Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Journal

Approach and avoidance motivational orientations play a striking role within close relationships, with approach-oriented goals predicting increased positive affect and relationship satisfaction. As research suggests that motivational orientations influence individuals’ ability to regulate their own emotions (i.e., intrapersonally), we posit that these motives may also moderate individuals’ ability to regulate the emotions of others, thus affecting social outcomes. We hypothesize that individuals whose partners use more affect-bettering (versus affect-worsening) emotion regulation strategies will show improved relationship outcomes, with this link being strengthened in individuals high (rather than low) in approach motives. 37 romantic couples (74 participants) completed daily diary surveys for 10 days, with one partner reporting their use of affect-bettering and affect-worsening emotion regulation strategies and the other partner reporting their relationship outcomes. Preliminary results show that participants high in approach motives experienced significantly improved relationship outcomes in response to their partners’ use of affect-bettering emotion regulation strategies. This has implications for extending our understanding of extrinsic emotion regulation strategies and approach-avoidance motives in the close relationships context.

The Student Resource Building at UC Santa Barbara, finished in 2007, houses a multitude of departments in addition to the Cultural Resource Centers (CRCs). This paper focuses on the history behind student activism, a focus on Asian American student activism, for a resource center for Asian American students. Starting in the late 1980s to early 1990s, the small population of Asian American students and other students of color resulted in students organizing and working with student administrators, including more faculty of color, more focus on student retention, and support for first-generation college students. In March 1998, the Daily Nexus wrote an article that included a quote stating that missing dogs were due to the Vietnamese and Hmong population living in IV. What followed is a series of protests that would ultimately lead to the establishment of the Cultural Resource Centers, housed in the future Student Resource Building. Student activists, to this day, continue to fight for more resources and support in ways that parallel the Asian American activists a few decades prior.

Given most people gain information about COVID-19 from news media, it is important to understand if news framing of COVID-19 can influence people’s intentions to take preventive behaviors and their actual behaviors, which may affect public health and many people’s life safety. Based on framing and functional emotion theory, this research examined how exposure to differently framed news (threat, positive future, or neutral news) influenced emotional reactions, intentions to take preventive action, and actual subsequent protective behaviors. 196 undergraduates participated in a two-part online experiment. First, they read two COVID-related news stories appropriate to their condition, and then reported their emotional reactions and behavioral intentions. Two days later, they reported their COVID-related protective behaviors. Results indicated that threat news in the frame of fear evoked fear as expected and positive future frames in the frame of hope evoked hope, as expected. Although frames did not directly influence intentions or behaviors, indirect effects were found such that threat frames generated fear, fear influenced behavioral intentions, and intentions predicted behavior 2 days later.

Over 100 million people worldwide use oral hormonal contraception (OC), and yet there is still little knowledge surrounding the consequences of contraceptives on the human brain. In particular, the intersection of autobiographical memories, stress, and OC is important to study for real-world applicability. Previous research has shown that women on OC demonstrate a negativity bias when recalling an event by reporting more information for negative experiences compared to other emotional situations. This negativity bias could be an indication of the ease of recall which is defined by the speed, accuracy, and intensity of the memory search. The present study examined the reported ease of autobiographical recall of OC users compared to those who are naturally cycling (NC) for negative and neutral events. It was predicted that those on OC would report an easier time recalling a stressful event and report less difficulty for the neutral event compared to NC women. There were no significant differences between those who are NC and on OC in terms of ease of recall ratings for either event. However, within NC women rated remembering negative events more easily than neutral. Suggestions for future studies are discussed.

Drosophila melanogaster, commonly known as the “vinegar fly”, is a model organism for studying olfaction-induced behavioral activity. The behavior of positive chemotaxis or attraction from the activation of odorant receptors such as Or42a are well characterized through extensive prior research. However, the behavior from the activation of aversive odorant receptors like Or49a are not well understood. To characterize aversion and to test whether aversion and attraction have equal and opposite behaviors, I utilized the PiVR tracking system to simulate several odor conditions by applying light gradients on optogenetically modified third-instar larva. I have concluded that the characteristics of aversive behavior are not directly opposing the characteristics of attractive behavior through the analysis and comparison of turn rate modulation, trajectories, and preference indexes between Or42a and Or49a light-stimulated larva.

Language is tied directly to identity formation, especially in the way individuals express themselves and are perceived by others. This extends to language being proven to have the ability to change an individual’s personality depending on the language they are speaking (Ramirez-Esparza et al. 2006; Pavlenko, 2006; Wedérus, 2017). This study expands on these findings by comparing these theories to the experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse multilinguals. This study is particularly concerned with the experiences of bilingual immigrants in the US and how issues of acculturation and xenophobia may affect these phenomena. This project aims to help better understand how language shapes identity, as well as gain insight into the challenges of immigration and multilingualism.

Stroke recovery is a difficult process, so there are many forms of robot-assisted therapy (RAT) that seek to make it easier for patients and physical therapists. However, machines designed for this type of therapy are often expensive unitaskers that limit their therapy assistance to only one part of a limb. We have developed a series of prototypes that have the potential to aid in drawing therapy for stroke rehabilitation and assessment, as drawing can engage every muscle group in the arm and is often used as a method of estimating limb and neural pathway function. Our current focus is refining a system of surface electromyography (sEMG) and internal motion unit (IMU) sensors processed via machine learning to quantify limb function and location in order to assist the user in creating their drawings. We believe this robot has the potential to be incredibly useful to artists with unsteady hands, physical therapists, and physical therapy patients.

A first-generation college student is the first of their family to enter higher education (RTI International, 2019). This study examined whether first-generation college students adopt avoidance goals (i.e., goals focused on avoiding negative outcomes) more often than continuing-generation college students, and how these goals may impact their campus resource utilization. We hypothesized that first-generation college students at UCSB would report less resource utilization compared to continuing-generation students, and that this association is mediated by the strength of their approach goal orientation. For first-generation college students, we expected higher endorsement of avoidance goals and lower endorsement of approach goals, compared to continuing-generation college students. Lastly, we hypothesized that for those with higher agreement towards avoidance goals and lower agreement towards approach goals, these students would utilize fewer campus resources. In our study, generational status was associated with goal orientation and campus resource utilization. However, generational status and goal orientation together did not appear to predict campus resource utilization. Additionally, first-generation college students used significantly more academic resources compared to continuing-generation college students. Future studies should continue to investigate the relationship between generational status, goal orientation, and resource utilization to develop more insight on how to better support minoritized communities.

Recent advances in Deep Neural Networks (DNN's) over the last decade have allowed modern neural networks to be reliably deployed "on the edge" in countless applications ranging from computer vision to natural language processing. Existing hardware is capable of running complex models with low latency, but a problem occurs when applications are scaled to require cheaper hardware with shallower memory resources or minimal latency. The goal of model compression is to take popular pre-trained deep neural networks and reduce their size to allow them to be readily deployed in areas requiring "on-device" inference such as self-driving vehicles and A.I. assistants. This paper covers recent advances in the field of model compression that has allowed us to create a 100x smaller model in terms of memory storage, while maintaining stable F1, Precision and Recall scores.

The current study had two goals: (1) to investigate how acute exercise can improve short-term mental health in an ecologically valid setting and (2) determine whether different forms of acute exercise (aerobic vs. anaerobic) affect mental health differently. To explore these questions, we recruited participants from various exercise classes at the UCSB Recreation Center and the Robertson Gym. Participants were given one survey before their exercise class and one after. Both surveys had indices that measured four aspects of mental health: perceived stress, anxiety, positive affect, and negative affect. To answer question one, we analyzed how these indices changed from pre- to post- exercise class across all participants. To answer question two, we analyzed whether or not there were greater improvements in the four indices depending on the exercise type (anaerobic or aerobic). Based on prior research, we predicted that perceived stress, anxiety, positive affect, and negative affect would improve from pre- to post-test and that aerobic exercises would produce more improvements than anaerobic exercise. Consistent with our first hypothesis, we found statistically significant improvements from pre- to post- test across all four measures. However, we did not find statistically significant differences between acute aerobic and anaerobic exercise in modulating improvements to mental health. Our results indicate that exercise is an effective way to improve short-term mental health. Further, either form of exercise (anaerobic or aerobic) can be performed to similar effect.