HONOURS THESIS 2023

Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by difficulties in social behaviour and communication. Curious to learn about the experiences of youth with autism, Yara Bayoumi, a graduate from the Bachelor of Arts program in Psychology, did her honours thesis on how quality of life in youth with autism or intellectual disabilities changes during their transition out of high school. Results from this type of study may help schools develop better resources for supporting this youth. She shares how she surveyed caregivers of youth with autism, her process for dealing with her data, and how fulfilling she found the unpredictable aspects of research.

Supervisor: Dr. Barbara D’Entremont and Lindsey McCollough

HONOURS THESIS 2023

Uyen Phan completed Honours in Psychology (BA) and a minor in French. Her thesis studied how parents’ notions of intelligence as either a fixed or improvable trait affect how they compare their children to other children. Initially planning to do a study comparing Western and Eastern Asian parents, she hopes that this topic will be studied across cultures in future. She explains that her research experience was rich with unpredictability - with changes in her thesis topic, unexpected study results, and many discussions with her supervisor for improving the study - and is hoping to continue this study with more participants.

Supervisor: Dr. Elaine Perunovic

HONOURS THESIS 2023

Sof Mehlitz completed Honours in Psychology with a Specialization in Neuroscience (BSc), and a biology minor. Inspired by past research, they attempted to identify factors that might underlie why adolescents have low intentions to seek help from professionals, and how often adolescents intend to seek help from teachers and mental health professionals. They found it most interesting that these factors were different depending on whether a mental health professional or a teacher was considered for help, suggesting that help-seeking intentions are professional-specific.

Supervisor: Dr. Heather Sears

HONOURS THESIS 2023

Madeline Wiseman completed a Bachelor of Science in psychology with a specialization in neuroscience. Her thesis studied how language is processed differently in the brain for monolinguals and bilinguals who have left-to-right or right-to-left reading directions in their first language. She describes how her project arose from personal curiosity, gaps in the literature, and dialogues with her supervisors, and shares her thoughts on the study’s societal and clinical impacts. Emphasizing the help she received from research assistants in Dr. Whitford’s lab, she believes it “takes a village to conduct research”.

Supervisors: Dr. Daniel Voyer and Dr. Veronica Whitford

BASIC RESEARCH PROJECT 2023

Samantha Otis is a Science student completing a psychology degree. Her basic research projects investigated how the lived experiences of 2SLGBTQIA+ service members and their partners have changed 30 years after the ban on 2SLGBTQIA+ people in the military was lifted, which contributes to a large, ongoing Canadian study using interviews from 2SLGBTQIA+ service members. During term, she transcribed a qualitative interview, coded and organized demographic information, wrote the introduction, methods, and results sections of a research paper, and completed multiple training modules about ethics, implicit bias, and the qualitative methodology used in the study.

Supervisors: Dr. Carmen Poulin, Dr. Lynne Gouliquer, and Hilary Longobardi (senior research assistant)

BASIC RESEARCH PROJECT 2023

Loreena Kujiper is an Arts student in psychology who completed her basic research project with Dr. Emilie Lacroix. As a member of Sheshatshiu Innu First Nation, she is passionate about doing research that acknowledges Indigenous peoples, and contributed to an ongoing project studying the addictive-like consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages among Indigenous adults living in Manitoba. During term, she familiarized herself with traits of addictive-like consumption in Indigenous communities to write an introduction for a paper on this study. Hoping to pursue clinical psychology and Indigenous research in future, her basic research project gave her valuable insight into both her areas of interest.

Supervisor: Dr. Emilie Lacroix

BASIC RESEARCH PROJECT 2023

Sejal Sharma is a 3rd year student doing a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and a minor in sociology. Her basic research project involved examining bias towards social groups one identifies with versus social groups one does not identify with - insights that are crucial to begin dismantling our social biases. During term, she worked with participants to run experiments, attended lab meetings, learned about quantitative research, and began writing a methods section for a paper on the study. She hopes to continue work in Dr. Perunovic’s lab and pursue Honours.

Supervisors: Supervisor: Dr. Elaine Perunovic and Kyoungsil Nah (graduate student)

BASIC RESEARCH PROJECT 2023

Daniel Huynh is a 3rd year psychology student in the Arts faculty. Resonating with the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on student mental health, he worked with Dr. Michael Palmer on a research project examining student well-being during quarantine. He investigated whether psychological factors - like impulsivity or openness to experience - might predict social media use in undergraduate students. This may deepen understanding of the established relationship between social media use and academic burnout during lockdown. He summarizes the results of his study and shares the knowledge, confidence, and joy he gleaned from different aspects of the research process.

Supervisor: Dr. Michael Palmer

BASIC RESEARCH PROJECT 2023

Annabelle Strahsberger is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Psychology at the University of Graz in Austria, and came to UNB as an exchange student. Interested in bilingualism and multilingualism, she contributed to a project examining reading in adults who are monolingual, bilingual, healthy, or presenting with different levels of cognitive impairments. Throughout term, she attended weekly lab meetings, helped prepare a recruitment database, learned how to operate eye-tracking machines and EEG, and completed ethics certification. She enrolled in the basic research course to learn the differences in research settings between Austria and Canada, and learned both about the highly collaborative nature of research and how timelines for research projects are prone to change.

Supervisor: Dr. Veronica Whitford and Narissa Byers (graduate student)

BASIC RESEARCH PROJECT 2023

Emily Fabeck is a 3rd year Arts student studying English and Psychology. Her basic research project investigated how well local services for the homeless in Fredericton address the needs of individuals experiencing homelessness. She contributed to the research by transcribing interviews conducted with homeless individuals and helping to identify common themes in their experiences - tasks which gave her insight into qualitative research methods and the complex problems faced by the homeless. She describes the research process as long and tedious but ultimately rewarding, and recommends the basic research course to everyone for the all-encompassing skills it helps build.

Supervisor: Dr. Scott Ronis and Laura Kabbash (graduate student)

BASIC RESEARCH PROJECT 2022

Molly Miller is a 4th year student working towards a Bachelor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Leadership as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. She discusses how, through an opportunity to work with Dr. Emilie Lacroix, she participated in research surrounding comorbid eating disorders and substance use disorders. Touching on her research with Dr. Lacroix, Molly speaks to the value of the hands-on experience acquired through the Basic Research course and how her project contributed to facilitating stronger academic research on disordered eating.

Supervisor: Dr. Emilie Lacroix

BASIC RESEARCH PROJECT 2022

Jayden Roberts is a 3rd year Science student in Psychology with a minor in biology. She enrolled in the basic research course to gain the required research experience prior to completing Honours next year, and contributed to a project clarifying the relationship between anxiety and working memory. Roberts detailedly explains the research project, and shares that she was involved in data collection, writing literature reviews, and reading relevant literature - all tasks that she found enriching.

Supervisor: Dr. Biljana Stevanovski and Jennifer Gallan (graduate student)

BASIC RESEARCH PROJECT 2022

Holly McLaughlin is a 4th year Psychology student who studied adolescents’ help-seeking intentions from a general practitioner for her Basic Research project. She describes results from her study and shares that she was involved in conducting literature reviews, data analysis, and writing components of a potential manuscript. Having enrolled in the Basic Research course to gain research experience, she says that the experience taught her valuable skills and exceeded her expectations.

Supervisor: Dr. Heather Sears

BASIC RESEARCH PROJECT 2022

Naomi Levins is a third-year Arts student in Psychology. She worked on a basic research project examining job satisfaction in autistic adults where she assisted in completing a manuscript for publication. She emphasizes that minimal research on this topic currently exists, and that the project results can provide insight into how job satisfaction in autistic adults might be improved. Interested in child psychology, Levins was drawn to this project to learn more about autism, and shares that she has realized how crucial research can be for helping those who are suffering.

Supervisor: Dr. Barbara D’Entremont

BASIC RESEARCH PROJECT 2022

Emma Hynes is a 3rd year student doing a BSc in psychology. Aspiring to pursue graduate studies in clinical psychology, she completed the basic research course to prepare for future research pursuits. She embarked on a project investigating how psychologists view and use performance validity tests, which serve to assess whether cognitive tests appropriately detect cognitive deficits. She was involved in participant recruitment and transcribing interview content, and affirms that, though the tasks were basic, they gave her a good sense of what research entailed.

Supervisor: Dr. Diane LaChapelle and Jenna Wright (graduate student)

HONOURS THESIS 2022

Emma Toole is currently pursuing a Master’s of Science in Occupational Therapy at Dalhousie University, and completed her Honours in Psychology (BSc) at UNB last year. She describes her thesis on how stress is experienced differently in student athletes and non-student-athletes, a project inspired by a prior study about stress in university students. She shares her personal interests in sports psychology, the joy of contributing to practical mental health research, and encourages students to seek out research experiences.

Supervisors: Dr. Janine Olthuis and Dr. Brooke Linden.

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE 2022/ ASSISTANT RESEARCHER

Mackenzie Lacey is a 4th year Science student in Psychology who is currently working as a research assistant in Dr. Voyer’s Visual Perception lab, contributing to a project on sex differences in visuospatial processing. Her work involves directing experiments - organizing meetings with research participants, setting up the lab for experiments, and ensuring that participants complete the experiments adequately. She shares the joy of meeting student participants across different disciplines and how the work experience has shaped her confidence.

Supervisor: Dr. Daniel Voyer

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE 2022/ ASSISTANT RESEARCHER

Hanna MacFarlane is a 3rd year Science student in Psychology conducting experiments in cognitive psychology. She shares the elements of her workday, how the position allowed her to hone in on her research interests, and how obtaining research positions are facilitated by forging strong relationships with professors.

Supervisor: Dr. Daniel Voyer

HONOURS THESIS 2022

Emma Giberson is currently pursuing a Masters of Applied Psychology, Research, and Evaluation at UNB-SJ, and completed her Honours in Psychology last year. She explains her thesis on the relationship between substance use and the fear of physiological sensations - now submitted for publication in a research journal - and the joy of devising a new project and seeing it from start to finish.

Supervisor: Dr. Janine Olthuis

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE 2022 / ASSISTANT RESEARCHER

4th year Honours student Mallory Murphy discusses her research work on devising methods for organizing and analyzing qualitative data, and manuscript reviewing. She works both at UNB and in collaboration with Crandall University, and shares how she appreciates working with the conceptual problems and details that drive the development of unique research methods. She encourages students who are interested in research to reach out to faculty, and emphasizes that even volunteer work can give great research experience.

Supervisor: Dr. Elaine Perunovic