In this study, we pull data from a corpus called ASAPsports.com. We're interested in examining the language of NBA players in their post game interviews. Specifically, we want to know if there are any differences in language after winning and losing games. Do players engage in more cognitive processing or analytic thinking following the outcome of their game? Using Jamie Pennebaker's Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC-22) Software, we set out to tackle this question.

In this set of studies, we're interested in understanding children's affective dimensions of death. We focus on three samples of children in Austin, Texas, Brasília, Brazil, and Tana Toraja, Indonesia, due to the cultural variation in death beliefs, rituals, and death-related media. How do parents interact with their children with this content? Further, do parents share beliefs and rituals outside of their own practice with their children? We aim to explore these cognitive dimensions and explanations of death to understand how they impact children's understanding of death and grief.

What might make a child more likely to explain an event through superstition, versus an act of god, or some natural, scientific cause? In this study, we read children a series of illustrated stories about things that happen to fictional children (e.g., a sick boy gets better just in time to go on a fun field trip) and ask them to offer explanations. We are interested in how explanation preferences change across development, and whether other factors, like a child’s perception of control, might predict children’s preferences for different explanations.

What are the psychosocial outcomes of reasoning about, and responding to, significant misfortune? The purpose of this study is to investigate the experience of significant misfortune, Specifically, we investigate how aspects of beliefs and experiences impact coping with misfortune.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate and examine the efficacy of program advertising materials and explore the integration of humor in a mental health space.

• UT Center for Health Communication: Mansi Shah (PI), Sophia Dove, Lee Ann Kahlor
• Longhorn Wellness Center: Adrian Lancaster

Within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, I studied the individual differences of risk perception. Given the marked variation in preventative behaviors across the world during the pandemic, there is a critical need to understand the reasons behind within and between-population variation in preventative practices.

• Center for Applied Cognitive Science: Cristine H. Legare, Oskar Burger, Alejandro Erut, Frankie Fong, Ajna F. Kertesz, Jesse D. Peregrino 

Project RISE (Ritual to Improve Service-delivery and Empower health workers) seeks to understand the rituals and motivations surrounding service delivery of front-line workers (FLWs) in India. This project integrates social science research with human-centered design to understand and leverage rituals to improve the quality of healthcare service delivery by front-line workers in Bihar, a state in Eastern India.

• Center for Applied Cognitive Science: Cristine H. Legare, Oskar Burger, Faiz A. Hashmi
• Project Concern International: Sudipta Mondal, Santosh Akhauri, Indrajit Chaudhuri, Janine Schooley
• Scope Impact: Palash Singh, Mari Tikkanen, Joan Vinyets, Joseph Savage 
• BMGF: Tracy Johnson
• Neela Saldanha, Nachiket Mor, Micah Goldwater, Emily Little

Our research has demonstrated that unexpected or anomalous events are powerful triggers for explanatory reasoning. Children try to explain unexpected outcomes and explore causal connections through play. We examined how children’s explanations and exploratory play behavior work in tandem to guide their causal learning and scientific reasoning through the use of eye trackers and audio recording.

• Center for Applied Cognitive Science: Cristine H. Legare, Adrienne Barnette, Ajna F. Kertesz, Sohmee Kim