Daisy Fang, Entry #4, "It's your turn, take it away"

Last week, my undergraduate student, Alessandra, finally came back from her vacation in the Dominican Republic. After sharing funny stories from her trip, we immediately dived back into work. On top of recruiting and testing, we have started cross checking scores from recordings with scores from the participant packets. Although this is a rather daunting process, it is crucial in ensuring the accuracy of the data.

The presentation we prepared

Since we have asked many other RAs to accompany us to testing appointments and help us with calling, Jill (the grad student) asked Alessandra and I to give a presentation during lab meeting to explain the study more in depth. Alessandra and I were both really nervous since we had to present in front of Dr. Winner, who proposed the study in the first place. Fortunately I read the grand proposal and other research papers during EXP, so I was able to use a lot of information in my EXP proposal to prepare for the presentation. Although it was a little intimidating to talk in front of all the psychology majors as a high school student, they were all really interested in learning about the research and asked a lot of questions. Overall the presentation went very well, and the lab meeting went by quickly as we discussed various details and the next steps for this study. 

Data table extracted from 1 of the 6 sections of the test

We are in the home stretch with data collection. I met with my lab manager to start learning the basics of statistics in order to prepare for data analysis. Besides learning stats online, I also started sorting the data from a section of the test that is completed on computer. I had to import all the results into excel, clean up the data, and add other measures before we can enter the data into SPSS to be analyzed. From what I have learned so far, I have found statistics to be really interesting, because while it is based on a theoretical framework, it also has tremendous practical value. 

We also finally got to hear about the research done by an undergrad who just graduated. Chris is interested in evolutionary psychology, the study of how human behaviors can be conceptualized as adaptations that helped human ancestors to survive ad reproduce in their environments. His study specifically tested if potential mates with higher musical intelligence would be more desirable. Since data is still being analyzed, we don't know much about the findings of the study yet. Chris hopes to continue studying evolutionary psychology as he attends graduate school this fall. Both my PI and Chris talked about the importance of undergraduate research, especially doing one's own study. They emphasized that though this opportunity is rare, but it will be extremely rewarding and helpful for the future.