Psi Chi, The International Honor Society in Psychology at UC Riverside
Psi Chi at UCR
R'PSYC 2024
6th Annual Undergraduate Psychology Research Conference​
Hosted by Psi Chi, the International Honor Society, at UC Riverside, R'PSYC 2024 is an annual Undergraduate Research Conference that allows undergraduate researchers to present posters of their psychological/neurological research at a symposium to students, faculty, friends, and family. Come expand your knowledge about research, how it is conducted, and talk to undergraduate research students about their experiences.
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R’PSYC 2024 will be held on Sunday, June 2nd from 12pm to 7pm (PT), in-person at HUB 302 South.
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Co-Directors: Ashley Zhang and Rina Ahuja
Faculty Advisors: Dr. Kalina Michalska and Dr. Annie Ditta
Follow our Instagram @ucr_rpsyc_conference for updates. If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at ucrrpsycconference@gmail.com.
R'PSYC 2024 Day of Schedule
Come check out what students are working on and learn from our panelists and keynote speaker! Refreshments will be provided.
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Interdisciplinary Panel: Dr. Aerika Loyd, Maribeth Trego, Dr. John Franchak, Amanda Sadri
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Keynote Speaker: Dr. Annie Ditta
Interdisciplinary Research Panel
Dr. Aerika Loyd
Dr. Aerika Loyd is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Director of the Youth Health and Development Lab at UCR. She earned her PhD in Human Development and Child Study from Tufts University and completed postdoctoral training at the Prevention Research Center at Arizona State University. Dr. Loyd is an interdisciplinary and community-engaged developmental scientist who studies race-related social stressors and cultural protective factors among Black and Latine youth and families. She offers recommendations for culturally informed youth practice, prevention, and policy. Dr. Loyd was a featured panelist on a webinar on “Interdisciplinarity and the Advancement of Research on Adolescents” hosted by the Society for Research on Adolescents, linked here.
Maribeth Trego, MA
Maribeth’s research investigates the complex interplay between memory and the classroom environment, with particular focus on how students’ and teachers’ actions during lecture affect the students’ recall of information and academic success. The ultimate goals of her research are threefold: 1) to help students of all backgrounds to succeed in an academic setting, 2) increase motivation to learn, and 3) to design better methods of instruction at the university level. My current work focuses on how 1) student behavior during lectures, 2) student working memory, 3) student attention and motivation, and 4) teacher-lead cognitive tasks influence the immediate and long term retention of lecture information. Examples include the interplay of student note and photo taking behaviors and working memory on recall, and attention priming before lectures on memory recall. These experiments are performed both in lab and classroom settings, with an emphasis on understanding the cognitive mechanisms involved.
Dr. John Franchack
John Franchak earned a BA in Cognitive Science from the University of Virginia in 2005 and a PhD in Experimental Psychology from New York University in 2011. Afterwards, Dr. Franchak completed postdoctoral fellowships at New York University (2011-2013) and Indiana University (2013-2014) before joining the UCR Department of Psychology. Dr. Franchak and the members of the Perception, Action, and Development lab investigate perceptual and motor systems in infants and children. Specifically, they ask 1) how infants and children actively gather visual information to attend to targets of interest by moving their eyes, heads, and bodies, and 2) how new motor abilities, such as sitting, crawling, and walking, allow infants to explore their surroundings and provide new ways to interact with objects and people. Dr. Franchak has developed a set of new methodological techniques to study perceptual-motor development in ecologically-valid settings. Head-mounted eye tracking technologies used with infants and children allow researchers to study how eye movements function during full-body movement. Smartphonebased survey methods gather parents’ observations of their infants to characterize infants’ daily motor experiences. New machine learning procedures categorize infants’ body position and walking behaviors based on inertial sensors worn in a pair of pants.
Amanda Sadri, PhD Student
Amanda Sadri’s research examines how individual (e.g., cognitive, affective, physiological) and environmental (e.g., family socialization, neighborhood) factors contribute to the development of psychopathology (e.g., conduct disorder, psychopathic traits) and behavior (e.g., aggression, delinquency). Her current work focuses on (a) identifying cognitive and affective processes associated with child externalizing and internalizing behavior in the context of parent-child relationships) and (b) understanding how broader cultural (e.g., ethnicity and racial socialization, gender identity) and institutions (e.g., juvenile legal, child welfare) systems influence child development. Amanda’s work refines culturally responsive theory and practice aimed at preventing and reducing carceral outcomes for children and youth.
Keynote Speaker
