My First Poster Presentation
Author: Cecelia Schneider | Major: Psychology | Semester: Fall 2022
My trip to the annual Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies conference in New York City was extremely enriching. I went to present a poster about the addiction research I have been conducting over the past year about how the varying intensities of the desire to smoke cigarettes and the desire to resist smoking cigarettes can interact to predict craving uncontrollability. Craving uncontrollability is the perceived ability someone has to control their own cravings. If we wanted to know if a person’s craving uncontrollability would be affected by them having a strong desire to smoke but also a strong desire to quit smoking, knowing about the nature of this interaction would be helpful. We found that when resistance is low, higher craving predicts more craving uncontrollability, and this relationship was stronger when the resistance was low compared to when the resistance was high. These results show that craving is considered easier to control when resistance is stronger, suggesting that smoking cessation treatment may need to find ways to enhance desires to resist smoking to improve quitting self-efficacy.
Presenting the work was very exciting, but I actually found that there are lots of areas of research that interest me more when I attended the conference. I met a Psychologist at Case Western University that conducted research on conduct in adolescent females and males from ages 10-16 and found that attention-seeking behavior often leads to suicidal behavior. I found this extremely interesting because it makes a lot of sense that someone with attention seeking behaviors probably has a reason to seek attention in the first place, and the negative attention they receive is further perpetuated as they are labeled a “class clown” or “troublemaker” by their teachers and peers. This experience is isolating and points to solutions and interventions that should be implemented in school environments. This exposure was valuable and solidified my thoughts that I would like to work with children when I am older. When working with adults, you are trying to understand and reverse all of the trauma they have endured. However, children are very malleable and preventative measures can be implemented in youth, so I am very excited about the prospect of working with younger populations.
Another really great part of the conference was that I got to explore the city with some of the members of my lab, people I hadn’t gotten to know very well beforehand. My fellow research assistant and I were thrilled to discuss things we’d learned at the conference over Korean barbecue in Times Square. And the Korean pastries??? DELICIOUS! I also got to have great conversations with some of the graduate students in my lab and learn about their career paths and their research interests. Exploring a city unfamiliar to me was wonderful, but the ability to speak with people who have tons of research experience and knowledge was the most enjoyable part of the trip because I got a level of intellectual stimulation that I have been missing for quite a long time. I look forward to attending more conferences in the future and am extremely grateful for the opportunity to do so as early in my college career as I have been able to. I would recommend that anyone with even a slight interest in research get involved in a lab. Opportunities like this one are prevalent at the University of Arkansas, and I was fortunate enough to reap the benefits!