Program News & Events

Reem-Kayden Center Lobby  5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Join us in celebrating our December graduating seniors as their present their work!

Erik Nook, Princeton University
Preston Theater  4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Taking a distanced perspective on stressful situations helps us reduce negative emotional reactions and respond more adaptively. But what if our words (i.e., language) could be tools for increasing psychological distance, and consequently facilitate emotion regulation? This talk will present a series of studies on linguistic distancing (i.e., changing one’s words to increase psychological distance by reducing use of first-person singular pronouns like “I” and present tense-verbs) and its relationship with emotion regulation and mental health. Experimental studies (Ns = 107-207) showed that having participants write about aversive images without using the word “I” or present-tense verbs reduced their self-reported negative affect. Conversely, asking participants to engage in emotion regulation (by cognitively reinterpreting or reappraising) aversive images while writing their thoughts revealed spontaneous increases in linguistic distance that correlated with reap-praisal success. Finally, a large naturalistic study of psychotherapy transcripts (N = 6,229) showed that linguistic distancing increased during treatment and tracked within-person reductions in depression and anxiety symptoms. All studies included replications of key findings, strengthening conclusions. Together, this line of research shows that language is a powerful tool for measuring and manipulating both emotion regulation and mental health at large scales.
 

Reem-Kayden Center  4:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  5:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Majoring (or interested) in science or math but unsure about whether grad school is right for you?  

The Bard Interdisciplinary Science Research Accelerator is sponsoring a panel discussion, Q&A, and networking event with admissions administrators and faculty from across the region.  

We’ll talk about what master’s and PhD programs are out there, what they are like, and how to optimize the rest of your time spent at Bard.  

Panelists:

Delilah Gates
Gravity Initiative Postdoctoral Associate Research Scholar, Princeton University

Andrew Harder
Director of Graduate Admissions, Mathematics Department, Lehigh University

Emily Harms
Senior Associate Dean, The Rockefeller University

Felicia Keesing
David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, Bard College

Chris Lafratta
Professor of Chemistry, Bard College

Chuck Doran
Distinguished Visiting Professor of Mathematics and Physics, Bard College

Open to all Bard students, especially those moderated in mathematics or the sciences.

Sayed Jafar Ahmadi, Research Scholar in Psychology, Bard College
Preston Theater  4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4

Erica Hsiung Wojcik
Skidmore College
 
Preston Theater  4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
How children learn to link (or “map”) a label to its meaning has been a primary focus of word learning research. Most—if not all—researchers agree that there is more to word learning than mapping. Children must learn the contexts in which words are used, the relationships between words, and more. And yet, our research programs and methods are still dominated by the mapping problem. One way move forward from this mapping focus is to think from a baby’s perspective.  Recent technological advances have made it possible to collect, store, and share unprecedented naturalistic audio/video corpora that document the first years of a baby’s life. These new datasets have led to an explosion in exploratory, descriptive, naturalistic studies that aim to unpack how infants learn language out in the real world. In this talk, I present data from two descriptive case studies that use the unique SAYcam database, which comprises headcam footage from three babies, sampled two hours per week across the first two years of life. Both studies unveil new characteristics of early lexical input, demonstrating how descriptive, naturalistic work can enrich word learning research.
 

Heidi Levitt, University of Massachusetts-Boston
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
It is well documented that people who have marginalized sexual identities often experience, on top of their daily stressors, heterosexist events that increase both their total levels of stress as well as their risk of physical and mental health concerns (e.g., Patterson et al., 2020). Despite this, research has indicated that many clients do not feel comfortable discussing experiences of heterosexism with therapists or feel that the structure of therapy prevents these discussions (Hand & Levitt, 2022). In this presentation, I describe a program of research, conducted by myself and my colleagues, to develop accessible expressive-writing interventions that aid sexually minoritized people to process and resolve heterosexist experiences, demonstrating decreases in both event-related stress and depression (Levitt et al., 2021). In this presentation, I concentrate on what we have learned from this research that is helpful for therapists to know.

A task analysis is presented though which a model of the stages of resolving heterosexism was developed (Collins & Levitt, 2021). This model highlights the types of changes that people experience as they work through troubling heterosexist experiences as well as the obstacles that appear to block the change process. It was striking through our analyses that, although the healing processes were similar, the outcomes of the process differed widely. They included, for instance, decisions to withdraw from heterosexist contexts, to seek out mentoring and affirmative community, to have greater empathy for people with heterosexism, or to advocate for themselves. Having an awareness of these stages, obstacles, and varied outcomes can aid therapists when guiding clients to work through these experiences. 

Although the exercises have focused on heterosexism, analyses found similarly strong positive effects by people who have multiple minoritized identities (e.g., marginalized sexual minority and racial identities). Notably, in two projects, over half of the participants indicated gender diverse identities and projects have specifically studied non-monosexual men (Chickerella et al., 2022) and autistic sexual minority people (Maroney et al., 2022). The presentation considers how understanding the intersection of healing and heterosexism can advantage therapists working with this client population and maximize clients’ agency in the healing process.  
 

Alexis May, Wesleyan University
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Over the last two decades the frequency of suicidal thoughts, behaviors, and deaths has risen in the United States and remains high. This crisis has spurred the rapid development of interventions to prevent suicide. A common element across these interventions is their sole focus on the suicidal individual. This is in stark contrast to the critical role interpersonal connections play in suicide risk – a role highlighted by suicide theory, empirical data, complementary evidence, and best practice recommendations. However, including loved ones in treatments for suicidal individuals also presents unique challenges – suicidal individuals fear stigma, poor response to their disclosure and being a burden to others. Allies of suicidal individuals are hindered by misinformation, limited self-efficacy in helping, and high stress levels. The presentation will explore what contemporary suicide theories suggest about the role of significant others in suicide prevention and describe emerging interventions that involve significant others. The presentation will take a deep dive in to the couples crisis response plan, a novel single session suicide prevention intervention currently being tested among psychiatrically hospitalized service members and Veterans. 

Elena Kim, Psychology Program
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5
What does psychological counseling look like in the Global South? What shapes professional practice in a post-Soviet country? How is psychological intervention regulated in contemporary Central Asia? Guided by these questions, I conducted a qualitative inquiry in a crisis center for women in Kyrgyzstan, making use of a feminist-inspired methodological tool of Institutional Ethnography (Smith, 1987; 2005).  In this presentation, I share my findings demonstrating how the global standards of human rights protection inform what happens in the offices of the Kyrgyz crisis psychologists as they carry out their frontline work with survivors of domestic violence.  I found that adherence to these global frameworks, through discourses and textual work, might be at odds with the women’s actual obtainment of protection. Puzzled by this contradictory outcome, I explored and analytically mapped the institutional processes and activities which accounted for it. Following the tradition of critical, international and feminist psychology, I hope to demonstrate how the mental health needs of the minority may be routinely overlooked even within programs with the most benevolent agendas.

Sarah Dunphy-Lelii, Psychology Program
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Chimpanzees are a highly complex, social, and endangered species, wild-living only in a narrow band of equatorial Africa. In 2016 the Ngogo chimpanzee community of western Uganda was the largest in the world: more than 220 individuals living peacefully together. Over the last six years, researchers have witnessed the shocking and deadly division of the community into two factions, making enemies of long-time friends and brothers. This talk explores how species-typical chimpanzee social ecology and changes in natural environment contribute to a war-like phenomenon that, while personally and professionally distressing for human observers, is fascinating and instructive in its own right.