Category: Behavior/Psychology Page 19 of 28

Brain Camp Makes 'Aha Moments'

On July 28, 2015

In Behavior/Psychology, Guest Post, Neuroscience, Science Communication & Education, Students

Final presentations for the Neuroscience and Neuroethics Camp were held in the new headquarters of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. (photo by Jon Lepofsky)

Given just two weeks to formulate a hypothesis about brains, Duke’s Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroethics Camp students spoke with impressive confidence as they presented at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences (DIBS) on July 16.

The high school students had designed experiments using the concepts and methods of cognitive neuroscience to demonstrate what is unique about human brains.

“It was good to see the curiosity, energy, and critical thinking that was present throughout the students’ projects,” said Jon Lepofsky, Academic Director for the Cognitive Neuroscience & Neuroethics camp, the Duke Youth Programs summer program of hands-on, applied problem-solving activities and labs was developed in partnership with DIBS.

The campers dissected real sheep brains

Lepofsky said he was pleased to start the first year of the camp with an engaged, diverse, and thoughtful group of 22 students.

Andie Meddaugh, Xi Yu Liu, Emily Lu and Anand Wong were working on a project involving the logic and the emotion of the human brain. Their hypothesis was that the ability to combine logic and emotion to create a subjective logic shows the difference between human brains and other intelligence processing systems, like artificial intelligence.

Meddaugh said she liked thinking about the brain and logic.

“I enjoy thinking about the problem of what makes us special,” said Meddaugh.

Another group of students presented a project involving the social construct and morality of the brain.

Nicolas Douglass, Abigail Efird, Grace Garret and Danielle Dy are using a hypothesis that suggests if organisms are presented with an issue of resource availability how they respond is a matter of survival. They proposed using birds, humans, and monkeys to test the reactions of each organism as it is placed outside of its comfort zone.

Abigail Efird said teamwork and “aha moments” were the best way to conduct this project.

“It took human ingenuity and scientific development in order for us to come up with different strategies,” said Efird. “It was surprising to see that humans are not as special and are very much similar to other organisms. “

The group’s final “class picture” before heading home to High School.

Lepofsky said at the end of the program, students will leave with a new set of critical thinking tools and a better understanding of decision- making.

“I know the students will walk away with a deeper understanding of how to evaluate news stories celebrating neuroscience,” Lepofsky said. “They will know how to think like scientists and how to ask quality questions.”

Along with developing a hypothesis on the human brain, the students participated in interactive workshops on perception and other forms of non-conscious processing with Duke researchers. They’ve engaged in debates about topics in neuroethics and neurolaw. In addition to that they went on lab tours and visits to the DiVE.

For more information on Duke’s Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroethics Camp visit http://www.learnmore.duke.edu/youth/neurosciences/ or call (919) 684-6259.

Guest post by Shakira Warren, NCCU Summer Intern

Undergrads Share Results, and Lack Thereof

By Karl Bates

On July 24, 2015

In Behavior/Psychology, Biology, Computers/Technology, Genetics/Genomics, Guest Post, Science Communication & Education

Arts & Sciences Dean Valerie Ashby and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Research Ron Grunwald got the big picture of the poster session from an LSRC landing.

Dozens of Duke undergrads spent the summer working in labs, in part to learn why science is called “research” not “finding.”

“About a third of these students ended up without any data,” said Ron Grunwald, associate dean for undergraduate research, during a Friday poster session in the atrium of the LSRC building for three of the summer research programs.

Biology junior Eric Song gets it now. He spent the summer trying to culture one specific kind of bacteria taken from the abdomens of an ant called Camponotus chromaiodes, which he collected in the Duke Forest. All he got was

Eric Song’s poster featured a photo of the ant and the mysterious white stuff.

“this white stuff showing up and we don’t even know what that is.” His faculty mentor in the Genomics Summer Fellows Program, Jennifer Wernegreen, was hoping to do some genetic sequences on the bacteria, but the 10-week project never made it that far. “We’re only interested in the genome basically,” Song said good-naturedly.

Christine Zhou did get what she set out for, mastering the art of arranging E.coli bacteria in orderly rows of tight little dots, using a specially adapted ink jet printer. Working with graduate student Hannah Meredith and faculty mentor Linchong You, she was able to lay the bugs down at a rate of 500 dots per minute, which might lead to some massive studies. “In the future, we’re hoping to use the different colored cartridges to print multiple kinds of bacteria at the same time,” she said.

Sean Sweat (left) discusses her mouse study.

Neuroscience senior Sean Sweat also got good results, finding in her research with faculty mentor Staci Bilbo, that opiate addiction can be lessened in mice by handling them more, and identifying some of the patterns of gene expression that may lie behind that effect.

Neuroscience senior Obia Muoneke wanted to know if adolescents are more likely than children or adults to engage in risky behaviors. Muoneke, who worked with mentor Scott Huettel, said her results showed the influence of peers. “Adolescents are driven to seek rewards while with a peer,” said Muoneke. “Adults are more motivated to avoid losing rewards when they are by themselves.”

The new dean of Trinity College, chemist Valerie Ashby, worked the room asking questions before addressing everyone from a landing overlooking the atrium. “How many of you wake up thinking ‘I want nothing to happen today that I am uncertain about?’” she asked. Well, Ashby continued, scientists need to become comfortable with the unexpected and the unexplainable – such as not having any data after weeks of work.

“We need you to be scientists,” Ashby said, and a liberal arts education is a good start. “If all you took was science classes, you would not be well-educated,” she said.

_ post by Shakira Warren and Karl Leif Bates

Brain Institute Goes Underground

By Karl Bates

On May 20, 2015

In Behavior/Psychology, Neuroscience

By Karl Leif Bates

From the top side, it looks like a miniature of the landmark Apple store on Fifth Ave. in Manhattan — a simple glass cube.

The entrance to the new DIBS space is just a glass box on the plaza next to LSRC.

But descending the stairs or the glass elevator brings one into the newest, hippest space on campus, the new headquarters of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences (DIBS). DIBS opened the new underground space at the Levine Science Research Center (LSRC) this week with a reception and lecture.

(The inaugural lecture by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore of University College London, was about her work on the adolescent brain. The peak volume of gray matter in the human brain comes around age 14 and then declines, Blakemore says, but that’s not all a bad thing. It’s the pruning and streamlining of connections that turns a socially obsessed, impulsive teenager into a confident, somewhat-rational adult.)

The atrium of the new center feels spacious, despite being underground.

The 11,000-square-foot space stretches south from the cube and beneath the Blue Front dining hall in a big bay that used to house utilities equipment for LSRC. The ceilings still boast giant pipes marked CHILLED WATER and such, but the rest of it is comfortable, ultra-modern space for brain scientists to communicate, collaborate and learn, with space-saving sliding doors on the offices, and glass garage doors to section off or open up the meeting rooms.

There are actually two levels in the new lair. The mezzanine, ringed by a groovy steel-cable balustrade, provides offices, a conference room, and even a sort of balcony overlooking the main events space where Blakemore spoke.

The lecture hall is a flexible space with a ‘balcony’ of sorts.

The main level below is larger and has more staff offices, two teaching labs, and an airy atrium topped with big ring-shaped light fixtures. A divisible “team room” can be used for Bass Connections meetings or other gatherings, and an even larger multi-function space is set up for lectures, but has a flat floor and stackable chairs, so it could do lots of other things too.

There’s even a little room between the teaching labs that might come in handy for storing brains, DIBS Director Michael Platt points out on an introductory tour.

“We haven’t come up with a name yet,” Platt says. “It’s been called the DIBS underground, the Cube…” Standing nearby, psych and neuroscience professor Scott Huettel offers, “We could call it the voxel,” a cubic measure often used in MRI studies.

DIBS Director Michael Platt and Associate Director Zab Johnson designed the new space.

The orange walls on the lower level offices don’t go all the way to the ceiling, which helps it feel less underground but may require some new telephone and meeting etiquette, says communication director Julie Rhodes.

“We’re thrilled with it,” said DIBS Associate Director Elizabeth “Zab” Johnson, who co-designed the space with Platt and has already relocated her office from LSRC to the still-unnamed new space.

Researcher Goes to the Dogs, Lands on TV

By Karl Bates

On May 12, 2015

In Animals, Behavior/Psychology, Faculty, Science Communication & Education

Fresh off a visiting teaching gig at Duke-Kunshan University and a sabbatical in Australia, canine and primate cognition researcher Brian Hare is about to land in your living room.

Hare, an associate professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and founder of Duke’s canine cognition lab and the Triangle startup Dognition.com, is now a television host too.

He’ll be hosting a three-part series on Nat Geo WILD at 10 p.m. ET this Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights called “Is Your Dog a Genius?”

Hare will introduce viewers to some of the latest knowledge about what our dogs think and understand, as well as sharing some at-home games you can use to reveal your dog’s personality. He’ll also visit with some ordinary and extraordinary dogs to see their problem-solving in action.

Friday’s episode is titled ” Doggy See Doggy Do.” Saturday is “Who’s Your Doggy.” And Sunday is “Talk Doggy to Me.”

Bringing a Lot of Energy to Research

By Karl Bates

On May 6, 2015

In Behavior/Psychology, Climate/Global Change, Computers/Technology, Data, Engineering, Environment/Sustainability, Mathematics, Nanotech

By Karl Leif Bates

The Duke Energy Initiative‘s annual research collaboration workshop on May 5 was an update on how the campus-wide alliance of more than 130 faculty has been pursuing its goals of making energy “accessible, affordable, reliable and clean.” In short, they’ve been busy!

Energetic discussion swirled around research posters from graduate student projects and Bass Connections. (Photo: Margaret Lillard)

At the afternoon session in Gross Hall, David Mitzi, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, led a panel of five-minute updates on energy materials including engineered microbes, computational modeling of materials, solar cells built on plastic rather than glass, and a nanomaterial-based sheet of material that would combine photovoltaics with storage on a single film.

Kyle Bradbury, managing director of the new Energy Data Analytics Lab that works with the ‘big data’ folks at iiD and the social scientists at SSRI, led a panel on the lab’s latest projects. As smart meters and Internet-enabled appliances enter the market, energy analysts will be flooded with new data, Bradbury explained. There should be great potential to improve efficiency and provide customers with useful real-time feedback, but first the torrent of information has to be corralled and analyzed.

Kyle Bradbury (standing) moderated a data analytics panel with Leslie Collins and Matt Harding (right).

For one example of what big energy data might do, Bradbury and Electrical and Computer Engineering professor Leslie Collins (his former advisor) have done a pilot study to see if computers could be taught to pick out roof-top solar arrays in satellite photos. Nobody actually knows how many arrays there are or how much power they’re producing, Collins said. But without too much fussing around, their first visual search algorithm spotted 92 percent of the arrays correctly in some hand-picked images of California neighborhoods. Ramped up and tweaked, such an automated search could begin to identify just how much residential solar there is, where it is, and roughly how much energy it’s producing.

The third group of researchers, moderated by Energy Initiative associate Daniel Raimi, is working on energy markets and policy, including energy systems modeling and the regulation of green house gasses through the Clean Air Act.

Energy Initiative director Richard Newell said there were 1,400 Duke students enrolled in energy-related courses this year. A first round of six seed-funded research projects was completed and seven new projects have been selected. Eight Bass Connections teams in the energy theme were very productive as well, examining smart grids, solar energy and household energy conservation with teams of undergraduates, graduate students and faculty.

Imagining Alternate Realities: Is Brian Williams in the Clear?

By dbd4@duke.edu

On March 27, 2015

In Behavior/Psychology, Lecture, Neuroscience, Science Communication & Education

By Duncan Dodson

When I go home and reminisce with family about road trips we took or embarrassing moments they facilitated, eventually we’ll disagree on “what actually happened.” We’re all so certain—our memories unfold vividly yet contrarily. It’s clear the past can be subjective, but why is this so?

As part of Duke University’s Brain Awareness Week, I went to a talk at Fullsteam Brewery on imagining alternate realities by Dr. Felipe De Brigard, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and member of Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. De Brigard began by discussing studies of patients with hippocampal atrophy (as in amnesia, PTSD, and severe depression) struggling to place themselves in both the future and the past. Their impoverished answers contrast with those of healthy controls, suggesting a link between areas of the brain accessed for recalling the past and picturing the future.

Dr. Felipe De Brigard presents his recent studies on the relationship between the neural default network and autobiographical thoughts at Fullsteam Brewery 3/19.

De Brigard buttressed this by displaying fMRI neural images of parts of the brain used when imagining future events and evoking memories. These parts encompass the default network: a system of functions and firings executed when the brain is not engaged in a specific task. Evidence shows the default network allows engagement in “mental time travel” or the projection of oneself into the future or onto the singular, objective past. This assumption leads to temporal asymmetry: only one past exists with which the imagination can corroborate yet it can visualize limitless possibilities.

De Brigard challenged this view: what if the default network works in both directions? He argues that the parts of the brain used for imagining possible futures also allow us to conceive potential outcomes in our past that did not occur, the process of counterfactual thinking. He has found that when contemplating an alternative reality considered likely to have occurred, the brain behaves as if it were remembering. Memory is not haphazard reproduction but probabilistic reconstruction — our memory is constantly rebuilding the past with both fact and what are likely facts, and frequently the distinction is blurred.

A fascinated and packed Fullsteam; many audience members were at their second or third event for Brain Awareness week at Duke.

“Perhaps we should cut Brian Williams a little slack?” De Brigard chuckled. Ample evidence shows that engagement in especially rich and detailed counterfactual thinking can increase the probability of constructing — and believing the authenticity of — false memories.

More intriguing than pardoning Williams are potential contributions to treatment of anxiety, depression, and PTSD. A common debilitating trigger among these disorders is repetitive counterfactual thinking, “I shouldn’t have said that, I shouldn’t have said that.” Perhaps with further study on the default network and its relationship to autobiographical contemplations, neuroscientists might develop tools to alter the pathways or functionality of the default network.

As for my family, they have some major counterfactual thinking patterns to alter; my memory is immaculate.

Grave Effects of the Great Migration

By Robin Smith

On February 16, 2015

In Behavior/Psychology, Medicine

Sometimes a great move can have grave consequences — particularly when that move is a massive migration. In the 20th Century, millions of African-Americans relocated from the Deep South to search for greater quality of life in an exodus known as the Great Migration. However, the gains many made were clouded by higher mortality rates in old age. Despite having access to greater opportunities for work and education, Duke economist Seth Sanders found that men and women who relocated to the North and West were more likely to die before reaching their 70s than their counterparts who remained in the rural South. Here’s a glimpse at how city living took a late-life toll on migrants:

You can read the full story on Duke Today.

The Power of the Past

By Karl Bates

On January 30, 2015

In Behavior/Psychology, Field Research, Guest Post

Guest Post by Eric Ferreri, Duke News & Communications

If you grow up in the working class, neither love nor money can trump your blue-collar roots, a Duke sociologist has found.

Her study of couples from different social classes suggests that those who “marry up” still make life decisions based on their upbringing.

Sociologist Jessi Streib’s book “The Past” is about class structure in marriages.

“Your social class never goes away,” says Jessi Streib, an assistant professor of sociology whose findings are revealed in her new book: The Power of the Past: Understanding Cross-Class Marriages. “It stays with you in terms of how you live your life. The class you’re born into sticks with you and shapes you, even when you marry into more money and a far more financially secure life.”

Streib’s findings derive from interviews she conducted with white, heterosexual Midwestern couples. She interviewed 32 couples in which one spouse came from a working class background, the other from the middle class. For comparison, she also interviewed 10 couples in which both spouses grew up in the middle class.

Streib defines working class as people raised by parents with high school educations; the middle class subjects were raised by college-educated parents.

Her findings run contrary to the notion held by many scholars that strivers can outrun a difficult childhood by getting a college degree and good-paying middle-class job.

While the findings suggest that a middle class upbringing isn’t required to excel in the American workplace, those upwardly mobile people from working class roots may still miss out on opportunities if they can’t or don’t subscribe to the unspoken norms of middle class culture, Streib notes.

Streib found that couples from different classes held onto their own, firmly-rooted beliefs regarding money and parenting, often negotiating fervently with each other over the proper amount of career planning and nurturing of children. Should children be left to grow and discover on their own, or should goals and schedules be set for them?

“Those are the sorts of tiny battles cross-class couples have all the time,” Streib said. “These are not insurmountable obstacles, but they are certainly common and consistent.”

Death with Dignity: the Brittany Maynard Story

By sa160@duke.edu

On December 19, 2014

In Behavior/Psychology, Global Health, Medicine

By Nonie Arora

Is it acceptable for patients to choose to die on their own terms? Can physicians assist them with their wishes? Where do we draw the line for euthanasia and end-of-life decision making? Faculty and students discussed these thorny issues at a recent Science & Society Round Table event, co-hosted by the Duke Undergraduate Bioethics Society.

Brittany Maynard, “Death with Dignity” advocate. Credit: Wikipedia

This event was sparked by the recent events regarding Brittany Maynard. On November 1st, Maynard, a 29-year-old terminally ill cancer patient, chose to take a pill that ended her life.

During the roundtable, professor Dr. Jennifer Hawkins and paramedic Anita Swiman discussed this case as a launching point to delve into ethical issues regarding decision-making and “Death with Dignity” laws. Dr. Hawkins is a philosopher in bioethics and has studies quality of life issues and the nature of suffering. Swiman, an emergency medical technician, has insight into what it’s really like to deal with families who are making decisions about end-of-life care.

Because of her brain tumor, Maynard would have to undergo a very difficult process of death. She chose to relocate from California to Oregon to take advantage of their “Death with Dignity” statute. Previously, about 750 people – mostly elderly – had used the statute, but Maynard changed the discussion by being a young, vibrant woman talking about a decision to end her life, according to round table moderator, Michael “Buz” Waitzkin.

Dr. Hawkins described three main worries that come along with physician-assisted suicide. She said the first struggle is whether it can be in someone’s best interests to die. “Death is the enemy for most of us most of the time because we are healthy and have things we want to do,” she said. However, some people are suffering deeply. She questioned how can we distinguish between those that could be helped in what remains of their lives from those who cannot.

“Even if we can agree that sometimes it’s in a person’s best interests to die,” Dr. Hawkins explained, “We can disagree about the roles of physicians or other health care workers in this process.” Physicians generally operate by the code of doing no harm. Some people believe including physician-assisted suicide violates sacred codes of physician conduct.

Editorial Cartoon by Dan Wasserman of the Boston Globe

Finally, Hawkins said that even if we can agree that sometimes it is in some people’s best interests to die, and we don’t have a problems with physicians helping them, we may still worry about the effects on society of such a policy that permits physician-assisted suicide. She said that some people are concerned about how such a policy could impact end-of-life decision making if elders feel pressured to choose this option, against their own wishes, to not feel like a burden on their families.

“Will we be able to keep the policy restricted to the terminally ill, those who request it, and those who are able to take the prescription on their own?” Dr. Hawkins asked the group. She questioned why we restrict the application of “Death with Dignity” laws to those who can ask for a prescription. Some people who are paralyzed or cannot take prescriptions for themselves are excluded.

Paramedic Anita Swiman provided a perspective based on practice. “As a health care provider in prehospital medicine, there are clear laws that we must follow. If a patient meets certain criteria, we know what we will do. We take our personal feelings out of the discussion. We (sometimes face) assault from family members who want something different from what their family member had written in their wishes.”

Swiman said that pre-hospital providers act as counselors as well. She described that while being receptive to what family members are saying, paramedics sometime have to explain, “This is what the person wanted. This is what the law states. I would like to fix the situation for you, but there is nothing that I will be able to do for you.”

Ultimately, scholarly work that addresses the nature of suffering or examines consequences of “Death with Dignity” laws in different states could further inform the difficult ethical issue of physician-assisted suicide.

RISK: The Adolescent Mind

By Anika Radiya-Dixit

On November 25, 2014

In Behavior/Psychology, Neuroscience, Science Communication & Education

By Anika Radiya-Dixit

Have you ever been labeled an out-of-control teenager? A risky driver? An impulsive troublemaker? Here’s the bad news: That’s partially correct. The good news? It’s not your fault: blame the brain.

On November 18, the department of Psychology and Neuroscience introduced students to “The Origins of Heightened Risk Behavior in Adolescence.” The presenter, Dustin Albert, is a PhD research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy here at Duke University, who is interested in cognitive neuroscience, problem behaviors, and peer influence.

Researchers have identified the stage of adolescence as the peak time of health and performance, but at the same time, they noticed a jump in morbidity and mortality as children approached teen years, as seen in the graphs below. Specifically, adolescents show increased rates of risky behavior, alcohol use, homicide, suicide, and sexually transmitted diseases. However, as Allen tells the audience, “These are only the consequences.” In other words, what teenagers are stereotypically ridiculed for is actually the result of something else. If that’s the case, then what are the causes?

Professor Albert explaining the spike in risky behavior during teenage years.

Psychologically speaking, researchers believed that these behaviors are caused by a lack of rational decision, perhaps because adolescents “are unable to see their own vulnerability” to the outcomes, meaning that teens are apparently inept at identifying consequences to their actions. However, the studies they took demonstrated that adolescents are not only able to see their own vulnerability, but are also able to intelligently evaluate costs and effects to a certain decision. If teenagers are so smart, then what is actually causing this “risky behavior”?

One important reason Professor Albert discussed is brain activity and maturation before, during, and after adolescence. As a child ages from early to middle adolescence, fast maturation of incentive processing circuitry drives sensation seeking – in other words, the willingness to take risks in order to gain a reward increases as the child approaches teen years. In the brain, this occurs due to increased dopamine availability in reward paths as well as heightened sensitivity to monetary and social reward cues. In one interesting study, adolescents were instructed to press a button only when they saw an angry face. However, the researchers noticed that when the teens saw a happy face, they had a “particularly difficult time restraining themselves” to not press the button. Essentially, the happy-angry face study demonstrates that adolescents have more struggle in restraining themselves against impulsive actions, which often translates into responses during driving, alcohol use, and the other aforementioned risky behaviors.

Later in their life, there is a slower maturation of cognitive control circuitry that leaves a window of imbalance in the teen’s life. In the brain, this period is noted by thinning of gray matter and increasingly efficient cortical activation during inhibition tasks. In other words, older people “use smaller parts of [their] cortex to stop inappropriate responses.” Essentially, due to the way the physical and hormonal brain matures, adolescents are more prone to impulsive behavior. The take away: it’s not your fault.

Another influence on teens’ risky behavior is called the peer presence effect, commonly known as “peer pressure.” Based on arrest records, “adolescents, but not adults, [are] riskier in the presence of peers,” pointing out that the percentage of co-offenders arrested for the top eight crimes decreased with age after teenage years (Gardner & Steinberg, 2005). Perhaps the need to “establish their status,” Albert speculated, decreases with age as they gain more experience about living in the real world.

The test to evaluate the result of peer presence simulates the effect of teens taking a driving exam when in the car alone as compared to when with peers. In terms of peer influence, the study shows that adolescents ran more intersections when sitting with a peer than when sitting alone. In terms of risky behavior compared with adults, adolescents when watched by peers showed over 20% increase in risky behavior of running through intersections, as opposed to the 5-10% increase seen for adults in peer presence. Albert partially attributed this effect to the fact that “teens driving the first time could assess the probability of crashing less than adults do,” but he doesn’t have specific evidence for this claim.

While Albert claimed that the study was valid because the adolescents participating were made aware of the outcome of driving recklessly – damage to the car, injury, time it would take to get a new car, insurance problems – I believe that the study should have taken into account the fact that the teens may have subconsciously known the simulated driving test wasn’t real – viewing it as a mere video game – and so may have succumbed more into peer pressure as the true fear of dying in a crash would not have been present.

Albert ended his talk by giving one last piece of advice to people working with teens: It’s “not enough to [simply] increase their knowledge,” but rather to “understand and work towards developing impulse control and reward sensitivity.”

Below are some of the thought-provoking questions raised by audience members during the Q&A session:

Q: What would be the result of peer presence effect for same-sex peers as compared to peers of the opposite sex?

A: While Albert admitted that this particular situation has not been tested yet, he believes it may be based on personal perceptions of what the peer thinks, and what the opposite person likes.

Q: What would be the result of risky behavior for the simulated driving test if the participant’s parent(s) and peer(s) were both present in the car?

A: On one hand, the participant might drive more carefully due to the presence of an authoritative figure. However, if the participant opinionates the peer as a stronger influence, he / she would effectively neutralize the effect the parent has and drive more recklessly. Other audience members claimed that they would drive more cautiously irrespective of who was sitting with them in the car because they are aware there is another life at stake for every decision they made behind the wheel. “It would be interesting to see the [results of the study] based on this internal conflict,” the audience member who posed this question said. Overall, Albert said the results would be primarily influenced by the type of person participating – whether they would “take the small amount of money or be willing to wait for the big amount” in front of peers – that would determine whether the parent or peer becomes a stronger influence in risky behavior.

Q: How could someone going into education help keep high school students away from risky behaviors?

A: Albert noted that these behaviors are more the result of personal experience rather than something that can be quickly taught. In a school setting, teachers could introduce the practice of challenging situations to help the kids acting ‘in-the-moment’ recognize and understand “changes in their own thought patterns for decision making,” but simply giving them a “lesson in health class is not necessarily going to translate into the Friday night situation.”

If you are interested in these type of topics, Professor Albert is teaching PUBPOL 241: METHODS SOCIAL POLICY RESEARCH this Spring (2015).

More details about the presenter can be read at: http://fds.duke.edu/db/Sanford/ccfp/william.albert