Research & SoTLP Lab

The Laboratory for SoTL in Psychology (Room 2432 Lagomarcino Hall)

Dr. Loreto Prieto is always looking for individuals who are highly responsible, motivated, and willing to commit time to learning basic research skills that can be applied to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology (SoTLP). Experience in the SoTLP lab would be ideal for individuals whose future plans include teaching psychology students. Most research out of the lab is based on social cognitive theory, and currently focuses on improving the research and statistical training of undergraduate psychology students. Undergraduate psychology students who are willing to spend at least one year, preferably two years, to work in my lab are encouraged to apply. If you are interested, please contact Dr. Prieto (lprieto@iastate.edu) to submit application materials and set up an appointment for an interview.

CURRENT DOCTORAL STUDENTS IN THE LAB:

CEDAR ANDRAE, B.A.

Cedar entered with the Class of 2023. He earned a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology and Neuroscience at Coe College in Iowa. His research interests center around factors that affect men's help seeking behavior.

 

 

 

JOSHUA PEIFFER, B.A.

Josh entered with the class of 2024. He earned his bachelor's degree in psychology at Cornell College in Iowa. His research interests center around general psychopathology.

 

 

 

 

CURRENT UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN THE LAB:

ALLISON LOOMIS

Allison is a senior, double majoring in psychology and statistics at ISU. This is her third year as a research assistant in the SoTLP Lab, and she has worked on various projects. She performs literature searches, creates Qualtrics data collection tools, and helps with writing and creating the final products of research (i.e., poster presentations, articles for publication). 

Allison plans on attending graduate school in an applied psychology program.

 

Select SoTLP publications out of the lab (Bold print identifies student authors):

Prieto, L. (2023). Concerns about teaching culturally diverse students in a cross-disciplinary sample of higher education faculty. Teaching in Higher Education: Critical Perspectives, 28, 772-783.

I examined concerns surrounding teaching culturally diverse students held by a cross-disciplinary sample of higher education faculty. Findings indicated as faculty levels of acceptance of culturally diverse students increased, negative faculty attitudes toward these students decreased, as did faculty concerns that these students might hold negative perceptions toward them. A greater acceptance of culturally diverse students was also associated with a faculty assigning greater importance to incorporating content regarding cultural diversity into their courses, and spending more time discussing diversity issues in class. Faculty identified chief barriers concerning the incorporation of diversity issues into their course content as: (1) not finding diversity issues relevant to their course content; (2) time constraints; and, (3) student apprehension about faculty including diversity content in courses.

Prieto, L., Siegel, Z., & Kaiser, D. (2021). One fish, two fish, red fish (or green fish?): Assisting students with color vision deficiency. Teaching of Psychology, 48, 90-94.

We discuss the ways in which psychology educators can assist students who have color vision deficiency (CVD). We outline basic information concerning CVD, offer tips for instructors to help students with CVD access content materials in the classroom, and suggest class activities to help all psychology students learn about CVD.

Burke, K., & Prieto, L. (2019). High-quality research training environments and undergraduate psychology students. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 5, 3, 223-235.

We examined the ratings of students on the quality of their research training environments and the relation these ratings had to their reported research self-efficacy as well as their willingness to engage in future research activities. Students who reported higher ratings of the quality of their research training environments also reported higher research self-efficacy, (r = .31, p < .01). In line with Social Cognitive Career Theory, we also found that student research self-efficacy partially mediated the direct effect of high-quality research training environments on student willingness to engage in future research activities (t = 2.63; p < .01). We discuss the implications of our findings for training and future research.

Boysen, G., Prieto, L., Holmes, J., Landrum, R. E., Miller, R., Taylor, A., White, J. N., & Kaiser, D. (2018). Trigger warnings in psychology classes: What do students think? Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 4, 2, 69–80.

Sensitive topics are an inherent part of psychology education, but some college students have begun to demand prior notification before the coverage of potentially disturbing content. This call from students for “trigger warnings” has been controversial among faculty, and no research has documented psychology students’ perspectives on the topic. In order to fill this gap in knowledge, we collected data from six different psychology departments across the United States. Undergraduate psychology students (N = 751) reported their attitudes toward, and experiences with, trigger warnings in the psychology classroom. Results indicated that many psychology students held favorable views about the use of trigger warnings, viewing such warnings as necessary for topics such as sexual assault, child abuse, and suicide. Despite this, the overwhelming majority of psychology students reported little discomfort with discussing sensitive topics in class and indicated that any discomfort they felt had little or no effect on their learning. Most psychology students also agreed that potentially distressing topics have an appropriate role in the pedagogy of psychological science; that students should expect to encounter potentially disturbing content during psychology classes; and, that experienced distress does not warrant student avoidance of sensitive topics. The implications of our findings for teaching are that relatively few students report the type of distress that trigger warnings are intended to prevent, but students are generally supportive should teachers choose to provide trigger warnings. However, these implications may not generalize across all types of students or institutions of higher learning.

Boysen, G., & Prieto, L. (2017). Trigger warnings in psychology: Psychology teachers' perspectives and practices. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 4, 1, 16-26.

The content of psychology courses can include topics that may be sensitive to some students, especially those with personal histories of trauma. Increasingly, the news media has reported student requests for teachers to provide trigger warnings before covering sensitive topics in college classrooms. However, little empirical data has been published about the use of such content warnings in undergraduate education. The current research consisted of a national survey of psychology teachers (N = 284) assessing their attitudes and practices related to trigger warnings. Thirty-nine percent of the sample had given a trigger warning, but the frequency of warnings was rare. Few teachers had received requests from students for trigger warnings or accommodations related to sensitive topics. Although teachers’ attitudes about trigger warnings tended to be more positive than negative, they did not believe that teachers held primary responsibility for preventing student discomfort with content or that potentially distressing content should be avoided in the psychology classroom. Overall, the results of the study indicate that offering trigger warnings to students about potentially sensitive topics does not appear to be a typical practice in psychology.