RG
Ryan Gough
  • Class of 2014
  • Spring Grove, IL

Ryan Gough participated in Celebration of Learning

2012 May 7

More than 75 Augustana students from all academic areas shared their advanced research projects on Saturday, May 5, at the Celebration of Learning. This on-campus research symposium annually gives students an opportunity to show off their academic accomplishments to their families and the Augustana community.

Among the students involved:

Ryan Gough, a sophomore from Spring Grove, Ill., majoring in neuroscience. The research was titled Electrophysiological Correlates of Moral Reasoning. Neuroscientists have been concerned with differentiating between the role that emotion and the role that reasoning plays on moral judgment. The purpose of this research project is to better understand individual differences in behavioral and emotional responses to personal, impersonal, and non-moral scenarios. Our research hopes to show the role that emotion plays in moral reasoning. In this study, we will explore the ability of students to provide solutions to these scenarios, and will record the nature of their decisions, the time required to render those decisions, and the degree to which they indicate physiological arousal as measured by the skin conductance response. We argue that the differences in complexity involved in these moral scenarios will elicit varying degrees of emotional responses. Through monitoring the changes in responses, we can examine the electrophysiological correlates of moral reasoning. Through the analysis of data, we will examine possible preferences to ethical theories.

Celebration participants presented their research through a poster display or an oral presentation. Many students expounded on the results of their Senior Inquiry, a multiple-term research project required for most academic programs. Other students shared honors capstone projects or student-faculty research findings. Because of the advanced level of research involved, most of the presenters are upperclass students.

Anne Earel and Stefanie Bluemle, Augustana reference librarians and the event's co-directors, said the Celebration of Learning provided an outlet for students to showcase their accomplishments.

Presentations topics varied greatly and included anthropology, biology, physics, geography, gender studies, theater and more.