Kelly Bennion

Thomas Cole

Jennifer Drake

I have two lines of research in the arts. One area is the study of perceptual abilities underlying realistic drawing talent in autistic and non-autistic children and adults. This is the focus of my dissertation research. My second area is the study of the emotional and cognitive benefits of art making for both children and adults. I am examining whether making art and/or writing improves emotion regulation, empathy, and cognitive performance, and whether making art by hand vs. digitally affects affective response.

Kelly Dumais

My research interests focus on the neurobiology of social behavior, specifically the role of oxytocin and vasopressin in behaviors such as social investigation and social memory. Using behavioral testing and brain analysis on animal models, I am interested in understanding the neuronal mechanisms underlying low versus high social investigation, which may ultimately be valuable in understanding low social interest in humans.

James Dungan

Maria Gendron

Maria's current research focuses on language and the construction of emotional percepts.

Angelina Hawley-Dolan

Angelina's research interests focus on aesthetic reasoning in children and adults, examining the cognitive and affective responses involved in viewing and analyzing visual art. She is interested in how we make meaning out of art and how intentionality influences our aesthetic experience. Her other interests lie in the relationship between the evaluative processes within moral cognition and art.

Alisha Holland

Mary Kayyal

My research primarily focuses on the development of children’s emotion concepts and how culture interacts with this development. One line of research compares how Palestinian and American children understand emotion in different domains (e.g., facial expressions, situational causes, and behavioral consequences), and how that understanding changes with age. A second line of research examines how culture and language each influence the way adults interpret spontaneous facial expressions of emotion.

Drew Linsley

Qingxuan Meng

My research interest focuses on the neurobiological mechanisms by which early life stress alters social behavior. I aim to establish a new juvenile social stress model to study this. I am particularly interested in the effects of juvenile social stress on juvenile play-fighting behaviors and adult aggressive behaviors. The new model may contribute to understanding the effects of adolescent social stress on brain and behavioral functions in humans.

Brendan Murray

Joseph Pochedly

I am broadly interested in emotion and social psychology. My current research focuses on the development and evolution of disgust. I am interested in issues such as why disgust and anger are commonly conflated, the role of disgust in moral cognition, and which aspects of disgust are universal and which are evoked by specific environmental and cultural contexts.

Tasha Posid

Christina Reppucci

Caroline Smith

I am interested in understanding the neural circuits underlying social behaviors. I am particularly interested in how these systems differ across the lifespan and between sexes. Oxytocin and vasopressin are known to be critical to the control of many social behaviors. In my current project, I aim to elucidate the roles of these neuropeptides in the modulation of social preference and affiliation in males and females, as well as juvenile and adult animals.

Preston Thakral

Jordan Theriault

Laura Young

Xuan Zhang

My research focuses on how affect/emotion modulates person perception of voice and memory of speech.