Kate Davis ’20 and Hannah Hanson ’22 conducted a SCOPE project under the supervision of Professor of Psychology Fay Guarraci, which was recently published in Physiology & Behavior. This collaboration also involved Jessica Bolton ’10, who will soon begin a tenure-track position at Georgia State University. Davis, a current graduate student in the Department of Neuroscience at The University of Texas at Austin, designed the project, and together, the team found that using an animal model of poverty caused long-term deleterious effects on reproductive physiology and behavior. Neonatal poverty disrupted maternal behavior, which accelerated physiological maturation in females but delayed sexual maturation in males. However, both male and female rats displayed enhanced sexual motivation. These results have implications for precocious sexual behavior and disrupted puberty in children who are born into poverty. This research was also supported by a Sam Taylor Award. 

Recent alumni Maryam Ali ’20, Michael Broyle  ’20, Kate Davis  ’20, Chantal Gonzalez  ’19, Devon Lucero  ’19, and Lainey Stary  ’19 and Professor of Psychology Fay Guarraci  published a new research project investigating the long-term effects of neonatal exposure to a component of soy (genistein) on male and female reproductive physiology and behavior in the journal Behavioural Pharmacology.  Although this research was conducted in rats, it suggests that there may be some consequences of feeding neonates soy-based formula.

For the first time, members of Professor of Psychology Fay Guarraci’s  team of researchers, the Guarraci Lab, had two articles accepted for publication as companion papers in the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior.  These two papers reflect a collaboration between the Guarraci Lab and Sarah Meerts from Carleton College and her student. The SU coauthors include current psychology major Shannon Odell  ’20; recent psychology graduates Kate Davis  ’20, Wes Clemmons  ’20, and Beth Henneman  ’20; Maryam Ali  ’19 (biology); as well as alumnae Chantal Gonzalez  ’19 (psychology) and Devon Lucero  ’19 (animal behavior). The first article is titled “I. Antidepressants and Sexual Behavior: Weekly Ketamine Injections Increases Sexual Behavior Initially in Female and Male Rats.” This work was supported by multiple SCOPE awards and a Sam Taylor Award. The second article is titled “II: Antidepressants and Sexual Behavior: Acute Fluoxetine, but not Ketamine, Disrupts Paced Mating Behavior in Sexually Experienced Female Rats.”

Assistant Professor of Psychology Carin Perilloux presented a poster with her collaborator Dr. Jaime Cloud (Western Oregon University) at the evolutionary psychology pre-conference at the annual meeting of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) in New Orleans, LA. You can download an image of the poster, “Women with Attractive Faces Want it All,” here.

Daniela Beckelhymer ’20 and Emily Thompson ’22 presented “Who Feels the Tingles? The Emotional Side of ASMR” at the emotion pre-conference with Assistant Professor of Psychology Carin Perilloux at the annual meeting of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) in New Orleans, LA. This poster is based on work completed on a 2019 SCOPE project.

Associate Professor of Psychology Erin Crockett presented a poster with students MacKenzie Maddox ’19, Athena Pinero ’20, and Aaron Mink ’21 titled “Is Emotional Suppression All Bad? The Consequences Associated with Suppressing Negative and Positive Emotions” at the annual meeting of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) in New Orleans, LA. This research was the result of a faculty-student research project in the summer of 2019.

Professor of Psychology Traci Giuliano presented a poster titled “A 3-Pronged Approach for Teaching Psychology Students to Understand and Avoid Plagiarism” at the teaching pre-conference of the annual meeting of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) in New Orleans, LA.

Professor of Psychology Fay Guarraci, Chantal Gonzalez ’19,  Devon Lucero’19, Kate Davis’20, and Sarah Meerts, an associate professor of neuroscience and psychology at Carleton College, published a longitudinal study in the journal Current Aging Science titled “Sexual Behavior Is Enhanced by Regular, Repeated Mating Behavior from Young Adulthood to Middle Age in Female Long-Evans Rats.”