Graduate Student Projects & Interests
Graduate students in the SCORS Lab are leading exciting projects to learn about a diverse array of topics relevant to our understanding of mental illnesses and ways to promote recovery! See brief summaries of some of their ongoing work below. If you're interested in learning more, contact us!
Lily Hammer is leading a study across three online platforms to assess differences in mental health symptoms between sexual and gender minority (SGM) and non-SGM groups. The study includes measures of paranoia and alexithymia, as well as one week of ecological momentary assessment. Through this work, we hope to inform whether daily and lifetime experiences of minority stress are related to worse mental health symptoms, with a focus on symptoms relevant to psychotic disorders. Lily is additionally leading a literature review of the relationship between SGM status and mental health symptoms, and she helped to design a question to assess SGM status that is now used across SCORS Lab studies.
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Cassi Springfield is interested in introspective accuracy (IA; the ability to accurately estimate one’s own abilities and skills). IA has been identified as a significant predictor of functional impairment in people diagnosed with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, but determinants of IA are currently unclear. Her research aims to explore potential determinants of IA impairment, with a particular interest in sleep disturbance and symptoms.
Cassi is leading collection of IA data across several studies in the lab. To assess IA, we ask questions about a participants' perceptions of their own performance, such as: 1. Do you think you got the question right? 2. How confident are you that you got the answer right? 3. Overall, how do you think you did on that task? |
Kendall Beals is interested in interoception, or the ability to sense, interpret and integrate signals from one's body and lived experiences. There are both self-report and task-based measures of interoception, including asking participants to sense and report on their own heartbeat. Patients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders have deficits in interoception, which are linked to symptoms. Kendall's research aims to explore the relationships between self-reported interoception and other measures of self-awareness across cognitive, emotional, and other domains. In the future, she hopes to explore how interoception relates to sleep and other basic functional abilities in people across the psychosis spectrum.
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