Eastern’s Department of Psychological Science represented at two academic conferences this past October. At the annual meeting of the Berkshire Association of Behavior Analysis and Therapy (BABAT) in Worcester, MA, Professor James Diller presented a poster with student co-author William Warkentin. Meanwhile, at the New England Psychological Association (NEPA) conference at Springfield College, students presented on college-student well-being, while others presented on BIPOC peer mentoring.

Diller and Warkentin’s research concerned the growing focus on diversity, equity and inclusion among demographic groups. “Since 2019, there has been a greater emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of behavior analysis,” said Diller, “with calls for additional training in these areas, and questions raised about who is represented in the professional sphere.”  

Warkentin was involved in data analysis, writing the abstract, working on the poster and presenting. He said that “the results we found were an increase in race, ethnicity and female representation over the past couple years. But we also found that there was a severe lack of reporting across race, ethnicity, age and gender demographics.” He added, “Being at the conference was a great experience. I got to go to a lot of great talks with Dr. Diller and even got to meet some of the presenters.”  

At the NEPA conference on October 26, students of Professor Jenna Scisco's Health and Human Performance Lab presented their poster "The Impact of Physical Activity Interventions on Well-Being in College Students: A Systematic Literature Review." The students included Victoria Daye, Andrew Esposito, Carly Prentiss, Victoria Eisenhauer and Cailey Fay.

The project focused on a systematic literature review examining the impact of physical activity interventions on the well-being of college students. Their review found that physical activity interventions have a positive impact on short-term measures of well-being, such as mood, but have less of an impact on global measures of well-being, such as quality of life. 

“Students were involved in all aspects of this literature review,” said Scisco, “including brainstorming search terms, reviewing the relevant literature, summarizing research articles and identifying patterns in study results.”  

Other students who presented at NEPA included Christina Xiong and Troy Stewart, whose poster, "Advancing the BIPOC Peer Mentoring Program for Psychology Students," was supervised by Professors Jennifer Leszczynski and Lyndsey Lanagan-Leitzel.