- Information for Students
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- Department History
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Research Labs
- Adult Learning Lab
- Attention and Memory Lab
- Children and Families Lab
- Clinical/Applied Research (CAR) Group
- Cognition Lab
- Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Lab
- Cognitive Development Lab
- Industrial/Organizational Psychology Lab
- Lifespan Social Cognition Lab
- Metacognition Lab
- Motivation Lab
- Research of Ethical and Social Topics (REST) Lab
- Semantics Lab
- Social Development Lab
- The Academic Quality (TAQ) Lab
- Vision and Haptics Lab
Faculty Research Interests
Reagan Brown
My research interests are personnel selection, psychometrics, and statistics.
Pitt Derryberry
My research interests pertain to socio-cognitive development during adolescence and
the college years with specific emphases on the development of moral judgment and
self-understanding.
Website: Research of Ethical and Social Topics (REST) Lab
Lisa C. Duffin
My research interest spans the factors that impact academic quality at many different
levels (i.e., program-level, group-level, and individual-level) and in many different
contexts (i.e., university, K-12 schools, lab).
Website: The Academic Quality (TAQ) Lab
Rick Grieve
My research interests lie in the area of eating disorders, and right now I am investigating
men's eating disorders, especially muscle dysmorphia. I am also interested in sport
fan behaviors. I have a number of studies going in both areas through the Clinical/Applied
Research (CAR) Group.
Website: Clinical/Applied Research (CAR) Group
Lance Hahn
My primary research focus is on the semantic memory underlying word recognition. I
use a very multidisciplinary approach that includes aspects of computation, behavior
and neuroscience. Two representative projects are 1) behavioral and computational
measures of word expectancy within a local context and 2) an examination of how gender
and sex hormones influence the recognition of aggressive words.
Website: Semantics Lab
Sally Kuhlenschmidt
My research is identifying, classifying, and assessing faculty development practices
in higher education institutions. I use specialized Internet search tools as well
as informal contacts to identify units.
Elizabeth Lemerise
My research examines aspects of social and emotional development in preschool and
elementary school children. Specific topics addressed are social and emotional development,
peer relations, and social information processing.
Lab: Social Development Lab
Diane Lickenbrock
My research interests focus on early social and emotional development, beginning
in infancy, by focusing on the dynamics of the family. Using longitudinal designs,
I examine how characteristics of the child and parents influence the development of
emotion regulation and parent-child relationships. I am particularly interested in
the role of the father in his child's development.
Lab: Children and Families Lab
Kelly L. Madole
My main interest is in conceptual development. Currently, my research is focused on
the factors that influence our beliefs about social categories. I am also conducting
research on how adults' reasoning about object categories is similar to reasoning
about events.
Lab: Cognitive Development Lab
Andrew Mienaltowski
I study social and emotional reasoning across adulthood. My lab is currently investigating
how we recognize emotion in the facial expressions of others, as well as how socioemotional
goals (e.g., love, friendship, competitiveness, etc.) and stress impact decision making.
Lab: Lifespan Social Cognition Lab
Sharon Mutter
My research interests center on how age-related changes in cognitive processes such
as attention, learning, and memory affect older adults ability to acquire both causal
and non-causal contingency knowledge. At the moment, we are investigating (1) age
differences in the ability to transfer causal knowledge learned about one set of cues
to a similar, but novel set of cues, and (2) age differences in causal learning following
error-driven and simple associative learning tasks.
Lab: Cognition Lab
Farley Norman
The goal of my Laboratory's research is to understand visual and tactile perception.
We study how human participants perceive the 3-D shape and motion of environmental
objects. We also study how perception changes as people age and become older.
Lab: Vision and Haptics Lab
Tony Paquin
My research interests are: 1. The impact of culture on workplace behavior (e.g.,
productivity/organizational effectiveness, leadership, and incivility) in traditional
and nontraditional organizations. 2. Psychometric issues in the translation and design
of cross-cultural instruments. 3. Rater agreement in the context of performance appraisal.
Jenni Schelble
My research examines cognitive factors related to student learning and achievement.
I am interested in how working memory capacity (the limited attentional resources
we have available during effortful tasks) influences problem-solving and retrieval
of information from long-term memory. Part of this work investigates methods for teaching
effective strategies to individuals with low working memory capacity (i.e., fewer
attentional resources).
Lab: Attention and Memory Lab
Amber Schroeder
My research interests focus primarily on (a) the examination of negative employee
and organizational behavior (e.g., workplace deviance, cyberbullying, and discrimination),
(b) the assessment of employee personality and culture and their impact on work outcomes,
and (c) the use of social media in employment settings.
Lab: Industrial/Organizational Psychology Lab
Matt Shake
My research focuses on how cognitive aging affects language processing and comprehension.
This includes research on how external factors (e.g., text structure, reading environment,
etc.) and internal factors (e.g., reader goals, attentional capacity, etc.) affect
older adults' ability to process and retain information that they read.
Lab: Adult Learning Lab
Betsy Shoenfelt
My research interests focus on factors that influence performance in business, industry,
education, and sport. Recent research has focused on justice perceptions of disciplinary
decisions in team settings, influences on organizational citizenship behavior, identifying
and developing team values, and the measurement and development of leadership skills.
Brandy Tiernan
My research focuses on self-regulation in a variety of contexts. Currently, I use
event related potentials (ERPs) coupled with behavioral techniques to investigate
the neural correlates of affect, emotion regulation, cognitive control and aging.
Lab: Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Lab
Aaron Wichman
I am interested in social cognition, and in how cognitions either can be perceived
as threatening or as information to integrate into judgments. I try to understand
when and how people come to think in these ways.
Steve Wininger
The majority of my research interests are in motivation, specifically in teaching
people to self-regulate. My research spans three different contexts: exercise, learning,
and sport. The three central outcome variables are exercise adherence, self-regulated
learners, and peak sport performance.
Lab: Motivation Lab
Qin Zhao
My research interests include metacognition, self-judgment, and self-regulation.
Currently, the metacognition lab is examining how cognitive, motivational, and social
factors influence metacognitive judgment of performance.
Lab: Metacognition Lab
Student Research Opportunities
A "yes" under openings for students means that the faculty member will consider allowing you to work in his/her lab. Please contact that individual faculty member to discuss further.
| Faculty Name | Lab Name | Openings For Students | |
| Undergraduate | Graduate | ||
| Reagan Brown | No | No | |
| Pitt Derryberry | Research of Ethical and Social Topics (REST) Lab | Yes | Yes |
| Lisa C. Duffin | The Academic Quality (TAQ) Lab | Yes | Yes |
| Rick Grieve | Clinical/Applied Research (CAR) Group | Yes | Yes |
| Lance Hahn | Semantics Lab | Yes | Yes |
| Sally Kuhlenschmidt | No | No | |
| Elizabeth Lemerise | Social Development Lab | Yes | Yes |
| Diane Lickenbrock | Children and Families Lab | Yes | Maybe |
| Kelly Madole | Clinical/Applied Research (CAR) Group | Yes | Yes |
| Andrew Mienaltowski | Lifespan Social Cognition Lab | Yes | Yes |
| Sharon Mutter | Cognition Lab | Yes | Yes |
| Farley Norman | Vision and Haptics Lab | Yes | Maybe |
| Tony Paquin | Yes | Yes | |
| Jenni Schelble | Attention and Memory Lab | Maybe | Maybe |
| Amber Schroeder | Industrial/Organizational Psychology Lab | Yes | Yes |
| Matt Shake | Adult Learning Lab | Maybe | Maybe |
| Brandy Tiernan | Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Lab | Yes | Maybe |
| Aaron Wichman | Yes | Yes | |
| Steve Wininger | Motivation Lab | Yes | Yes |
| Qin Zhao | Metacognition Lab | Yes | Yes |
