Summer lab picture! There is some unplanned color coordination happening. 

The last few months we have had a lot of fun events - a trip to the Math Cognition and Learning Society Conference at Oxford, a trip to the American Educational Research Association annual meeting in New York City, the Psych Department Undergraduate Research Day, and Courtney's honors thesis defense!

Courtney presenting her senior honors thesis at her defense (left) and at the Psych Department Undergrad Research Day (right)

Dr. Ganley published a new journal article titled "Gender Equity in College Majors: Looking Beyond the STEM/Non-STEM Dichotomy for Answers Regarding Female Participation" with co-authors Casey George, Joe Cimpian, and Martha Makowski in the American Educational Research Journal.

You can access the study here (paywall) or email Dr. Ganley for a copy. There is also a nice write up in Inside Higher Ed here.

Abstract:
Women are underrepresented in many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors and in some non-STEM majors (e.g., philosophy). Combining newly gathered data on students’ perceptions of college major traits with data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), we find that perceived gender bias against women emerges as the dominant predictor of the gender balance in college majors. The perception of the major being math or science oriented is less important. We replicate these findings using a separate sample to measure college major traits. Results suggest the need to incorporate major-level traits in research on gender gaps in college major choices and the need to recognize the impact of perceptions of potential gender discrimination on college major choices.

Over the last few months we celebrated some grad student birthdays (Amanda and Elyssa) and had a lab night out to celebrate the end of the fall semester!

MTL Lab grad student Amanda McGraw defended her honors thesis and the lab went out to celebrate! Her work focused on the relation between finger gnosis (the ability to recognize your fingers) and different math skills. 

Congratulations Amanda!

At the end of April, the FSU Psychology department held their annual Graduate Research Day. As always, it was very exciting to see all the research that was being done by the graduate students in the department! Amanda McGraw, Connie Barroso, and Elyssa Geer represented the MTL Lab with their posters!

Last week, Connie Barroso gave a talk in FSU's College of Education's Learning and Cognition brownbag series. She discussed her work examining the math and science mindsets of engineering students, which was based on her master's thesis she completed in the Learning and Cognition program last year. There was a great crowd and very interesting questions and ideas to think about as she continues this work!

This past week was the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Austin, TX, one of the biggest conferences in our field! Our lab had four posters at the conference and Dr. Ganley was awarded an Early Career Research Contributions Award!

This week the MTL Lab and IDCD Lab had an inter-lab bowling competition! Each lab won a game!