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.
Congratulations to McKenna Nhem and Christina Personette who presented their results at the University of Oklahoma UReCA showcase on October 4!
They conducted research on environmental sensitivity to discrimination (McKenna) and recent stressful experiences (Christina) through the UReCA summer fellowship.
Madison Bissa, who completed her Honors thesis in the lab and is now a PhD student in clinical psychology at the University of Tulsa, recently published as first author in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology MFM. This work was conducted in addition to her Honors thesis as part of independent research under the supervision of Dr. Rioux for her minor in Women’s and Gender studies.
Madi found that in a recent pregnancy cohort (Experiences of Pregnancy), asking several questions about gender identity, modality, and binary did not lead to participant dropout. This answers researcher concerns that cisgender participants offended by gender-related questions may drop out of their study, in turn supporting that the academic and social benefits of measuring gender identity outweigh worries about participant dropout.
Find the paper here! https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajogmf.2024.101484
This Fall semester, Dr. Rioux and the PEANUTs Lab are moving from the University of Oklahoma to Texas Tech University.
Dr. Rioux and the PEANUTs Lab will be located within the College of Health and Human Sciences, where Dr. Rioux will be affiliated as a founding member of the new Department of Interdisciplinary Human Sciences.
The lab will welcome undergraduate students as research assistants and Honors thesis students, graduate students completing theses within the human sciences masters program. The lab also welcomes inquiries from prospective postdoctoral fellows (see Join the lab website tab for more details).
Last May 29-31, undergraduate students from the lab attended and presented their research at the Life History Research Society international conference in Montreal, Canada!
McKenna Nhem presented her Honors research. She conducted a scoping review on environmental sensitivity to social environments in adult mental health. After reviewing 31 studies and over 100 interactions, she found that most studies focus on genotype as an individual sensitivity factor and internalizing problems as a mental health factor, with most studies not testing sensitivity based on recommended statistical analyses.
Zoe Childers-Rockey and Emily Flesher presented research they conducted as research assistants. They examined the feasibility, cost, and representativeness of social media recruitment for a pregnancy cohort. They found that social media is an efficient recruitment method, and that while the sample was more diverse than community-based samples, it was less diverse than the US Census.
Madison Bissa, who graduated from her undergraduate degree in December, presented her Honors thesis work at the conference of the Society for Research on Adolescence last week in Chicago! Madi’s poster speed talk was on a systematic review of the moderators of the association between parental separation and adolescent externalizing behaviors. Dr. Rioux also presented her work on alcohol use age of onset and substance use disorder symptoms conducted with colleagues at the University of Montreal.
Congratulations to Honors thesis student McKenna Nhem and undergraduate research assistant Christina Personette, who both received the OU Provost’s Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (UReCA) Summer Fellowship! The fellowship will support their independent research over the summer.
McKenna will work on a research project examining how individuals differ in their sensitivity to experiences of discrimination in the prediction of mental health in a national sample of adults in the United States.
Christina will work on a project examining how pregnant individuals differ in their sensitivity to recent stressful experiences in the prediction of mental health in the first trimester of pregnancy using data from the Experiences of Pregnancy cohort study.
