Author: igdalsky

Ending at the Lifespan Emotional Development Lab

Ending at the Lifespan Emotional Development Lab

It’s hard to believe that my summer internship at the Lifespan Emotional Development Lab is over. I learned so much and really enjoyed working at the lab, so time seemed to fly! I feel as though nearly all of the tasks that I completed were relevant to my learning goals, because they gave me the opportunity to learn about the different aspects of psychology research. I wanted to see the daily tasks associated with running and publishing a study, and the variety of things I did offered that to me.  I found this most basic chart of the tasks of research:

Source: ckbooks.com

Even though some tasks were not the most exhilarating, they reflect the reality of the field. Spending hours entering and coding data is simply par for the course. However, if I had to pick a few tasks that taught me the most, I would choose that of running participants through the entire study protocol, and attending weekly lab meetings. I ran approximately 15-20 participants through our study, and I feel that this is where I really came to understand why the study was designed as it was. Rather than simply coding the participants’ answers to our various questionnaires, I understood what their different answers and scores meant. This was especially helpful when working with our eye-tracking data, which could have been hard to understand if I had not worked to calibrate participants and run them through the various video-watching tasks of the study.

 

The summer 2012 LedLab team!

 The weekly lab meetings were an important learning opportunity for me, because they gave me the chance to talk to people working on other studies, and learn about their protocol and findings. It is easy to get “tunnel vision” when you are working on the same study day in and day out, and speaking with others working on different but related research helped to bring my understanding back to the “big picture.” Please check out this link to the most recent lab meeting article: http://spl.stanford.edu/pdfs/2001%20Current%20Directions%20in%20Psychological%20Science%20-%20Emo.%20Reg.%20in%20Adulthood%20Timing%20.pdf.

To build off of what I learned this summer, I plan to explore my own research interests more. Now that I have some background and understanding in the way that research in the field works, it is time to figure out the particular questions that I want to explore through research. I think that Dr. Isaacowitz’s work on emotional development throughout the lifespan is incredibly interesting and important, but I also hope to take on opportunities in other arenas of research. Dr. Isaacowitz also let me know how important independent research experience is for graduate school applications, so now is the time to start thinking about these big questions.

For other students interested in an internship in the field of psychology research, I would advise them to try working in different labs. If you have never worked in a lab before, how can you really know what your research interests are? What you learn in class is really different than what you do in the lab. Just check out this webpage from the American Psychological Association to get sense of how varied the field is! (http://www.apa.org/topics/) Also, even if you find that your personal research questions are different than those of the lab you’re working in, you will gain valuable knowledge and skills that are universal in psychology research! – Leah Igdalsky, ’13

Halfway Through

It’s hard to believe that I’m already halfway through my time at the Lifespan Emotional Development Lab at Northeastern University. Although I feel like time is flying, I have also learned a lot since I started. I have become much more involved in the study we are conducting. I have had the chance to understand many of the steps of psychology research, from literature review to running subjects to entering and coding data to data analysis. At first, I only observed my supervisor and other research assistants (RAs) running participants, but now I lead multiple participants through our study daily, asking for assistance only as issues arise. The picture below shows me and another RA practicing the proper way to apply the sensors that we use to measure physiological responses in our participants.  I know that I’machieving my goals here at the LEDlab,  not only because of the fact that I have learned more specific research skills, but also because I have learned more about why psychology research works the way it does. For example, the physiological data that we gather supplements the survey and eye-tracking data by giving us concrete data on how the person’s body is responding to the stimuli. Thus, we do not have to rely only on what the person reports about how they are feeling, because we have evidence of the physical processes at work.

As a psychology major, the chance to have such hands-on experience in conducting a study has been invaluable in making the concepts I have read about in my classes come to life. For example, I remember completing countless problem sets for my Statistics course about hypothetical studies. These problems often required the use of SPSS, a common statistical program used in psychology. As I went through the steps of each problem, I sometimes had a hard time really understanding what to do. Where in the spreadsheet should particular data go? Which statistical test should I perform?  While I certainly do not have all the answers to SPSS, working with others to calculate those statistics for the study that I’ve been working on for weeks makes the concepts “come to life” for me. I think that this new understanding of SPSS will be helpful in future lab experiences and even job interviews, as well as in classes that will require research methods and statistics.

My main personal goal for the summer was to see if I wanted to pursue research or clinical psychology. Speaking with other RAs about their co-op experiences has been illuminating in this regard. Co-op is a Northeastern University program in which “students alternate semesters of academic study with semesters of full-time employment in positions related to their academic or career interests” (Northeastern Co-Op). Many of the other RAs spent their Co-Ops in clinical settings, working in hospitals and mental health centers. Talking to them has given me some insight into what it is like working on the clinical side of things. Talking with them inspired me to look into more experiential learning opportunities in the Brandeis psychology department, especially the Clinical Practicum Program. So, hearing about my colleagues’ co-op experiences has inspired me to look into ways to gain experience working in different sectors of psychology through my university.

– Leah Igdalsky, 2014

My First Week at the Lifespan Emotional Development Lab

(Image source)

I began work this week at the Lifespan Emotional Development (LEDLab) at Northeastern University. This psychology lab is headed by Principal Investigator Derek Isaacowitz, a researcher and professor who worked at Brandeis before Northeastern. I chose to spend my summer with this lab because I had wanted to get involved in Professor Isaacowitz’s research on emotion and attention across the lifespan since he was my instructor for Social Psychology during my freshman year. I actually interviewed for a position as a Research Assistant (RA) with this lab while it was still at Brandeis, but had to defer joining for a semester because of prior commitments. I thought I had missed my chance to join the lab when it moved to Northeastern in January 2012. Lucky for me, support from WOW made it possible for me to have my chance to be an RA this summer.

The LEDLab investigates “the links between attention and emotion throughout the adult lifespan…how individuals of different ages manage their emotions, and what role attention plays in emotion regulation and maintenance of well-being” (lab website). In order to study the way that adults of different ages attend to information and how that relates to the emotions that they experience, we make use of an eye tracker. which continuously tracks where a person’s gaze is across the screen. This lets us to know what a person focuses on: is is the emotional expressions on people’s faces or is it irrelevant details of the scene which allow a person to avoid facing emotional content? Believe it or not, this varies among ages. In order to better understand what eye tracking is really like, here is a photo of my lab manager and P.I. using the equipment.

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You might wonder why knowing this type of information matters. However, understanding how people relate to emotional content has important practical uses for society. For example, the study I am working on is looking at how people of different ages (younger adults, middle adults and older adults) process health-relevant information differently if the focus is on emotions or information. Professor Isaacowtiz published on this topic in article called “Looking, Feeling and Doing: Are There Age Differences in Attention, Mood and Behavioral Responses to Skin Cancer Information” in the journal Health Psychology earlier this year. I will not go into detail on the findings, since they are a bit complicated to explain here, but they did find a difference in the way older and younger people processed information that was important to their health and well-being. This knowledge is important in knowing how to reach out to people in the most effective manner to protect their health.

My expectations for learning this summer relate to both the particular skill set that I hope to gain, and knowledge about myself and my future career goals. The particular skill set I think I will learn is the nitty-gritty details of psychology research: running human subjects, coding and entering data, analyzing data, and discussing findings. For myself, I think that this summer will help me figure out which path I want to take with psychology: will I want to focus on research, or clinical work? By gaining a deeper understanding of what research really entails, I will be able to make a more informed choice for my future.

– Leah Igdalsky ’14