Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders affecting college students, yet research examining how ADHD is supported and understood in a college setting remains limited. Faculty members play a significant role in shaping students' academic experiences. Their beliefs and knowledge may influence how student requests are interpreted, which may subsequently impact student behavior and academic performance. The current study investigates how instructional university faculty perceive ADHD in college students. Specifically, we assess beliefs about the legitimacy of an ADHD diagnosis, perceptions of student's abilities, and attitudes toward academic accommodations.
It is hypothesized that on average, faculty will view ADHD as less impairing in the college context than would be expected based on clinical descriptions (i.e., viewing ADHD as a manageable challenge rather than a significant academic barrier). Additionally, it is expected that the level of ADHD knowledge will significantly predict perceptions and attitudes towards diagnostic legitimacy and accommodation support.
This study employs a cross-sectional survey design, administered through the Qualtrics online survey platform. Participants include current or full- or part-time university instructional faculty. Following consent, participants complete an online survey which assesses demographic information, ADHD knowledge, perception of student ability and impairment, and attitudes towards the classroom and testing accommodations. Regression models will test whether ADHD knowledge is associated with perceptions of ADHD legitimacy, support for accommodations, and corresponding attitudes toward student capabilities.
Understanding how instructors conceptualize ADHD can inform professional development, awareness initiatives, and accessibility training in higher education. The findings may also guide universities in improving support systems for students with ADHD, ultimately fostering more inclusive learning environments and equitable academic opportunities.

Throughout development, humans encounter pathogen threats that shape both physiological and behavioral defense systems. The immune system protects the body from infection, while the emotion of disgust helps prevent contact with potential sources of disease. Research suggests that early life stress can biologically alter children’s developing bodies, leading to immune cells that are primed for heightened inflammatory responses to threat. Consequently, childhood adversity has been associated with altered stress regulation and long-term changes in immune function. This study examines how early life stress influences inflammatory and autonomic responses to a simulated pathogen threat. Participants will be exposed to disgust-inducing stimuli, such as sticky keyboards and unpleasant smells, to elicit perceptions of contamination and disease risk. During exposure, inflammatory markers, including cytokine levels, heart rate, and core body temperature, will be documented to assess immune and autonomic activity. Participants will also report on early life stressors such as neglect, maltreatment, or socioeconomic adversity. We hypothesize that greater exposure to early adversity will lead to stronger inflammatory and autonomic responses to pathogen related stimuli. This work aims to clarify how early experiences shape the body’s reactivity to pathogen threats and investigates the link between childhood stress and long term health outcomes.

Improving Caregiver Education about Dementia Through the Science of Learning
Michala Pollard, Emma Goffard, Ariana Elsden, Lesca Hadley, & Uma Tauber
Most (83%) of the care provided to people living with dementia (PLwD) is provided by informal caregivers such as family members or friends who are not paid for their assistance. Informal caregivers’ 18 billion hours of care is valued at $339.5 billion for 2022 alone (Alzheimer’s Association, 2024). Caregivers for PLwD often assist with complex medical tasks and manage challenging emotional and behavioral symptoms of dementia with limited formal training (e.g., Fortinsky & Hathaway, 1990; Penrod & Dellasega, 1998; Ringer et al., 2020). As the demand for caregiving increases, it is critical to understand how caregivers can best learn and retain essential information for managing ADRD care.
The goal of is project is to establish methods to improve caregiver education about the behavioral and psychological symptoms (BPSD) of dementia. Specifically, our educational intervention incorporates principles from the science of learning for structuring retrieval practice to optimize learning (e.g., Agarwal et al., 2021; Sumowski et al., 2010; Tse et al., 2010; Woods et al., 2021). We compared the structured retrieval practice intervention against an active control comparison to determine the degree to which structured retrieval practice enhances caregivers’ long-term retention of dementia care information.
Caregivers of PLwD were recruited from the community and underwent an online survey screening and video or in-person screening prior to study enrollment. Caregivers learned 4 modules on emotion and mood symptoms of dementia – agitation, irritation, apathy, and depression – via the learning intervention or active control (rereading). Caregivers took an immediate test of their knowledge approximately 10 minutes after study and after a 2-day delay. Our novel intervention significantly increased caregivers’ knowledge immediately, and their knowledge was maintained 2 days later at a significantly higher rate relative to the active control comparison.

There is an ever-increasing push for trauma-informed practices to be integrated into human service sectors and systems of care (e.g., criminal justice, education, healthcare). Trauma is a well-documented public health concern, leading many systems to revise their approach to care to emphasize a trauma-informed lens of “what has happened to you” as opposed to “what is wrong you” with those they are serving. As service providers in these systems of care are charged with integrating trauma-informed care (TIC) into their everyday practices, further research is needed to examine those factors contributing to successful TIC implementation, including whether service providers see the value in TIC. The presented study serves as a pilot, addressing this gap by exploring beliefs about the necessity for and feasibility of implementing TIC. The presented study looks to sample 175 undergraduate students majoring or minoring in human service professions (e.g. social work, healthcare, education, criminal justice). The study will employ a pre-post two-group experimental design, in which participants will read vignettes depicting individuals seeking care from a human service sector, followed by questions about the appropriateness of the interactions. Participants will be randomly assigned to either the control group (which will receive unrelated educational information) or the exposure group (which will receive educational information about trauma-informed practices) before reevaluating the vignettes again. Pre-and post-test measures will assess changes in beliefs regarding the necessity and feasibility of TIC as a function of group assignment (treatment vs. control). Thus, the presented study looks to document beliefs about the perceived necessity and feasibility of using TIC in human service systems and to explore whether these perceptions change after exposure to TIC education in future service providers.

Situationships represent an increasingly common form of romantic involvement, with nearly 40 percent of Americans and half of young adults ages 18 to 34 reporting having been in one (YouGov, 2024). Although these relationships resemble traditional dating in terms of emotional connection, sexual involvement, and shared time, they lack labels, commitment, and clearly defined expectations (Langlais et al., 2024). Despite their prevalence, situationships remain understudied. Therefore, the present study investigated whether power dynamics and gender influence investment strategies in situationships. To investigate this, heterosexual men and women ages 18 to 32 were recruited through Prolific, and participants who reported being in a situationship were assigned into one of four conditions: woman in control, woman not in control, man in control, or man not in control. 400 eligible respondents (100 per condition) completed measures of mate retention behaviors and situationship investment. It was hypothesized that situationships controlled by women, compared to those controlled by men, would involve male partners engaging in more resource display and greater expressions of love and care, whereas situationships controlled by men would involve the female partners engaging in more appearance enhancement and sexual behaviors as investment strategies. Data are forthcoming.

During ancestral times, while women focused on child-rearing, they relied on their male mates to protect their family. Nowadays, women can protect their families themselves by employing strategies like using a home security system or owning a firearm. However, modern women continue to form long-term relationships with men to reduce the risk of encountering harm (Wilson & Mesnick, 1997). Crucially, men will not provide investment without getting something in return. One resource that men value that women can provide in exchange for investment is granting men sexual access (Baumeister & Vohs, 2004). Therefore, given that women continue to use men as a protective resource and men will accept sexual access in exchange, we should find that women in dangerous environments are more sexually open. This study aims to examine the impact of dangerous environments on women’s sexual strategies. Importantly, no previous research has focused on this. Overall, I predict that women who are primed with dangerous environment cues, compared to women who are primed with a control condition, will show higher levels of sexual openness. By gaining more knowledge about how dangerous environments can influence women’s mating strategies, we can better understand how evolutionary mechanisms continue to influence women’s sexual behaviors. Data are forthcoming.

Many barriers to accessing treatment for substance use disorder and HIV among those on community supervision are well-documented, including a lack of transportation, lack of reentry care, and lack of awareness of services. To address these barriers, a NIDA-funded R01, ACTION, aimed to promote engagement in care for infectious diseases (like HIV/AIDS) and opioid use disorder for individuals on probation in Texas. When conducting these large studies, it is imperative to understand participant and staff perceptions of an intervention’s feasibility and acceptability. Therefore, the current study aims to analyze the similarities and differences in opinions and attitudes of the success of the intervention identified by project staff and client. To examine this, a deductive qualitative analysis of 6 project staff and 20 clients was completed using Atlas.ti. Staff identified communication, state resources and facilities, and issues with pharmacies as key barriers to the intervention, whereas clients cited scheduling and transportation as key barriers. Staff identified the ability to communicate with other staff for resources, meeting clients in person, and meeting in the mobile health unit as key strengths of the intervention, whereas clients cite receiving healthcare services and interaction with the patient navigator and research assistant as key strengths. Understanding these barriers to and facilitators of the ACTION interventions allows researchers to see what works and what can create issues in the study.

Young adults’ mental health has emerged as a critical public health concern, with rising rates of sleep deprivation reported over the past decade. Online video gaming has become a popular bedtime activity, especially among undergraduates, and may contribute to their sleep disruptions and daytime mental health malfunctions. However, not all undergraduates experience bedtime online gaming in the same way, and understanding who is most vulnerable, under what conditions, and whether bedtime online gaming may have neutral or even protective effects for some individuals remains a critical gap. Besides the importance of exploring individual differences in such effects, many studies rely solely on self-reported sleep quality, which can be biased or inaccurate.

To address these issues, this project will utilize a longitudinal data collection method. A total of 10 TCU undergraduates will be recruited through the campus gaming club. Over 14 days, participants will complete a morning survey assessing their prior night’s online gaming experiences and subjective sleep quality, and a brief tasks to measure cognitive functioning. Evening surveys will assess momentary mental health states and include an open-ended question about anything they want to share about their past day. Participants will continuously wear Garmin devices to collect objective sleep metrics passively. Findings will uncover the moment-to-moment impacts of bedtime gaming on sleep quality and overall functioning, and provide preliminary insights into individual differences in why and how some students are negatively affected by bedtime video gaming, while others may not be.

I expect that task performance will vary among participants based on individual gaming habits. Specifically, I anticipate a negative correlation between total bedtime gaming time and next-day performance on cognitive tasks, particularly when participants stay up late to game, leading to disrupted sleep. In such cases, deviations from typical healthy sleep patterns may negatively influence participants’ cognitive functioning. I also expect that the type of game played may influence outcomes, as games that involve higher levels of sensory stimulation and rapid decision-making (e.g., action shooters) may negatively affect sleep and further impair cognitive performance compared to slower-paced genres such as role-playing games.

Frustrative nonreward refers to the behavioral reactions that occur when an expected reward is reduced or omitted. Reward downshift procedures provide a useful framework to examine whether behavior is guided by current reward expectancies (action) or by learned stimulus - response associations (habits). Under conditions in which behavior depends on reward expectancies, animals typically adjust their responses when reward value changes. By contrast, if behavior has become habitual, original responses may persist even when the outcome is reduced. The present study examined whether extended training in a Pavlovian autoshaping task promotes habit-like responses following a reward downshift. In Experiment 1, rats were trained to respond to two levers associated with different reward magnitudes. Animals received either standard training (10 days) or extended training (30 days). After training, preference for the higher-value reward was assessed, and then one lever was downshifted to deliver the same smaller reward that the other lever provided. Changes in lever preference following the downshift were used to evaluate behavioral adjustments. Both groups initially adjusted their responses after the reduction in reward magnitude, through a change in preference from the downshifted to the unshifted lever. However, animals that received extended training gradually returned to their original preference for the downshifted one, even though both options delivered the same outcome. This persistence suggests the development of stimulus–response associations consistent with habit-like control. In contrast, animals that received standard training maintained a frustration induced change in preference after the downshift, indicating a weaker habit formation response. Experiment 2 tested whether overtraining by increasing the number of trials within each session would produce similar effects. Although animals received more trials per session, both groups showed similar behavioral adjustments following reward downshift and did not differ in preference patterns. Together, these results suggest that the development of habit-like responding depends not only on the amount of training but also on how experience is distributed over time. Training extended across multiple days, rather than concentrated within sessions, appears to promote persistent responding that is less sensitive to changes in reward magnitude.

Women remain disproportionately affected by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), with disparities in acquisition risk research concentrated among Black women in the Southern United States. Although there are effective prevention tools such as Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), uptake of these tools remain low. This review analyzes the critical gap in prevention and protection against HIV in Black women. Systemic search of PubMed (2010-2025) was conducted looking for keywords such as “Women and PrEP”, “Barber Shop Model”, “Beauty Shop Model”, “Mobile Health Unit Health Care”, “PrEP Education”, and “Birth Control”. Reducing HIV disparities among Black women requires changing structural and social factors that influence the high HIV risk-factors. Awareness and self-perceived risk must be considered at the individual level in order to effectively prevent HIV acquisition. Existing research shows that the way prevention services are delivered and designed affect the efficacy of HIV prevention efforts. In addition to advancing biomedical strategies, interventions should be culturally responsive to increase awareness and reduce stigma surrounding PrEP and HIV. Overall, HIV disparities among Black women are multifactorial, and shifting prevention efforts into trusted community spaces while addressing the structural roots of medical mistrust shows a promising strategy for narrowing the gap in HIV prevention.