All students are encouraged to discuss their research interests with me. The student's interests do not necessarily have to coincide with mine- I am open to supervising a wide range of experimental investigations. Students can also assist in conducting ongoing studies. Here are projects I have supervised:

Some of my students' research projects are displayed outside my office on the first floor of Parker Hall.

• In the spring of 1998, Bruno Sousa completed his honors thesis entitled Conditioned Taste Aversion in the Terrestrial Hermit Crab. This project involved the use of Pavlovian conditioning techniques to train a crab to avoid a previously acceptable food. The animals then had their aversions successfully extinguished and their preference restored. This aversion learning ability had been demonstrated in crustaceans only once before. Bruno presented his work at Psi Chi and Honors Program meetings here at Wagner College and also at the 52nd Annual Eastern Colleges Science Conference (ECSC) held at Niagara University in April, 1998 where he won an award for outstanding psychology presentation. These data have been published in abstract form in the journal Appetite.

• In October, 1999, Amy Siegel, Greta Siss and Karen Robinson presented research papers on eating behavior for a Faculty Masters panel entitled "Eating More by Eating Less: Food Restriction, Cravings and Psychopathology." The papers originated from the Psychology of Eating & Drinking seminar taught the previous semester.

• In 1999, Julien Delepine received departmental honors in psychology for a project entitled Discrimination Learning Between Reward and Non-reward Maze Arms in the Dwarf Crayfish. Julien used operant conditioning techniques to train crayfish to move toward a lighted arm to receive food reinforcement in a water-filled Y-maze he built. Julien was able to determine that the animals did learn that food was to be found at the end of the maze (their time to complete the maze was shorter with progressive trials). While there was a trend towards animals being able to discriminate between the lighted and non-lighted arms, it was not statistically significant.

• In 1999, Amy Siegel presented a research project entitled Habituation of Shell Withdrawal to Tactile Stimulation in the Terrestrial Hermit Crab at the 53rd Annual Eastern Colleges Science Conference (ECSC) held at Sacred Heart University in April. These data are based on a class project conducted by students in the Experimental Psychology course Learning & Motivation in 1998 which showed the process by which the hermit crab's withdrawal reflex to a touch stimulus could be weakened by using a habituation technique.

• For her honors thesis in the spring of 2000, Karen Robinson investigated the effects of structured relaxation on electroencephalographic (EEG) measures in a study entitled Measuring the Relaxation Response to a Pre-Recorded Structured Relaxation Tape Using an Electroencephalograph Recorder. This is a pilot study for a larger study that is being supervised by Dr. Fulop in biological sciences that will examine how relaxation techniques may alleviate stress. Karen found that the relaxation tape produced a significant reduction in beta brain activity in the women studied in the one session where they were tested but had no effect on alpha waves which would have indicated a deeper relaxation state which some researchers think could be useful for reducing the effects of stress. She concluded, as others have, that this deeper relaxation level may only be acheived with multiple training sessions as it is probably a conditioned relaxation effect. Karen presented her results at the 54th Annual Eastern Colleges Science Conference (ECSC) held at Wagner College in April.

• In the Fall of 2000, Cerissa Creeden explored the relationship between anti-schizophrenic drugs and levels of obesity in psychotic patients receiving treatment at a local state psychiatric facility in her thesis entitled Body Weight of Patients Treated with Antipsychotic Medications. It is known that patients taking newer (atypical) medications such as clozapine and olanzapine tend to gain greater amounts of weight than those on more traditional medications such as haloperidol and chlorpromazine. Cerissa found no significant difference among the weights of subjects classified by the drug they received for treatment although it is interesting to note that those on atypical drugs (particiularly clozapine) were less likely to be obese than those on any other drug. This is opposite of what was predicted. Further investigations need to be conducted to determine the relationship between duration of treatment and the effects on body weight. The mechanisms by which weight is gained in these patients is not well understood and we hope to examine the appetites and food preferences of these patients in the future (a project Cerissa has all ready planned). Cerissa presented her results at the 55th Annual Eastern Colleges Science Conference (ECSC) held at Wilkes University on March 31, 2001.

• Also in the Fall of 2000, Amy Siegel returned to the laboratory to determine whether subjects who cognitively restrain their food intake and are disinhibited by violation of the restrictions placed on themselves in their attempts to control weight can be re-inhibited (ie. have their cognitive control re-asserted) by scenarios describing a failed life of dieting. Previous studies had shown that, contrary to expectations, TV commercials depicting successful dieters had potentiated the disinhibited eating of these subjects. In Amy's study, however, we were unable to assess the effectiveness of the scenarios since the subjects did not show disinhibited eating in our laboratory. Amy is currently examining the possible reasons why this may have occurred. The title of her departmental honors thesis is Can Descriptions of Unsuccessful Dieters Restore a Person's Restraint After Being Disinhibited? Amy presented her results at the 55th Annual Eastern Colleges Science Conference (ECSC) held at Wilkes University on March 31, 2001.

• In the spring of 2001, Jillien Soranno conducted a study to examine the influence that perceived meal formality would have on reported food selection. She developed this project after reading several studies showing the influences that social context has on amount and types of foods consumed in a meal. Jillien gave students 6 descriptions of meals (meal scenarios) of varying formality and asked them to rate the likelihood that they would choose each of 6 food items. She found that both men and women reported that they would eat less of all 6 foods in the most formal of the scenarios (dinner with a faculty member). In all scenarios, women selected roughly equal amounts of all 6 food items indicating no one item would clearly serve as the main course. Men, however, indicated that meat and pasta would make up the bulk of any meal, particularly in the least formal scenarios of eating alone and eating with friends (where vegetable and salad selection were at their lowest). We would like to follow-up this experiment to examine the reasons why men and women's reported selections were different with both questionnaire and behavioral studies. Jillien presented the results of her study at the 55th Annual Eastern Colleges Science Conference (ECSC) held at Wilkes University on March 31, 2001. The title of her thesis is Food Choice in Different Social Situations. I presented the study at the 2002 American Psychological Society meeting.

• Also in the spring of 2001, Michael Kenny conducted an experiment to examine the effects of caffeine on spatial relations ability as measured by the Woodcock-Johnson test of Spatial relations. He found that while caffeine did improve performance on the task when compared to the no drug group, it was not significantly better than placebo. The title of his thesis is Caffeine as a Cognitive Performance Enhancer: Effects on Spatial Relations Ability.

• After reading about the perception among clinicians that people recovering from drug addiction experience cravings for candy, Lisa Scagnelli decided to conduct a study to examine the relationship between drug abuse, methadone treatment, and cravings for sweets. The results of her study indicate that people undergoing methadone treatment were heavier and reported poorer eating habits than age-matched controls. They also reported a higher desire to consume candy, chocolate and pizza than controls and in higher quantities. We speculate that the consumption of more pleasureable foods may be a mechanism for dealing with drug cravings but it is not possible to determine from this study. Lisa presented her work at the 56th Annual Meeting of the Eastern Colleges Science Conference at Niagara University on April 27, 2002 and received an award for outstanding presentation in psychology. I presented these data at the 2003 meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior in Groningen, Netherlands.  In 2007, these results were published in the journal Substance Use & Misuse.

• In Spring, 2003 Joanna Ferreri and Karen Pagano completed their senior theses under my supervision.
  • Joanna conducted an experiment with 50 men and women to determine whether a food's label would affect the amount a second food consumed a few minutes afterwards. We did not find any effects on the second food which may mean that the label on one food may not affect consumption of another. One interesting finding was that lower weight participants thought their food intake was affected by the label even though it was not. Joanna presented her findings at the 57th Annual Meeting of the Eastern Colleges Science Conference at Ithaca College on April 12, 2003 and I presented them at the 2005 meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior in Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Karen surveyed 71 women measuring self esteem, body image ratings, and dietary restraint and disinhibition in order to determine the relationships among them and the participants' body mass and to find which factors may best predict restraint and disinhibition which are linked to risk for binge eating and bulimia nervosa. We found that high body mass was the best predictor of dietary restraint followed by low self esteem. However, overweight women did not have significantly lower self esteem than normal weight women (overweight women did report wanting to be smaller in size). Restraint was not related to disinhibition which was best predicted by low self esteem followed by high difference between ideal and current body shape. These data confirm that self esteem is an important factor in the prediction of dietary restraint and disinhibition. Karen presented her findings to the students in my 2003 Psychology of Eating & Drinking course and I presented these data at the 2003 meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior in Groningen, Netherlands.
• Kristen Fisher and Linsday Halperin completed their senior theses with me in 2004 and presented their findings at the 2004 meeting of Eastern Colleges Science Conference at Manhattan College.
  • Kristen examined how students on an all-you-can-eat college meal plan (or not) responded to different types of foods in the laboratory.  While no difference was found there, we did find that those who liked variety did eat more of different food when presented with lunch.  The results were also presented at the 2006 meeting of the British Feeding & Drinking Group in Birmhingham, England.
  • Lindsay's study looked at the relationship between stress, performance, and hunger. The results of this study were also presented at the 2005 meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior in Pittsburgh, PA.
• In 2007, Alfred Raccuia conducted his senior project in my lab entitled "The Effect of Caloric Density on Conditioned Taste Preferences of Caffeinated Beverages."  He presented his results at the 2007 meeting of the Eastern Colleges Science Conference at Mount St. Vincent College.

Back to Dr. Nolan's page