Current Research Projects

Current Projects

Does childhood exposure to nature protect teenagers and young adults from compulsive media use? 

  • The Caldwell-Harris Lab has been working on this project for 2 years. Most recently, the lab finished collecting 120 surveys and interviews about the relationship between childhood exposure to nature and compulsive media usage. The lab is working to analyze the collected data and is looking to organize a second study about this topic with new updated materials.  

What makes Discord communities thrive?

  • The Caldwell-Harris Lab is working with Prosper Health–a tele-health clinic that serves autistic adults from a neurodiversity-affirming framework–to co-create knowledge with autistic Discord users. This information will help to identify what fosters connection and what sustains harm or exclusion within online communities. The Caldwell-Harris  Lab interns will conduct interviews for Prosper Health via Zoom and will analyze data. The goal of the study is to both describe and to transform online community experiences as places of healing and empowerment. 

Bilingualism, culture, and frame-shifting. How does the language you speak and your culture affect your emotions and your moral reasoning?

  • The Caldwell-Harris  Lab currently has several ongoing studies exploring how language and culture can impact emotions and moral reasoning. Current studies are focusing on Mandarin, Turkish, Russian, and Hindi speakers.

Perspectives on understanding sarcasm across cultures, languages, and neurodiverse communities.

  • Sarcasm can sometimes be challenging to understand if you are from a different culture or speak a different language.  Neurodiverse people also sometimes find sarcasm difficult, such as those with autism or ADHD. The Caldwell-Harris Lab will be analyzing existing data of BU students who were interviewed about their experiences with sarcasm and who watched videos with different types of non-literal language.

Current Honors Projects

Boston University undergraduate seniors in the Honors in Psychology program must complete a year-long honors research project under the supervision of a faculty advisor. Below is a list of current honors projects within the Caldwell-Harris Lab.

Inner speech differences between native and foreign language – Dila Bostanci

This study investigates the differences between someone’s native language and their foreign language when it comes to how they engage in inner speech. We plan to assess how the languages participants hear in childhood shape their inner speech, the amount of inner speech experienced in each language, and how they use inner speech to rationalize their thoughts to determine how people can use inner speech positively.