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Research
Interests
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| Thane
S. Pittman
Professor and Chair of Psychology 207 859 5557; Roberts 334; 5557 MH Directory Profile |
I am interested in human motivation. One area of research concerns our desire to understand and control our surroundings, and how experiences with lack of control affect the way we think and act in subsequent situations. A second area of interest concerns the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations toward activities. Generally, how does doing something (e.g., playing a game, interacting with another person) as an end in itself versus doing that same thing as a means to an end affect our performance on that activity and our interest in engaging with the activity in the future? Other motivational interests include the effects of the emotions and emotional expressions of regret and remorse as they affect the likelihood of future action and procrastination (inaction inertia), and reactions to moral transgressions (punishment desires, and the phenomenon of moral luck). |
| Diane
S. Winn
Professor of Psychology 207 859 5556; Roberts 340; 5556 MH Directory Profile |
My
current research interests are in two areas. One is the
psychology
of anomalous or psi experiences - that is, experiences that are not
readily
explained within conventional scientific paradigms. I am
particularly
fascinated by anomalous experiences that are transpersonal (i.e., one's
consciousness seems to be located beyond the person, in another time
and/or
place); an example would be the past-life experience. My second
area
of interest is in the psychology of death and dying - more
specifically,
how people in professions that deal on a regular basis with animal
death
(veterinarians, wildlife rehabilitators, animal shelter staff, etc.)
cope
with the stress of euthanasia in their practices. |
| Tarja
Raag
Associate Professor of Psychology 207 859 5558; Roberts 330; 5558 MH Directory Profile |
My present research efforts are focused on studying children?s perceptions of gender norms. I am currently working on a series of studies evaluating what type of social pressure children experience and how this contributes to their conformity to gender roles. What I?ve found is that children who have perceptions that gender is important to other people (familiar people like parents, siblings, peers) are more likely to show gender-typed behavior, but only in contexts where gender is highlighted as important. Even subtle cues about situational importance of gender influence children. However, depending on what the activity is, boys and girls respond differently to subtle and explicit cues of the importance of gender. |
| Yulia
E. Chentsova Dutton
Assistant Professor of Psychology 207 859 5572; Roberts 338; 5573 MH Directory Profile |
My
primary research interests focus on how cultural tendencies and
situational
cues to attend to self interact to shape the physiological, subjective,
and expressive aspects of emotional responding in healthy and clinical
populations. My studies employ a multi-method approach
(subjective
reports, facial behavior, physiological responding) and focus on
comparing
emotional responding of European Americans and Asian Americans, groups
with different cultural norms regarding expression of emotion. The
literature
on cultural differences in emotional responding suggests that
individuals
from Asian cultural contexts experience and show emotions less
intensely
than individuals from European American cultural contexts. These
findings
are consistent with accounts that suggest that mainstream American
cultural
norms encourage the open expression of emotions, and Asian cultural
norms
encourage the moderation of emotion. Expanding on this
literature,
I propose two mechanisms mediating cultural differences in emotional
responding:
1) attention to self cues, and 2) impaired capacity to engage with
cultural
norms (among individuals with Major Depressive Disorder). In my
research,
I demonstrate that the pattern of cultural differences in emotional
responding
can be reversed among individuals attending to relational self cues and
among depressed individuals. These findings suggest that cultural
influences on emotional responding are more nuanced than previously
thought. |
| Ayanna
Kim Thomas
Assistant Professor of Psychology 207 859 5574; Roberts 336; 5574 MH Directory Profile Personal Web Page ~ includes all course information and materials |
My lab group studies
human memory and considers such
issues
as the mechanisms of veridical and distorted memory, how subjective
experience
affects memory, and memory disorders (resulting frontal brain damage,
aging,
and Alzheimer's disease). An example of veridical and distorted
memory
research would entail comparing susceptibility to memory errors as a
result of
imagination or misleading questioning. Subjective experience
refers to
such things as confidence in memory and qualitative judgments about
memory.
Ongoing research questions include: (1) the interaction between
subjective
experiences during encoding and retrieval. How does subjectivity
direct
encoding processes? How accurate are we in predicting what we
will later
recall? Do predictions at recall correspond to confidence at
retrieval? Can subjectivity be used to distinguish between
veridical and
false memories? (2) Accessibility of contextual cues. How
do
contextual cues (e.g. external and internal context) affect encoding
and
retrieval? When is encoding of context impaired? When is
encoded
context unavailable? (3) Aging and memory. We are exploring
age-related
changes in memory in all of the above--in identifying mechanisms that
underlie
accurate and inaccurate recall, in investigating how subjectivity
directs
encoding and retrieval, and examining the accessibility and utilization
of
context. We use cognitive/behavioral and psychometric techniques to
investigate
these questions. The research questions we address have direct
applications
to real-world problems, including eyewitness suggestibility, and memory
changes
as a function of normal and pathological aging. |
| Jennifer
R. Yates
Visiting Asst. Professor of Psychology 207 859 5569; Roberts 332; 5569 MH Directory Profile |
Following an injury to the brain or spinal cord, there are initiated a number of processes that cause further damage to the injured area. The general process is called secondary pathology. My research has focused on a specific aspect of secondary pathology that is mediated by immune cells that are recruited to the injury. These immune cells produce molecule called quinolinic acid which is toxic to nerve cells. My previous studies have investigated the time course of the accumulation of this molecule, the benefits on structure and function of blocking this accumulation, and the mechanism of damage to other CNS cells in a guinea pig model of spinal cord injury. I would like to further this research by investigating the cognitive effects of quinolinic acid accumulation and blockade in a gerbil stroke model. |
| Jean
E. Burr Faculty Fellow in Psychology 207 859 5570; Roberts 333; 5572 MH Directory Profil |
My
research examines preschooler’s social behaviors and
friendships. Most research examining
early friendships has focused on the positive aspects of these
relationships
(e.g., links to prosocial behavior, cognitive development, or improved
school-readiness). However, my research
supports the existence of a darker side to early friendships by
examining
relational aggression. Relationally
aggressive behaviors are those intended to hurt or harm another's
interpersonal
relationships. For example, excluding
someone from an activity, gossiping about them, or giving them the
"silent
treatment." The use of these behaviors has been tied to several
negative
social-psychological adjustment indices in children and adolescents
(e.g., peer
rejection, reduced prosocial behavior, and depressive symptoms).
Relational
aggression has most commonly been studied in older children. However,
my
research demonstrates that preschool children use relational aggression. Unexpectedly, children who are more
relationally aggressive have more friends and choose friends who are
similar to
themselves in aggression levels. Some
children use relational aggression against their mutual friends, while
other
children do not. Surprisingly, using
relational aggression against a mutual friend during the preschool
years is not
associated with negative outcomes (as it is for older children). My current focus is to gain a better
understanding of why this is, including the processes that occur in
relationally aggressive children’s friendships and the implications of
these
relationships for the transition to kindergarten. |
| Joseph
E. Atkins
Research Scientist, Psychology 207 859 5561; Roberts 301; 5561 MH Directory Profile |
My research has focused on perceptual learning for vision, particularly object-oriented depth perception as derived from multiple visual cues and influenced by haptic (touch) information. Using a multi-modal virtual reality environment to provide subjects with conflicting or ambiguous sensory information, I explore how sensory information is combined and the plasticity of visual percepts. A fascinating aspect of work in this field is an increased acceptance of the concept that humans must learn to see just as they must learn to walk and talk, and that visual perceptions are highly context-dependent and task-specific. My research interests also extend to related issues such as decision making with uncertainty, how information is processed and integrated in social situations, and probabilistic models of beliefs. |
| John
Brian
Bulevich Research Scientist, Psychology Roberts 331 207 859 5550 (Department Secretary) |
My research involves the role of cognitive control in long term memory. Memory is often conceptualized as having opposing controlled and automatic processes. For example, if you have just moved and someone asks for an address, you may start to give them your old address. This would be an automatic component of memory. However, you may catch yourself and then give out the new address. This is an example of cognitive control overriding automatic processing. My research examines this basic idea in a number of different areas. “Can you use cognitive control to suppress a memory?” and “Can you use cognitive control to resist misleading or erroneous information?” are two research questions that I have investigated recently. I also use different populations and techniques to examine this question. We currently use older adults and people with Alzheimer’s disease to examine how cognitive control changes. Along with different populations, we also use neuropsychological testing and neuroscientific techniques like MRI to examine how the concept of cognitive control is linked to different biological systems. |
| Edward
H. Yeterian
Dean of Faculty; Professor of Psychology 207 859 5566; Eustis 305A; 5566 MH Directory Profile |
My research involves using experimental neuroanatomy to reveal functional pathways in the brains of nonhuman primates and, most recently, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to reveal pathways in the human brain. I have used sensitive pathway tracing techniques to delineate the connectional organization of the forebrain in nonhuman primates and have found connections that were not evident using older techniques. I have a special interest in how cortical-subcortical pathways serve sensory processing and sensorimotor integration, and in how cortical pathways allow cognition and motor behavior to be influenced by emotion and motivation. I am studying pathways in rhesus monkeys that carry visual information from association areas to other cortical regions. I have also begun a new line of research using MRI to reveal cortical pathways in the human brain that previously have been shown only in nonhuman primates. I hope that this latter project will lead to greater understanding of how lesions in the human brain, e.g., from strokes, affect pathways that travel through the damaged brain regions. |