Congratulations to Bailey Rann, a graduate student in the Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience (CCN) research area in the MSU Department of Psychology, on being awarded the 2025 J. Frank Yates Student Travel Award.
Given by the Psychonomic Society, a community of over 4300 cognitive and experimental psychologists from around the world, this award is given to graduate student members from underrepresented populations. It is designed to support attendance and advance their mission of building a more inclusive scientific community.
“Without the help of this award, I would not be in the position to financially afford presenting in and traveling to this year's Psychonomic Society conference where I will disseminate my research findings,” said Rann.
Rann’s research explores potential differences in the neural mechanisms underlying rhythm perception/discrimination and working memory in individuals diagnosed with developmental stuttering.
Prior studies suggest that people who stutter may rely more heavily on an interval-by-interval mechanism, requiring the use of working memory, when perceiving rhythms. In contrast, fluent individuals are thought to engage in an entrainment mechanism, which supports a more automatic and continuous rhythm perception process.
“The brain is incredible, and I love the passion and detailed nature of all those within the CCN program as we work to uncover the underlying reasoning and processes that most humans take for granted like processing rhythms in our environment and attending to different objects,” said Rann.
She hopes that through her work, she can inspire undergraduate students at MSU to pursue their passions within the STEM field and add a vaster understanding of the underlying mechanisms involved in rhythm perception and discrimination amongst various clinical populations.
Winners of the award receive a certificate, complimentary conference registration, a $1,000 USD travel stipend, and an invitation to a Diversity & Inclusion reception. A full list of awardees can be found here.