The Psychology Department concentrates in the following areas of academic specialization. These are the five areas in which we offer graduate education.
- Behavioral Neuroscience
- Cognitive and Cognitive Neuroscience
- Social-Personality Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Quantitative Psychology
Visitors can also get a sense of the work of our department by investigating our:
Behavioral Neuroscience
Faculty and students in the Behavioral Neuroscience group use a systems level analysis to explore the neural circuits underlying motivational and emotional processes that regulate essential behaviors in animals. We are also interested in the effects of genetic and experiential factors on the development and function of these circuits.
The basic motivational and emotional processes of interest include those underlying: positive social behaviors such as affiliation and parental care; food intake and hunger; attention and arousal; reward or reinforcement processes and their relationship to synaptic plasticity, learning, and memory; defensive, anxiety-, and stress-related behaviors; aggression. These basic processes and associated behaviors are likely subserved by evolutionarily conserved core neural circuits, which allow the findings from animal research to be relevant to the homologous processes in humans.
Michael Numan investigates the neurobiology of an important mammalian social behavior: maternal behavior. He examines the neural circuits, and their neurochemical makeup, which regulate this behavior in postpartum animals. Of particular interest are the interactions which occur between the hypothalamus and the mesolimbic dopamine system. He also investigates how pregnancy hormones act on these circuits to promote the onset of maternal behavior at birth, and the mechanisms through which previous maternal experience can substitute for hormonal stimulation in the regulation of maternal responsiveness.
Gorica Petrovich studies the neurobiology of motivation and feeding behavior. She uses rodent models to examine how stress and experience modulate appetite and food consumption, and to define the critical neuronal networks. In particular, studies focus on the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and hypothalamus, and their role in integration of external factors with metabolic signals. The studies are informative for control of eating in humans, including maladaptive environmental influences that contribute to eating disorders.
A long-term goal of the Psychology Department is to significantly enlarge the Behavioral Neuroscience Program. A third member will be added to the group in the fall of 2009, and future additions are planned after that.
The Behavioral Neuroscience faculty interact with those in Cognitive Neuroscience and with the Neuroscience faculty in the Biology Department, who use animal models to study neurodegenerative disorders.
Cognitive and Cognitive Neuroscience
Lisa Feldman Barrett’s research investigates the psychological processes that construct the experience of emotion. In particular, she is interested in the roles that affective processing and conceptual knowledge about emotion play in the experience of emotion. She is also interested in how emotion experiences are created and represented in the brain.
Hiram Brownell’s research interests center on language and communication in adults. Most of his work examines the effects of brain injury on people's ability to produce and understand differ forms of language. Analysis of brain lesions and associated deficits can be used to build and test theories of normal cognition and can also be used to address real problems affecting patients and their families. Specific areas of interest include nonliteral language such as metaphor and sarcasm, treatment programs, discourse, humor, Theory of Mind, prosody, and lexical semantics.
Randy Easton’s research specializes in the relationship between different perceptual systems. One major program of research focuses on the extent to which perceptual systems can share information, especially at the pre-semantic level where modularity of the systems is thought to be the primary architecture. Another major program of research explores sensory substitution in visually impaired people, in particular the ability of the auditory and somatosensory systems to convey information typically garnered by the visual system.
Elizabeth Kensinger’s research combines behavioral and brain imaging techniques to understand the processes used to remember information with emotional importance. Particular emphasis is placed on understanding how emotion affects the subjective vividness and accuracy of memory. She also is interested in identifying how emotion's influence on memory changes across the adult lifespan.
Jeanne Sholl’s research specializes in spatial cognition with a special interest in the cognitive substrates of human navigation. She studies how spatial knowledge of large-scale environments is acquired, organized, and retrieved. She also studies individual differences in navigation ability with a particular interest in the cognitive substrate underlying sense of direction. Other research interests include sex-related differences in working memory for large-scale spaces, the role of dead reckoning in human navigation, and the properties of landmark-based navigation.
Scott Slotnick’s research program aims to understand the nature of visual memory (i.e. memory for visual items or events). Drawing on the foundation of research in visual perception, he employs cognitive modeling (based on behavioral measures), event-related potentials (ERPs), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). His research indicates that memory retrieval is a continuous process that is constructive in nature, where features or components from disparate cortical regions bind together to form a unified memory.
Social-Personality Psychology
Faculty and students in the Social-Personality Psychology concentration explore human psychological processes and behavior at different levels of analysis, ranging from the intra- and interpersonal to the group, intergroup, and societal levels. Areas of investigation include the study of emotion; how nonverbal behavior and discourse reflect and influence human social relations; the study of social-cognitive mechanisms in emotion regulation; the study of individual differences in affect, motivation, and performance; social-cognitive processes at the individual level and as shared “cultural models;” ways in which such social categories as gender, class, and ethnicity frame and constrain social behavior; cultural construction of the self and social identities. Inquiry into these areas of study require different methodological approaches, and students have an opportunity to develop competence in a variety of research methods, including experimentation, surveys, and psychphysiological recordings.
Affiliated Faculty: Lisa Feldman Barrett, Donnah Canavan, Ramsay Liem, James A. Russell, and Maya Tamir.
Developmental Psychology
Faculty and students in the Developmental Psychology concentration are studying social, emotional, and cognitive development across the life span. Areas of study include attachment relationships; sibling and peer relationships; children's understanding of emotions; cultural aspects of young children's development; ethnic identity development; the role policies and programs play in the lives of children, adolescents, older adults, and families; the development of artistic abilities in normal and gifted populations; the acquisition of a theory of mind; the relationship between theory of mind and communication skills; adolescent sexual behavior; mental health in later life. Children from both western and non-western communities are studied.
In addition to the resources in the department, students can also take advantage of the courses and faculty in the Lynch School of Education.
Affiliated Faculty
Michael Moore studies cognitive development and children's participation in organized sports.
Gilda Morelli studies the cultural aspects of young children's development, and the role of policies and programs in family functioning.
Karen Rosen (contact person for this area) studies social and emotional development during infancy and early childhood, parent-child attachment relationships, and sibling relationships.
James Russell studies how children come to understand the emotions, and the nature of their emotional concepts.
Ellen Winner studies the cognitive processes underlying learning in the arts.
Quantitative Psychology
The Quantitative Psychology concentration focuses on the quantitative and methodological issues in conducting psychological research. The quantitative issues are loosely categorized into application of statistical methods to psychological study, psychometrics, and mathematical modeling of psychological processes.
The Quantitative area provides statistical consultation to members of the department through the Statistical consulting committee. The Statistical consulting committee provides faculty and graduate students in the department with consultation on statistical issues in data analysis and research design. Currently, the committee consists of Ehri Ryu (Chair) and Hiram Brownell. Click here for more information.
Affiliated Faculty: Hiram Brownell, Ehri Ryu, Scott Slotnick.
Ehri Ryu's research interests include a broad range of multivariate statistical methods used in psychological research. Her current research specializes in multilevel modeling and analysis of longitudinal data. In particular, she is interested in assessment of model fit multilevel structural equation modeling, and comparing two approaches to analyzing multivariate multilevel data: multilevel covariance structure analysis vs. multilevel structural equation modeling with random coefficients. She is also interested in analyzing longitudinal relationship between multiple variables.
Scott Slotnick evaluates models of memory. The widely accepted dual-process model assumes memory is based on either the all-or-none process of recollection or on the continuous process of familiarity, while the single-process signal detection model assumes memory is a continuous process. During memory for source/context, the dual-process model predicts a linear receiver operating characteristic (ROC, a plot of hit rates versus false alarms) while the signal detection model predicts a curved ROC. Prof. Slotnick and his colleagues have found evidence that source memory ROCs are curved which indicates memory is a continuous process.