Group: Current PHD and MA Students

Marina is a first year Master’s student in the PLAY Lab. She got her BA in Psychology with a minor in Human Development from SUNY Geneseo in 2023, where she was Head Research Assistant for the Sibling Peer Research Group. Before coming to Mason, she spent two years as Lab Manager at the Buffalo Early Learning Lab at the University at Buffalo, where she conducted studies with kids between 9 months and 5 years old.

Racquel is a first-year Master’s student working in Dr. Goldstein’s PLAY lab. She graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.S. in Psychology and a B.A. in Music from Kent State University in May 2022. As an undergraduate, she served as a research assistant in the Clinical Affective Science lab, where she assisted with the Resilience After Injury study. After graduation, she worked as a youth counselor at Bellefaire JCB, a residential treatment facility for adolescents with autism and mental health diagnoses. Her current research interests include how music-making affects social-emotional development in children and adolescents and the evolutionary origins of music-making.

Abigail (Abbey) Milhaven is a first-year Psychology Ph.D. student in the Applied Developmental Program at George Mason University and is also in Dr. Goldstein’s PLAY Lab. Abbey graduated Summa Cum Laude with Honors in Psychology from Lafayette College in 2024 where she received a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in Anthropology & Sociology. While at Lafayette College, Abbey was the Head Research Assistant of the Lafayette Kids Lab and worked on multiple research projects regarding grandparent/grandchild interactions during video chat sessions. Her research interests include social cognitive development, socio-emotional learning, playful learning, the performing arts, and education during childhood. Abbey is also interested in being involved in research both during and after graduate school to further advocate for and contribute to the equity, accessibility, and applicability of child development research.

Jasmine Rose is a second year MA student in the ADP program under the advisement of Dr. Goldstein. Jasmine’s broad interests surround the experiences of Black women; especially as they relate to gendered-racial identity development, racism, self-efficacy and other factors which influence Black womens’ life experiences. Her current work includes an investigation to the longitudinal experiences of Black women in education. Jasmine’s master’s thesis explores how Black women’s intersectional identity may act as a mechanism between academic self-efficacy and academic achievement. Jasmine participated in the Multicultural Academic Opportunities Program (MAOP) at Virginia Tech, where she completed and presented an independent research project focused on how religiousness mediated the relationship between adolescent substance use and socioeconomic status. She graduated with a BS in Psychology with Honors and a concentration in Health Psychology from GMU in 2021, where she also worked in the REACH lab.

Anna S. Caruso, who mostly goes by Sofie, is currently a third year PhD student in Dr. Goldstein’s lab. She graduated Summa cum Laude from the University of Oklahoma in 2021 with both a BA in psychology and a BMA in Opera Vocal Performance. Her Research in the PLAY lab has included studying how people do or do not engage in a variety of artistic and imaginative forms (i.e., music, stories, pretense). This work has included examining how children engage in immoral pretend play, how adults consider extramusical information when engaging with music, and how opera and musical theater performers view the differences across theatrical-musical productions.

Additionally, Anna is a passionate educator. She is also working with Dr. Alison Melley at GMU to develop an open access resource for Introductory Psychology students and instructors following the updated APA Introductory Psychology Initiative guidelines by developing the resource around key integrative themes and diverse, current research in the field.

Her current research interests include music performance, imagination, engagement, and morality.

Study: Engagement in Moral Narratives and Religiosity

Led by PhD student Sofie Caruso, we conducted and analyzed a study where we had participants write narrative responses to non-moral and morally deviant prompts to examine moral imagination in regards to narratives and if there is a relationship between moral imaginative engagement and religiosity. Moral imagination is defined as imaginatively engaging in moral subjectivism when confronted by a novel moral situation. Its inverse construct imaginative resistance, defined as resistance engaging in a work, negatively correlates to imagining a subjective moral world (Black & Barnes, 2020). We explore the relationship between religiosity and engagement in moral imagination through having 518 participants complete moral and non-moral permissibility measures and create a narrative world for a morally-deviant and non-moral prompt. Results suggest that while religiosity may act as a moderator for non-narrative moral imagination tasks, it may not constrain moral imagination in the more active demand of creating a narrative.

Study: Composer Intent and Character on Musical Enjoyment

Led by PhD student Sofie Caruso, this study examined if knowledge about a composer’s intent when writing a piece or the quality of their character impacted participants enjoyment and engagement of the piece. Participants were randomly assigned to read a paragraph dealing intent and composer character in a 2X2 study design of sexist/neutral intent and sexist/neutral character. Results are being analyzed.

Study: Moral Imaginative Resistance in Preschooler’s Pretend Play

Led by Sofie Caruso, we examined if children ages 4-6 years old display a resistance to engaging in pretend play based on the actions in the pretense were moral or immoral, and if the immoral actions were by the participant or another child. This study was conducted in local parks. Children completed a card sort with 24 moral and immoral play scenarios differing in who the moral agent was (child or other). The participants were then asked to actually go and play one of the scenarios for up to 10 minutes before returning for questions on their play and a questionnaire for moral evaluations across real and pretend situations. All of the data has been collected and is in the process of being transcribed and analyzed.