Electronic Dance Music (EDM) is a high-energy musical genre characterized by its hypnotic rhythms, heavy basslines, and intense build-ups that culminate in a sudden, dramatic shift in rhythm and amplitude known as a “drop.” EDM has not only gained recognition for its dynamic listening experience, but also for its influence on modern social and cultural landscapes. Meanwhile, yoga—an ancient and sacred practice of synchronized bodily flow through breath, movement, and mindfulness—holds spiritual importance and has the potential to promote physical, mental, and emotional well-being (Akhtar et al., 2013; Ray et al., 2001). While yoga has been paired with meditative music to reduce depression, stress and anxiety (Vajpeyee et al., 2021), it remains unclear whether integrating other genres of music, such as EDM, could facilitate greater positive affect. Although EDM has been researched across a variety of sociocultural contexts, revealing its social and emotional importances (Cannon & Greasely, 2021), little is known about its effect on well-being. The current study examines the impact of yoga and electronic dance music on well-being in adults attending a community Vinyasa yoga class in Rhode Island using the UCLA Arts Impact Measurement System (AIMS). Findings are predicted to support EDM-integrated yoga practice as a therapeutic intervention as an accessible and viable therapy that can improve well-being across a variety of contexts.

When children are introduced to a new object, they typically hear its label and descriptive attributes (e.g., “This is a red apple”). Such combinations are critical for category learning, enabling children to recognize previously-seen objects (e.g., red apples), extend the label to other objects of the category (e.g., green apples), and distinguish between perceptual variations (e.g., differences in color). While it is evidenced that the order of presented information impacts learning (Ramscar et al., 2010), less is known about how the timing of description in the introduction of an object (before or after the label) impacts children’s categorical learning. In the current study, four-year-old children were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: hearing the label first or hearing the description first for eight novel objects. The procedure also counterbalanced the task sequence (extension first vs. recognition first) and presentation format (blocked vs. interleaved). Preliminary results (n=30) revealed that children performed better in the label-first condition (p=0.01), specifically on the recognition task. This aligns with evidence that novel labels act as attentional "anchors" for young learners (Carvalho et al., 2019). Presenting the label first may have primed children’s attention towards the object’s features, leading to better performance on recognition. Early labels may scaffold richer perceptual encoding, which has implications for improving educational paradigms in children’s vocabulary and category learning.

Adolescence is a period marked by growing independence, self-discovery, and shifts in family dynamics, which can often lead to increased parent-child conflict, potentially raising the risk of poorer mental health outcomes (Mastrotheodoros et al., 2019). Further, although there is a positive link between parent-child conflict and adolescent mental health, less is known about whether the strength of this association varies depending on adolescents’ and parents’ perception. The present study aims to address this gap by examining how parent- and adolescent-reported parent-child conflict relate to negative affect, anxiety, and depressive symptoms in 110 adolescents at-risk for depression (M_age = 14.17; 66.4% female). We hypothesize that both adolescent- and parent-reported conflict will be associated with increased negative affect, anxiety, and depression in adolescents. We also predict that adolescent-reported parent-child conflict will account for a greater proportion of the variance in adolescents’ psychological outcomes relative to parent-reported conflict. Findings from this study could highlight the importance of adolescents' self-perceptions of their interpersonal relationships in comprehensively understanding their mental health and encouraging psychological interventions to address the environmental factors that contribute to adolescent well-being.

Stress is a common experience, but our perception and response to bodily signals may play a crucial role in how we manage it. Previous research has shown that interoception, the ability to sense and interpret bodily signals, influences how individuals perceive their emotional and physiological states. In this study, we tested whether individuals with greater self-reported interoception experience stronger links between physiological changes and anxiety. We examined data from a study with 46 undergraduate participants who underwent a stress task. During the task, electrocardiogram (ECG) data was collected in addition to reported anxiety levels before and after the task using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-S). Interoceptive sensibility was measured using the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness 2 (MAIA-2) pre-task. Initial findings revealed a significant rise in anxiety post-task (t(45) = 8.77, p < 0.001). We aim to further investigate the relationship between heart rate changes and anxiety, as well as how interoceptive awareness might influence this link. Findings from this study may help us better understand individual differences in the relationships between bodily sensations and the experiences of stress and anxiety.

A reader's ability to understand handwritten text depends on its legibility, as illegible handwriting introduces excess noise. To characterize this noisy channel comprehension (Gibson et al., 2013; Gibson et al., 2017), we asked 320 participants to decode 20 legible vs. illegible sentences. These sentences had implausible meanings but were a single letter away from a plausible alternative (e.g., “mom got a dog but the baby was upset by all the banks”, which could be “barks”). When faced with illegible handwriting with several alternative interpretations, we hypothesize that individuals rationally combine two sources of information: (1) top-down common sense (i.e., what interpretation is more plausible?), and (2) bottom-up sensory evidence (i.e., what letter is this similar to?). To test this, we asked participants to transcribe the implausible sentences, and predicted two patterns of rational comprehension. First, when the handwriting is illegible, readers will be more likely to fix perceived mistakes to make the meaning plausible (retyping “banks” as “barks”). Second, when the written letter is visually similar to its plausible alternative (e.g., n vs. r), readers will be more likely to “fix” the perceived mistake compared to when those letters are dissimilar (e.g., g vs. m). These predictions give us a better understanding of how the mind navigates written language when the writing is noisy rather than pristine, for example, a teacher’s messy handwriting on a chalkboard, or a prescription written by a doctor.