Megan Taylor, of Columbus, Indiana, presented and won the “Recognition of the First-Person Experience in Children” a poster session at the Indiana University Undergraduate Research Conference (IUURC) at Indiana University-Bloomington on Friday, Nov. 20, 2015.
Taylor won the award for best research presentation in her poster session, which included students from the other IU campuses at the Indiana University-Purdue University Conference (IUURC). She is the first IUPUC student to win the award since the conference began presenting awards last year. In addition to the recognition, she won $250 as prize money.
This year is the 21st-year for the IUURC and the third year that IUPUC has been represented by student research. The IUURC showcases the breadth and depth of undergraduate research and creative activity across all of the Indiana University campuses.
According to Megan’s research mentor, Dr. Mark Jaime, assistant professor of psychology, “Megan’s work explores children’s memory for ‘phenomenal awareness’ —the ability to be aware of one’s sensations and feelings. This is an understudied, yet important, area in cognitive development because the emergence of self-awareness in children is a likely basis for more complex social cognitive skills in later development.
To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine children’s ability to recognize first-person actions. Megan has played an integral role in the evolution of this research. Megan’s involvement in this project has afforded her a unique perspective of the challenges involved in conducting research and has helped her develop a number of skills that will make her an asset in any research environment.”
This past summer, Megan co-presented this research with Dr. Jaime at the 45 Annual Meeting of the Jean Piaget Society, which was held in Toronto Canada in June of 2015. The Jean Piaget Society, established in 1970, has an international, interdisciplinary membership of scholars, teachers and researchers interested in exploring the nature of the developmental construction of human knowledge. The Society was named in honor of the Swiss developmentalist, Jean Piaget, who made major theoretical and empirical contributions to our understanding of the origins and evolution of knowledge.
According to Dr. Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick, Director of the Office of Student Research and associate professor of English, “As you can see, Megan is dedicated to research, already presenting at undergraduate and professional conferences, and she will make genuine contributions to the field of psychology. What impresses me most about her—and I interact with dozens of smart, ambitious, and talented student researchers in my role with the Office of Student Research—are two traits: her unwavering dedication to demanding work and her professionalism. She is certainly an asset to our student body
at IUPUC.”
Here is the abstract of Megan’s IUURC research presentation:
RECOGNITION OF THE FIRST-PERSON EXPERIENCE IN CHILDREN
The mirror self-recognition task has been considered an index of self-awareness in children. Variations of the self-recognition test that exclude a live feedback of the face have shown a developmental dissociation among different forms of self-concepts in children. However, little research has examined our ability to recognize first-person experiences. The objective of this study is to explore whether children have the ability to recognize first-person experiences and if this ability enhances with age.
Thus far, 29 children ranging from two to eight years of age have participated. All participants wear a small chest-mounted camera that records from a first-person perspective as they walk and jump in a pre-specified location. Recordings are then paired with a control video and simultaneously played back across 10 trials. For each trial, participants are asked to indicate which video belongs to them. This study consists of two conditions: same action and different action. Preliminary results currently reveal a marginally non-significant age related difference in the recognition of first-person experiences. However, more data is currently being collected, as this is an ongoing study.