Psychology Archives - Princeton Insights

November 3, 2022November 3, 2022

Isolation Disorganizes Typical Social Interaction and Whole-Brain Genetic Expression in the Bumblebee

Review written by Adelaide Minerva (PNI, G4) and Rebekah Rashford (PNI, G5)

Throughout the COVID pandemic, many of us were faced with profound levels of social isolation which took a toll on both our mental and physical health. This has been especially detrimental for children, whose brains and social skills are still developing. Normally, social experience in early life plays a crucial role in guiding this development; but what happens when that guidance is no longer present? Disruptions to the early social environment have been seen to negatively impact other social species besides humans, such as mice, fish, and some insects. Studying how social isolation may disrupt the development of these highly social species can provide insight into the neural mechanisms underlying both typical and aberrant behavior at a level of detail not currently possible in human subjects. Taking advantage of one of these highly social species, Dr. Yan Wang and colleagues in the departments of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and the Center for Biophysics at Princeton used bumblebees to measure the effects of early life social isolation on behavior, gene expression, and whole-brain neuroanatomy.

October 28, 2022October 28, 2022

Using Machine Learning to Better Understand Human Behavior

Review written by Paula Brooks (NEU, G6)

How similar are bears and bulls?

If you ask a biologist, she might say that they are pretty similar, since they are both four-legged mammals found in North America. However, if you ask an economist, he might say they are polar opposites, since they are used to describe distinct stock market conditions. The unique way in which individuals organize their semantic knowledge, or general information gained through life experiences, could cause two people to judge the similarity between two animals in very different ways.

October 20, 2022October 20, 2022

Early life adversity can induce pathological avoidance behaviors in mice, but males with suppressed neurogenesis may step out of their comfort zones

Review written by Amy Ciceu (NEU, 2024)

Early life adversity, ranging from physical and emotional abuse, neglect, and violence, to poverty and unstable home environments, can have an enduring toll on child development. Some children who experience early life adversity may experience detrimental effects in the moment but develop into adults without pathological behavior. On the other hand, for certain children, the impacts of early life adversity increase the likelihood that they will develop neuropsychiatric disorders as adults. For instance, anxiety disorders are more prevalent amongst survivors of early life adversity compared to the general population. Although diverse in the symptoms they present and the treatments they require, anxiety disorders share one feature in common: heightened levels of anxiety. Normally, anxiety helps us steer clear of dangers. However, if ramped up into overdrive, excessive levels of anxiety can fuel a range of maladaptive behaviors.

January 14, 2022January 14, 2022

What other species can teach us about how infants learn to speak

Review written by Sarah McFann (CBE, G6)

One thing that sets humans apart from our closest evolutionary relatives, Old World apes and monkeys, is that much of human brain development occurs outside the womb. This means that, relative to our evolutionary neighbors, humans are born altricial—a term describing animals that are born helpless and dependent upon parental care. Because our immature brains are presented with real-world stimuli as they develop, humans have the chance to be molded by external cues like language.

September 29, 2021September 29, 2021

Attention, Awareness, and the Right TPJ

Review written by Amy Ciceu (2024)

Have you ever found yourself in deep thought in a public setting only to come to your senses and arrive at the uncomfortable realization that you’re making eye contact with another person? Such is the dilemma that faces us when we lose control of our awareness. Awareness—a module of behavior that allows us to be conscious of stimuli in our environment—is fundamentally distinct from but similar to attention—the process of selectively focusing the mind on certain stimuli at the expense of others. In an insightful new study led by graduate student Andrew Wilterson of the Graziano Lab at Princeton University, researchers used stimulus-prediction tasks and MRI imaging to investigate the interrelated nature of awareness and attention in the human brain.

June 17, 2021June 17, 2021

The moment-to-moment pitch dynamics of child-directed speech shape toddlers’ attention and learning

Review written by Liza Mankovskaya (SLA, G7)

Have you ever wondered why we tend to talk to children in a different way than we speak to adults? You might think there isn’t much to it. After all, kids are cute, so adults melt, and hence - “baby talk.” Yet, this difference serves a very important purpose. Several decades of studies have shown that children, from young infants to toddlers, prefer this kind of speech; most importantly, when exposed to speech directed to them in this way, children are more engaged and learn more. But why? We can first consider the differences between speech to children, and speech between adults. One of the most recognizable ways in which caregivers tend to speak to children--child-directed-speech (CDS)--is characterized by significant variation in pitch and intonation. Compared to CDS, “adult” voice and intonations are much more monotonous, so children have a harder time concentrating. Thus, researchers believe that the overall higher level of engagement engendered by CDS promotes learning in children. What is less known, however, is how children process and learn from specific patterns of stress and intonation of CDS on the level of individual words. Recently, Princeton researchers Mira Nencheva, Elise Piazza, and Professor Casey Lew-Williams in the department of Psychology took on exactly this question. They identified specific ways in which caregivers’ pitch changed throughout a word (pitch contours) of CDS in English and analyzed how engaged two-year-old children were during these different pitch contours and how well they learned novel words that followed these contours. Their findings provide a sub-second frame for understanding the mechanisms and features of CDS that make it optimal for children as they listen to CDS in real time.

May 6, 2021May 6, 2021

#MeToo? Perceptions of sexual harassment depend on the victim’s femininity

Review written by Leon Mait (PSY, G2)

In October 2017, actress Alyssa Milano tweeted a call for women who had been sexually harassed to reply to her post saying “Me too”, aiming to give the public a sense of how pervasive the experience of sexual harassment is. This ignited the Me Too movement as we know it. However, ten years earlier, social activist Tarana Burke had already started using the phrase on her Myspace page to promote empowerment among women of color who had been sexually abused. Milano did later credit Burke with coining the phrase, but the fact that it took a White woman to bring national attention to a social movement spearheaded by a Black woman is telling.

April 29, 2021April 29, 2021

Using virtual reality to demonstrate the environmental reinstatement effect

Written by Paula Brooks (PNI, G4)

Walking through your old high school might release a flood of memories that were locked away for years, perhaps even a decade (or more)! Walking through the cafeteria might remind you of the time you almost scared the timid new girl when you boldly walked up to her to invite her to join your friend group for lunch. Or maybe, going past the gym might bring back the memory of when you face planted in front of the entire class while attempting to do the high jump. (Full disclosure: Both of these things happened to me.)

April 20, 2021April 20, 2021

The development of visual-spatial biases in children

Written by Munisa Said (PSY, 2022) & Crystal Lee (PSY, GS2)

How good are you at finding Waldo? Whether you’re good or bad at it, finding Waldo is not a trivial task. To do so, you must be able to direct your attention to a specific location in a scene, process a massive amount of noisy input, and, finally, make sense of it. Tasks that you perform in your everyday life like reading, driving, cooking--and yes, finding Waldo--all depend on your ability to direct your visuo-spatial attention, the attentional mechanism that allows you to select information from a specific location in space for processing, as well as filter out irrelevant information from other locations.