Arts - Buffalo State College

Change Blindness At the Movies
Ryan Brownell, Lindsay Cosenza, Amanda Grenier, Caley
Wekenmann, Latisha Swanston, Raisa Reyes, Alyssa
Grove, Tessa Bechtoldv Chris Miller, Nolan Przybyciel,
Lauren Stanley, Nick Schultz, Amanda Wasielewski,
DeLeon Hughes, and Jessica Brow, Psychology Club
Faculty Mentor: Professor Stephani Foraker, Psychology
Sometimes we are so focused on one thing going on that we miss
relatively big or important changes going on around us. Researchers
call this “change blindness” and have shown that participants
concentrating on counting basketball passes will not notice a gorilla
walking through that group of people (Simons and Chabris, 1999).
Other studies by Simons and colleagues have looked at color changes
in clothing, background objects gone missing, and changing one
person for another, but there is not much research on how the
magnitude of the change affects its detection. We compared small,
medium, and large changes found in movie mistakes. Participants
watched two small, two medium, two large, and three no-change
video clips two times. After the first time, they just described the
events and whatever they saw. The second time, they were instructed
to look for a change, and describe it in detail. We predict that the
larger the change, the sooner and more often they will be detected.
Women may also detect changes better than men, if they are more
detail oriented.
Presentation Type and Session: Poster II
Changing of the Guard: How Mao and
Nixon Changed Their Ideologies
Jonathan Keenan, SOC 208: Sociology of Contemporary China
Faculty Mentor: Professor Jie Zhang, Sociology
Richard Nixon, former US president and Mao Zedong, former
ruler of China were leaders of their respective countries forming
careers based on the correctness of their ideology and the evilness
of each other. I will study the backgrounds of both politicians to
gain a basic understanding where they began and how they reached
their high positions of influence. From this, I will look into how they
changed over time to creating a co-inhabiting relationship between
these two opposing nations. This diplomatic change was crucial in
setting up Sino-American relations for the rest of the Cold War as
well as into the post-Cold War era. The distinct hatred that formed
after the Chinese Communist Revolution has changed to one of
companionship, beginning with talks between Nixon and Mao. This
is going to be a library archive research from a historical perspective.
Presentation Type and Session: Poster I
Communication Strategies: Recruiting
Students For Study Abroad
Victoria Church, HON 400: All College Honors Colloquium
Faculty Mentors: Professor Andrea Guiati, Director, All College
Honors Program and Professor Pamela Kloc, Communication
Studying abroad provides a valuable educational experience
for students. It allows pupils to travel to new and unique places
Psychology and Social Sciences
while simultaneously advancing their studies. Regardless of
duration or destination, students will benefit from considering
the career implications of their decision to study abroad. Buffalo
State College and the SUNY system offer ample opportunities for
students to take advantage of such programs, but they must first
make students aware that those programs exist. Too often, campus
efforts to “internationalize” focus on the academic logistics of
supporting study abroad opportunities. There is not always a careful
and intentional approach taken to providing an integrated effort
to harmonize student support services – principally between the
study abroad and career service offices – to guide a student on the
best way to make their decision to study abroad and become aware
of how the experience may impact their career development. This
project applies techniques used in public relations to examine the
strategies used by the Buffalo State College International Education
Office to attract students to the study abroad programs. It will
include an interview with a member of the International Education
Office as well as a student survey assessing the knowledge students
have of the various programs and suggestions of ways to make
international education more accessible.
Presentation Type and Session: Poster I
Dear Professor, So You Think You’re
Having an Effect On Your Students
Tyler Sutton, PSY 499: Independent Study
Faculty Mentors: Professor Howard Reid, Psychology and Professor
Jill Norvilitis, Psychology
The goal of the present study is to examine if undergraduate
psychology students’ attitudes toward statistics and their views of
psychology as a science change as they progress through psychology
statistics and research methods courses. Previous research has
indicated that within the course of a semester student attitudes about
statistics don’t change, while their knowledge about the subject does.
In addition, research has shown that students who have positive
attitudes towards statistics show higher scores in regards to openness
to experience, and confidence, while math anxiety is inversely
associated with self-efficacy. We plan to examine these personality
measures as well as measures for curiosity and liberalism, and
predict that those students who score higher on psychology as
a science and who have a positive attitude toward statistics will
likely show higher scores on all of these traits. This study will also
manipulate a variable called “mythbusters”. Mythbusters will involve
introducing one class to the results of studies that dispel commonly
held beliefs. We are examining whether this intervention will
influence the way students see statistics. No research exists that deals
with the changing of academic attitudes through the manipulation
of this form of class exercise.
Presentation Type and Session: Poster I
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