2012 Department News

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Lecturer Jef Lamoureux has a forthcoming article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes suggesting that a violation of previously learned information may cause people to pay more attention to their surrounding environment. Jef will also present these findings at the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association.

Assistant Professor Gorica Petrovich has been awarded the 2012 Alan N. Epstein Research Award from the  Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior. This award honors an individual for a specific research discovery that has advanced the understanding of ingestive behavior. The letter of nomination states: “Gorica’s work combines cutting-edge behavioral analyses with high-resolution neuroanatomical techniques to provide unique insights into the way that external cues can influence feeding behavior through learning. This work is of high significance and novelty because it provides a rigorous experimental foundation for understanding how cognitive processes in the telencephalon can interface with circuits in the hypothalamus and hindbrain to control feeding behavior.” Gorica will be travelling to Zurich to accept the award and make a presentation on her research.

We are pleased to announce that Emotion Review, edited by Jim Russell, has been selected for coverage in Thomson Reuter’s products and services.

Ursula Anderson, postdoctoral fellow in Sara Cordes' lab, was awarded an NSF SBE Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to study relational concepts in infancy.

Christina Reppucci, doctoral student, and Assistant Professor Gorica Petrovich report in their forthcoming paper in Appetite, “Learned food-cue stimulates persistent feeding in sated rats,” that learned cues can repeatedly stimulate binge-like consumption of food regardless of physiological hunger state, and that increased consumption following the cue is uncompensated for in total daily food intake.

Jordan Theriault, graduate student in Liane Young's lab, was awarded a Postgraduate Scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

Shannon Snapp, Ph.D. 2010 and now a postdoctoral fellow at University of Arizona, has just published an article (with Boston College Assistant Professor Ehri Ryu) on body image resilience. She reports that a variety of factors contribute to positive body image in young women: high family support, low levels of perceived sociocultural pressure about the thin and beautiful ideal, rejection of the super-woman ideal, and active coping skills. Results can inform prevention of eating disorders and suggest interventions to improve body dissatisfaction and initial maladaptive eating practices.

Shannon Snapp, Laura Hensley-Choate, Ehri Ryu. A Body Image Resilience Model for First-Year College WomenSex Roles, 2012; DOI: 10.1007/s11199-012-0163-1

Caroline Smith, graduate student in Alexa Veenema’s lab, has been awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship for her research on the neural mechanisms regulating social novelty-seeking. Several human social disorders (e.g. autism) are characterized by impaired social novelty-seeking, but the neural mechanisms underlying social novelty-seeking are poorly understood. Caroline has developed a new behavioral test to study, for the first time, the neural network that mediates social novelty-seeking and the role of prosocial neuropeptides vasopressin and oxytocin in this network.

Assistant Professor Liane Young joins the editorial board of Psychological Science in January, 2012.

Assistant Professor Liane Young has been awarded a three-year grant from the Dana Foundation to study the cognitive and neural basis of atypical social and moral cognition in high functioning autism. She was also selected as a Dana Neuroscience Scholar, which provides her with additional funding for this project.

A new book, Categorical versus Dimensional Models of Affect, looks at research by James Russell and Jaak Panksepp: "In this volume Panksepp and Russell each articulate their positions on eleven fundamental questions about the nature of affect followed by a discussion of these target papers by noted emotion theorists and researchers. Russell and Panksepp respond both to each other and to the commentators. The discussion leads to some stark contrasts, with formidable arguments on both sides, and some interesting convergences between the two streams of work."

Thalia Goldstein, Ph.D. 2010, former student of Ellen Winner, accepts a tenure track Assistant Professorship in the Department of Psychology at Pace University in New York City. This follows her NSF postdoctoral fellowship at Yale working with Paul Bloom.

Jennifer Drake and Mary Kayyal have been named recipients of the Donald J. White Teaching Excellence Award for 2011-12.

Danielle Stolzenberg, Ph.D. 2009, former student of Michael Numan, has been offered a tenure track Assistant Professorship in the Department of Psychology at University of California, Davis.

Anne Krendl, a post-doctoral fellow advised by Elizabeth Kensinger from 2010 until the present, accepts tenure track position in the Psychology Department at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Kristen Lindquist, Ph.D. 2010, former student of Lisa Feldman Barrett, accepts a tenure track Assistant Professorship in the Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Katherine Mickley Steinmetz received her Ph.D. in 2011 from Boston College, working with Elizabeth Kensinger. She had three job offers, and has accepted a tenure track position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina.