Lab News – SNAP Lab @WPI

Spring 2024

Research from the SNAP Lab featured in WebMD article, “How Your Future Self Can Make You Healthier Right Now”

Science writer Marta Zaraska featured work by Prof. Lopez and external collaborators that recently demonstrated links between people’s connectedness to their future selves and their daily eating habits in the present.

We are excited to have Victoria Corcoran (left) and Mya Lesieur (right) begin training in their role as the lab managers!

Fall 2023

Congratulations to Sophia, Korinna, and Olivia for presenting posters featuring some of the lab’s research on social media use and mental health at the 2023 NEPA meeting!

“Beyond Screen Time” article published in Templeton Ideas

In the article, Prof. Lopez highlights some of the SNAP Lab’s research on psychological factors involved in social media use among youth and young adults.

The SNAP Lab is excited to welcome Shannan Chen (left) and Pooja Kulkarni (right) as visiting scholars!

Summer 2023

SNAP Lab member Eva Petschek presented a poster at WPI’s Summer Research Showcase titled, “Examining contingent self-worth on social media and implications for enhancing health and wellbeing in daily life.” Eva’s summer research has laid important groundwork for an interdisciplinary Psychology / BBT MQP she and two other students will be involved with this coming academic year. Eva’s poster was also featured in this WPI press release. Congrats Eva!

New paper alert!

Prof. Lopez, student co-author Gabriel Traub, and collaborators Dr. Brittany Tausen, Effie Marathia, and Dr. Blair Saunders found evidence for links between people’s connectedness with their future selves and eating behaviors in daily life.

These and other findings can be found in a recently published, open-access paper titled, “Connecting to our future, healthier selves: Associations between self-continuity measures and eating behaviors in daily life.”

Welcome, Dr. Nicole Hayes!

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Nicole Hayes as the lab’s first postdoctoral fellow! Dr. Hayes’ work examines social and cognitive factors that contribute to antisocial and aggressive behaviors, especially among adolescents.

Congratulations to SNAP Lab member Sophia Kouznetsov ’26, who was recently featured in WPI’s Student Voices! Speaking about her time in the lab thus far, Sophia said, “Since the beginning of my freshman year, I have been a research associate in the SNAP Lab at WPI. This experience opened my eyes to the world of academia and research in a field that I am passionate about. It gave me the opportunity to connect with students and faculty that share my interests and passions. Pursuing research in the SNAP Lab has also given me the opportunity to greatly expand my knowledge and skill base, not only of psychology and neuroscience, but also of data management and analysis, coding, writing scientific literature, and presenting research.”

A new emotion regulation paper has come out in Emotion!

Prof. Lopez, student co-authors Anya Swinchoski, David Liang, and Pauline Goodson, along with external collaborators Dr. Bryan Denny and Dr. Andrea Courtney, found that undergraduate students reporting more social support in their dorm halls exhibited different patterns of emotion regulation strategy use, which then impacted their health and wellbeing.

The lab continues to grow! This summer we welcomed undergraduate researchers Sakshi Joglekar (left), Lorena Nunes (middle), and Eva Petschek (right), who will be working together on an MQP examining the neural and behavioral effects of emotion regulation training aimed to promote mental health in daily life.

Spring 2023

SNAP Lab manager Emma Moughan presented a poster titled, “Cue reactivity in vivo: Links between GPS-based real world cue exposure, neural cue reactivity, and daily eating behaviors among teenagers” at the 15th Annual Meeting of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society in Santa Barbara, CA.

Candlepin bowling for Wellness Day

For D Term’s Wellness & Community Day, the SNAP Lab ventured off campus and played a beloved New England tradition: candlepin bowling!

Welcome, Olivia!

We are honored to have Olivia Cava join the lab as an undergraduate researcher!

Welcome, Kaitlin!

We are very grateful to have Kaitlin Mae Fernandez join us as a visiting undergraduate researcher via SPSP’s SPUR Program! Kaitlin will be conducting a supervised research study on cultural and generational factors impacting use of various emotion regulation strategies.

Fall 2022

Korinna training a student to use cognitive reappraisal.

SNAP Lab manager Emma Moughan presented a poster titled, “The dynamics of goal disruption and goal expectancy violations in daily life: a pilot study” at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the New England Psychological Association. Kudos to Emma and our collaborators, and stay tuned for more findings from this project on goal disruption!

Hot off the presses: a new article has been published in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences–with amazing student co-author Isabela Cruz-Vespa! Prof. Lopez and Cruz-Vespa outline brain bases of regulation of eating and sketch out new directions for the field. The article appears as part of a special issue on executive control of eating.

We are excited to welcome undergraduate researchers Sophia Kouznetsov (left), Korinna Muller (middle), and Brianna Romero (right) to the SNAP Lab!

Summer 2022

Welcome wishes are in order for Emma Moughan, who just joined the SNAP Lab and will serve as our first lab manager! Emma graduated from Miami University in May with a bachelors degree in Psychology and a minor in Statistical Methods.

Prof. Lopez wrote a blog post for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology that featured recent research from the lab on links between social anxiety and Instagram use.

Amanda Derrell (L) and Isabela Cruz-Vespa (R), two of Prof. Lopez’s former undergraduate mentees, won 1st and 2nd place prizes for their research presentations at the RISE summer research symposium at Rutgers University.