Mental health disorders affect nearly one billion people worldwide, yet many individuals struggle to access timely support and assessment. In this project, I developed PsychSPT, an artificial intelligence system that uses large language models to identify signs of loneliness, depression, and other mental health concerns from written language. Using millions of posts collected from online mental health communities, I trained and evaluated models capable of both prediction and explanation. This work explores how advances in natural language processing can contribute to earlier mental health assessment while providing interpretable results for researchers and clinicians.

Recall that the problem statement of my project is to quickly and autonomously navigate and map a burning building, identify trapped inhabitants, and send recovery/escape routes to firefighters as fast as possible. During my background investigation of this subject, I discovered that navigating fires has traditionally posed a challenge for robotic systems. Traditional LiDAR (Light based) sensors are often employed for SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping: A class of perception and mapping algorithms), but these sensors lose accuracy significantly in smoke. Meanwhile, SONAR (Soundwave-based) or RADAR (Radio-based) mapping systems are often very bulky and technically complex, making them challenging to incorporate onto a dynamic robotic system. This posed a perception challenge: to develop a novel perception and navigation system that can function effectively in a fire environment.

After going to school in face masks during COVID-19, I began to contemplate their impact on human connection and how well people could recognize each other’s emotions behind the mask. My curiosity led me to investigate. In an online search, I discovered Dr. Felicity Bigelow’s study on facial emotion recognition in the scientific journal, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, and I was immediately captivated. Her research aligned perfectly with my own interests, so I decided to reach out to her with my idea for an independent research project. I asked if she’d consider being my mentor, and I was ecstatic when she agreed, despite living across the globe in Australia. For nine months, I’d log onto Zoom at 8:30 PM every Monday in New York, while Dr. Bigelow did the same at 10:30 AM every Tuesday in Melbourne.

In a world with climate deniers, scientists have been trying to uncover the most effective way to present the scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change to audiences. “Climate stories” are personal accounts that have been used in recent years to engage more people in the global issue of climate change from an emotional perspective. There are multiple ways in which “climate stories” are presented. The present study explored the effects of audio, written, narrative, and informational climate change passages on the environmental decision-making levels of individuals. The current study hypothesizes that participants who receive the audio narrative will have the greatest environmental decision-making levels. Participants first completed the Climate Change Perceptions Scale (van Valkengoed, 2021) to obtain participants’ baseline views on climate change. Next, participants were randomly split into one of four groups, each presented with a different climate change passage: written narrative, audio narrative, written information, and audio information. After viewing the climate change passages, participants answered 5 scenario-based questions based on research reports to assess their environmental decision-making levels. The results of this study indicated that factual information is significantly more effective at influencing peoples’ environmental decision-making levels than climate stories, and the formatting of climate stories (audio or written) has no significant impact on environmental decision-making. These findings suggest that scientists should use an informational approach when sharing climate change evidence with others.

Music has been an integral part of my life. I began playing piano when I was two years old and percussion in fourth grade. As I progressed through elementary and middle school, I also developed a deep passion for math. When it came time to choose a research topic for the Al Kalfus Long Island Math Fair in eighth grade, I combined these two passions and investigated the connections between math and music theory. I became fascinated by this connection and continued to research different subtopics of math and music for each subsequent year of the Math Fair, receiving multiple gold medals … In high school, I began to read academic journal articles, both in my research class and on my own time, about music’s benefits on society, and I also grew interested in the intersection of psychology and music. I found it intriguing how music’s effects can be so widespread – from improving cognition to treating anxiety and depression. I wanted to perform my own independent research project that would enhance the developments in this field. However, after reading many articles as well as more popular literature on the subject, I noticed a certain rampant inaccuracy regarding musical intervals and emotion that has been compounded over time. (Specifically, many authors have asserted that music’s major-minor dichotomy applies to keys, chords, and intervals. However, the dichotomy is not applicable on the intervallic level.) So, I decided to design a survey that would test this widespread inaccuracy among the literature. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, 180 adults from the general population responded to my survey, which was presented online and included embedded audio samples. I completed research both at home and at school.

The conditions of low-income living and the prevalence of discrimination have been long studied in African Americans; however, the Hispanic community has long been overlooked in this research, despite their parallel struggles with the pessimistic products of poverty. There is a knowledge gap in the study of adverse stimulation associated with incessant deprivation, bias, prejudice, and stereotypes applied to Hispanics/Latinos. This research focuses on how continuous struggles analogous to poverty affect the brain development and cognitive function of Hispanic children from Union City, NJ: the most densely populated city in the United States with the highest hispanic diaspora in the State of New Jersey. Two surveys were developed utilizing the Likert Scale, a derivative of the Everyday Discrimination Scale, and CDC’s Developmental Standards to measure the correlation between the reports of parents’ challenges and the teacher’s observation of the children. Contrary to previous studies on African American preschoolers in similar living conditions, they revealed that the children of Union City were provided with nutritious foods, proper health care, and little exposure to discrimination. After a careful analysis of the government programs and services provided to the constituents of Union City, it could be confidently concluded that these results are due to a unique administration and “close-knit” community. This integration of neurological studies and sociology sets an example for the governments of other low-income communities to implement, refine and improve the children’s prospects and reduce developmental issues within their towns.

I was never a STEM-oriented person. I like to think it was because I had talent in another subject that took my attention away from STEM, but it was more likely due to the humbling experience of going to an academically challenging high school that turned my love for science and math into the stress of finishing mountains of homework and fear of failing back-to-back assessments. I couldn’t picture myself pursuing a career in STEM when I obviously wasn’t good at it … I bounced from subject to subject, taking various non-STEM-related classes to find my interest. Music bore me, literature made no sense half the time, and Spanish required me to use more brain cells than I had. It seemed like I would end up majoring in a subject I disliked until I took AP Psychology during my junior year. While the kid next to me used the class to catch up on his sleep, I was engrossed in the material, taking notes on every little thing in each lecture. By the time the fall semester was over, I knew that I wanted to do something psychology related in the future … I contacted a research assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and introduced myself. I combined my interest in psychology, natural understanding of economics, and job in the food service industry to research tipping and how default tip options on an electronic payment system can affect the amount a customer tips.

Pain is tricky to study. Along with being the most prevalent chronic medical condition in the world, pain forces us to combine our understanding of physiology and the philosophy of the self and mind. This is because pain is considered a “subjective experience”, limited to the individual themselves … We can think of many examples where two different people are presented with the same stimuli or situation and produce a different response: stubbing a toe or holding a hot object, for example. There are even situations where we may respond to stimuli that shouldn’t result in pain. A famous example from 1995 describes a 29-year-old builder who jumped onto a 7-inch nail. He wailed in pain on his stretcher and the ambulance as the nail stuck out of both sides of his steel-toed boot. But when the doctors peeled off the builder’s boot, they found that the nail hadn’t penetrated any part of his foot. It had passed between his toes, without a scratch … A simple linear regression, used improperly, can be overwrought with bias and confounding effects. With the increased availability of data available to the public, it has become increasingly dangerous to make assumptions of the world around us. It is the premise of the project that I present to you today. My project challenges almost two decades of research that confirms the presence of a statistical phenomena and practice within analgesic clinical trials that could have potentially invalidated their results … Pain or not, to produce a more accurate, working model of the world, it is necessary that the data that we obtain, the methods that we use to analyze them, and the conclusions that we draw, operate on valid assumptions and understanding. This is the power of combining mathematics and science; we’re able to unearth previously invisible relationships around us. There is so much left to operationalize, to reason, to understand. With this in mind, don’t forget to challenge your own assumptions as well as the assumptions of the world around you to bring forth a clearer understanding of the tricky things in our world. This is where the progress of science lies.

Cognitive distortions are individually generating thoughts or feelings that are negative, persuasive, and usually inaccurately based on reality. Cognitive distortions can also be referred to as types of thinking. Cognitive distortions all share the commonality of representing an individual’s private negative thinking about themselves and could cause an individual to interact negatively with others. For example, one cognitive distortion type is mental filtering. Mental filtering is when an individual focuses on the negative instead of the positive in a specific current situation. In other words, they filter anything optimistic. Cognitive distortions are important to study because it relates to daily negative thinking that an individual can experience. It is important for mental health professionals to be able to identify cognitive distortions when treating depression, stress, and anxiety because it is essential to modify an individual’s core beliefs in supporting their mental well-being … The purpose of this study was: 1.To determine which cognitive distortions affect high school students more frequently in achievement and social situations and whether it mirrors the college students found by Covin (2011). 2. To examine whether the students who reported higher GPAs and engaged in more rigorous academic courses reported higher frequencies of cognitive distortions …

I have always enjoyed science, ever since I was 7 and read that over 6 billion bacteria live in your mouth. For a 7 year old, this was a scary thought. I refused to eat during meals. I never closed my mouth, as to let the invaders out. I stopped breathing through my mouth and relied only on my nose. However, I am proud to say that I am no longer afraid of being a home to my microscopic friends. Instead, I enjoy their company as they allow me to be immersed daily by science … Anxiety is the normal response of fear that occurs during threatening or stressful situations, but, if this feeling persists, it could be diagnosed as an anxiety disorder [1]. More specifically, social anxiety disorder is a common anxiety disorder. Social anxiety disorder affects 15 million adults, or about 6.8% of the United States’ population [26]. Symptoms for the disorder appear in both females and males around age 13 [26]. Females have been found repeatedly to be more likely than males to suffer from and be diagnosed with anxiety, including social anxiety [27]. People who experience this disorder feel symptoms of anxiety or fear in specific if not all social situation (e.g. meeting people for the first time) and doing daily tasks in front of others [1]. These people have a fear that they will be humiliated, judged, and/or rejected [1]. This disorder may be hereditary, but it is unknown why some family members may experience social anxiety while others do not [28,29] … Current studies have yet to examine the effects of MDMA on social anxiety in healthy human volunteers while also considering sex as a factor. Thus, this study evaluated prosocial effects of MDMA through the administration of modified questionnaires that addressed social anxiety, depressive experiences, and mood states with sex as a contributing factor …

During the winter of 2020, I was expecting to have a very different project for the summer. COVID was not something that was on everyone’s minds all the time, and I was spending time looking and applying for internships in a lab performing biological research. Biology has always been of great interest to me, and I want to pursue biomedical engineering in the future. When the pandemic hit, my summer plans were upended. Labs everywhere were closed and not accepting any interns. Worried that I would not have a project for the following school year, I realized that I needed to shift gears. I was suddenly tasked with coming up with an idea for a project that I could perform almost completely independently on my computer at home. I also had to find a mentor to answer any questions I had. As I watched the media cover stories about anti-masker protests and COVID deniers, I started to think about the psychology of the crisis that we were in. Why did the United States, one of the countries best equipped to deal with a pandemic, have such a dismal response? I started to research the psychology behind crisis responses, especially the theory of reasoned action, and that led me to my politics-focused question. I thought that it was possible that people were looking to sources of information that they trust, and as a result were consuming partisan information with conflicting messages, resulting in the disastrous first few months of the pandemic.

World Trade Center (WTC) disaster responders were exposed to psychological trauma due to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. As a result, many continue to suffer from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and psychological distress which can worsen after exposure to subsequent traumatic events such as Hurricane Sandy. Preexisting data were obtained from a study group of anonymous WTC responders both before and after Hurricane Sandy. Statistical analyses concluded that higher levels of hurricane exposure were associated with increased symptoms of PTSD and distress following Sandy. It was also determined that 9/11 responders with high hurricane exposure levels who possessed increased adaptive coping skills prior to Sandy had lower distress symptoms post-Sandy. The results highlight the importance of adaptive coping skills in promoting resilience to psychological distress.

Last year, my father and I were displaced by a hockey puck the artificially intelligent Amazon Echo Dot. As my family was getting ready to go to my uncle’s house, my sister asked my father how cold it was outside. My father in response told her that it wasn’t too chilly out and that she wouldn’t need to wear her coat. Immediately afterwards, however, my sister asked the Amazon Echo Dot also known by her wake word “Alexa” what the temperature was. “Alexa” curtly responded with the current temperature, the expected high and low temperatures of the day, and how cloudy it was. My father asked my sister why she didn’t take him at his word, and she simply responded, “I just wanted to make sure” … The present study examined whether social comparison processes and the pratfall effect exist in the human-robot interaction (HRI) domain. Contrastive upward-comparison theory states when one evaluates oneself in comparison to a superior target perceived as having an unobtainable status, the comparer feels relatively disadvantaged, and may undergo negative psychological consequences (e.g. a worsened self-concept). Because artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly human-like and flawless in its cognitive abilities, the present study hypothesized subjects outperformed by a perfectly performing robot will make contrastive upward-comparisons to it and develop negative feelings of inferiority. The present study also hypothesized, in light of the pratfall effect, that an erroneous robot would be perceived as more humanlike and likeable than an error-free robot.

The parents didn’t send their kids because there was a male teacher! Scoffing at the absurdity, my disgruntled father strolled into the house, booming with another story to share from his after-school program. As an elementary educator, he fills up our conversations at the dinner table about his daily interactions with the students and their parents; my usual routine consists of quiet nods and smiles. But this particular story got me curious. Thinking back to my own elementary days, I tried to remember my previous male classroom teachers and could only name one. Perhaps this is an anomaly! But, devoured by wonder, I later scoured Google for answers and encountered a shocking statistic: men only represent about ten percent of elementary school teachers nationwide. Only. Ten … Little is known about the effect of gendered traits on perceptions of male elementary educators. This paper presents the results of two experiments to fill this void. Experiment 1 explored the influence of gendered traits and teacher gender on perceptions of elementary educators. Participants (N = 246) were randomly assigned to view websites that varied gendered traits (communal, neutral, agentic) and teacher gender. When choosing a teacher for their child, individuals preferred either neutral or communal teachers to agentic teachers …

The present study aims to investigate the impact of two types of pressure to conform on decision making in an online setting. Since there has been an increase in social media usage in the political realm, the present study investigates how viewing comments and likes that are present on various social networking sites can cause a significant change in people’s political opinions. Subjects received both an informational conformity condition and a normative conformity condition as participants served as their own control. For both conditions, subjects gave their initial opinions on five different political issues. In the informational conformity condition, participants viewed persuasive comments on one of the political issues? whereas in the normative conformity condition, participants viewed likes on one of the political issues. Subjects also completed the Satisfaction with Decision Scale (HolmesRovner et. al., 1996) after each condition. Overall, the present study illustrates the profound impact of informational and normative pressure on people’s political opinions and decision satisfaction in online environments.

The first respect in which this paper breaks from much of the literature is that it rejects the notion that bullying behavior is carried out by a small, identifiable social group. Rather, bullying is regarded herein as a widespread social phenomenon, characteristic of the social interactions of those who would not be branded as bullies in the traditional sense. Bullying behavior is not emblematic of the mentally or emotionally disturbed bully, but rather is an inevitable result of the repeated convergence of motivating and enabling factors of bullying behavior (Zapf, 1999). For bullying to occur, the perpetrator must be willing and able to perform the behavior. The repeated coincidence of these factors is necessary because in order for a behavior to qualify as bullying, it must be repeated over time … If personality can be thought of as a stable construct, it follows that people can be expected to react to setbacks and difficulties in a manner similar to how they have in the recent past. We all face negative emotions, and many of us are imperfect in coping with them, often resulting in thoughtless behaviors or communications directed at others. The result is a set of repeated behaviors which, if directed in a hostile manner at others, might very aptly be called bullying. Therefore, many of us can be evaluated as bullies under this criterion, not in the traditional sense, but in a more broad one which does not regard us as antisocial personalities, but as social animals whose behavior toward others is shaped by our varying emotional states. A school is a particularly fertile ground for this kind of research, as students are constantly under societal and peer pressure to succeed academically. In their striving to achieve, students are often met with setbacks and disappointments which evoke the negative emotions focused on in this paper.

When one asks a group of students at any school in the country if they have ever been involved in and/or affected by bullying almost every hand shoots up into the air. Such instances demonstrate the rising incidence of bullying in each community, the country, and throughout the world. Although it is obvious that bullying occurs in schools, teachers, the adults closest to the problem, have been avoided by students. Prior studies already established statistics indicating that teachers are the last group to be approached, followed by family and friends, in cases of students who witness bullying. This study explores the reasons behind this phenomenon and proposes the question ‘why do students choose not to approach teachers about bullying? . . . Although behavioral science may not appear to have much math involved, math actually plays a major role in the research and especially in data analyses. Mathematics, and particularly statistics, was utilized to analyze data in the form of correlation analyses, Independent T-tests, and Analyses of Variance. Behavioral science, although dealing with human subjects and their interactions with others, still involves testable explanations based on logic and facts. Mathematic analyses and statistical decisions were paramount to the interpretation of results; I was able to form valid conclusions from the data and offer explanations as to why students are unwilling to approach teachers about bullying situations.

In 1997, The New York Times quoted a Bronx High School of Science administrator regarding the then- surprising increase in behavioral science honorees in the prestigious Westinghouse (now Intel) Science Talent Search competition: ‘It [behavioral science] does provide another outlet for some students whose strength may not be in empirical science and math,’ said the chairwoman of the school’s biology department (A Fine Hour For Squishy Sciences, NYT 2/16/97). Oh really? I thought my diverse fifteen hundred subject sample population and multiple analysis of covariance-based statistical analyses were pretty darned scientific. Silly me. I was also impressed with the way my friend at a local school developed and piloted her own instruments in two languages, using factor analysis and Cronbach’s alpha. A professor in California has asked permission to use the instruments in her own future research among Latino/a adolescents. It’s been fifteen years since the Times article, which otherwise offered a very positive review of all the wonderful work being done by young social scientists. Hopefully, we’re all past this squishy science / hard science nonsense. At heart, I’m a physicist. Nothing I’ve read in the last three years has excited me more than last week’s ‘Higgs boson’ discovery, but at 16 or 17, I lacked both the expertise and the opportunity to talk my way into an internship in Geneva. Social science represented an important area where I could both apply and develop my skills to an important project one that could actually make a tangible difference to girls not much younger than myself . . . Has the movement to reform middle grade education had unexpected social consequences for preteen girls struggling with self-esteem, body and weight issues? This study examined body-consciousness and sociocultural appearance attitudes among 1537 girls in seven different towns with three different grade groupings: Middle School (K-5/6-8), Modified Middle School (K-4/5-8); and Junior High (K-6/7-8). Do grade groupings within school districts affect the age at which girls become body-conscious? Do girls in Middle School districts report worse body image than those in Junior High districts?

Autism is a mental disorder that impairs the mental and social development of children on their way to adulthood. Not everyone with autism has the same severity of symptoms and therefore researchers refer to the variance of the disorder as autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). In recent years, there has been an increase in children diagnosed with autism (Groom, 2009). Reasons for such a peak in diagnoses range from a vaccine link to simply just more accurate methods of testing (Downs, 2009). No matter the cause, children with ASDs need assistance in progressing as individuals throughout life. . . The topic of autism is very personal to me. Due to the fact that my brother has autism, I have always been intrigued by the progress he has made with behavioral intervention. I want to help others with ASDs communicate and express their feelings just like any regular person has the luxury of doing. By increasing positive behavior in children with autism, they would gain the ability to socialize with normal peers and enjoy the same experiences a normal functioning child goes through. Numerous types of interventions have been implemented to aid kids with autism. These interventions span various settings and conditions, which creates a sense of spontaneity that these kids would otherwise lack. Decreasing bad behavior in kids with autism during school hours allows teachers to maximize the children’s potential . . . There is a great demand for successful interventions in the realm of behavioral intervention for children with autism. Much attention has been paid to behavioral interventions such as applied behavioral analysis (ABA) and the Lovaas method, but such a strict, rigorous method can be very hard on the parents. The treatment in this experiment is known as a social story technique, and it can be a lot less time-intensive and therefore a very useful tool for parents if it is effective.

Most people, especially teenagers, do not know HIV as anything more than an STD and that we are to avoid being infected . . . Past research has shown that the highest percentage of HIV infected patients lies in East Africa. Research has also shown that the HIV population of the United States is rapidly growing. Like all humans, my childhood played a major role in the shaping of my current personality. I personally spent my childhood in Kenya where I witnessed the effects of such a cruel virus. These sights and experiences were embedded in my mind until I moved to the United States in high school and decided to pursue my interested in the virus . . . This study was conducted to research the impact of culture and gender on the resilience of HIV infected patients. It was hypothesized that males would be more resilient than females. It was also hypothesized that it would be more difficult for Africans to cope with being HIV infected than it would be for Americans.

Most people cannot deny having procrastinated at some time; almost everyone can sympathize with the desire to delay working on an uninviting task. As a high school student, I have seen the extent to which both my peers and I postpone our work, putting off assignments until crunch time when we rush to get it done. Empirical studies have largely classified procrastination as a maladaptive trait, as it has been correlated with irritation, regret, self-condemnation, low self-esteem, despair, test anxiety, and lower GPAs (Burka & Yuen, 2008; Ferrari, Johnson, & McCown, 1995; Ferrari, 1998; Lay, Edwards, Parker, & Endler, 1989; Schouwenburg & Lay, 1995, Schraw et al, 2007, Tice & Baumeister, 1997) though I was well-acquainted with these findings long before I read about them in scientific journals. Experiences with all-nighters, avoidable typos in papers that were not given the time to be properly proofread, and stress caused by piles of work left until Sunday night had taught me first-hand about the dangers of procrastination. Yet I could never explain to myself why I dawdled in beginning my work it was simply a habit I had grown to accept. And for that reason, I began my research to understand why students procrastinate. Procrastination is something so common and relatable, yet something that we rarely take the time to understand and I wanted to change that.

First noted in the United States in 1980, the obesity epidemic has since increased twofold in recent decades. In the 21st century, obesity has become one of the leading health problems in the United States; over 34% of all adults age 20 years and over and 18% of all children age 6-11 years are obese (CDC Faststats, Obesity and Overweight). In fact, obesity is more prevalent in the United States than in other Westernized country. With obesity comes a vast array of health concerns including hypertension, glaucoma, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, certain cancers and heart disease. According to the National Institutes of Health, obesity is one of the leading cause of preventable death in the US, second only to tobacco usage; obesity-related conditions cause approximately 300,000 deaths a year . . . As a sophomore in high school, I did not know much about the obesity epidemic and I vaguely understood the concept of eating healthy and exercising regularly. When I first entered the basement of the Neurological Institute of New York, I did not plan on applying to the Intel Competition nor had I decided to obesity research. Rather, I joined the Columbia University Medical Center’s Program for Imaging and Cognitive Sciences (PICS) at the end of sophomore year because a strange fascination with the brain . . . I wanted to understand why individuals found food so mouthwateringly attractive, and how the brain normally controls food intake; using the resources provided at the fMRI lab, I hope to better understand and prevent obesity and save lives…

I found David, in all his glory, on his bed, leaning on both elbows and knees, staring at the calendar on the wall next to his pillow. The calendar holds mystical powers for David. It lists all the activities he’s scheduled to do for the next day. David is my 15 year old brother. David has autism. While David stared at the calendar, I stared at him. That moment taught me what unconditional love means.

While reading this article, I noticed a number of faults in the setup of the experiment, which indicated the possibility that hypnopaedia was not impossible. The paper of the research, done by Emmons and Simon, never specified the nouns used in the study, so their results couldn’t be duplicated. The words in the study were learned by listening, but volunteers were tested in a written format.