Biographies
About: Lina Alfonso
I am from Miami and moved to New York a couple of years ago. I now live in Queens and have loved it ever since. I came to New York the pursuit of education and a diverse cultural atmosphere. It took me some time to decide what I wanted my career to be but luckily I have found it. I am seeking a career in Nursing at Hunter College.
Apart from my educational career, I enjoy photographing people in their everyday atmosphere on my free time. I try to concentrate more on street photography. I have been able to expand my skills in photography throughout high school and college. I try to teach anyone around me the intrigue photography as on my so they can understand why it takes me at least 3 minutes to compose my photographs. Moreover, I am also a waitress and a full time adventure seeker. I try to walk around a lot with friends and enjoy finding new places to eat. This becomes more difficult as the weather continues to play the “How low can I get before everyone’s coffee freezes while waiting for the train” game.
Furthermore, while enrolled in the Introduction to Research Methods in Psychology course, I plan to improve the way I find my research. I am looking to be a more effective researcher and find connections between findings that will better my understanding of the topic at hand. I also plan to mold my team work skills and interact with new faces while discussing the impacts of research.
About: Tania Duran
My name is Tania Duran. I am 25 years old, live in Long Island City and I’m Salvadorian. This is my second semester at Hunter College. My major is Spanish Literature and minor is psychology. I received my associate’s degree in Early Childhood Education at BMCC. After I graduated from BMCC I went to Brooklyn College for a year but then had to take a break from school after my father passed away. I had to start working fulltime to help out at home. I’m currently a teacher at a daycare, babysitter and a waitress at a golf club.
Working, as a teacher with young kids is the best feeling ever, watching them grow and learn so many different things is so satisfying. Waitress job is exhausting, but I have to make the extra money. I’m in love with traveling; I try to travel as much as I can! I just got back from Argentina where I was studying abroad for the winter semester and it was such a great experience! I learned so much about Argentina and ate so much as well; the steaks were amazing! Since my fathers passing I’ve tried to do anything and everything that makes me happy, always up for an adventure. He loved to travel and in a way it makes me feel closer to him when I travel.
Coming back to school has a lot to do with him, school was always so important to him; therefore he’s my motivation to do better for my career and myself. What I hope to get out of this course is a better understanding of research in general; learn more on how to do good research, know exactly how to find what I’m looking for.
About: Eleona Poltiyelova
My name is Elona Poltiyelova and I am a senior here at Hunter College. My major is Biochemistry and my minor is Psychology. I love all the psychology courses here at Hunter college. They are very interesting and I learn something new every day. In the future I aspire to be a physician either MD or DO. At the moment outside of school I tutor children and participate in community service activities. Some hobbies of mine include swimming, cooking, and reading. I also enjoy traveling. This summer I went to Israel and had an amazing time. I hope to travel the world and learn about many different countries. I am the oldest of 2 siblings, both of which go to Queens College. In this course, research psychology, I hope to learn about different research methods in the field of psychology. I want to compare this to research done on the medical field. Additionally I want to learn about different studies that have made in impact on our society and they specific research method the study was done with.
About: Wei Jun Xia
My name is Wei Jun Xia and I am taking this Research Methods in Psychology class to improve my research skills. I have finished my degree in Nutrition and Food Science. During that program I took two classes on research methods (Nutrition Research and Epidemiology). And before that I had taken other classes that taught me to do research and required me to research papers. And I have used research skills all my life. Growing up in the digital age, it was very important for me to learn how to do research and separate good and bad sources. What I want to gain from this class is to further refine my research skills, learn how to monetize my research skills, look to do research for the nonprofit I currently work for, and possibly look at becoming a researcher as career.
I am currently uncertain of my prospects, I have two weeks decide if I want to graduate this semester and apply for the Hunter College Nutrition program, apply for Hunter’s Nursing program, continue taking undergraduate classes at Hunter College (because I receive financial aid, so I figured I might as well as take more undergraduate classes that would cost 3 times as much after I graduate), or apply for graduation and take a year off to work. While writing this, I have also just come to realize that I will probably need to decide sooner rather than later if I want to apply to Hunter’s Nutrition program because I still need letters of recommendation.
I was born and raised in Queens. I am a fourth-year student at Hunter. My hobbies include but are not limited to: memes, photography, fashion, cycling, running, skateboarding, video games, and smoking fat doinks in the Amish. You may be thinking to yourself “Wow! What a great list of hobbies,” well hate to disappoint you but, I’m one of those people that pick up and drop hobbies pretty often, but still appreciate the hobbies and crafts. I think at some point I really hated myself for dropping hobbies so easily, but I’ve come to realize that there’s plenty of time to hit the milestones in those hobbies, and it is okay to not hit them too. Just appreciate and enjoy them.
As you can tell I am still very uncertain of what I want to do with my life, but I try my best to not let it get to me and take one day at a time. Personally, I know if I worry too much about my future, I will get anxious and just stop doing things. And I think that’s okay, as long as I am happy, I know that eventually I’ll find something I really enjoy doing. It’s all about the journey because the destination will be the same, right? Anyways if you really read through all of this, thanks for reading! I wasn’t really too invested in writing this, and had thought I had a general idea of what I wanted to get out of taking this class, but writing it down really helped a lot.
Chapter 1 Exercise 1
Paper 1 Title: Overweight and Normal-Weight Children’s Decision-Making in a Child Variant of the Iowa Gambling Task
What Research question did the study address? The study wanted to see if weight group differences play a role in decision making during childhood.
Why is the question important to address? This question is important to address because it is testing the validity of a study already done on adults, to see if it also takes place in children. The previous study was called the Iowa Gambling Task.
What was new about the study? How did it fill in gaps in the literature?
In the Iowa Gambling task, we saw that overweight adults tend to make riskier decisions compared to normal weight adults. In that previous study they found that more impaired decision-making occurs under uncertainty in overweight adults than normal weight adults. However the current study for children wanted to see if that is true for young ages as well. A longitudinal design was applied to explore the development of weight-group differences across a 3-year period in middle childhood. It used a more age appropriate task, the Hungry Donkey Technique. The results indicate that more risky decisions (immediate rewards) were made by overweight as compared to normal-weight children and by girls as compared to boys. Therefore weight-group and gender differences in decision-making are already present during childhood. Also there was no significant change in the three year period.
What are some of the limitations and future directions of the study? What ideas do you have for future studies? Some limitations include that the study had a small sample size. Also the socioeconomic factors were not accounted for. In order to make this study have more validity this should be accounted for in future studies. I think this study should also be done with the elderly, to see if weight would still effect decision making at old age.
Elona Poltiyelova
Chapter 11 Exercise 3
Find three to four research summaries in the news or media find and read the corresponding original articles. Is the summary consistent with the research findings? In what ways and in what ways not? If not, rewrite the summary here.
Study 1
Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/health/ecigarettes-nicotine-smoking-quit.html?
E-Cigarettes Are Effective at Helping Smokers Quit, a Study Says
This article from the NY Times was a summarization about the efficacy of E-cigarettes (I will use the term JUUL as a shortening because I like the word, even though in the original study they did not use a JUULs, because they were not legal in U.K. in the time period, 2015-2018, the study was done). Overall the article did a good job of summarizing the original study. But some things they didn’t mention and probably for good reason. For example, the NYtimes article did not include the rate at which JUULs made coughing and phlegm production more common. This was probably because it was not a significant value (Confidence intervals of .6-.9). But the article probably mostly wanted to focus on the fact that it was way more likely that someone quit smoking with a JUUL as opposed to other forms of nicotine replacements (like patches and gum). The NYtimes article also failed to mention that in the conclusion the study also stated that JUULs are more likely to cause people to quit smoking if it is accompanied by behavioral support. This is an important caveat because it may not be accessible to everyone.
Wei Jun Xia
Study 2
Article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190131084243.htm
Americans concerned about weight, but don’t understand link to heart conditions, health
The summary is consistent with the research findings in the entire article. In the summary they state the percentages of Americans that are concerned about getting heart disease due to extra pounds. Also they explain how even though all these people are concerned they don’t do anything about it. In the article they explain the percentage of Americans that have tried to make dietary changes to lose weight as mentioned in the summary.
Tania Duran
Study 3
Article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190124110844.htm
Rocking motion improves sleep and memory, studies in mice and people show
In this article dealing with sleep, memory and rocking motion, the summary section provides two studies to corroborate its argument that rocking motion improves sleep and enhances memory. One study was conducted with young adults and the other with mice.
The body of the article introduced the statement that rocking before falling asleep leads to a faster rate of falling asleep and longer intervals of deeper sleep. The article explores the interest in the topic by stating that the study was conducted to understand the effects of rocking on sleep and its correlation with brain waves. It goes on to list the sample size and instructions the participants had to follow in order for the experiment to yield results. The summary does include what the article will be touching on but does not give much detail on the exact findings, only the overall. Another important information discussed in the summary was that rocking positively affects memory. The article was clear on expressing how the study lead to the results and its overlap in positive attributes to memory. The article did well in informing the reader the key points of the study and how the findings came to be. The summary accurately represented the research study and its attributes.
Lina Alfonso
Psych 215 Research Group 