Five Towns students to present at APA conclave

Only a handful of high school students have ever been selected as lead authors on presentations in the 127 years of the American Psychological Association convention.

However this year three Lawrence High School seniors Rene Alpert, Alex Gold and Elon Packin, along with Stella K. Abraham High School senior Jennifer Strauss and Davis Renov Staller (DRS) Yeshiva High School for Boys senior Adam Moisa (“Science students,” Herald April 7-13) will present five different projects and four subfields of psychology. The subfields include psychology of women, family psychology, educational psychology and aesthetic psychology.

The APA convention is the largest gathering of psychologists in the world, bringing together several thousand to share the latest research. Typically the youngest APA poster presenters are college seniors or graduate students. This year’s convention is in August in Washington, D.C.

Alpert, Packin, Strauss and Moisa worked independently. Gold worked with and will be joined by his research partner Jacklyn Sullivan of MacArthur High School.

Alpert’s study focused on the role of women’s dress as a form of nonverbal communication to other women and is considered groundbreaking by Stephen Sullivan, a behavioral science teacher at Lawrence High School, who mentored all five projects.

“The chance to do serious research while I’m still in high school is really pretty amazing,” said Alpert who will present to the convention’s Division 35 (Personality of Women). “It was so much work, but I learned so much.”

Based on evolutionary psychology, Gold and Sullivan theorize that fathers express greater emotional attachment with children they think more closely resembles them, while mothers feel closer to children who behave more like them.

Their work will be presented at a poster session by Division 43 (The Society of Family Psychology). “Your high quality submission will help ensure that this year’s convention will be on the best!,” one project reviewer said.

In extending the pioneering work of Australian researchers to a younger, more ethically diverse sample population, Packin strengthened the argument for a biological basis for attractiveness among teenagers.

“I was really pretty surprised at my own findings, that my hypothesis would be so strongly supported,” said Packin, who along with Strauss will present to Division 10 (Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts).

Strauss’s study examined whether rewarding students with extra credit or pressuring them with mandates helped or harmed creativity when performing an artistic task. Out of 147 submissions to Division 10 only 18 were accepted.

In linking suggestibility to personality traits, Moisa is the first to hypothesize correlations between the eyes, personality characteristics and learning styles that associates a biologic marker with psychosocial behavior. He will present to Division 15 (Society for Educational Psychology).

“There are two things that are particularly gratifying about these invitations from the APA,” Sullivan said. “First, consider that the kids’ work was selected over work the work of much more experienced researchers in blind judging. Second, isn’t it remarkable that Five Towns students from both public and private schools have accomplished something like this?”