Senior Essays

This page lists all of the senior projects from previous cognitive science majors, organized by year. If a project title is blue, you may click on it to download a PDF of it. For current majors, you can find a guide to research and the senior thesis at this link.

CLASS OF 2024 

STUDENT SENIOR PROJECT TITLE ADVISOR
Yaara Aybar Seeing the Future Self: Effects of Dynamic Age Visualizations on Intertemporal Decision-Making Gal Zauberman
Mikayla Barber The Relationship Between Lifetime Substance Use and Cost Weighing in a Loss-Based Probabilistic Learning Task Arielle Baskin-Sommers
Steve Blanco The social Bouba-Kiki effect: the liking bias induced by face-name congruence in moral character assessments Isaac Davis
Mina Caraccio Impartial beneficence predicts greater moral concern for socially distant others—but not at the expense of close relationships Margaret Clark
Jessie Cheung Societal evaluations of ChatGPT-generated ethnic-minority cultural narratives Isaac Davis
Mikheil Gabashvili Mindsharing: implicit motivation to reveal preference strength Julian Jara-Ettinger
Gillian Gold Exploring the Association Between Educational Attainment and White Matter Integrity in Adults Dylan Gee
Brendon Gong Investigating Compact 3D-CNN Configurations for MRI-based Detection of Alzheimer’s Disease Priya Panda
Cora Hagens Exploring the Impact of Psychological Motivators and Political Context on the Development of Climate Efficacy Beliefs Marija Verner
Charlotte Harrington Riddle Me This: An Exploratory Analysis of Stumper Riddles Shane Frederick
Harry Keenan Awe and Empathy: A Reductionist Perspective on the Relationship Wendy Berry Mendes
Ihtesham Khan Susceptibility to Sunk Cost Fallacy: Individualistic vs. Collectivist Cultures Isaac Davis
Victoria Lacombe Beyond Audit Studies: Redefining Discrimination through the Interplay of Sociological and Cognitive Perspectives Issa Kohler-Hausmann
Shen-Vey Lai Decoding Consensus Anger: Examining the Role of Faces and Facial Action Units (AUs) in Anger-Speci c Emotion Segmentation Maria Gendron
Zoe Larkin So Funny I Forgot to Think: The Effect of Humor on Belief Formation Ravi Dhar
Connor Lee Unveiling Moral Dimensions in Artificial Intelligence: A Comparative Analysis of Large Language Models and Human Perspectives Isaac Davis
Demi Lee Enhancing Education Through Trust: A Gendered Analysis of Student-Instructor Interactions Mark Graham
Mark Matera Preferences for Exploration as a Function of Cognitive Ability: Investigating Human Decision-Making in the Exploration-Exploitation Dilemma Using Obscured Topographic Maps Shane Frederick
Felix Mebius Absentminded Selfishness? How Observed Time Pressure Influences Inference of Social Value Orientation Isaac Davis
Alyssa Michel Knowledge Trumps Exposure: The Implications of Critical Black History on Interracial Relations Wendy Berry Mendes
Lydia Monk You’re Hot and You’re Warm: An Investigation into Scalar Implicature Processing Costs and Time Course Maria Piñango
Kayla Morgan Effects of Melodic Expectations on Induced Auditory Hallucinations Al Powers
Kirin Mueller Examining the Increased Processing Load of Long-Distance Dependencies and Aspectual Verbs in Neurocognitively Healthy Individuals: Toward a Diagnostic Test for Language Deficits in Neuro-Oncology Maria Piñango
Katie Nail Fostering Care : Impacts of Childhood Trauma on Cognitive Development, Life Outcomes, and Welfare Policy Andrea Asnes
Tramy Nguyen Efficacy of Attention Networks in Borderline Personality Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sara Fineberg
Jennifer Okolo Minds in Motion: Modeling the Trajectory of Cognitive and Motivational Development Across Childhood to Mid-Adolescence Youngsun Cho
Toni Oluwatade The Heart-Mind Connection: Language Preference and Linguistic Competence Among Yoruba-English Bilinguals Maria Piñango
Shruti Parasarathy The Art of Wellness: Developing and Testing the Feasibility, Acceptability, and Preliminary Efficacy of a 4- Week, Digital Mindfulness-Based Indian Classical Dance Intervention, Mindful Kala, for University Students James Floman
Nick Phillips Enhancing Perceptions of Stress Zoe Chance
Samantha Prince Discovering the Linguistic Semantic Composition Network An fMRI Meta-Analysis and Contrast Study on Linguistic Semantic Composition Maria Piñango
Kris Qiu The diagnostic disconnect: autism as an identity and the role of the Internet Fred Volkmar
McKenna Ragen Kindness and Gratitude Interventions and Their Impact on Well-Being Laurie Santos
Ariana Reichler Exploring Associations Between Childhood Unpredictability, Emotional Memory, and Psychopathology Dylan Gee
Nathalia Reis Catching Cheaters: Examining the Role of Perspective on Cheater Detection in Social Contracts Nicolo Cesana-Arlotti
Danny Rodriguez Powerball, Coin Tosses, and the Kentucky Derby: A Neuroeconomic Analysis of Risk Aversion, Gambling Prevalence, and Delayed Gratification across Socioeconomic and Political Spectra Isaac Davis
Elana Rothberg Why Buy a Birkin? How Quality, Status, and Heritage Affect Consumer Economic Valuation of Luxury Bags Isaac Davis
Chris Song For God, For Ministry, and For Yale: Analyzing the effects of ingroup/outgroup cognition in a church environment Isaac Davis
Joey Utomo The Fauna Naming Test: A new naming task for the localization of naming impairments in left temporal lobe epilepsy Christopher Benjamin
Naheem Watson Technology and Trust: Using and Analyzing Digital Tools to Address ADHD Disparities in Black Communities Isaac Davis
Annie Yan Addressing disagreement on acquisition of disjunctive syllogism through an analysis of study design Isaac Davis

 

CLASS OF 2023 

STUDENT SENIOR PROJECT TITLE ADVISOR
Kwaku Acquah Stuck in Their Ways: The Effects of Age and Stress on Belief Flexibility Wisteria Deng & Jutta Joormann
Addison Beer Just a Press: The Impact of Simple Motor Action on the Statistical Learning of Visual Sequences Samuel McDougle
Ilyana Bejelloun I Am the River and the River is Me: Anthropomorphic Language and Environmental Personhood in the Rights of Nature Movement Frank Keil
Michael Bochkur Dratver An empirical study of public perception of essentialism and its association with prejudice towards Black, woman, gay, and Jewish social categories Yarrow Dunham
Konrad Collins Optimizing Education: Mindset, Other Traits, and the Roles They Play in Child Development Mark Graham
Elena DeBre Hidden Scars: The Cost of Sacrificing Morality Steven Marans
Carla Descombes Beyond Brushstrokes: Uncovering and Moderating the Bias against AI-Generated Art Ravi Dhar
Jared Fel Automated and manual segmentation of the hippocampus in human infants Nick Turk-Browne
Mourad Frishkopf An Experimental and Simulative Proposal: Investigating Semantic Structure through Grammatical Person, Aspect, and Mood Maria Pinango
Marissa Healy Taking Charge: How parents’ beliefs about their children’s learning impact over- engagement Julia Leonard & Reut Shachani
Daniel Inojosa Toward a Cognitive Critique of Culture: “Historicizing” and Temporalizing Psychology Through Living Indigenous Relationalities Isaac Davis
Raime Jones Psychological Connectedness and Addiction: Do Addicts Perceive Their Future Self as a Different Person? Gideon Yaffe
Reese Koppel Overprecision in Confidence Intervals Shane Frederick
Allie Liebmann Find the Matching Word:A Visual World Paradigm Study of Written Word Recognition in Children Richard Aslin & Erin Isbilen
Silver Liftin Talking Tigers and Other Distortions of Reality: Examining Remission Rates Within the Clinical High Risk for Psychosis Population Tyrone Cannon
Kincaid MacDonald Metaphors as Conceptual Compressions Isaac Davis
Jaret Malouf Linguistic tools for building social momentum Shane Frederick
Nicholas Marinaj The Relationship between Need for Cognition and Framing Effects in Financial Decision-Making Isaac Davis
Michelle Marti Ideas of Reparations in Children Yarrow Dunham
Diego Miro Rivera The Mind Represents Space in Multiple Formats Simultaneously Frank Keil & Sami Yousif
Clare Naughton Beyond Entertainment: How Entertainment Media Can Combat Prejudice and Foster Long-Term Social Tolerance, Turning a Potentially Dangerous Tool into a Catalyst for Positive Change Melissa Ferguson
Noah Norman From Flexible to Fixed: Parents believe children’s interests become less malleable with age Julia Leonard
Vishwa Padigepati FIRE and Future: The Role of Future Visualization in the Willingness to Commit to the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) Movement Gal Zauberman
Aram Russell Different Substance Use Motivations Relate to Differential Integration of Cost Information in Effort-Based Decision-Making Arielle Baskin-Sommers
T. Scarborough Humor and Resonance: A Novel Presuppositional Approach to Comedy Jason Stanley
Stella Sekoff Climate Cognition: Investigating International Climate Change Risk Perceptions Jennifer Marlon
Vanya Shivanshankar Investigating Changes in Adult Pupil Diameter in Response to the Multisensory Cocktail Party Problem David Lewkowicz
Katherine Skoff How do we decide where to donate? Social Influence and Charity Selection Deborah Small
Jes Springer The Power of Co-Creating Knowledge: Folk Theories of Normal and Possible . Robin Dembroff
Alexandra Truwit Why CEOs Need Emotional Intelligence Zoe Chance
Doga Uenlue It is like Talking to a Brick Wall: The Effect of Political Groups on Judgments of Mental Fixity Melissa Ferguson
Sarah Valeika A Study of Maternal Interaction and Rearing Conditions in Rhesus Macaque Neurobehavioral Development Amanda Dettmer
Vivian Wang Here it comes: Active forgetting triggered even just by anticipation of an impending event boundary Brian Scholl
Nyla Williams Fair Game? Investigating Children’s Bargaining Behaviors in the Presence of Outside Options Yarrow Dunham & Sifana Sohail
Nancy Wu Bridging the Mental Health Gap: Increasing Access to Treatment for Low-level Mental Illness in China with AI-powered Therapy Chatbots Bradford Martins
Lauren Yoon Prada, Chanel, and YSL, “Who cares?”: Addressing the Motives for Luxury Consumption Margaret Clark
Adam Zhang Fostering Creative Thinking in Human Groups using Autonomous Bots Nicholas Christakis

 

CLASS OF 2022 

STUDENT SENIOR PROJECT TITLE ADVISOR
Valerie Akinyoyenu A Matter of Time: Temporally distancing from historical racism is related to overestimates of racial economic equality Jennifer Richeson
Mafalda von Alvensleben (Re)framing Disability: a case for the importance of social-identity approaches to disability in cognitive science Molly Crockett
Hannah Armistead An Exploration of the Psychological Factors Underlying Conflict Aversion Ifat Levy
Cameron Berg Social Group Size Modulates Human Reinforcement Learning Strategies. Exploring the Computational Underpinnings of Human Reward-Seeking in Social Environments Samuel McDougle
Anika Bhargava Accent Perception as a Driver of In-Group Bias Jason Shaw
Mikaela Boone Demographic Moderators on the Efficacy of a Large-Scale Positive Psychology Intervention Laurie Santos
Rachel Calcott An Investigation into the Role of Relational Context in Perceptions of Identity Change Brian Earp, Joshua Knobe, and Molly Crockett
Brendan Campbell Meant to be Good, or Meant to be Good at Being Good? Investigating Criteria of Life Purpose Joshua Knobe
Zola Canady Virtual Reality and Rehabilitation for Justice-Involved Populations Michael Kraus
Aparajita Chauhan Effects of Visualization on Athletic Performance Samuel McDougle
Sarah Chiang One-to-one: Children’s understanding of gesture as tallying Julian Jara-Ettinger, Peggy Li, and Susan Carey
Braden Cody Unequal Treatment: Perceptions of Manipulation in Experimental Design Ravi Dhar
Ariel Cohen Giving What and How We Can: The Impact of Charitable Giving on Career Choices Ravi Dhar
Conor Downey Group Trustworthiness and Moral Assessment: A Pilot Study Brian Scholl
Chloe Fink Rehabilitating the Innocent: Reported Beliefs about what Exonerees’ Deserve Post-Wrongful Incarceration and Individuals Actual Willingness to Integrate Exonerees into Society Tom Tyler
Aya Hall Ethos, pathos, logos in legal argumentation Guilherme Almeida
Julia Hu Temporal Contagtion and Moral Judgment Gal Zauberman
Jen Huang Innovation and Decision-Making Structures in Teams Florian Ederer
Kyle Johnson Hypothetical psychedelic drug use for treatment versus enhancement: an experimental bioethics study into public attitudes Setphen Latham
Alexandra Jones The Pain of Paying: The Impact of Tangibility on Consumer Purchase Decisions Ravi Dhar
Caroline Kindler Smash your phone Jason Stanley
Sonia Lingos-Utley Evaluating the Psychological Explanations Behind Millennials Obsession with Frozen Pre-made Foods Samuel McDougle
Eric Liu Facial Homophily in Human Social Networks Nicholas Christakis
Carolyne Newman American children’s and adults’ attitudes towards immigrants to and from the United States Yarrow Dunham
Valerie Nguyen State-Level Interference Effect of Statistical Learning on Episodic Encoding Nick Turk-Browne
Alan Presburger How Relational Context Shapes the Expression of Emotions Margaret Clark
Jacob Rhee Investigating the Importance of Socio-Academic Interactions in Online Learning Kenneth Pugh
Adam Rothman No evidence that brief algorithm literacy education corrects polarizing effects of social media newsfeeds William Brady and Molly Crockett
Nicholas Ryan-Schreiber Mitochondrial Function and Ambiguity Processing Bias in Honeybees: implications for the neurobiological underpinnings of common psychiatric disorders. Benjamin Kelmendi
Maya Sanghvi Resolving Conflict: Conscientiousness and Subjective Probability Mediate Choices Under Uncertainty Ifat Levy
Allie Schneider Under Pressure: Evaluating Psychological Distress Among Young Children and Caregivers During the COVID-19 Pandemic Walter Gilliam
Lydia Schooler Confidence in Moral Decision-Making Molly Crockett
Brooke Schwind Conceptualizing Coercion: Examining Folk Intuitions of Coercion in Societally Sanctioned Punishment Mechanisms Guilherme Almeida
Eden Senay A Token for Your Thoughts? Exploring How Children Perceive the Mind and Morality of Artificial Intelligence Molly Crockett
Amy Shteyman Dynamic Mitochondrial Cristae Remodeling During Neuronal Synaptic Plasticity Elizabeth Jonas
Ely Sibarium The Combined Effects of Cochlear Implantation and American Sign Language on Early Literacy Kenneth Pugh
Kira Sze Storybooks as Tools to Teach External and Internal Reasoning: How Priming Children With External or Internal Reasoning Affects Beliefs About Socioeconomic Inequality Yarrow Dunham
Serena Thaw-Poon Interpretive Bias in Adolescents: A Pilot Study on the Use of Event-Related Potentials to Differentiate Social Anxiety Responses to Ambiguity Michael Crowley
Kaori West Reimagining Race: An Exercise in Futurity Yarrow Dunham
Georgia Woscoboinik The Effect of Domain on Lay Intuitions of Psychological Trait Heritability Yarrow Dunham

 

CLASS OF 2020 

STUDENT SENIOR PROJECT TITLE ADVISOR
Ashna Aggarwal Stress-Induced Relapse to Nicotine Seeking: Mechanistic Effect of Guanfacine in Male Mice Marina Picciotto
Naima Amraan Self-Other Discrepancies in Context- Dependent Risky Choices Nathan Novemsky
Mary Baumann Analogies, Content Knowledge, and Implications on Learning Frank Keil
Shruti Baxi Extrospection and the Racial Income Gap: Putting Yourself in Someone Else’s Skin Shane Frederick
Kayleigh Bishop Towards Flexible Referring Expression Generation for a Collaborative Robot Brian Scassellati
Tyler Bleuel Is the Price Right?: An Examination of Compensatory Damages to Understand Taboo Trade-Offs George Newman
Lydia Buonomano Cognitive Substrates of Belief in Fake News Tyrone Cannon
Lukas Burger Mental Inference: Mind perception as Bayesian model selection Julian Jara-Ettinger
Hannah Burgess Robot Moderation of Hot Topic Political Conversations Brian Scassellati
Marina Cisneros On ‘Electability:’ The Influence of Epistemic Injustice on the 2020 Primary Election Jason Stanley
Devon Doheny Direct and Mediated Learning in Hallucinating Rats Jane Taylor
Farhha Feroz The Potential of Behavioral Economics in the Characterization of Anxiety Disorder Comorbidities in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder Fred Volkmar
Jazzy Fisher Cultural Opacity Mindset: Exploring Barriers & Conduits to Cross-Cultural Collaboration Maria Gendron
Ellie Garland Stories of Migration: Indirect Contact Theory & the Power of Narrative to Improve Attitudes toward an Outgroup Jason Stanley
Amelia Haynes Exploring Relations Between Psychopathy, Resting State Delta, and Performance on an Attention Bottleneck Task Arielle Baskin-Sommers
Claire Hu The Light Switch of the Brain: How the Thalamus Drives Cortical Conscious-Linked Activity Hal Blumenfeld
Lotta Keller “Tu me gustas, but do you like me?”: Quantifying Affective and Political Response to Political Code-Switching Maria Gendron
Jocelle Marius The Challenges of Intergroup Communication: Warmth and Competence Perception Differences During Interracial Mentorship John Dovidio
Cameron Martel Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news David Rand and Gordon Pennycook
Louisa Nordstrom The Effect of Differential Spatiotemporal Contexts on the Perceptual Saliency of Animacy, Emotion, and Intentionality Brian Scassellatti
Will Oles Social Correlates of Depression in Honduran Village Networks Nicholas Christakis
Daniel Rice Treating Tobacco Use Disorder: Neural Mechanisms and Comparative Efficacy Hedy Kober
Sidney Saint-Hilaire What is Enough? Examining Americans’ Estimates of a Living Wage Michael Kraus and Jun Won Park
Leslie Schneider The Effect of Relational Reasoning on Young Children’s Self-Resemblance Preference Yarrow Dunham and Karen Wynn
Gabriella Seo Children’s Concepts of Institutional Groups Yarrow Dunham
Tamar Sifri Seminal Systems: Dual Process Theory and Lay Perceptions of Authenticity George Newman
Mariana Suárez-Rebling Autism education for caretakers: Tracing the evolution of the disorder and its impact on the education of caretakers and teachers of children with autism Fred Volkmar
Anna Thorndike Aversive Learning and Discrimination: The Impact of Monetary Loss on Visual Perception Ifat Levy
Sarah Widder Syntactically-Constrained Paraphrase Generation with Tree-Adjoining Grammar Robert Frank

CLASS OF 2019 

STUDENT SENIOR PROJECT TITLE ADVISOR
Alexander Wisowaty Group Human-Robot Interaction: A Review Marynel Vázquez
Adoración Guzmán García Seeking of Confirmatory and Disconfirmatory Information by Children Mark Sheskin
Alex Wang Intersectionality and Daily Affective Experiences of LGBT People Maria Gendron
Andrew Del Vecchio Procedural Justice in the Connecticut Correctional System: An Exploration of Correlates and Modifications through an Intervention Program Arielle Baskin-Sommers
Bianca Li Beyond Discrete Categories: Young Children Fail to Privilege Categories when Shared Preferences Compete Yarrow Dunham and Ashley E. Jordan
Celia Crum Venting: Combatting the Globalizing Influence of Specific Judgments Shane Frederick and Guy Voichek
Daniel Do Goodness, Realness, and True Love Joshua Knobe and Brian Earp 
Darwin Edwards III Professor Cyborg: Exploring the Impact of New Technologies on Learning Outcomes and Cognitive Pedagogy Mark Sheskin
Ellis Burgoon Miskell Differences in Acceptability Ratings of Incorporation Structures in French and English Speakers Maria Pinñango and Mark Sheskin
Eugine Szeto Exploring Relations Between Ambiguities in Product Designs and Sentences Shane Frederick
Evelyn Roberts Teamwork and Social Robots: Examining Forced Participation Within Group Endeavors Brian Scassellati
Evin Henriquez-Groves Distinguishing the Impact of Child Maltreatment and Exposure to Violence on Neuropsychological Measures and Academic Functioning Arielle Baskin-Sommers and Suzanne Estrada
Georgi Dumanov The Effect of Time on Moral Judgment George Newman
Imani George Who, What, Where? How Information on Product Production Affects Consumer Perceptions George Newman and Minju Han
Kacey Fang All the lonely people: the relationship of loneliness and social isolation to age-related changes in brain structure Steve Chang and Avram Holmes
Katherine Hong The Effect of Exposure to Violence on Trustworthiness Perception Arielle Baskin-Sommers
Kiarra Alleyne Where Should They Sit?: Infant and Toddler’s Expectations about Third-Party Affiliation Based on Gender Karen Wynn and Lisa Chalik
Ladan Mohamed Moral Decision Making in Adults with Autism: The Role of Capacity in Blame Assignments Fred Volkmar
Levi Truong Signs of Social Class and Anxiety Michael Kraus and Brittany Torre
Maxwell Greene Parahippocampal Fos-Like Immunoreactivity After Incidental Association Formation in Rats Jane Taylor and Leah Fleming
Maya Rodriguez The Anchoring Effect and Moral Judgements Paul Bloom and Matthew Jordan
Noorisingh Saini Streaming Now: The Effect of Live Streaming and Temporal Distance on Emotions and Closeness George Newman
Phillip Vorster Clinical Cognitive Screening: A Study Done with Chiari Malformation I Patients Christopher Benjamin
Shelby Kennedy Best Practices for Replicable Research on Gender Differences Mark Sheskin
Zachary Balleisen On the Origins of Polarized Risk Assessment Dan Kahan

CLASS OF 2018 

STUDENT SENIOR PROJECT TITLE ADVISOR
Aviva Abusch Dylan Gee
Maxim Baranov
 Brian Scassellati
Stephen Barmore Evaluating Differing Proportions of Text and Image Fixation During User Internet Experience Joy Hirsch
Spencer Birney Crime, Punishment, and Abuse: The Effect of Post-Crime Mitigating Evidence on Sentencing Decisions George Newman
Sam Bowers Laurie Santos
Lilla Brody
Defying Empathy: Applying Criticisms of Empathy to Maximize the Utility of Arts-Based Empathy Training Programs
 Mark Sheskin
Brooks Butler  David L. Katz
Jason Campbell Michael J. Crowley
Amrutha Dorai Theories of Intelligence, Metacognition, and Teaching Strategies in Student Achievement Mark Graham
Kyle Hietala Conceptualizing and Studying Free Will Belief and Disbelief Thomas H. Brown
Victor Hunt Problems in Pedagogy: Teaching Deficits in an In-Lab Sample Julian Jara-Ettinger
Adam Lowet Seeing structure: Shape skeletons modulate perceived similarity Chaz Firestone and Brian J. Scholl
Michaela Macdonald Worker changes in effort and perceptions of fairness in response to leader management strategy David Rand and Gordon Kraft-Todd
Damla Ozdalga Fake News and Social Endorsement Cues: Do the Number of Likes, Shares and Comments Influence Engagement with Inaccurate News Articles? David Rand and Gordon Pennycook
Andi Peng Brian Scassellati
Jacob Prince
Covert metrics of conscious visual perception: Pupil, microsaccade and blink dynamics
 Hal Blumenfeld
Aaron Resnick Ravi Dhar
Amanda Royka Metacognition across domestication: A comparison of dogs and dingoes Angie M. Johnston and Laurie Santos
Kacie Saxer-Taulbee Expectations of Rationality in Rhesus Macaques (Macaca mulatta) and Dogs (Canis familiaris) Laurie Santos
Genevieve Simmons Regulation of Craving: Stress and Anxiety in Cigarette Smokers Hedy Kober
Michael Tappel Moral beliefs and intuitions about the true self predict responses to precommitment dilemmas Molly Crockett
Harrison Tracy Crowding Out and Competition in Charitable Giving: The Impact of Thank- You Gift Incentives George Newman
Tara Venkatesan Beliefs about Authentic Music George Newman and Joshua Knobe

CLASS OF 2017

STUDENT SENIOR PROJECT TITLE ADVISOR
Selena Anjur-Dietrich Diversity and Quality of Institutions: Fostering Prosociality toward Outgroup Members David Rand
Eryk Banatt Input Latency Detection in Expert-Level Games: An experiment in visuomotor perception Brian Scholl and Stefan Uddenberg
Nathaly Basto Camargo Human Relationships: A Systematic Review of the Outcomes of Intergenerational Programs Claudia Valeggia and Melanie Martin
Kevin Blohm What have we learned in non-human primate behavioral economics Mark Sheskin
Hatice Nur Eken The Impact of Psychopathic Traits and Anxiety on Responses to Social Exclusion in Adolescents and Young Adults Arielle Baskin-Sommers
Grant Fergusson Your Mind on Politics: exploring a theory of identity fusion during the 2016 presidential election Yarrow Dunham and Antonia Misch
Angelica Fuentes Effects of Pharmacological Manipulations on Natural Social Interaction in Rhesus Macaques: A Pilot Investigation  Steve Chang
Rachel Ha I’d Rather Hear From the Robot: The Potential for Social Robots As Evaluators That Provide Negative Performance Feedback  Brian Scassellati and Sarah Strohkorb
Darby Henry The Influence of Neuroscientific Evidence on Mock Jurors Hedy Kober and Gideon Yaffe
Paul Holden Dogs Do Not Change Their Problem Solving Strategies After Receiving Pedagogical Cues Laurie Santos and Angie Johnston
Lydia Keating A cross cultural analysis of implict and explicit xenophobia John Dovidio
Toby Knisely A Meta-Analysis on Drug Cue-Induced Craving and Outcomes Hedy Kober
Ben McCoubrey How much does an anchor weigh? Psycholphysical anchoring and the role of mental representation in weight judgments Shane Frederick
Chris Melamed Mechanisms of Optimistically Biased Belief Formation Laurie Santos and Matthew Jordan
Sara Metzger Chronic Overcommitment: The Role of Opportunity Cost Consideration in Time Commitment Decisions Gal Zauberman
Abdel Morsy Specificity in Psychological Distances Shane Frederick
Tiffany Oche
There are Two Sides to Every Coin: 
Metacognitive Scaffolding and the Development of a Critical Epistemology
 Mark Sheskin
Alexander Sernyak Rationally Biased Cognition: A Study of Ideologically Motivated Information Processing Dan Kahan
Andrea Smith From Where She Stands: Standpoint Theory as a Significant Predictor of Diversity in Academia Jason Stanley
Emma Speer When laughing gets serious: Gender Bias in Humor Perception Mark Sheskin
Sean Sullivan Vocalization Defects in Conditional Foxp2-KO Mice David McCormick
Nate Swetlitz More to the Point: Dogs (Canis familiaris) interpret pointing as a command that conveys information Laurie Santos and Angie Johnston
Lisa Ann Tang Mechanism and Problem-Solving: What do you want to know? Kristi Lockhart and Frank Keil
Lucy Tashman Virtual Reality in Scripted Television: Why it will ultimately fail Paul Bloom
Natalie Warren From Norm to Table (and Beyond): The Cooperative Dilemma of University Food Waste Dave Rand and Gordon Kraft-Todd
Camille Weisenbach More Than a Game: Sports Team Affiliation as a Social Identity Marker Mark Sheskin
Cindy Xue On the origins of chronic regulatory focus: The role of socioeconomic status Woo-kyoung Ahn
Grace Yi Threat Perception, Legitimation, and the 1911 Baltimore Racial Zoning Ordinance Henry Cowles

 

CLASS OF 2016

STUDENT SENIOR PROJECT TITLE ADVISOR
Chen, Lucia Multi-Choice Defaults in Charitable Giving (Or: How to Manipulate People for Social Good) Ravi Dhar
Cobb, Abby A Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Academic Performance Susan Rivers
Cohen, Matthew Framing Private Vaccination Behavior as a Public Good: A Randomized Trial of Self- and Other-Framed Influenza Vaccination Appeals David Rand
Connelly, Rebecca Perceptions on Transforming the True Self Nina Strohminger
Dow, Anny The Emotional Marketplace Gregory Samanez-Larkin
Durkin, Allison The Development of a Preference for Procedural Justice Tom Tyler
Feldstein, Emily “How Many?”: Object Individuation in Canines (Canis familiaris) Using Spatiotemporal, Property/Kind, and Verbal Cues Laurie Santos
Garvey, Katherine Belief Contagion: Susceptibility to Others’ Beliefs in Canis familiaris Laurie Santos
Hullar, Kateline The Effects of Common In-Group Identity and Race of the Narrator on Perceived Credibility of Stories of Racial Discrimination Jack Dovidio
Jiang, Irene Does the Mere Experience of Empathetic Emotion Shape Self-Perceptions? Margaret Clark
Kagan, Ari Imperfect Deliberation, Context Sensitive Intuition, and the Evolution of Cooperation David Rand
Kim, Savina Behavioral Economics and the Affordable Care Act Marketplaces: Utilizing Choice Architecture to Optimize Consumer Decisions for Health Insurance Fiona Scott Morton
Lee, James Do Domestic Canines (Canis familiaris) Understand Human Competence? Laurie Santos
Leopold, Michael Smarter in the Long-Term: Diminishing Ambiguity Aversion in a Repeated Ellsberg Urn Task  Shane Frederick
Lewis, Aaron Can Images of “Watching Eyes” Kick-Start Donations to Crowdfunding Campaigns? Shane Frederick
Liu, Carleen Group and Similarity Effects on Cooperation and Punishment Yarrow Dunham
Marvin, Rebecca

Reassessing the Poverty of the Stimulus

That-trace Effect: Parameter Setting or Distributional Learning?

 Robert Frank
Matyas, Daniel

You Had My Curiosity, But Now You Have My Attention: Camera Movement and the Spatial Distribution of Audience Attention in Cinema

 Brian Scholl
Pavco-Giaccia, Olivia Rationality is Gendered: Using Social Cognition to Explore the Thinking/Feeling Gender Bias Jason Stanley
Ryu, Jun Hwan Designing Neural Networks for Surface Normal Estimation Steven Zucker
Schroeder, Jordan Breaking the Fourth Wall: The Effects of Metareference and Direct Address in Fictional Narrative Jonathan Kramnick
Shorenstein, Danielle The Effect of Color on Monetary Decisions Regarding Risk Ifat Levy
Solder, John Cognition and Histamine: H1 Receptor Modulation of Prefrontal Cortex from Fungi in the Amazon to Working Memory Function in the Rat Brain Amy Arnsten
Spaulding, Rebecca Examining Executive Function and Empathetic Processing in Disinhibited Populations Using the Social Simon Task Arielle Baskin-Sommers
Stern, Daniel “The Thirty Dollar Drop”: A Study of (1) Risk Aversion, (2) “Perceived Control” Effect, (3) Under- and Over-Confidence, and (4) Hindsight Bias in “Hedged” Decisions Shane Frederick
Tolappa, Aaditya Measuring Distinct Reward Processes in Depression and Mania Jutta Joormann
Wong, Matthew Role of General Competence in Risk and Ambiguity Preferences Shane Frederick
Yu, Jonathan Structural Imaging Findings in PTSD: Tracing Neuroanatomy Through the 5-Factor Model Ifat Levy

 

 

CLASS OF 2015

STUDENT SENIOR PROJECT TITLE ADVISOR
Chen, Monica Turnip the Beet… and the Brain: How Cognitive Science Can Inform Food-Related Public Service Messaging Greg Samanez-Larkin
Froome, Nia I Had a Dream that Greenwald Developed a Prejudice Detector…But Then I Woke Up: Critical Issues with the Implicit Association Test and What Can Be Done  Kristi Lockhart
Gertler, Aaron Charitable Fundraising and Smart Giving: How Can Charities Use Behavioral Science to Drive Donations? Hedy Kober
Gottlieb, Deena Was it Meant to Be? Atheism and Teleological Reasoning about Life Events Paul Bloom and Koni Banerjee
Jones, Lindsey Great Expectations: Developing a Behavioral Method of Reward Prediction Error Laurie Santos
Kaye-Kauderer, Halley The Dimensions of Mind Perception: Agency, Experience and the Need for More Fine-Grained Dimensions of Variation Aaron Norby
Kim, Emmett The Ransom Note Effect: Modeling Visual Word Recognition through the Lens of Typographic Theory Brian Scholl and Chaz Firestone
Mahoney, Erin Adult Language Learning: A New View Informed by Hyperpolyglots Kate Davidson
Pham, Tammy Effect of Attentional Focus on the Formation of New Memories Marcia Johnson and Kyungmi Kim
Ratskevich, Maria The Implications of a Gradient Cognitive Model of Possession and Ownership Concepts for the Theoretical Approach of Developmental Research on Ownership: A Linguistic Critique Ashwini Deo
Roth, Alexander A Novel Framework for a Two-dimensional Conceptualization of Misrepresenting the World Around Us: Misperceptions and Illusory Beliefs Lawrence Marks
Schoening, Rachel Shaping Viewer Experience through Communication of Artistic Intent Insights from Cognitive Science towards Greater Accessibility in the 21st Century Museum George Newman
Silver, Ike Empirical Evidence of Selective Dualism between Mental Traits Josh Knobe
Sin, Lucas Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Roads- We Need Stories: Mental Time Travel as a Function of a Narrative Model of Mind Aaron Norby
Ullman, Daniel Distinguishing between Intentionality and Agency in the Context of Human-Robot Interaction Brian Scassellati
Weiner, Daniel Regulation of Desires in Everyday Life Partially Mediates the Relation between Dopamine and  BMI Across the Human Life Span Greg Samanez-Larkin
Yoder, Kyle The Monstrous Player: Studying Acting and Performance through the Lens of Cognitive Science Thalia Goldstein
Youssef, Sharif Sickly and Contagious: Vegan Stereotypes and Ravi Dhar
 Contagion Effects in the Domain of Food
Zhang, Muye The Development of Metonymic Processing Maria Pinango

 

CLASS OF 2014

STUDENT SENIOR PROJECT TITLE ADVISOR
Zachary Bakal Individual Differences in Moral Judgment Steve Guglielmo (CGSC) Postdoc/Lecturer
Kevin Chen Gender Salience is Mediated by Correlation between Natural Gender and Grammatical Gender: A Novel Paradigm and Proposal for Investigating Linguistic Relativity in Gender Laurence Horn
Nace Cohen Conformity on the Computer: The Role of Conformity in Online Interaction and Computer-Mediated Communication  Yarrow Dunham
Daniel First The Neural Basis of Craving Hedy Kober
Jenner Fox Music, Spirituality, and Evolution: How Altered States of Consciousness Induced through Music Might Boost the Evolutionary Argument for Music as a Biologically Transformative Technology of the Mind Ian Quinn
John Griswold The Implications of Science’s Immunity to Moral Refutation in Cognitive Science Daniel Greco
Reuben Hendler Brief Mindfulness Training, Cognitive Performance, & Pro-Social Behavior Hedy Kober
Katarzyna Hitczenko Incremental Versus Batch Search: Cognitive Limitations Affect Learing Outcomes in Word Segmentation Gaja Jarosz
Julia Hosch The Impact of Music in Decision-Making Situations Eve Poudrier
Jasmeet Jernaill We Are the Sum of our Transgressions Negativity Bias and Asymmetry in Moral Judgment Steve Guglielmo (CGSC) Postdoc/Lecturer
Sophia Jia Consumption Utility Neglect (Or why People Go Crazy on Black Friday) Ravi Dhar
Matthew K Johnson Utilizing Power Posing to Manipulate Perspective Taking in Moral Processing Michael Crowley
 Hobart Lim Role of Emotions in Decision-making as Integral and Incidental: an Exploration of a Possible Framework to Integrate the Different Theories and Findings Greg Samanez-Larkin
Eugena O’Donnell Dublin English: A Linguistic Analysis of Social Change Ryan Bennett
 Cindy Ok Lakoff Today: Reinterpreting Old Postulates of Gender in Language Marianne LaFrance
Greta Parnes Nonverbal Autism in Deaf Children Exposed to Sign: Two Case Studies and Avenues for Further Research Kathryn Davidson
Julie Qui The Role of Individual Differences and Effectiveness of Health Messaging in Cognitive Training Products Greg Samanez-Larkin
Tyler Reynolds The Cognitive Science of Financial Bubbles: Cognitive Biases and Neurological Causes Greg Samanez-Larkin
Mariya Toneva Towards a Model for Attribute-based Representation of Scenes in Human Vision Marvin Chun
Geoffrey Van Psychedelics and Creativity: a Review Noah Capurso
Liliana Varman Can Capuchin Monkeys Infer Others’ Goals? Laurie Santos
Rebecca Watsky Opening the Doors: Attentional Saccades and the Requirements for Conscious Perception Hal Blumenfeld
Nathaniel Weinstein The Influence of Visual and Verbal Presentation Styles on the Success of a Computer-Assisted Learning Module for Math Brian Scassellati
Nicole Wenger A Literature Review of Alzheimer’s Disease and Fear Conditioning: Can Studying their Intersection Improve Understanding of the Disease? Greg Samanez-Larkin
Michael Wolner Seeking Recommender Liking over Expertise as a Regret-minimization Strategy Nathan Novemsky

CLASS OF 2013

STUDENT SENIOR PROJECT TITLE ADVISOR
Sohini Bandy Attention to Emotion in Bipolar Disorder Using an Eye Tracking Approach June Gruber
Ezekiel Blackwell Psychological Theories of Humor: A Literature Review and Methodological Critique Paul Bloom
 Cynthia Chen You Don’t Think I Like You on Purpose? Intentionality in Psychology Verbs Joshua Knobe
Max Cho Causality as a Perceptual Size Modifier Brian Scholl
 Paul M Cohen Context Independent Preferences in Capuchin Monkeys (Cebus apella) Laurie Santos
Alan Cowen Reconstruction Perceived Face Images from Evoked Brain Activity in Fmri Marvin Chun
Simon Cozzens Power, Inequality, and Action: Exploring Hierarchy through Cognitive Jaime Napier
Julian DeFreitas Attentional Rhythm: A Temporal Analogue of Object- Based Attention (Angier Award winner for Psychology and CGSC) (Henry Snow Prize winner: highest ugrad sr. award) Brian Scholl
Jennifer Friedman Exquisitely Useless: The Evolution of Arbitrary Aesthetics in Cotingidae, in Redefining Evolutionary Aesthetics Richard Prum
Gregory Hindy Moral Psychology and Performance Art George Newman (SOM)
David Kastelman Justice as Fairness for all: Strains of Commitment,  Empirical Work in Normative Philosophy, and Judging Liberal Democracies Thomas Pogge
 Nayeon Kim The Effect of a Future Memory Test on Age-related  Differences in BOLD Response in Category-selective Regions During Perceptual Attention Marcia Johnson
 Sebastian Park A Hard Reset: How Professional Poker Players Trained to Be Optimally Rational Succumb to Systematically Predictable Deviations from Learned Strategy Only to Return to the Optimal after a Period of Break Scott Boorman
James Silveira Where is My Mind?-Self-concept Representations in Bicultural Individuals Keith Chen
JohnMark Taylor The Phylogeny of Willpower: Ego Depletion in Capuchin Monkeys Laurie Santos
Kartik Venkatraman Polarizing Experts: Examining the Effect of Challenges to Our Beliefs from Credible Sources Joshua Knobe
Benjamin Watsky Chapel Town to Alwoodley: A Case Study of Sociolinguistic  Variation in the Jewish Community of Leeds Bob Frank
Victoria Westerhoff Value Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Investigating the Effects of  Value on Perceptual Averaging Brian Scholl
Beau Wittmer Longshots and Friends: Social Distance, Risk-Preferences, and the Overweighting of Low Probabilities for When Betting for Other People Nathan Novemsky

CLASS OF 2012

STUDENT SENIOR PROJECT TITLE ADVISOR
Mary Altonji The Effect of Money Primes on Relationship Orientation Margaret Clark
Hilary Barr Art as Communication with Painting Elephants Stephen Anderson
Ashok Bhaskar Vowel and Consonant Feature Influence on Non-Arbitrary Sound-Symbol Mapping Carol Fowler
Samuel Brudner Fixating an Irrelevant Object Speeds Early Word Recall if the Object Was Fixated During Learning Brian Scholl
Sofija Canavan Accomplished Lucid Dreamers and Prefrontal Task Function Peter Morgan MD PhD
Linda Chang Function-based Individuation of Artifacts in Rhesus Macaques (Macaca Mulatta) Laurie Santos
Nicole Cohen Inequity Aversion in Capuchins: A New Methodology Laurie Santos
Nicolas Finger Comparison of Attitudes and Beliefs about Bisexuals, Homo-sexuals, and Heterosexuals: Perceived Vulnerability to Disease Predicts Negative Attitudes Marianne LaFrance
Shelley Foran The Power of Explanation: Its Role in Enhancing the Ability to Learn from Experience and Facilitating the Generalization of Learning across Domains Nathan Novemsky
Paul Joo The Cognitive Science of Corruption Marvin Chun
Hope Kronman Effects of Stress on Auditory Cued Fear Conditioning Glenn Schafe
Claire Paulson Prosodic Signatures in the Speech of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders Jelena Krivokapic
Raja Pillai The Sibling and the Cerebellum: A New Marker for Face  Processing Deficits in ASD? Kevin Pelphrey
Patrick Pitoniak Psychological Priming and Conflict of Interest Daylian Cain
Nicholas Simmons-Stern  Music as a Memory Enhancer Ian Quinn
Cynthia Weaver Beliefs about Contagion Moderate the Effects of the Perceived Fit of Brand Extensions George Newman (SOM)
Chloe Zale The Role of Gender and Food Preferences as Expressed in a Regulation of Craving Task Hedy Kober

CLASS OF 2011

STUDENT SENIOR PROJECT TITLE ADVISOR
James Cersonsky The Identity Politics of Consensus: Democrats’ and Republicans’ Views Converge as a Function of Abstract, Nation-Based Thinking Jaime Napier
 Brendan Dill How to Start a Revolution in Charitable Giving Frank Keil
Samantha Ellner The Necessity of Extrapolation in Multiple Object Tracking  Brian Scholl
AJ Haskins Parents’ Topic  Management and Attention Contingency in Free-Play Interactions with Autistic Children Rhea Paul
Sabrina Karim Reflection Over Reflexiveness: The Effects of Mindfulness Meditation on Behavior Regulation Hedy Kober
Andi Klestadt Toward a Comprehensive Amodle of Phonological Acquisition: How Research on Mnadaring Lexical Tone Can Enhance Under- standing of First and Second Language Acquisition Rhea Paul
Harrison Korn Neurolaw: Differential Brain Activity for Black and White Faces Predicts Damage Awards in Hypothetical Employment  Discrimination Cases Marvin Chun
Jarrett Lovelett Learning Recursive Rules; the Importance of Statistical Relation-ships in Training Corpora for Artificial Grammar Learning Bob Frank
 Stephanie Marton The Venture Capital Decision-Making Process: Insights from the Behavioral Sciences Joe Simmons
Jacqueline Meadow (Beanie) The Role of Interdependence in Prejudice Jaime Napier
 Nicholas Selz Regressing to Our Moral Sweet Spot: A New Model of Behavior Fluctuation Daylian Cain
Jason Sullivan Order Effects: Positional vs. Temporal Effects in Choice and Judgement Shane Frederick
 JinJin Sun How Does the Perception of Animacy Influence Behavior?: Online Avoidance Based on Cues to the Direction of Intention Brian Scholl
Yue, Amy  Event “Grain” and Associative Strength in Memory: Fine-grained and Coarse-grained Events Frank Keil

CLASS OF 2010

STUDENT  SENIOR PROJECT TITLE ADVISOR
Ahmet Aktay Investigating Pre-Target Brain Activity and its Behavioral Effects  in a Visual Detection Task Greg McCarthy
Pria Anand Toward an Understanding of Working Memory: Dopamine and Internal Calcium Release in Prefrontal Cortical Neurons Mark Yeckel
Wilma Bainbridge Using Computer-Generated Facebook Profiles to Understand Perception of Online Personas Brian Scassellati
Samuel Cartmell Attraction and Partner Selection: A Study in Social Decision-Making Marvin Chun
Ian Cutler The Effect of Near Misses on Subjective Probability and Risk Taking Joe Simmons
Brian Earp Incidental Exposure to No-Smoking Signs Primes Craving for Cigarettes: An Ironic Effect of Unconscious Semantic Processing? John Bargh
Emma Griffin Rebellion and the Status Quo: Effects of the Unconscious Motivation to Rebel on the Status Quo Bias John Bargh
Lauren Hartman Characterizing Self-Regulation: An Integration of the Ego-Depletion and Construal Level Models Jeremy Gray
Jack Ben Margines Provincial Norms: How Situation Specific Normative Information Can Effectively Change Behavior Joe Simmons
Samuel Norman-Haignere Task-Modulated Functional Connectivity in Category-Selective Networks Greg McCarthy and Marvin Chun
Jesse Obbink  UncertaintyMoral Noise: A Quarantining Model for Reduction of Moral Dan Kahan
Tiffany Petrosino Naming as a Conduit for Emotional Attachment: Toward an Understanding of the Brand-Consumer Relationship Joe Simmons
Ian Randolph Unraveling and Reweaving the Law of Attraction: Physics, Belief, and Transformation David Gelernter and Michael Basso
Nicole Roberts Early Language Development in Autism Spectrum Disorders Rhea Paul
Amy Skerry Capuchin Monkeys Do Not Behave Prosocially Towards a Conspecific in an Instrumental Helping Task Mark Sheskin and Laurie Santos
Susan Steinman Malleability and Optimistic Bias Erica Dawson and Cade Massey
Eric Tsytsylin Face and Reputation Processing During the Trust Game: An fMRI Study Greg McCarthy
Leah Wibecan Causal Cognition in Non-human Primates: Abilities of Capuchin Monkeys (Cebus apella) to Reason About Unobserved Causes Laurie Santos

CLASS OF 2009

STUDENT SENIOR PROJECT TITLE ADVISOR
Matthew Baer Modulation of Inhibition and Disinhibition of Associative Memory Networks as the Basis of Creative Cognition Tamar Gendler
Luke Broster Harmonic Priming and Musical Expectancy: The Circle of Fifths and Harmonic Function Models Ian Quinn
Benjamin Deen Hand Motion Perception during Naturalistic Stimulation: A Parietal-Temporal Network Analyzed with Regression and Time-Frequency Decomposition Greg McCarthy
Margarita Gorlin Understanding of Basic Probability in Rhesus Macaques (Macaca Mulatta): A Perspective on Human Base Rate Neglect Laurie Santos
J. Alex Johnson Comparing Phototactic Cues to Word and Morpheme Boundaries in Multiple Languages Gaja Jarosz
Amy Jones Differences in Analogical Domain as an Aid to Comprehension: A New “Teaching-with-Analogies” Model Jeremy Gray
Joel Knopf Teachers Can and Should Violate Students’ Expectations about Concepts Jeremy Gray
Sydney Levine An Experimental Philosophy Approach to Imaginative Resistance Tamar Gendler
David Mackenzie Formal Models of Iterative Pair-wise Choices Keith Chen
Jordan Malter Diminishing Selective Exposure to Politically Polarizing Information on the Internet Joe Simmons
Olivia Scheck In Defense of Emotionalism: Empirical Evidence and Its  Jonathan Gilmore
  Philosophical Relevance  
Heather Stoller Positive Effects of Uncertainty: When Uncertain Incentives Increase Performance on an Anagram Task Ravi Dhar
Mai-Ahn Vu Aging, The Prefrontal Cortex, and Memory Encoding: fMRI Contributions Marcia Johnson
Kara Weisman Memory for Specific Sensory Stimuli: Absolute Pitch and the Possiblity of ” Absolute Hue” David Ross