Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Student (Summer 2019)

“During my summer at CIRP, I had the opportunity to contribute to and conduct research under the mentorship of Elizabeth Walshe, PhD. In collaboration with the Neuroscience of Driving Program, which includes Dr. Walshe, Flaura Winston, MD, PhD and Chelsea Ward McIntosh, MS, and Dan Romer, PhD, I assisted with a project that investigated the neuropsychological factors underlying risky driving behavior in developing young drivers. More specifically, I developed a method to analyze eye behavior collected with the Tobii Eye Tracker 4C during a simulated driving assessment. To do this, I conducted literature reviews on eye tracking and simulated driving assessments to familiarize myself with the different ways that visual inattention influences driving performance. Then, I created a standard operating procedure that outlined a step-by-step process to quantify eye behavior in the simulated driving assessment. Using REDCap and VLC Media Player, I completed a video content analysis with the coding method I created.

While conducting literature reviews, I became interested in the ways cell phones encourage distracted driving. This interest led me to develop an independent research question within the larger project that examined how cell phone notifications affect young drivers’ eye behavior, a topic that has not been thoroughly investigated.

I will soon be entering my fourth and final year as a Psychology major at Arcadia University in Glenside, PA, where I have been involved in psychological research for two years. I valued my summer experience at CIRP because I was able to learn about various types of technical equipment and use new data analysis software, all of which will be invaluable when I later pursue a PhD in Psychology with a specialization in Cognitive Neuroscience in the hopes of eventually becoming a research scientist. Best of all, I will be returning to CIRP as a Research Assistant for the fall and spring semesters to expand upon my independent research project and to assist the Neuroscience of Driving Program researchers.”