Tiffany A. Ito, Ph.D. - US grants

DESCRIPTION (adapted from investigator's abstract): The proposed project is designed to develop and validate a physiological, brain-based measure of prejudice. This measure, which relies on event-related brain potentials (ERPs), has been used frequently in the general attitudes domain, where its sensitivity to attitude valence and degree of extremity has been demonstrated. The proposed research will modify this existing paradigm to assess ERP reliability as a measure of individual differences in attitudes toward social groups, its relation to behavior, and the extent to which it relates to extant implicit and explicit measures of prejudice and stereotyping. Concern about the reactivity of self-report measures has fueled development of implicit measures of prejudice and stereotyping. The proposed research represents an important step to expanding our range of measures to include physiological ones. ERPs have several unique and advantageous features relative to implicit measures. Whereas implicit measures are by definition indirect measures, the ERP is a direct, on-line measure of information processing activities. ERPs are also sensitive to the underlying evaluative percept itself, even when this evaluation is inconsistent with explicit verbal reports. Recent research also reveals that ERPs are sensitive not only to intentional evaluations, but also to more spontaneously activated evaluative judgments. Thus, ERPs may be useful in marking early evaluative responses that an individual may not even intend. The development of an ERP measure of prejudice may therefore aid in our understanding of prejudice, especially with respect to how a single social group can produce different and sometimes conflicting evaluative dispositions depending on the type of measure being used.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of the proposed research is to investigate mechanisms involved in the inhibition of prejudice and stereotypes. We are specifically interested in how implicitly activated stereotypical and prejudicial associations are detected so that their influences may be subsequently inhibited. An overarching goal of the proposed research is to integrate cognitive neuroscience models of conflict monitoring and cognitive control with models and findings on the successful inhibition of prejudice and stereotypes. Ultimately, we hope to develop a comprehensive understanding of how individuals manage their reactions when encountering members of different social groups so as to inhibit the effects of prejudice and stereotypes. This knowledge should increase our ability to design interventions and strategies to block the negative consequences of prejudice and stereotyping. The proposed studies will assess the role of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and areas of prefrontal cortex (PFC) in detecting prejudice and stereotypes using neuroimaging and scalp-recorded event-related brain potentials. We will specifically examine the extent to which group members and category labels implicitly activate evaluative and stereotypical responses that conflict with non-prejudicial representations, and the degree to which this conflict is detected by the ACC and PFC. We will also examine the role of ACC and PFC mediated conflict monitoring systems in producing successful inhibition of stereotypes.

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of the proposed research is to investigate how social category information such as race, gender, and age affect the perception of faces. This will be done by drawing on work from two related yet not-well-integrated lines of research. The first deals with early perceptual processing of faces, and the second focuses more generally on impression formation. Research in the former tradition has not often addressed the role of social category information whereas work in the latter tradition has not addressed how early perceptual processes affect outcomes such as stereotyping and prejudice. [unreadable] [unreadable] Preliminary research we have done using event-related brain potentials (ERPOs) shows that target race and gender have multiple discrete effects on the processing of faces beginning as early as 100 ms after stimulus onset (Ito & Urland, in press). Moreover, these effects differ throughout the time course of processing. Based on this, the working hypothesis of the proposed research is that social category membership affects the perception of faces at very early stages of processing, and that it has different effects as processing progresses. Studies are proposed that (a) assess the degree to which the perception of social category membership is a multi-staged process, (b) examine whether a single model can account for processing of different group dimensions, and (c) assess how early perceptual aspects of face processing relate to stereotyping and prejudice. More generally, the proposed research will integrate models from cognitive neuroscience on face perception with social psychological models of social perception with the ultimate goal of better understanding the full time course of how social cues are extracted from faces and later affect the activation of stereotypes and prejudice. [unreadable] [unreadable]

"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."


This collaborative project outlines a series of studies investigating the role of individual differences in executive functions (EFs) in expression of implicit racial bias. Executive functions refer to higher-order control processes that regulate thought and action. Although an individual's performance on laboratory-based implicit bias tasks is typically interpreted as a straightforward manifestation of his/her underlying automatic bias, recent preliminary evidence suggests that performance on all such tasks implicates executive control processes, such as the overriding of dominant or pre-potent responses. According to the team of researchers involved in this project, racial bias, as assessed by implicit bias tasks, is a complex construct jointly affected by automatic bias and individual differences in EF abilities. The research they will carry out seeks to vigorously test this emerging theoretical view by conducting a large-scale individual differences study of the relationship between EF abilities and expressions of racial bias. The aim of this research is threefold: to investigate the extent to which behavioral manifestations of race bias are associated with individual differences in related but separable EF abilities; to investigate several neurocognitive processes associated with cognitive control as mechanisms through which EF abilities affect expression of race bias; and to determine whether individual differences in EF abilities moderate the impact of manipulations that temporarily deplete executive functioning. The work will involve 5 collaborators and include nearly 500 research participants at three geographic locations. What sets this project apart theoretically from existing work is that rather than treating EF as a unitary ability, the current research adopts a multi-component view of EF that suggest it can be decomposed into correlated yet separable subcomponents, such as inhibition, updating, and shifting. By examining both behavioral and neurocognitive (ERP) indices of implicit bias, this project has the potential to provide the first-ever systematic and comprehensive analysis of the EF-bias relationship.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Awareness of the growing prevalence and deleterious effects of cannabis use has greatly increased over the past decade, making salient the need to better understand the mechanisms that underlie its initiation and progression of use. Self-regulation provides the means through which we control our thoughts and behavior to be in line with desired outcomes. As such, it is a fundamental component in substance use behavior. The purpose of the proposed research is to better understand marijuana use through a systematic assessment of self-regulatory processes related to marijuana use. It takes a multilevel approach, examining genetic, neural, and social/ behavioral influences on marijuana use. In particular, we hypothesize that genetic variability influences neurobiological and social psychological aspects of self-regulation involved in decision making regarding substance use. These neurobiological and social/behavioral deficits are then implicated in failures of self-regulation that are associated with the initiation, maintenance, and/or escalation of substance use. These processes will be explored by examining neural mechanisms associated with self-regulation (including sensitivity to rewards and punishments, response inhibition, and attention and working memory) as well as social psychological factors implicated in self-regulation (such as normative beliefs and prototypes of substance users) among three groups of cannabis users: (1) individuals exposed to marijuana use who have never initiated use, (2) individuals who have initiated use but not as heavy users, and (3) daily users. The association of specific genetic factors with neurobiological and social aspects of self-regulation and drug use will also be examined. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Understanding the mechanisms associated with cannabis use has important public health implications. Cannabis is the mostly widely used illicit drug, and recent statistics indicate that 2.8 million Americans meet criteria for cannabis abuse or dependence (Epstein, 2002). Its use it also associated with a wide ranged of problems, including difficultly at work and school, psychopathology, and high risk sexual behavior. The design of more effective interventions should particularly benefit from a better understanding of self-regulation and substance use, allowing interventions to be targeted to more specific sources of dysregulation.

The proposed project is focused on the gender gap in the STEM disciplines through research on the impact of stereotype threat, which is viewed as an important factor in female underrepresentation in mathematics and science. Stereotype threat for women in math and science takes the form of a fear that they could be judged in light of negative stereotypes. The research rigorously tests the emerging view that identity threat impairs
learning and performance by reducing mental capacity, specifically working memory capacity, cluttering individuals? minds with negative task-irrelevant thoughts (e.g., worry) and inducing them to excessively monitor task performance. Affirmation is hypothesized to reduce task-irrelevant thoughts and/or excessive performance monitoring, thereby protecting working memory capacity from the effects of identity threat.

Using multiple levels of analysis, the research is designed to: a) test whether stereotype threat diminishes the math and science performance of undergraduate women by reducing working memory capacity; b) determine the efficacy of a self-affirmation intervention for lessening the negative impact of stereotype threat on women's math performance and clarify the underlying cognitive mechanism (i.e., depleted working memory capacity ) that allegedly mediates its impact; and c) examine whether a self-affirmation intervention can improve the learning of new scientific concepts in addition to enhancing the solving of math and science problems. A significant strength of this proposal is the proposed testing of working memory capacity in a more rigorous and comprehensive manner than previously done, by examining multiple mediating mechanisms with a diverse array of converging measures (e.g., reaction times, event-related potentials, heart rates.

The proposed research will yield rich data on underlying mechanisms that should provide a foundation for conducting larger-scale longitudinal interventions in actual STEM classrooms. The research also has the potential to advance knowledge and understanding across several fields and create transformative concepts

This project has the potential to significantly reduce the gender gap in STEM fields at the undergraduate and graduate levels through significantly reducing underrepresentation in these disciplines and increasing performance on standardized tests of math and science. At the same time, the proposed activities offer a unique blend of training opportunities to undergraduate trainees, graduate and post-grad students. The interdisciplinary team includes leading researchers with expertise in cognitive psychology, social neuroscience, and science education. Thus the project also can serve as a proof of concept that an interdisciplinary approach can reveal the mechanisms underlying one of the most significant psychological barriers to women's success in the STEM, and that a psychological intervention targeting identity threat can improve women's STEM learning and performance.

This research seeks to understand the causes of women's lower rates of participation and achievement in STEM compared to men. The focus is specifically on the role of belonging in STEM defined as feeling a sense of fit, personal acceptance, respect, and inclusion as a member of an academic discipline. The study builds on two key prior observations: (1) belonging is well documented to facilitate a range of positive academic outcomes such as achievement and motivation, but (2) women report feeling a lower sense of belonging in STEM than do men. Recent research, including preliminary work by the research team, indicates that such gender differences in belonging underlie gender differences in STEM representation and achievement, but key questions remain. First, why do women experience a lower sense of belonging in STEM than men? The research addresses this by investigating theoretically-derived antecedents of belonging and how they may produce differences in belonging between men and women in STEM. Second, how does a thwarted sense of belonging in STEM translate into lower performance and motivation? The proposed research specifically tests whether questioning one's sense of fit in a domain consumes cognitive resources that would otherwise be used for learning and performance, producing reductions in working memory capacity that underlie the negative effects of low belonging on academic outcomes. The particular focus in this research, to be conducted at the University of Colorado, will be women?s achievement and retention within the physical sciences, technology engineering, and math (pSTEM), where gender disparities have been particularly large and persistent.

These research questions will be addressed with a large prospective field study and several experimental lab studies. The field study assesses both the antecedents of belonging, and the impact of belonging on short-term and long-term academic outcomes. This will be accomplished by surveying men and women enrolled in gateway pSTEM classes several times during the semester, then tracking their academic performance throughout their college career. Factors identified in past research as possible antecedents of belonging (instructor support, general social support, compatibility of life goals with pSTEM careers, and salience of gender stereotypes in pSTEM) will be measured earlier in the semester, and their impact of end-of-semester belonging will be assessed. We will also assess how belonging in turn influences course outcomes (e.g., course grade), as well as longer-term outcomes such as grades in subsequent pSTEM classes and retention in a pSTEM major. The field study will be complemented by controlled lab studies that test the direct effect of belonging on performance and learning, and whether any decreases in belonging are driven by reduced working memory capacity. These studies will take the form of varying situational cues that should impact belonging among women, then measuring working memory capacity and either performance on tests of already learned pSTEM material or learning of new pSTEM content. Analyses will assess whether decrements in women's performance and learning are mediated by decreases in working memory capacity.

Despite meaningful increases in the number of women pursing STEM disciplines in college, women's pursuit of and achievement within pSTEM disciplines still lags behind that of men. The main goal of this research is to understand the role that a sense of fit and acceptance within STEM plays in this gender gap. The ultimate goal is to inform empirically-rooted interventions that foster a secure sense of belonging among all students pursing pSTEM. For example, knowledge of factors that influence belonging, and how such factors may operate within actual pSTEM classes to produce lower belonging almng women, could be used to shape educational practices to minimize such gender differences. Similarly, knowledge of how threats to belonging impair performance and learning could lead to strategies that minimize these effects in authentic learning contexts. Moreover, while the proposed work is focused on understanding gender disparities in belonging and how these produce gender disparities in pSTEM achievement and representation, a fuller understanding of how belonging translates into positive academic outcomes should serve the broader goal of increasing participation among other underrepresented groups, as well as facilitating achievement and retention of all students in STEM.

This engineering education research initiation grant seeks to explore how engineering fluid dynamics can be taught by engaging students from the arts on engineering teams. The study explore development of students' perception of fluid mechanics, contrasting what is learned with more traditional, mathematical approaches via the impact on learning outcomes and retention. A mixed-methods study and perceptual training study will be conducted to explore expertise development.

The broader significance and importance of this project arises through the potential for such alternative pedagogies to address both motivation and retention of students who are currently retained in engineering at a lower rate than peers. Combining students from visual arts and engineering backgrounds to explore fluid problems may lead to insights on communicating engineering to a broader audience. This project overlaps with NSF's strategic goals of transforming the frontiers through preparation of an engineering workforce with new capabilities and expertise. Additionally NSF's goal of innovating for society is enabled by building the capacity of the nation's citizenry for addressing societal challenges through engineering.

The goal of the SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (SPRF) program is to enhance the participation of under-represented groups in science and engineering; promote interdisciplinary research; and encourage doctoral-level scientists (who are not yet in full-time positions) to take advantage of the two-year fellowships to prepare for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. This postdoctoral research fellowship is supported by the Broadening Participation track of the SPRF program.

Converging evidence suggests gender differences in retention in the physical sciences, technology, engineering, and math (pSTEM) are partly driven by women?s lower sense of academic belonging (feeling like a valued, accepted, and legitimate member in an academic domain). What remains unclear is how students' sense of academic belonging is formed and factors that safeguard women's sense of academic belonging in pSTEM, particularly in the face of negative stereotypes regarding intellectual abilities that suggest women do not fit in intellectually in these fields. The aims of this project are to (1) refine a multidimensional theoretical model of academic belonging with particular attention to the distinct subcomponents of social fit and intellectual fit by conducting a longitudinal field study that assesses these components of belonging over time and examines their unique relations to achievement and persistence, and (2) investigate whether an intervention that normalizes concerns about one's abilities might bolster women's sense of intellectual fit in pSTEM fields and in so doing increase retention. By helping to understand factors that lead to gender gaps in pSTEM retention and identifying an intervention that can ameliorate those gaps, this work will help transform pSTEM education practices and settings so that they foster and affirm the belonging of all students. Furthermore, this work contributes a process model of how uncertainty regarding intellectual fit shapes reactions to events that can be applied to other stereotyped groups in other performance contexts (not just women?s experiences in pSTEM), as well as to understanding determinates of achievement generally (not just pSTEM achievement). These aims are directly aligned with NSF?s goals of promoting a strong and diverse pSTEM workforce and will benefit students, educators, and policy makers alike.

Two studies test the proposed aims of this project. Study 1 is a longitudinal field study of students enrolled in pSTEM majors that refines and tests an innovative multidimensional model of academic belonging. In this model, a student's sense of belonging in a field or domain is formed by perceptions of social fit as well as intellectual fit. This research sheds light on what it means to feel a sense of belonging in an academic domain and how students? perceptions of their belonging are formed and change over time. This multidimensional model of academic belonging allows for more precise predictions of academic persistence and adds a novel path to understanding gender asymmetries in pSTEM retention. Study 2 builds on Study 1 using a randomized field study design to test whether an intervention that normalizes ability fit concerns improves academic outcomes for women in pSTEM. In this study pSTEM majors are randomly assigned to a control group or to an intervention group where they learn that most students report worrying about their intellectual fit at some point in their academic career. All students are then followed longitudinally over the course of a semester to understand whether normalizing the experience of concerns regarding intellectual fit can boost women's retention. Both studies employ longitudinal growth curve modeling to assess how students' perceptions of their pSTEM ability fit change over time and how these changes relate to subsequent pSTEM achievement and retention. Together, these studies have significant theoretical and applied utility by providing new insights into how perceptions of academic belonging are formed and the structural factors that can be employed to create more equitable pSTEM environments for all students.

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving the way faculty give undergraduates feedback about their academic performance. Feedback is intended to promote student learning and achievement. However, relatively little research has explicitly studied how STEM students interpret feedback and whether feedback has its intended effects. This project will examine how students’ reactions to feedback are shaped by their self-perceptions, such as their confidence in mastering STEM material and their feelings of being accepted in the field. The project will test whether several types of feedback produce equally beneficial outcomes for students with different self-perceptions. The goal of the project is to build a knowledge base about the factors that affect students’ responses to academic feedback. It is anticipated that this knowledge may be incorporated into evidence-based STEM teaching practices at many types of institutions. In addition, knowledge gained about how students’ self-perceptions shape their reactions should be relevant to other aspects of STEM teaching and course design, such as describing learning goals or the instructor’s teaching philosophy.

Individuals vary in their academic self-perceptions, with some feeling higher efficacy and belonging in the field than others. Systematic differences also exist between students, with women on average reporting lower efficacy and belonging in STEM than men. The impact of these individual and gender differences on students’ reactions to academic feedback will be examined in laboratory studies in which student volunteers agree to complete representative STEM assignments that are evaluated by a person who is communicating with the student online. The study will examine key variables shown to affect responses to feedback in other contexts, such as the gender of the evaluator, students’ self-efficacy, and whether students think the evaluator knows their gender. As a second major goal, the project will also evaluate specific theory-informed ways to deliver feedback with the goal of maximizing the benefits of feedback for all students. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. This project is in the Engaged Student Learning track, through which the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.