Emerging adults' journeys out of the shutdown: Longitudinal narrative patterns in a college career defined by COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has defined the college career for this generation of learners, threatening mental health, identity development, and college functioning. We began tracking the impacts of this pandemic for 633 first-year college students from four U.S.

College, Interrupted: Profiles in First-Year College Students Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic Across One Year.

First-year college students in the 2019-2020 academic year are at risk of having their mental health, identity work, and college careers derailed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. To assess emerging and evolving impacts of the pandemic on mental health/well-being, identity development, and academic resilience, we collected data from a racially, ethnically, geographically, and economically diverse group of 629 students at four universities across the US within weeks of lockdown, and then followed up on these students' self-reported mental health, identity, and academic resilience three times over the following year. Our findings suggest that: 1) students' mental health, identity development, and academic resilience were largely negatively impacted compared to pre-pandemic samples; 2) these alterations persisted and, in some cases, worsened as the pandemic wore on; and 3) patterns of change were often worse for students indicating more baseline COVID-related stressors.

Early Impacts of College, Interrupted: Considering First-Year Students' Narratives About COVID and Reports of Adjustment During College Shutdowns.

The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened lives and livelihoods, imperiled families and communities, and disrupted developmental milestones globally. Among the critical developmental disruptions experienced is the transition to college, which is common and foundational for personal and social exploration. During college shutdowns (spring 2020), we recruited 633 first-year U.

Aligning Practice to Policies: Changing the Culture to Recognize and Reward Teaching at Research Universities.

Recent calls for improvement in undergraduate education within STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines are hampered by the methods used to evaluate teaching effectiveness. Faculty members at research universities are commonly assessed and promoted mainly on the basis of research success. To improve the quality of undergraduate teaching across all disciplines, not only STEM fields, requires creating an environment wherein continuous improvement of teaching is valued, assessed, and rewarded at various stages of a faculty member's career.

Do Overgeneral Memories Make us feel better? An experimental examination.

A critical assumption of the CaR-FA-X model, that overgeneral memory is partly attributable to the "functional avoidance" of specific details about one's past experiences, has not been experimentally tested. Further, while it is assumed that the reinforcing properties of said avoidance leads to the emergence of an overgeneral recall style over time, this question has not been addressed developmentally. To explore these issues, two studies were conducted.

When Parents Know Little about What Happened: Parent-guided Conversations, Stress, and Young Children's Eyewitness Memory.

This study examined how 4- to 7-year-olds' memories for a stressor were influenced by conversations with a parent who had little knowledge of the target event, and the stress children experienced before, during, and after the event. Children (N = 43) watched a mildly stressful video before talking about it with a parent. Parents were asked to focus on either the children's feelings or the content of the video itself.

More than pretty pictures? How illustrations affect parent-child story reading and children's story recall.

Previous research showed that story illustrations fail to enhance young preschoolers' memories when they accompany a pre-recorded story (e.g., Greenhoot and Semb, 2008).

Making sense of traumatic memories: memory qualities and psychological symptoms in emerging adults with and without abuse histories.

This study explored the connections between multiple measures of meaning making and psychological adjustment in people with and without histories of abuse. Young adults (n =177), recollected their three most stressful memories and rated them on importance and emotional and sensory qualities. We analysed the narratives for lexical markers of meaning making and explicit references to meaning or meaning-making attempts.

When and why does abuse predict reduced autobiographical memory specificity?

Two studies were conducted to explore the conditions that elicit autobiographical memory problems in abuse victims and the mechanism that underlie them. In Study 1 older adolescents (n=80) with and without self-reported abuse histories completed a modified version of the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT-U); participants were given an unlimited amount of time to provide specific memories in response to cue words. Participants also completed measures of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), working memory, and attentional biases.

Do illustrations enhance preschoolers' memories for stories? Age-related change in the picture facilitation effect.

This study investigated whether illustrations facilitate story recall in preschoolers (N=58) 46 to 63 months of age. Each child was exposed to either a verbal story narrative with illustrations (Verbal and Picture condition), the narrative alone (Verbal Only condition), the narrative with uninformative illustrations (Verbal and Irrelevant Picture condition), or the illustrations alone (Picture Only condition). Children recalled the story immediately and after a 1-week delay.

The relations among abuse, depression, and adolescents' autobiographical memory.

This study examined the relations among early and recent experiences with abuse, depression, and adolescents' autobiographical memory in a longitudinal study of family violence. Participants' (N = 134) exposure to violence was documented when they were 6 to 12 years old and again when they were 12 to 18 years old. The second assessment included measures of depression and autobiographical memory for childhood experiences.