The Annual Mary Lou Fulton Mentored Research Conference showcases some of the best student research from the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences. The mentored learning program encourages undergraduate students to participate in hands-on and practical research under the direction of a faculty member. Students create these posters as an aide in presenting the results of their research to the public, faculty, and their peers.
If you are submitting your poster, please do so via the Submit Research link in the left sidebar on this page, and not on the main Submit Research page.
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Best Practices for Financial Success in the Nonprofit Sector
Zach McKenzie, Benjamin Hendricks, Emily Foskey, Michelle Baria, and Gabriel Walker
With the recent upturn in economic success over the past year, United States citizens are becoming more and more poised to contribute to nonprofits and philanthropic causes. The aim of this project was to establish the best practices for financial success in the nonprofit sector as nonprofits look for an increase of funding from this philanthropic surge. Using ratio and environmental analysis, we found several best practices that can be applied to other organizations.
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A Closer Look at Nabataean Burials
Anna Nielsen
The ancient city of Petra is famous for monumental rock-cut tombs. These structures contain two little-understood mortuary types: primary burial, in which corpses were interred without alteration, and secondary burial, in which corpses were exposed and defleshed. This research explores the circumstances under which Nabataeans received primary or secondary burial.
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Praise and Prejudice: American Attitudes Toward Japan in Uncle Ben
Anna Nielsen, Rachel Baron, and Emily Orton
Uncle Ben in Japan is a 1933 geographical workbook intended to teach American schoolchildren about Japan. This text highlights both positive and negative American attitudes towards Japan in the 1930s. Although this work expresses certain views progressive for its time, it also contains evident assumptions of American national superiority.
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Nutraceuticals: An Alternative Treatment for Influenza Virus
Siale Teaupa
Influenza virus is a contagious respiratory pathogen that infects hundreds of thousands of people a year, making it a serious global health concern. The virus has a rapid mutation rate and has developed resistance to current antiviral agents, making it a difficult target for effective treatment. There is an increasing need to identify new treatments for Influenza. Recently, we have tested nutraceuticals as an effective alternative for blocking Influenza. We have tested Jamaican Sorrel, Black Currant Berries, and Manuka Honey paired with Bee Pollen for antiviral activity. We have demonstrated that these nutraceuticals block the 2009 Pandemic California Influenza strain between a concentration range of 1:8-1:16 dilution. Stock solutions of these nutraceuticals have been extracted with water to create a roughly 300 milliosmole solution. They are then neutralized with HEPES buffer, 1N HCl and1N NaOH.
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Sex and Money: Exploring How Sexual and Financial Stressors, Perceptions and Resources Influence Marital Instability for Men and Women
David B. Allsop, E. Jeffrey Hill, Ashley B. LeBaron, and Roy A. Bean
This project explores how finances and sex relate to each other and to marital in-stability for men and women. Data come from the Flourishing Families Project (N = 301 couples) and are organized using the ABC-X model of family stress. Financial stress predicted sexual dissatisfaction for men but not for women. Parenting stress predicted sexual dissatisfaction for women but not for men. Financial dissatisfaction and sexual dissatisfaction predicated marital instability for both men and women. Financial and relational communication fully mediated all significant relationships with marital instability except in the mediational model, couple income still predicted marital instability for men.
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American Prosperity Faces the Music
Douglas E. Archibald
If music influences people, what influences music? Intuitively, it is inspired by cultural traditions, changes in technology, and the zeitgeist of nations. On an even deeper level, it is inspired by demand. People will not buy music that does not give them utility. Now, how can someone know what type of music is in demand, or will be in demand? What factors influence music demand, and by studying these can future music trends be predicted? The purpose of this study is to discover how the economic well-being of a nation influences the demand for certain types of music, and if the measurements of economic well-being can be used to predict future music trends. The study uses date from the One Million Songs Database and the Federal Reserve Economic Data. Using Ordinary Least Squares regression, it determines the correlation between how upbeat music is with the fiscal health of the nation.
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Reconciliation in Religious Families
Betsy Hughes Barrow, David C. Dollahite, and Loren D. Marks
How do religious families resolve conflict and heal relationships? Through an in-depth study of interviews with 198 highly religious families, we explored motivations, processes, and outcomes of reconciliation. Through this analysis we have identified spiritual, relational, personal and practical processes, in the context of everyday family life, that help families strengthen relationships and resolve differences.
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Sexual Dimorphism in 2D:4D Digit Ratio is Linked to Anxiety in Rhesus Macaques (Macaca mulatta)
Alexander Baxter, E. K. Wood, J. P. Capitanio, and J. D. Higley
In humans, administering androgens exogenously reduces anxiety. Because prenatal androgen exposure (PAE) has organizational effects on the brain, and because it is higher in males, this may explain why, on average, females are more likely than males to develop anxiety. To assess PAE, the pointer-to-ring-finger digit ratio (2D:4D ratio) is frequently used. Though this phenotype is sexually dimorphic across primate species, preliminary research in a small number of species indicates that PAE's effect on digit ratio may be in the opposite direction when comparing nonhuman primates and humans. in humans, males typically show lower 2D:4D ratios than do females, whereas in nonhuman primates, males exhibit a high 2D:4D ratio. We investigated whether this nonhuman primate digit ratio pattern is present in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), and whether individual difference in 2D:4D ratio predicts infant anxiety. At 3-4 months of life, infant monkeys (n = 156) were separated from their mothers to assess temperament using a standardized test, the Human Intruder Paradigm. Subjects' 2D:4D ratios were measured between 3-17 years of age (M = 7.91). A t-test confirmed that teh 2D:4D ratio in rhesus monkeys is consistent with the nonhuman primate pattern, with males exhibiting a higher left-hand 2D:4D ratio than females (t(74) = -2.01, p = .049). Controlling for weight and sex, regressions revealed that lower right-hand 2D:4D ratio predicted infant anxiety (as measured by teeth grinding and yawns) (R = .39, p = .022), suggesting that higher PAE may mitigate threat-induced anxiety.
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Scourge on American Society: Are Refugees Increasing Violent Crime in the United States?
Rehtaeh Beers
President Trump and many citizens in his wake have called for a decrease in the number of refugees in America. Many claim that refugees are a “Scourge on American Society” and that refugees are “dangerous” and likely to commit violent crimes.
The total number of reported refugees in the world has been growing at an alarming rate since 2006 following the the Lebanese Crisis. Despite the growing number of refugees, the United States of America has kept the number of refugees located in the states relatively stable since 2007.
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Evaluating Fall-of Curves with Straight-line or Least Cost Path Distance
Robert J. Bischoff
A fundamental part of interaction is distance. Interaction can be modeled by plotting distance against the frequency of an object. My purpose it to evaluate whether straight-line distance is an acceptable proxy for actual distance or whether using more realistic distance measures is required. In this poster, I use the distribution of San Juan Red Ware in a portion of the southwestern United States to examine the differences between straight-line distance, the length of least cost paths (LCP), and the time to travel the LCP between points. San Juan Red Ware was produced in southeastern Utah between approximately A.D. 750 and 1100 and was widely traded.
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Family Educational Backgrounds Variations in Student Attitudes and Experiences using the SHARPs Utah data, 2015
Mandy Chidester
This research analyzed 150 variables within the SHARPS 2015 data to find the majority of differences that are coming between those grade school students who live with adults who have an education level of high school or less compared to the those who live with an adult who has completed college. The analyzed variables showed three main themes of major differences: monitoring of the student’s actions, neighborhood the student lives in, and student’s perception of drug risk. Also included is those variables who showed significant differences, but did not fall into any particular category. This categories show us areas of risk that should be focused on within the state of Utah.
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Infant Siblings of Children Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder Have Higher Perseveration
Katherine Christensen, Allison Garner Kotter, Rachel Nuttall, Bread Iverson, and Taylor Bayles
● Children with ASD have difficulty with social cues, repetitive behaviors, and restricted interests
● Many of these signs show up after a diagnosis and many children remain undiagnosed until school-age
● We want to demonstrate the utility of a screening tool to identify infants at risk for ASD
● This tool could enable earlier identification and treatment for those who have unknown risk for ASD
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Substitution of Religiosity for Socioeconomic Status and its Correlation with Adolescent Drug Use
Jordan Coburn and Mikaela Dufur
Adolescents with higher socioeconomic status participate in fewer negative activities. Religiosity is correlated with more positive activities. Religiosity can help through socialization: interacting with people who influence pro-social norms.
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Transcendent Matters: Family Relationships Associated With How One Experiences God
Hilary Dalton
For religious families, an important but understudied aspect of spirituality is
how their perceptions of God influence their family lives. Most research
addresses religious behaviors such as attendance, prayer, or degree of salience
(how important/central is religion) or degree of literal belief (e.g., biblical
inerrancy). Relatively little research has addressed both substantive beliefs about
God as well as their potential impact on specific relational processes. Mahoney
has called for more research on the influence of substantive, specific beliefs as a
way to further our understanding of the religion-relationships linkage (Mahoney,
2013). Specifically, she has used the concept of relational spirituality to connect
religiosity with marriage and family relationships. This study will explore one
aspect of relational spirituality: How perceptions of one’s experiences with God
are related to family life.
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To study or Not to Study: The Influences of Procrastination, Self-esteem, and Self-efficacy on Self-handicapping Among College Students
Tiatia Filemoni
Many college students have ambitions to succeed, graduate, and find a career. Despite their ambitions, many are choosing to replace study time with Netflix, social media, partying, drugs, alcohol, and other non-homework related activities. Approximately 30%-60% of college students report procrastination as a regular interruption of their undergraduate studies.
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Fixation-Related fMRI and Syntactic Networks in the Brain
Brent Foster, Ben Carter, and Steven Luke
Humans comprehend language at varying levels of complexity. Syntax, in particular, deals with the arrangement of words and phrases into meaningful sentences. For instance, in English we expect most sentences to follow some variation of the order "Subject-Verb-Object: such as "The boy (Subject) ate (Verb) cake (Object)." On the surface, such grammatical rules seem simple. However, our understanding of how the brain implements these rules to understand sentences is incomplete.
Syntax appears to be associated with Broca's area in the frontal lobe and various regions of the left temporal lobe. However, recent research has provided controversial data suggesting that the viewpoint of a specific "syntactic center" of the brain is oversimplified. In fact, when processing syntax, the brain appears to activate multiple areas not specific to syntactic tasks alone. The primary purpose of this study was to determine the network for neural syntactic processing via fixation-related fMRI and syntactic predictability.
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Goal Setting and Goal Achievement in Marathon and Half-Marathon Runners
Adam M. Fulton, Jared Richardson, and Kyler Griffith
In this study, we looked at how different variables predicted goal specificity, goal achievement, and finish time for marathoners and half-marathoners. These variables had to do with experience, confidence, and motivation for running, as well as goal specificity. Among the results was the finding that goal specificity was predictive of finish time for half-marathoners and close to predictive for marathoners. These findings could help runners prepare better for races.
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Between Citizens and Strangers: On Laïcité and Group Rights among Hmong in France
Austin Gillett
As the school year began in 1989, three Muslim girls, Samira S. and Fatima and Leïla A., started the ninth and tenth grades, insistent upon wearing their Islamic veils (Cardoso 2000). Problems arose when the girls refused to attend class at the beginning of the school year and on Saturdays, citing religious reasons. The girls were suspended from school, and eventually appealed the decision, prompting major upsets across schools in France. Schools began to act independently, issuing bans on the veils. In 1990, Jean-Juarés High School specified that “the wearing of all distinctive symbols, clothing or otherwise, religious, political, or philosophical, is strictly forbidden” (Philippe 1992). A national policy followed, which eventually banned the wearing of Muslim headscarves in French public schools. This measure that banned Muslim headscarves is one piece of a larger legislative project of secularism (laïcité). This study aims to contribute to scholarship on laïcité by providing an account of non-Muslim minority populations. I examined the experience of Hmong residents of France within the larger secular project to understand how their experiences have differed to those of Muslim immigrants in France.
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Collision or Cohesion? Hmong Shamanism and Ontological Holism in France
Madison Harmer and Telisha Pantelakis
The Hmong are an ethnic group from Southeast Asia who’ve lived as forced migrants and political refugees for the past several hundred years. Current U.S. literature has attributed Hmong difficulties adapting to Western culture, specifically health care from shamanic practices. They claim that traditional and western healing practices are incompatible. (Franzen-Castle & Smith 2013, Fadiman 1997). While living in a small town in central France, we conducted an ethnographic study observing Hmong refugees and their interactions and beliefs between traditional healing practices and Western medicine to explore this claim.
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It's No Accident: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Vehicle Safety Inspections
Alex Hoagland and Trevor Woolley
Traffic fatalities have fallen steadily over the past two decades, particularly those due to car failure. Many have attributed this fall to safer vehicle technology. This trend has led many states to reevaluate mandatory vehicle safety inspection programs. This study sought to answer the question, does the elimination of vehicle safety inspections have an effect on traffic fatalities?
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Social Anxiety Disorder in College Students and its Differing Treatments
Taylor Hubbert
- Approximately one in six College Students report having anxiety or being treated for anxiety
- Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is defined as anxiety that is caused by social experiences, and an individuals fear/ phobia of social situations
- Research available to us on Social Anxiety Disorder is extensive. This review examined the symptomology and prevalence of SAD, and compared both individual therapy and group therapy as treatments for college students.
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Neural Networks of Eye-Movements During Reading
Trenton D. Jackman, Benjamin Carter, and Steven Luke
Reading is an important part of normal life. We move our eyes 2-4 times per second. Each movement is called a saccade, and each pause is called a fixation. Progress has been made understanding saccade control during deliberate tasks. Not much is known about saccade control during more automatic tasks like reading. Using fMRI concurrently run with eye-tracking we looked at BOLD MRI response compared to amplitude of saccades, for 43 participants performing a simple paragraph reading task.
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Do Municipal Officials Represent the Views of their Constituents?
Steven Jamieson
Municipalities make decisions that effect millions of Americans every day. Research has been done to assess the link between citizen’s preferences and municipal policy (Tausanovitchand Warshaw2014). However, the link between the policies and the officials who make them is missing.
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Has Party Identification Changed in Utah?
Devin Johanson
Three weeks before the 2016 election, Utah was labeled as a swing state by most main-stream media outlets. The offensive rhetoric from both the Trump and Clinton campaigns and the rise of a popular independent candidate increased the potential for changes in the party identity of the Utah electorate. My research question is as follows: How has party identification changed in the state of Utah between the 2012 and 2016 elections?
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Making Japan Great Again: The Imperial Rescript on Education
Ayoung Kang, Alistor Skabelund, and Matthew Stephenson
The Meiji government used the Imperial Rescript on Education in order to develop nationalism and respond against the dominating presence of Western Imperialism by standardizing Meiji education and interpreting it to justify militarism.