Browsing by Author "Beier, Margaret"

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    A Computational Analysis of Meal Events Using Food Diaries and Continuous Glucose Monitors
    (2023-04-21) Pai, Amruta; Sabharwal, Ashutosh; Allen, Genevera; Patel, Ankit; Beier, Margaret; Kerr, David
    Diet self-management, through its effect on weight and glycemic control, is one of the cornerstones of Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) prevention and management. A quantitative understanding of bio-behavioral mechanisms of diet is needed to create effective diet self-management tools. Smartphone diet-tracking applications and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) are emerging devices that enable dense sampling of an individual's diet. Research in diet analysis of app-based food diaries and CGMs have mainly focused on developing aggregate measures of nutrient intake and glucose responses. However, innovative computational analysis is required to infer actionable insights. In this thesis, we develop computational measures for various bio-behavioral aspects of diet by leveraging meal event data collected with food diaries and CGMs. First, we establish recurrent consumption measures across meal events to characterize habitual behavior in an individual's diet. We leverage a large publicly available MyFitnessPal (MFP) food diary dataset to provide novel insights on differences in habitual behavior across individuals and temporal contexts. Next, we develop calorie compensation measures to characterize self-regulatory behavior. A quantitative analysis of calorie compensation measures on the MFP dataset reveals significant meal compensation patterns and their impact on adherence to self-set calorie goals. Finally, we designed an observational study using the MFP app and CGMs to evaluate the impact of meal events on glycemic control in adults with varying hemoglobin a1c levels. We developed elevated meal event count to characterize mealtime glucose responses by exploiting its association with hemoglobin a1c. Elevated meal event count significantly affected glycemic control, suggesting its value as a novel event-driven glycemic target metric. This thesis highlights the value of using CGMs and food diaries to broaden our understanding of diet. The developed measures augment existing intake measures and could be used as a digital bio-behavioral markers to personalize diet self-management strategies.
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    Can retrieval practice reduce the associative deficit?
    (2018-03-27) Rivas, Alda G; Beier, Margaret
    One of the main behavioral patterns of the episodic memory decline that accompanies aging is an “associative deficit.” This deficit involves a reduced ability to remember new associations. Retrieval-based learning has been explored in the literature as a potential strategy to reduce the associative deficit when learning non-verbal material. In the present study, the main question of interest was whether retrieval practice could serve as a strategy to reduce the associative deficit when learning verbal material. Other questions of interest involved whether an advantage of retrieval practice is observed when learning semantically unrelated material, and whether individual differences determine who benefits from retrieval practice, who benefits from re-study practice, and who benefits to the same extent from either type of learning practice. Participants from the community (N = 106) completed measures of episodic memory and processing speed, and an experimental paired-associates task. The experimental task involved learning 40 pairs of words (20 semantically related and 20 semantically unrelated). The learning strategy was manipulated so that participants practiced learning half of the related (10 pairs) and half of the unrelated pairs (10 pairs) through re-study and the other half the pairs through retrieval. After 24 hours, participants tried to recall all the pairs. Because a pattern of associative deficit was absent in the data, it was not possible to conduct the tests for hypotheses exploring whether retrieval practice reduces the associative deficit. As for the other questions of interest, the results replicated the findings in the retrieval-based learning literature: retrieval practice produced more memory benefits than re-study practice. However, when considering the semantic relatedness condition, the advantage of retrieval practice was observed only in the semantically related condition. When taking into consideration that not everyone benefits from retrieval practice, the results show that the benefits of retrieval and re-study practice are of similar magnitude, regardless of semantic relatedness. However, the proportion of participants that benefit from retrieval practice is larger than the proportion that benefits from re-study practice. Older participants with lower episodic memory scores do not show memory benefits from the baseline effects of either re-study or retrieval practice.
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    Examining an Online Microbiology Game as an Effective Tool for Teaching the Scientific Process
    (American Society for Microbiology, 2013-05) Bowling, Kristi G.; Klisch, Yvonne; Wang, Shu; Beier, Margaret; Rice University Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning
    This study investigates the effectiveness of the online Flash game Disease Defenders in producing knowledge gains for concepts related to the scientific process. Disease Defenders was specifically designed to model how the scientific process is central to a variety of disciplines and science careers. An additional question relates to the game's ability to shift attitudes toward science. Middle school classes from grades six to eight were assigned to the experimental group (n = 489) or control group (n = 367) and asked to participate in a three-session intervention. The sessions involved completing a pretest, a game play session, and taking a post-test. Students in the experimental group played Disease Defenders while students in the control group played an alternative science game. Results showed a significant increase in mean science knowledge scores for all grades in the experimental group, with sixth grade and seventh grade students gaining more knowledge than eighth grade students. Additionally, results showed a significant positive change in science attitudes only among sixth graders, who also rated their satisfaction with the game more favorably than students in higher grades. No differences in mean test scores were found between genders for science knowledge or science attitudes, suggesting that the game is equally effective for males and females.
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    Examining STEM Formative Experiences and College STEM Outcomes from a Social Cognitive Career Theory Perspective
    (2020-08-12) Bradford, Brittany Caitlin; Beier, Margaret
    College STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) major matriculation and attrition decisions may be influenced by experiences occurring much earlier in students’ lives than their contemporary college experiences. This research was guided by social cognitive career theory (SCCT; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994), which describes how students develop career interests, make choices as a result of these interests, interpret their successes and failures, and ultimately make career decisions. Although many studies of STEM interest, self-efficacy, and academic behavior have been conducted on high school and college students, childhood experiences have been less studied, despite the emphasis that SCCT places on early life experiences. Using a biodata measure that incorporated background influences and learning experiences factors previously developed from semi-structured interviews with STEM students, I conducted a two-part study. Study 1 entailed an exploratory factor analysis of the biodata measure and other constructs on underprepared STEM students at Rice (N = 154). After refining the biodata measure, a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model were conducted on a separate sample of Rice freshmen in Study 2 (N = 175). Findings from both studies provide support for a seven-factor model and a reasonable fit with a modified structural equation model based on SCCT. These seven factors comprise three background influence factors (general parent support, STEM parent support, and teacher support) and four formative experience factors (math extracurricular activities and competitions, science extracurricular activities and competitions, proactive behavior, and STEM knowledge). All were significant in the full structural equation model except teacher support. Further research will be necessary to refine and validate this measure on other samples and develop greater insight into the relationships between this new measure and STEM self-efficacy, STEM interest, career outcome expectations, initial college major, and intended college major. Ultimately, these studies may guide future research that uses a theoretical approach to explore the STEM experiences of students at all education levels, as well as define factors that schools and program administrators may find valuable to explore in future STEM interventions.
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    Lacking a Voice: Bias against Women as Academic Speakers at Top Universities
    (2015-12-04) Nittrouer, Christine Lynn; Hebl, Michelle; Oswald, Fred; Beier, Margaret
    Across a wide range of settings, women still face disparities in the workplace relative to men, even in seemingly equitable professions like academia (Moss-Racusin, Dovidio, Brescoll, Graham, & Handelsman, 2012). In the current research, I conduct five studies focusing on academia in more detail and specifically examining how gatekeeping or gender biases might influence the research presentations that are heard throughout top academic institutions. Specifically, Study 1 uses archival data to examine colloquia speakers who gave talks in six academic disciplines within the top 50 U.S. colleges and universities. Results shows that women are significantly less likely to be colloquia speakers than are men, even after taking into account the differential number of men and women who get their PhDs and hold academic positions. To eliminate alternative explanations (e.g., women are declining invitations more often than are men), Study 2 is conducted (with a faculty sample). Results reveal no gender preferences. Then, Study 3 (with a convenience sample) and Study 4 (with a faculty sample) examine individuals’ ratings of manipulated “potential speakers.” Results from Study 3 demonstrate a preference for women when they talk about communal topics and a denigration of women when they talk about agentic topics. Results from Study 4 indicate no preference for women or men. Finally, Study 5 examines whether such differences arise from individual or group decisions, and are more likely when women are present in gatekeeping roles (help decide speakers). As a whole, this research strongly shows that those who invite and schedule speakers are gatekeepers and can create (or avoid) gender bias, and I discuss strategies to make them more aware and vigilant about ensuring more equal distributions of speakers by gender.
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    Objective Sociability and Impulsivity Measures for Dimensional Assessment of Mental Health
    (2024-04-16) Lamichhane, Bishal; Sabharwal, Ashutosh; Sano, Akane; Patel, Ankit; Beier, Margaret
    Mental health disorders have a high prevalence and are on the rise globally. Subjective self-reports used for mental health assessment, with their recall and reporting biases, pose a scalability challenge for accurate and frequent assessment. Additionally, the existing nosology of disorders has rampant comorbidity and heterogeneity, creating challenges in the diagnosis and treatment. Instead of the dichotomous diagnostic labeling of mental health based on subjective self-reports, as is currently practiced, assessing mental health along the objectively measured bio-behavioral dimensions of functioning could provide a foundation for scalable, robust, and accurate mental healthcare. Towards the goal of improved mental health assessment, this thesis investigated objective measures of sociability and impulsivity, the bio-behavioral dimensions of functioning implicated in several mental health disorders. Sociability represents an individual’s tendency to interact and socialize with others. Sociability deficits and altered sociability patterns are commonly implicated across several mental health disorders. In this thesis, we propose using free-living audio to obtain sociability measures objectively. We developed a deep learning-based audio processing pipeline, ECoNet, that addresses the challenges of free-living audio processing to infer sociability measures accurately. The inferred sociability measures were significantly correlated with dimensional mental health measures in a clinical study comprising participants with diverse mental health conditions. Free-living audio also complemented the conventional mobile sensing modalities for dimensional mental health score prediction. Our results establish the potential of free-living audio-based objective sociability measures to represent mental health state. Impulsivity represents an individual’s tendency to act on urges without sufficient forethought about one’s action. Several mental health disorders commonly implicate heightened impulsivity. In this thesis, we propose using multimodal behavioral, physiological, and neurobiological measurements to model impulsivity objectively. We conducted a clinical study with mood disorder participants and discovered the complementarity of objective modalities to model impulsivity and predict the clinical outcome of suicidality with high accuracy. The complementarity of modalities was additionally validated with a large open-source dataset. To exploit the richness of neurobiological measurements for predicting impulsivity, we developed ImpulsNet. ImpulsNet is a lightweight deep learning model based on multi-task learning that outperforms existing models in the literature to predict impulsivity. Our results establish the feasibility of objectively modeling impulsivity for mental health applications. This thesis provides a foundation for dimensional mental health assessment using objective sociability and impulsivity measures. Further validation in larger studies should be pursued in future work. Other objectively assessed dimensions of functioning should also be explored to better represent mental health in the vastness of bio-behavioral space.
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    Predictors of Peer Perceptions of Teamwork Competence: A Field Study of Virtual Teams
    (2022-12-20) Oxendahl, Tim A; Beier, Margaret
    Peer ratings of team member competence, or the extent to which fellow team members are perceived to be capable of contributing to a team, are an important predictor of team viability and success. Drawing on trait activation theory (Tett & Burnett, 2003), this study examines the influence of personality and psychological safety on peer ratings of teamwork competence, along with the mediating influence of objectively measured speaking time via path analysis. I hypothesized that a) speaking time would be positively related to peer perceptions of teamwork competence, b) the personality traits of extraversion, emotional stability, and conscientiousness as well as individual perceptions of team psychological safety would be positively related to both speaking time and peer perceptions of teamwork competence, and that c) these traits and attitudes would be indirectly related to peer perceptions of teamwork competence via speaking time. Data for this study came from student (110 individuals distributed across 21 teams) teams working on complex, open-ended team design projects over the course of the spring 2021 semester. This longitudinal dataset contained self-report and peer-report data, as well as objective speaking behaviors extracted from naturally occurring virtual team meetings. The results showed significant relationships between speaking time and teamwork competence and between psychological safety and teamwork competence. However, no significant indirect effects were found (e.g., the effect of personality and psychology safety on teamwork competence via speaking time). This study sheds light on the ways in which individual attitudes and behaviors influence how people are perceived in a team.
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    Science games and the development of scientific possible selves
    (Springer, 2012) Beier, Margaret; Miller, Leslie; Wang, Shu
    Serious scientific games, especially those that include a virtual apprenticeship component, provide players with realistic experiences in science. This article discusses how science games can influence learning about science and the development of science-oriented possible selves through repeated practice in professional play and through social influences (e.g., peer groups). We first review the theory of possible selves (Markus and Nurius 1986) and discuss the potential of serious scientific games for influencing the development of scientific possible selves. As part of our review, we present a forensic game that inspired our work. Next we present a measure of scientific possible selves and assess its reliability and validity with a sample of middle-school students (N=374). We conclude by discussing the promise of science games and the development of scientific possible selves on both the individual and group levels as a means of inspiring STEM careers among adolescents.