Four students worked with faculty members in the Psychology Department. Fernando Panchana, a senior, and Michael D'Nodal, a junior, have both been working with Dr. Kevin Sailor, an associate professor of psychology. Panchana helped to conduct two studies in memory psychophysics that contradict a recent theory about how memory inaccuracies arise.

Panchana, who plans on pursuing a doctorate in psychometrics or experimental/ quantitative psychology, is vice president of the Lehman College chapter of Psi Chi, the national honor society in psychology. The Lehman chapter was recognized this year as the most active chapter in the eastern region of the United States.

D'Nodal is helping to gather evidence into the slowing of memory retrieval in Alzheimer's patients. He plans to help develop a model based on the theory that the rate at which Alzheimer's patients search their memory must be slower than the search rate found among the normal elderly. This kind of information could improve the early detection of the disease.

Senior Monique Guishard, meanwhile, worked with Dr. Alan Kluger, also of the Psychology Department, and helped to research another possible way to screen for Alzheimer's. Dr. Kluger's work has focused on two promising cognitive and motor tests, one of which has been selected for several large-scale treatment trials of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as well as early Alzheimer's disease.

Guishard, a graduate of Washington Irving High School, has been directly involved in administering and scoring these tests, as well as in maintaining, analyzing and presenting the resulting data. Since Dr. Kluger conducts research in normal aging and dementia both at Lehman and the NYU Aging and Dementia Research Center, Guishard worked at both sites. At his neuropsychology/neuromotor lab at Lehman, she helped to evaluate 50 undergraduates on alternate forms of the tests. At NYU, she entered information into an electronic database that had been gathered on hundreds of nondemented elderly over the last 19 years.

The fourth student to work in psychology, senior Ruth Williams, helped to explore age differences in how children learn a second language. Working with Dr. Gisela Jia, Williams used three different language tests to determine the English proficiency of a group of bilingual speakers, who had learned English at various ages.

Within the group of 50 Spanish speakers tested, she found that the younger learners demonstrated greater overall proficiency than the older ones. As a group, they did significantly better on the reading test than on the listening test - a tendency that was strongest among the older learners. The findings will be useful in helping to identify potential barriers for people of various ages who are learning another language.

In addition to the psychology students, JoAnn Caban, a junior, worked with Dr. Edward Kennelly of the Biological Sciences Department, helping to investigate the antioxidant capacities of seven tropical fruits. She studied which tropical fruits would help prevent illnesses such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, along with cancer and coronary heart disease.

Since people who eat more fruit are less likely to develop these diseases, Caban's research focused on which fruits contained higher levels of phytochemical antioxidants. Scientists believe these antioxidants may play a critical role in disease prevention. Caban's research found that the Jamaica cherry had the highest level of activity, while fruits such as the water chestnut and mamoncillo revealed the lowest activity.