I examined the effects of disrupting verbal mediation in a task that models the effects of verbally presented information on conceptual behavior. The experiment was done asynchronously by sending participants a SuperLab 6.0 software experiment, requesting a screen recording using Zoom, and acquiring demographic, consent, and exit interview information using Qualtrics. Sixty-four participants were randomly assigned to four conditions. The tact-intraverbal (TI) groups first learned to match visual stimuli with verbal labels, and then to associate pairs of verbal labels. The intraverbal-tact (IT) groups received the opposite sequence. After training, all groups were tested for new relationships between the visual stimuli. One TI group and one IT group were given an additional verbal task during the test, which was predicted to disrupt the performance more in the IT than the TI condition, due to IT participants being more reliant on solving the task verbally. No significant differences in accuracy or reaction time were noted between groups. However, only 47% of those in the IT-V group and 13% of those in the TI-V group actually performed the additional verbal task. The experiment should be repeated through real-time video calls or in person, so that participant instruction-following can be monitored and intervened on.

COVID-19, an unprecedented virus that shifted into a global pandemic almost a year ago, has greatly impacted the human way of life. Recent research, however, has shown that in the United States discrimination towards people of Asian descent has risen dramatically. From a terror management perspective, this heightened discrimination might be due to a defense mechanism to buffer death-anxiety through enhancing one’s cultural belief. The current study evaluates whether priming thoughts of COVID-19 leads to heightened death-related thoughts and increased racism towards Asians (i.e., worldview defense). Data was collected from 175 Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers. Our findings suggest that COVID did not influence attitudes toward Asians and international communication through increased mortality awareness. The current work will discuss possible limitations and directions for further study.

The United States is an increasingly diverse country with respect to the number of languages spoken (Shin & Ortman, 2011). With this increase, many adults experience benefits in their personal or professional lives from learning to read in a new language. However, learning to read fluently is increasingly difficult in adulthood (Abadzi, 1996; 2012) Previous research has shown a general bilingual advantage for novel word learning, such that individuals who are fluently bilingual more easily acquire additional languages (Kaushanskaya & Marian, 2009). Given that the reading and language networks largely overlap (Monzalvo and Dehaene-Lambertz, 2013; Stevens et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2020), we hypothesized that reading fluently in multiple print systems (multiscripturalism) may provide a similar advantage. Thus, we investigated the effect of multiscripturalism on novel letter-sound learning in young adults. Data were collected from young adults at TCU and the larger DFW community. Participants were screened for eligibility through a background questionnaire and a short assessment session conducted over Zoom. Eligible participants completed a 30-minute training session to learn eight Hebrew consonants and vowels. Immediately after training and seven days later, participants completed multiple reading measures to assess letter-sound learning performance (Thakkar et al., 2020). We will present our findings from the first wave of data collection, including the impact of baseline reading on learning and whether existing print systems impacted learning and retention of novel letters. We will also discuss implications for this work on literacy education policies and impacts on those with poor reading skills.

Bacillus anthracis is a bacterium that causes the deadly disease anthrax and has been used in bioterrorism. We are looking to investigate what genes within the chromosomal DNA contribute to the virulence of Bacillus anthracis. In this study, we screened a transposon library of B. anthracis ‘knock-out’ mutants for susceptibility to reactive oxygen species used by the immune system. A broad in vitro hydrogen peroxide screen was performed on 1,953 transposon mutants, and after several rounds of in vitro screening, 40 mutants were identified as consistently attenuated in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. Four of these mutants were then tested in the invertebrate model, Galleria mellonella, to assess virulence in an animal model. Mutants with phenotypes that repeated in both assays were prioritized for characterization. The location of the transposon insertion in one of the mutants was successfully identified. Identifying these novel genes contributing to the bacterium’s virulence will provide a better understanding of B. anthracis pathogenesis and may provide potential targets for combatting anthrax.

The bacterium Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent for the disease anthrax, possesses two plasmids that contribute significantly to virulence. Besides plasmids, certain chromosomal genes also contribute. In previous studies, our lab discovered that the chromosomally encoded ClpX gene is essential for virulence in B. anthracis. ClpX is an ATPase that is part of the ClpXP proteasome found in many bacteria. Loss of ClpX in B. anthracis Sterne results in increased susceptibility to cell wall targeting antibiotics like penicillin and daptomycin. However, the mechanism behind ClpX’s role in antibiotic resistance is not understood as it is likely that multiple pathways are affected by the loss of this global protease. We recently conducted a microarray to find which genes are up or down regulated in ClpX compared to wild-type (WT) B. anthracis. 119 genes had disrupted regulation and several of these had been connected to cell-wall active antibiotics like penicillin. In this study, we focused on three of these genes: MsrA, GlpF, and SigM. We confirmed the microarray results and showed that MsrA, GlpF, and SigM gene expression in our ClpX strains significantly differs from the wild-type B. anthracis Sterne via QPCR. Insertional knockout mutants were made for GlpF and SigM to test whether these genes were necessary for antibiotic resistance. We are currently testing these mutants in penicillin and daptomycin to assess their phenotypes. We found that loss of SigM results in increased susceptibility to penicillin and are currently studying the effect of daptomycin on SigM and GlpF. We will test the virulence of both mutants in our invertebrate animal model G. mellonella. This will hopefully provide better understanding on the mechanism behind ClpX’s antibiotic resistance.