Psychology

Dr. Kathryn Becker-Blease – Research interests include implementation of effective higher education teaching and learning practices, developmental traumatology, and the effects of trauma stress on attention and memory across the lifespan. (Will consider accepting students.)

Dr. Kathleen Bogart (Disability and Social Interaction Lab) – Research interests include disability from a social/health psychology perspective, examining others’ attitudes toward disability and the way people with disability adapt, manage stigma, and develop disability identity. Recent work is especially focused on quality of life in facial paralysis and other rare disorders. Dr. Bogart is particularly interested in examining intersections of disability with other identities including race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. (Currently accepting students.)

Dr. Daniel Bradford (Biology and Emotion of Addiction Via Experimental and Reprodicible Science (BEAVERS) lab) – Research interests include using a reproducible, multi-method approach to studying emotional responses to stressors and how commonly used drugs change those responses. Recent projects include the importance of stressor certainty and controllability to drugs’ effects on stressor responses, searching for evidence of drug-induced neuroadaptations to stressors, and increasing diversity and equity by highlighting the importance of intersectionality in research using psychophysiology methods.  (Currently accepting students.)

Dr. Iván Carbajal – Research focuses on two areas: 1) cultural neuroscience, specifically in the Latine population, investigating the effects of biculturalism on cognitive processes, and 2) social justice, regarding racial and ethnic identity development, critical consciousness development, and how these processes are affected by intersectional forms of oppression. (Not accepting students.)

Dr. Shana Carpenter (Learning & Cognition Lab) – Research interests include learning, memory, metacognition, and educational applications of cognitive science. Current projects focus on ways of implementing principles from the science of learning to improve students’ retention and transfer of knowledge to new situations. (Currently accepting students.)

Dr. Anita Cservenka (Substance Use & Neurocognition (SUN) Lab) – Research interests include 1) the effects of young adult substance use (particularly cannabis and alcohol use) on neurocognitive functioning, behavior, and health outcomes, 2) how personality factors, socio-demographics, as well as internalizing and externalizing symptoms, are related to substance use patterns, problems, and methods of use. (Currently accepting students.)

Dr. Jessee Dietch (Sleep Health Assessment, Intervention & Dissemination (SHAID) Lab) – Research interests include 1) improving sleep health, particularly by developing, adapting, and increasing accessibility to behavioral/psychological interventions, 2) exploring the relationship between sleep, mental, and physical health in special populations, including sleep health disparities, and 3) developing, validating, and evaluating measures of sleep health and sleep disorders. Dr. Dietch is especially interesting in examining sleep in diverse and understudied populations. (Currently accepting students.)

Dr. John Edwards – Research concerns causal uncertainty (recently extended into the health domain), effects of meditation, intersections between Buddhist philosophy and social cognition and attributions about situations. (Not accepting students.)

Dr. Regan A. R. Gurung (Applied Social Cognition, ASC Lab) – Two major lines of social cognition research interests: Factors influencing learning and effective teaching in higher education (e.g., best ways to study, designing engaging presentations, the role of AI in learning), and The role of clothing in diffusing racism, sexism, objectification, and prejudice as well as the link between clothing, identity, and behavior (e.g., do university logos make you seem smarter?  Does dressing formally increase performance?).  (Currently accepting students.)

Dr. Jackie Goldman (Motivation and Engagement for Student Success (MESS) Lab) - Research with an emphasis on the cognitive and motivational aspects of learning. Her current focus on increasing first-generation college student retention in higher education through task value and engagement interventions as well as goal-setting implementations to encourage intrinsic valuing of course material. (Not currently accepting students)

Dr. David Kerr (Youth Adjustment Lab) – Research interests include social influences on substance use, depression, and suicide risk among adolescents and young adults, often using long term longitudinal data or large survey data. Current projects concern how changing state alcohol and cannabis policies are associated with substance use patterns by young adults, and differences in policy effects for individuals with diverse sexual, gender, and ethnic identities. (Currently accepting students.)

Dr. Bridget Klest – Research interests focus on interrelations among trauma/negative event exposure, a person’s relationships with individual and institutional perpetrators of harm, and wellbeing. Current projects are focused on trauma and harm in healthcare, discrimination due to disability, race, or gender, and the role of institutions, such as universities and healthcare organizations, in exacerbating or mitigating harm. (Not accepting students.)

Dr. Mei-Ching Lien (Attention and Performance Lab) – Research interests center around the use of behavioral and electrophysiological (e.g., EEG) measures to understand multitasking, attention capture, individual working memory capacity in visual/spatial attention, cognitive control, mental workload, emotional processing, perception and action, and cognitive aging.  (Currently accepting students.)

Dr. Jeff Loucks – Research interests broadly centered on cognitive development in young children. Specific interests include children’s social cognition, memory for action, and children’s cognition regarding animals and other living things. (Currently accepting students.)

Dr. Kristen Macuga (CARVE Lab) – Research interests include perception and action, learning, spatial cognition, interface design, AI-assisted decision making, and human-computer interaction. Recent projects include using virtual reality to examine how drivers and pedestrians interact with automated vehicles, how neighboring pedestrians influence evacuation behavior, and how the brain's representation of the body changes following tool use. (Currently accepting students.)

Dr. Jason McCarley (PCP Lab) – Research interests in engineering psychology, with a focus on modeling of attention and decision making.  (Currently accepting students.)

Dr. Christopher Sanchez (ACTUAL Lab) – Research interests include STEM learning, human cognition, individual differences in attention/visuospatial abilities, and the human factors of using/designing technology, including mobile devices, UAVs, and gaming. (Currently accepting students.)

Dr. Steven M. Sanders (Adjustment, Identity, and Racism (AIR) Lab) - Research interests broadly include racism, coping strategies, racial identity development, instrument and intervention development, adjustment in college students, racial trauma, and posttraumatic stress in diverse populations. Recent projects include examining hazardous alcohol use in college students, initial exploration of a new psychotherapy intervention for preventing college students from developing hazardous drinking behaviors, and development of an instrument to measure healthy masculine behaviors (Currently accepting students).

Dr. Aurora Sherman (Research on Internalization, Sexualization, and Equity (RISE) Lab) – Research interests include gender, gender socialization, and health across the life span, particularly the importance of objectification and sexualization for physical and psychological well-being in childhood and adulthood.  Recent projects include surveying younger and older women regarding experiences of sexual objectification and a systematic review of measures of objectification with careful attention to psychometrics and sample inclusivity. (Not accepting students.)