On Saturday January 10, the lab hosted its second Paper-in-a-Day event! Five undergraduate and graduate students along with Dr. Rioux spent the day writing a paper on the associations between sensory processing sensitivity (also known as the highly sensitive personality) and motives for using cannabis, ending the day with a full edited draft. They celebrated the end of a long day with dinner. We look forward to finalizing the paper for publication!
On November 5-8, Dr. Rioux and the lab’s students Carson Freeman (undergraduate research assistant), Christina Personette (past undergraduate research assistant, now Clinical PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh), and Madison Bissa (past Honors thesis student, now Clinical PhD student at the University of Tulsa) presented their research at the Marcé of North America Conference in Toronto, Canada! Marcé of North America is a regional group that is part of the International Marcé Society for Perinatal Mental Health.
Carson presented his research finding that prenatal anxiety predicted a more difficult child temperament only when there were also high levels of prenatal sensory processing sensitivity (also known as highly sensitive personality).
Christina presented her research finding that social support buffered te impact of household, but not community-level, adverse childhood experiences on perinatal mental health.
Madi presented her research finding that asking questions about gender identity in a pregnancy cohort was not associated with participant dropout.
Zoe Childers-Rockey, who is an incoming Masters student, recently published an article she worked on as an undergraduate research assistant in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Epidemiology !
Zoe examined the effectiveness of social media advertisements with videocalls to recruit participants in their first trimester of pregnancy, outlined safeguard methods to counter fraudulent participants, and examined the representativeness of the resulting sample when compared to the US population and to pregnancy cohorts recruited in person. This work was conducted with the contribution of four other research assistants who are co-authors: Emily Flesher, Jacob Stephens, Nicole Barton, and Megan Waldron.
Learn about the key findings in the short video below and find the paper here: https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwaf061
On April 17, the lab’s students Carson Freeman (undergraduate research assistant), Zoe Childers-Rockey (past undergraduate research assistant and incoming Masters student), and Madison Bissa (past Honors thesis student, now Clinical PhD student at the University of Tulsa) presented their research at the Oklahoma Psychological Society Convention in Edmond Oklahoma!
Carson Freeman presented research he has been conducting with Christina Personette, examining the role of adverse childhood experiences and social support in prenatal mental health.
Zoe Childers-Rockey and Madison Bissa presented the lab’s Paper-in-a-Day project that examined mental health service use in pregnancy and postpartum.
On March 28-30, undergraduate student and recent graduates Christina Personette, Emily Flesher, and Zoe Childers-Rockey Southwestern Psychological Association Convention in Little Rock, Arkansas!
Christina presented on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and perinatal mental health. Her study expands research showing that conventional ACEs predict anxiety and depression in pregnancy by showing that (1) ACEs also predict prenatal anger symptoms and lower well-being and (2) this applies not only to conventionally examined ACEs, which occur in the home, but also expanded ACEs, which occur in the community.
Zoe and Emily presented on participant representativeness in an online study on mental health during pregnancy. Their research shows that recruiting pregnant participants online allows reaching participants that cannot be recruited via clinics and hospitals (such as those without access to prenatal care) and allows recruiting samples much faster than typically done in person – but that some limitations in terms of representativeness suggest the need to implement stratified sampling. Zoe received a graduate student poster showcase award for this poster!
On February 20-22, Jacob Stephens attended and presented his research at the annual convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, in Denver Colorado! Jacob is a research assistant in the lab and graduate from his undergraduate degree last Fall.
Jacob’s research found that sensory processing sensitivity (sensitivity to social and environmental stimuli) and rejection sensitivity (hyper-alertness to potential rejection from others) are associated with each other and independently predict psychological distress and well-being, with both predicting mental health even when controlling for the other.
On Saturday January 18, seven undergraduate and graduate students along with Dr. Rioux spent the day writing a paper on mental health service use in pregnancy and postpartum, ending the day with a full edited draft. They celebrated the end of a long day with dinner. We look forward to finalizing the paper for publication! We hope this will be the first of regularly occurring Paper-in-a-Day events for the lab!
Two of the lab’s students presented at the convention of the Oklahoma Psychological Association on November 8!
Undergraduate Honors student McKenna Nhem was invited to present a talk on her research examining environmental sensitivity to discrimination on the prediction of adult mental health. This summer fellowship project followed up McKenna’s scoping review and honors thesis finding limited research examining how temperament/personality can capture environmental sensitivity in adult mental health research. McKenna’s project also examined psychological distress and well-being after finding that previous research focused exclusively on psychopathology.
Recent undergrad alumni Zoe Childers-Rockey presented the protocol of her new independent project, a systematic review of the moderators of the association between peer influences and adolescent delinquency. Her poster got a first place award!
Madison Bissa, who is now a PhD student in clinical psychology at the University of Tulsa, recently published her Honors thesis completed in the lab in the peer-reviewed journal Adolescent Research Review.
Madi conducted a systematic literature review examining the moderators of the association between parent divorce and adolescent externalizing behaviors and substance use. In other words, her review helped understand for which adolescents and when parental divorce/separation has a larger or smaller association with externalizing behaviors and substance use. This work was conducted with the contribution of five undergraduate research assistants who are co-authors on the paper: Parker Haley, Ashley Wells, Jenna LaBelle, McKenna Nhem, and Delaney Fulp.
Find the paper here! http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40894-024-00249-9
Read-only free version: https://rdcu.be/dWNLN
On October 17-20, undergraduate students Christina Personette and McKenna Nhem attended and presented their research at the Society for Research in Psychopathology international conference in Montreal, Canada!
Christina presented her research findings on environmental sensitivity to recent stressful experiences predicting prenatal mental health. Results showed that recent stressful experiences predict depressive symptoms only for individuals high on the temperament trait of sensory processing sensitivity.
McKenna presented her findings on environmental sensitivity to discrimination predicting adult mental health. Results showed that individuals high on aesthetic sensitivity, a facet of sensory processing sensitivity, benefited most from low discriminatory environments. High levels of discrimination had negative impacts of psychological distress and well-being regardless of temperament.
