The purpose of this project was to research the expression of Autism Spectrum Disorder in children and create a children’s book that can help the peers of individuals with a diagnosis to understand what the disorder entails and potentially gain a new sense of empathy for peers of all levels of physical and mental abilities. The research component includes interviews with individuals deemed knowledgeable about ASD, including occupational therapists, behavioral analysts, and parents, as well as a literature review of research studies on the expression of Autism in children. This written portion of the project may also serve as a manual for individuals who have little to no knowledge of ASD, as it dives deeper into the content of the book and research, while remaining easily understandable and clear to those without any prior knowledge or experience with ASD. It could prove especially useful for those in professions that come into contact with individuals with Autism, but do not necessarily require psychology courses or training as a prerequisite for the role, such as teachers and some health professionals.

Exploratory Play is a universal experience that occurs throughout different kinds of childhoods. This study investigates how children’s vocabulary and exploratory play are influenced by how the caregiver responds to the child’s communicative bids. We hypothesize that if caregivers use more open-ended questions in response to their child’s communicative bids, children will show higher rates of exploration during free play.

Pediatric anxiety disorders are highly prevalent and while pharmacological intervention seems to be an effective treatment, the validity of reported adverse side effects remains unclear. <br/><br/>Objective: To analyze the nature of evidence regarding adverse side effects in the pharmacological treatment of pediatric anxiety disorders. <br/><br/>Approach: A search using Google Scholar, PubMed, and PsychInfo was conducted for meta-analyses of pharmacological treatment of pediatric anxiety disorders as well as randomized controlled trials. The focus was on adverse events.<br/><br/>Results and Conclusion: Reportings of a limited number of adverse events were found among resources available to clinician and patient informed sources to inform pharmacological treatment of pediatric anxiety disorders. Only a small fraction of adverse side effects were found in the research literature. This finding raises concerns about making informed decisions to treat pediatric anxiety disorders with pharmacotherapy.

The thesis project merges interdisciplinary research to develop a self-directed creative intervention for immigrant youth, allowing them to make sense of their social and cultural identities. It takes research on self-awareness, multicultural identification, perceived belonging, and bibliotherapy to create a guided journal titled "Unearth," filled with art and writing prompts that are age-appropriate for adolescents and that serve as avenues for self-exploration. The project ultimately engages a focus group discussion to understand the usability and accessibility of the intervention.

The thesis project merges interdisciplinary research to develop a self-directed creative intervention for immigrant youth, allowing them to make sense of their social and cultural identities. It takes research on self-awareness, multicultural identification, perceived belonging, and bibliotherapy to create a guided journal titled "Unearth," filled with art and writing prompts that are age-appropriate for adolescents and that serve as avenues for self-exploration. The project ultimately engages a focus group discussion to understand the usability and accessibility of the intervention.

Stress is common, and potentially adverse, for individuals transitioning to college. The purpose of the present study was to describe and understand first year college students’ experiences of stress. Specifically, the goals of this study were twofold: (1) to describe the types of stressors experienced by students transitioning into college and (2) to understand the predictors of students’ experiences of the different forms of stressors. Ecological Momentary Assessments were collected over the course of the first semester of the participants’ (N = 194, 56% female) first semester of college. Stressors were coded into 8 categories: academic, global interpersonal (family, peer, other interpersonal), obligational, health, and finances. It was found that (aim 1) academic stressors were endorsed the most frequently, followed by global interpersonal stressors and obligational stressors. Results also showed that (aim 2) males reported more frequent academic stressors than females, and females reported more frequent interpersonal stressors than males. In addition, higher GPA was positively related to obligational stressors and family support was positively correlated with academic stress. These findings suggest a need for increased awareness of stressors that students within differing contexts experience in a university setting.

In the present study, I will focus on several aspects of parenting (monitoring, structure, positive parenting, harsh discipline) and the relations with social competence. The larger study, on which this paper is based, was intended to study multiple types of parenting behaviors and social competencies, and development of measures was culturally and developmentally informed (including focus groups and pilot collection). However, utilizing each dimension that emerged from analyses of the parenting behaviors and social competence measures would result in a study with too large a scope. I will include each aspect of parenting that emerged in analyses. However, I will focus on just one of the two factors of social competence that emerged in analyses for adolescents. This first factor includes prosocial behavior (helping and sharing; Eisenberg et al., 2006) and also is composed of general social competence items capturing adolescents’ use of manners and politeness. For the purposes of this paper, I will refer to this first factor as “social competence,” and I will draw on the general social competence literature and prosocial behavior literature.