Department of Psychology

Professor Berry’s research examines relationships between neurochemistry, brain activity and cognition in humans. She is interested in how individual differences in the dopamine system shape functional interactions between prefrontal cortex, striatum and hippocampus. Her research combines behavior and neuroimaging approaches (fMRI, EEG, PET) in young and older adults.

Professor Clark's research examines early adversity, intimate partner violence, mechanisms of risk and resilience, and traumatic stress. She teaches courses in clinical psychology and research methods.

Professor DiZio's major research interests are control of human posture and movement, multisensory influences on spatial orientation, sensory localization, sensory-motor adaptation and motor development. Experimental approaches to these problems involve unusual force environments, such as space flight and virtual environments as well as clinical conditions, such as labyrinthine loss, congenital blindness, peripheral neuropathy, cerebellar dysfunction and Autism. These approaches are important both for illuminating basic neural mechanisms and for achieving solutions to practical problems.

Professor Gutchess' research investigates the influence of age and culture on memory and social cognition. She is interested in compensatory strategies and neural reorganization, particularly as an effect of context. Her work employs behavioral and neuroimaging (fMRI) methods.

Professor Gutsell's research areas include Social and Affective Neuroscience; Cross-group Resonance; Emotion and Self-control; Empathy and Environmentalism.

Professor Howard's research investigates reward, learning, and decision-making in humans. He uses neuroimaging, associative learning tasks, computational modeling, and non-invasive brain stimulation to understand how the human brain encodes information about upcoming rewards to guide decisions. His current interests are focused on understanding how prefrontal circuits function in concert with sensory and thalamic networks to support behavior dependent on representations of specific rewarding outcomes.

Reward, Learning, and decision making lab

Professor Jadhav’s research investigates the neural basis of cognition and behavior. He is interested in understanding how multiple brain regions coordinate activity to form representations of the external world, learn new experiences, store and retrieve memories, and make decisions. His current research examines how activity in neural ensembles of two critical brain regions, the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, supports learning and memory, working memory, and decision making. Techniques employed include behavioral, electrophysiological and computational methods.

Professor Katz's studies the neural bases of learning. His current research examines the ways in which interactions among simultaneously recorded ensembles of single neurons underlie both the within-trial identification of taste stimuli and between-trial plasticity related to taste learning.

Professor Knight's research interests include the assessment of and the taxonomic differentiation among sexually aggressive males (both juveniles and adults) and the assessment of and the identification of core features of psychopathy. He is also interested in the etiology and the prediction of outcome in both sexual aggression and psychopathy.

Professor Lachman's research is in the area of lifespan development with a focus on midlife and later life. Her current work is aimed at identifying psychosocial (e.g., sense of control) and behavioral (e.g., physical exercise) factors that can protect against, minimize, or compensate for declines in cognition (e.g., memory) and health. She is conducting studies to examine long-term predictors of psychological and physical health, laboratory-based experiments to identify psychological and physiological processes involved in aging-related changes, and intervention studies to enhance performance and promote adaptive functioning.

Professor Lackner's research interests concern human spatial orientation and movement control in unusual force conditions including weightless, high force, and artificial gravity environments. One feature of his work includes the recognition that exposure to non-terrestrial force environments helps reveal the nature of sensory-motor adaptation to the normal force background of Earth.

Professor Liu's research interests include the application of advanced statistics in psychological and educational research; the impacts of familial, communal, and school environments on child and adolescent psychological development and academic achievement; and gender and ethnic issues in child and adolescent psychological adjustment and academic achievement.

Dr. Mitchell's interests are in developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience.  She has studied the development of visual perception and attention in school aged children.  Most of her work has centered on developmental effects of congenital deafness and autism on face perception and visual attention.  She has used electrophysiological, eye tracking, and functional MRI techniques.

Professor Sekuler's research interests include visual perception, cognitive processes, particularly visual memory, navigation of complex environments, imitation of seen actions, and age-related changes in cognitive function.

Professor Snyder's research interests include cognitive development in adolescents and youngs adults, and how it is related to risk for depression and anxiety. Specifically, her research focuses on executive function processes that allow people to make decisions, plan for the future, and control their behavior.  Her research uses cognitive tests, clinical assessments, and neuroimaging.

Publications

Professor Wingfield’s lab conducts research on one of the most fundamental of human cognitive abilities: the ability to perceive and understand spoken language, and to encode in memory what has been heard.  Of special interest are the affects of aging and age-related changes in hearing acuity.  His current research includes sensory-cognitive interactions in adults with cochlear implants.

Extensive literature exists showing how psychological states affect physiological processes and thus eventually health outcomes. In comparison, the knowledge about the underlying molecular pathways is rather sparse, especially when considering the effects of psychosocial states, such as stress or depression, on the endocrine and immune system. Conversely, while many studies investigated the effects of the social environment (e.g., relationships between family members) on health outcomes, not many studies are looking at the underlying endocrine and immune processes. Professor Wolf's research aims on expanding the area of Health Psychology, specifically Psychoneuroendocrinology (PNE) and -immunology (PNI), in these two directions, to the molecular level on the one hand and the social environment on the other. Examples for questions she is trying to answer are (1) what are the molecular pathways linking psychosocial states, such as stress, anxiety, or depression, and health outcomes in, e.g., atopic disease patients and (2) what are the pathways by which psychosocial states of family members affect child's health.

Professor Wright's expertise is the intersection between clinical psychology, depression, gender, development, emotion regulation, specifically: gender and developmental differences in and risks for depression; risk, resiliency and depression prevention; emotion regulation, self-focused attention, rumination and reflection; coping, and development; psychosomatic obstetrics and gynecology and affective disorders (i.e., postpartum depression and Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder).