OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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Extracurricular involvement in the School of Psychological Science is essential for graduate school admissions. Without research experience and faculty mentorship, admittance into a graduate program (in psychology or elsewhere) is practically impossible. Described below are some of the research pursuits of School of Psychological Science faculty.
Dr. Kathryn Becker Blease studies child abuse and trauma across the lifespan, Science of Teaching and Learning, and Implementation Science in Higher Education. She is also interested in ethical methods for researching and teaching about difficult topics like trauma.
Dr. Kathleen Bogart studies attitudes toward people with disabilities and the way people with disabilities adapt to their conditions and manage stigma. Specifically, much of her work focuses on facial movement disorders (e.g. facial paralysis, Parkinson’s disease).
Dr. Daniel Bradford studies the role of stress reactivity in mental health using experimental psychopathology and open, reproducible, and equitable psychophysiological methods with focus on psychological processes at the interface of affect and addiction.
Dr. Iván Carbajal studies cultural neuroscience, specifically looking at the unique cognitive process in bicultural and bilingual Latinxs, and in racial, social justice, and critical consciousness identity development.
Dr. Anita Cservenka studies the effects of young adult substance use (primarily cannabis and alcohol use) on neurocognitive functioning, behavior, and health outcomes.
Dr. Jessee Dietch studies sleep psychology, specifically focused in the areas of 1) behavioral sleep health intervention development, adaptation, and accessibility, 2) sleep, mental, and physical health and disparities in special populations, and 3) sleep and sleep disorders measure development, validation, and evaluation.
Dr. John Edwards studies the relations between personality, motivation, and social cognition.
Dr. Regan Gurung research encompasses social, health, and pedagogical psychology and is currently investigating ways to diffuse prejudice and sexism, and unpacking the factors that can increase learning.
Dr. David Kerr studies depression, delinquency, suicide risk, and health-risking sexual behaviors in adolescence.
Dr. Hannah Lawrence studies risk factors for adolescent depression and suicide and designs and tests scalable interventions to reduce this risk. Much of the lab's research focuses on the role of mental imagery.
Dr. Mei-Ching Lien studies the relationship between attention and human performance as well as cognitive changes associated with aging.
Dr. Kristen Macuga studies engineering psychology, multi-sensory perception, motor control and learning, action observation, motor imagery, tool use, virtual reality, driving, and cognitive neuroscience (fMRI).
Dr. Jason McCarley studies Attention, Decision making, Human Factors, and Bayesian Statistics.
Dr. Steven Sanders studies the experiences of historically marginalized individuals. Specifically, examining the identity and adjustment processes of Black and Brown people.
Dr. Chris Sanchez studies Individual differences, design of learning environments, STEM learning and instruction, human factors, human-computer interaction, visualizations, working-memory capacity, spatial reasoning, technology-mediated collaboration, text processing, cognitive performance under physical pain, small devices, eye-tracking, consumer branding, bilingualism, adaptive technology, and perceptual judgments.
Dr. Aurora Sherman studies gender, gender socialization and health and social relationships across the life span, as well as personality factors in satisfaction with relationship, and the impact of sexualization on psycho-social and cognitive functioning in childhood and adulthood.