ecological framework, this study examines whether the neighborhood environment moderates the relation between falling frequency and physical activity (PA) behavior among adults 55 years or older.

Heather Eicher-Miller – Wearable egocentric cameras are gaining increasing popularity for monitoring eating behaviors, as they enable users to track eating habits and analyze dietary intake, thereby offering valuable insights into dietary patterns and supporting healthier lifestyle. However, they create privacy concerns, as cameras can inadvertently capture sensitive visual information, such as faces of bystanders.

Laura Schwab-Reese – Social media platforms are used by young people experiencing abuse or neglect to disclose what they are going through and seek support. Secondary analyses of social media posts demonstrate that responses to online disclosures of child maltreatment are predominantly supportive, often providing suggestions, validation, and encouragement.

A.J. Schwichtenberg – The ability to engage in synchronous interactions develops in the first year, as infants learn to sequentially regulate prosocial behaviors. Difficulty developing competence in these early social building blocks is linked to later developmental concerns, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

A.J. Schwichtenberg – New, potentially pioneering research in the Purdue University Sleep and Developmental Studies Laboratory is examining deep sleep’s role in “sloshing” metabolic waste from the brain. The study led by A.J. Schwichtenberg and her graduate student Moon West; Yungie Tong, associate professor in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering; and his graduate student Andrew Frels has analyzed MRI and 36-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) scans of 33 adults ages 30-55 so far as they sleep.