Faculty
Jonathan Beier
Assistant Professor
BPS 2147A
Research Summary : My research investigates how we reason about the mental causes and social consequences of other peoples behavior, by examining the origins of these skills in infancy and early childhood. In particular, my work focuses on the development of childrens understanding of the social goals that motivate peoples behaviors towards one another and the social relationships that may hold between individual people. These topics are closely related to many other foundational issues in social cognition, such as communication and prosocial motivations, as well as representations of intentional agency, social norms, and social categories. I employ a variety of behavioral methods, from looking time and eye-tracking methodologies to more active measures of childrens helping and communicative behaviors. Prior to joining the University of Maryland, I received my PhD from Harvard University and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Jack J. Blanchard
Professor and Department Chair
BPS 1123L
Research Summary : Dr. Blanchard conducts research examining the psychopathology of schizophrenia and schizotypy. This research involves understanding the emotional, social, and neurocognitive changes associated with these disorders. Much of his research has focused on understanding how emotion is altered in schizophrenia and how individual differences in affective traits are related to other aspects of the disorder including social dysfunction, stress reactivity, and cognitive impairment. Related to this work on emotion, Dr. Blanchard's lab has sought to understand how decreased hedonic capacity might serve as an indicator of the genetic liability for schizophrenia. Another focus of his lab is the development of new assessment approaches for the measurement of negative symptoms in schizophrenia.
Steven E. Brauth
Professor
BPS 0283
Research Summary : My research is currently focused on auditory-vocal learning in parrots. Auditory-vocal learning is a fundamentally important learning process necessary for normal speech acqusition in humans. Auditory-vocal learning involves the ability to acquire communication sounds in a social context in reference to the communication sounds of external models. The term external models normally refers to members of the individual's species with whom the learner engages in important social interactions. In other words, species capable of auditory vocal learning are capable of imitating the sounds of other individuals or creating novel sounds shared with other individuals for the purposes of coordinating social or reproductive behavior. The specific research problems involve identifying brain areas which acquire, store and produce learned communication sounds and the physiological processes by which these behaviors are accomplished.
Beth Brittan-Powell
Research Assistant Professor
BPS 2123A
Research Summary : I work in the Laboratory of Comparative Psychoacoustics under the direction of Dr. Robert Dooling. My research has focused on vocal and auditory development in small birds. Over the years, I have used the auditory brainstem response as a means of assessing hearing sensitivity in a wide variety of animals, including birds, small mammals, alligators and frogs. This technique also allows us to measure hearing sensitivity in animals without requiring overt responses. Thus, it affords us the opportunity for assessing development of hearing sensitivity in small altricial birds. Hearing sensitivity measures can then be correlated to changes in vocal development, giving us a broader picture how auditory and vocal communication influence each other in these birds.
M. Colleen Byrne
Research Assistant Professor and Psychology Clinic Director
BPS 2114
Research Summary : Dr. Byrne received her degree from Emory University in 1998. She completed her internship at the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital in Tampa, Florida and pursued postdoctoral training with children and adolescents at the Beyond Words Center for Social Skills Training in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Byrne served as head of the child team at East Ridge Community Mental Health Center in Martinsburg, West Virginia. She joined the UMCP faculty as the Psychology Clinic Director in 2001. Since 2005, Dr. Byrne has served on the Executive Committee for the Association of Directors of Psychology Training Clinics (ADPTC). She provides pro bono services for the Give an Hour Foundation and the Pro Bono Counseling Project.
Thomas A. Carlson
Assistant Professor
BPS 1145A
Research Summary : My general research interests are in visual perception, object recognition, and visual attention. Current research in my lab seeks to address the following questions: How do we recognize objects under natural viewing conditions? How are we able to dynamically track moving objects? And, how does the brain's representation of external objects interact with the brain's representation of our body.
Jude Cassidy
Professor
BPS 2147C
Research Summary : Jude Cassidy is professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, and director of the Maryland Child and Family Development Laboratory. She received her Ph.D in 1986 from the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on attachment, social and emotional development in children and adolescents, social information-processing, peer relations, early intervention, and longitudinal prediction of adolescent risk behavior from earlier family interactions. Dr. Cassidy serves as co-Editor of the journal Attachment and Human Development, and along with Phillip Shaver, is the co-Editor of the Handbook of Attachment (2008). She is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and received the Boyd R. McCandless Young Scientist Award from the American Psychological Association. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Andrea M. Chronis-Tuscano
Associate Professor
BPS 1123K
Research Summary : Dr. Chronis-Tuscano's research focuses broadly on understanding early predictors of developmental outcomes for children with Attention- Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and developing novel treatments which target these early risk and protective factors. Much of this research has addressed issues related to maternal parenting and psychopathology (namely, maternal depression and ADHD). A secondary line of research, conducted in collaboration with faculty in Human Development, aims to examine the trajectory of young children displaying early behavioral inhibition, including the development of psychopathology, and to intervene by targeting key moderators of outcome (e.g., parenting and social relationships). Recent projects conducted by Dr. Chronis-Tuscanos research group include: (1) the development and evaluation of an integrated parenting program for depressed mothers of children with ADHD; (2) examination of early predictors of developmental outcomes in a large sample of preschool-aged children with and without ADHD; and (3) development and evaluation of a parent-child intervention for families of inhibited preschool-aged children. Dr. Chronis-Tuscano is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology; on the APA Division 12 Presidential Task Force on Enhancing Graduate Training in Evidence-Based Practice in Psychology (link to come); and serves as the Scientific Advisor to the NIMH Outreach Partnership with the State of Maryland. She is the recipient of multiple NIH grants and has served on the NIMH Interventions Committee for Children and their Families. She is the 2013 recipient of the College of Behavioral & Social Sciences Teaching & Mentoring Award.
Andres De Los Reyes
Assistant Professor
BPS 3123H
Research Summary : Dr. De Los Reyes received his Ph.D. in 2008 from Yale University. He completed his training at the APA-accredited clinical internship at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Psychiatry, Institute for Juvenile Research. Dr. De Los Reyes is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Director of the Comprehensive Assessment and Intervention Program (CAIP) at the University of Maryland at College Park. His research seeks to understand why assessments of child and adolescent mental health often yield inconsistent conclusions. Commonly used informants of child and adolescent mental health, such as parents and teachers, often vary in where they observe children and adolescents, such as home and school settings. Thus, informants differ in their opportunities for observing child and adolescent mental health concerns. With an emphasis on assessments of adolescent social anxiety, Dr. De Los Reyes investigates how inconsistencies in mental health assessments reveal meaningful information about the contexts within which children and adolescents express mental health concerns. A key goal of this work is to enable researchers and practitioners to use inconsistencies in child and adolescent mental health assessments as key tools for understanding the etiology, classification, and treatment of child and adolescent mental health.
Robert J. Dooling
Professor
BPS 2123D
Research Summary : Research in the Laboratory of Comparative Psychoacoustics is aimed at understanding how animals communicate with one another using sound and whether there are parallels with how humans communicate with one another using speech and language. Birds such as songbirds and parrots, like humans, rely on hearing and learning to develop a normal vocal repertoire. We often study budgerigars (parakeets), canaries, zebra finches, and other small birds. For instance, we have specific projects on vocal learning and vocal development in budgerigars, the regeneration of auditory hair cells and recovery of hearing and the vocalizations in small birds following hearing damage, and the effect of noise on hearing. Other studies focus on how small birds localize sounds, how they perceive complex sounds such as bird vocalizations and human speech, and how the bird ear functions.
Lea R. Dougherty
Assistant Professor
BPS 1123G
Research Summary : Dr. Doughertys research interests lie broadly in the examination of the etiology and course of depression from a developmental, life-span perspective. Within this domain, her research focuses on three areas: (1) an examination of the developmental origins of risk for depression, with a particular focus on early neuroendocrine functioning, individual differences in affect and temperament/personality, and examining associations between potential endophenotypes for depression and specific genotypes; (2) understanding the phenomenology of depression and mood dysregulation in preschoolers and establishing empirically-based assessment and treatment approaches for affective disorders in very young children; and (3) investigating the neural basis of emotion regulation and the effects of early experience and stress on brain development.
Michael R. Dougherty
Associate Professor/Associate Chair & Director of Graduate Studies
BPS 1145C
Research Summary : My research consists of three interrelated strands. One strand examines the interplay between attention, memory, and judgment and decision making. We hypothesize that errors and biases in early attentional processes, and limitations in working memory capacity, can cascade into errors and biases in judgment and decision making processes. One important component of this strand is the development of a computational model of diagnostic hypothesis generation that allows us to examine how the processes of information acquisition and attentional limitations feed into the processes of hypothesis generation and judgment. A second strand examines the impact of cognitive plasticity training for improving cognitive functioning. Specifically, the goal of this research is to understand the core processes necessary for effective and efficient processing of information, to improve these processes through extensive cognitive training, and to apply this research to important domains such as quantitative reasoning, language comprehension, and academic achievement. A third strand of research focuses on the development and testing of psychometric measures of cognitive functioning and attitude. Specifically, we are developing novel measures of working memory capacity, and using these new measures to investigate the construct validity of existing measures of implicit attitude formation.
Julia Felton
Assistant Professor
BPS 1123M
Research Summary : My research focuses broadly on gender differences in developmental psychopathology. Specifically, I am interested in risk factors related to depression and substance use during adolescence and the role of stress and maladaptive coping styles in the development of these mental health disorders. I am also interested in longitudinal data modeling and related techniques. Prior to joining the University of Maryland, I received my PhD from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and completed a clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina. Currently, I serve as the Director of the MPS in Clinical Psychological Sciences Program.
Michele J. Gelfand
Professor
BPS 3147C
Research Summary : As a cross-cultural social organizational psychologist, my research focuses on three areas of investigation: a) Cultural influences on conflict, negotiation, trust, revenge, and forgiveness, particularly in the Middle East and East Asia; (b) The development of theory and methods in cross-cultural psychology, specifically individualism-collectivism, cultural tightness-looseness, fatalism, and honor; (c) Workplace diversity and gender dynamics in organizations, sexual harassment, and discrimination.
Charles J. Gelso
Professor
BPS 2147J
Research Summary : The focus of my theoretical and empirical research is the client-therapist relationship in psychotherapy of differing orientations. Within this broad area, I focus more specifically on constructs such as the client-therapist working alliance, client transference, therapist countertransference, and what is termed the real or personal relationship between therapist and client. My research on countertransference lead to a book in 2007 entitled Countertransference and the Therapist's Inner Experience: Perils and Possibilties (NJ: Erlbaum) and I am currently writing a book on the real or personal relationship in psychotherapyt (to be published by the American Psychological Association). My current empirical research efforts focus on countetransference and the real relationship in therapy, both brief and longer-term treatment.
Erica R. Glasper
Assistant Professor
BPS 2123N
Research Summary : How does experience change the structure of the brain? Are the functions of the brain mediated by changes in structural plasticity? Can rewarding experiences protect the aging brain? My laboratory aims to answer these and other related questions by investigating structural plasticity in the adult and aging brain, its alteration by experiences and hormones, with a view toward understanding their functional relevance. To do so, my research focuses on the interactions among rewarding experiences, hippocampal structural plasticity, and hippocampal function. My specific research interests include: (1) examining the interactions among age, rewarding experiences, and hippocampal structural plasticity and function, and (2) examining how paternal experience alters hippocampal structural plasticity and function in a biparental species, the California mouse. My laboratory focuses on adult neurogenesis; dendritic spine alterations; social, cognitive, and emotional behaviors, relying on many research tools from behavioral neuroscience, neuroendocrinology, and molecular and cellular biology.
William S. Hall
Emeritus Professor
Research Summary : During his career, Professor Hall has made contributions to two different but related fields in Psychological Science, developmental psycholinguistics and comparative neuroscience. His work in recent years in comparative neuroscience addressed a fundamental issue in Psychology and Biology: How do individuals who learn their communication sounds use the information in auditory stimuli to provide feedback for vocal learning? Using a small parrot (the Budgerigar) as a model system, he explored this question by mapping brain pathways interconnecting the auditory system with vocal control areas and other brain areas, employed the method of lesioning of putative pathways needed for providing auditory feedback to test hypotheses concerning the role of these pathways and, most recently used gene expression techniques to evaluate the responsiveness of neurons in the brain to species-typical sounds and other sounds.
Paul J. Hanges
Professor
BPS 1147C
Research Summary : Dr. Hanges research interests center on topics in (a) leadership and culture; (b) personnel selection, test fairness, and diversity; and (c) dynamical modeling, complexity theory, and research methodology. He was a co-Principal Investigator of the GLOBE project. GLOBE is a multi-phase, multi-method project in which investigators spanning the world worked together to examine the inter-relationships between societal culture, organizational culture, and organizational leadership. The project started in 1993 and over the years, approximately 170 social scientists and management scholars from throughout the world have joined the project. The fourth phase of this project is currently being planned. Dr. Hanges also has written articles and conducted research focused on personnel selection, test bias, and discrimination. He started the Adverse Impact Research Group along with Dr. Jim Outtz, an alumni of the Maryland program. This research group is a collaborative research effort to identify factors that reduce or eliminate adverse impact in human resources practices. Dr. Hanges has worked with organizations to develop fair and valid selection systems and has been retained as an expert witness on several court cases. Recently, he has been working with the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to understand the role of organizational diversity on the health of the organization (for more information go to http://www.lib.umd.edu/ocda/). Finally, Dr. Hanges is interested in dynamical models and their applicability to changes in perceptions and other cognitive processes. The conceptual model driving this work is the information processing model known as connectionism. With the connectionist perspective, the focus is on activation patterns of information stored in memory and focusing on factors that may activate or inhibit the leadership pattern.
Jens Herberholz
Associate Professor
BPS 2123H
Research Summary : Research in my lab investigates the neural basis of animal behavior. We use crayfish and other invertebrates as our primary model systems because they display easily quantifiable behavioral patterns, and they feature a nervous system of tractable complexity that is accessible to a variety of experimental techniques. We combine behavioral, neurophysiological and in vivo neuroimaging studies to identify and investigate neural circuitry that controls aggression and social hierarchy formation, and to determine neural mechanisms underlying decision-making processes and behavioral choice. For more information, please refer to my website.
Clara E. Hill
Professor
BPS 2147G
Research Summary : I am primarily interested in what makes psychotherapy work. Within this general topic, I focus on the skills therapists use to help clients, working directly with the therapeutic relationship, utilizing dreams to lead to greater insight and action, and training and supervising therapists to help them become more effective in their work with clients. In addition, I am very interested in discovering new and better ways to investigate psychotherapy, and have been working on developing qualitative methods that capture more of the inner experiences of participants in the psychotherapy process. To investigate psychotherapy more thoroughly and to train therapists, we have recently established the Maryland Psychotherapy Clinic and Research Lab.
William Hodos
Distinguished University Professor Emeritus
BPS 2123C
Research Summary : The early part of my scientific career was devoted to the study of motivation in animals. In the 1970s, I developed an interest in the excellent vision of birds and how visual information is processed in the avian central nervous system. This led to a series of anatomical experiments to determine the central visual pathways in the nervous systems of birds and application of various behavioral psychophysical techniques to measure color vision, visual acuity, luminance differences, and spatial and temporal contrast sensitivity in pigeons, quail, hawks, owls, starlings, and other birds. I have also carried out a number of studies of the physiological optics of the eyes of various birds. In addition to my research, I have scholarly interests in the evolution of the brain and the evolution of behavior, comparative neuroanatomy, and animal intelligence. I became an emeritus professor in 2005 and closed my laboratory. I therefore am no longer actively involved in research nor am I accepting new graduate students. I do, however, remain active in the teaching programs of the Psychology Department and the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science program
Susanne Jaeggi
Assistant professor
BPS 3123K
Research Summary : I investigate working memory and executive control in various contexts and across the lifespan with behavioral and neuroimaging methods. One of my research goals addresses working memory limitations. I aim to understand the behavioral as well as the neural consequences when performance is at capacity limits, and also, when capacity limits are exceeded. Further, I investigate whether and how working memory capacity can be improved and whether such improvements have generalizing effects to other cognitive domains. In these intervention studies, my goal is to determine the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie training-related changes.
Arie W. Kruglanski
Distinguished University Professor
BPS 3147
Research Summary : My research concerns the formation of attitudes and beliefs as they are impacted by cognitive and motivational variables. From this perspective I have been carrying out research in the domains of social cognition, the psychology of goals and goal pursuit, persuasion, and social judgment processes, group formation, intergroup relations, terrorism and the psychology of culture.
Carl Lejuez
Professor, Director of the Clinical Program, Director, Center for Addictions, Personality, and Emotion Research (CAPER)
BPS 1123C
Research Summary : Dr. Lejuez's current clinical and research interests focus on the development of ecologically valid laboratory analogues of addiction and their use to better understand the active ingredients of treatment (i.e., translational research). His most recent projects involve (1) the creation and validation of a behavioral task to predict adolescent risk-taking behaviors (e.g., drug use, unsafe sexual practices); (2) the examination of factors underlying addictions treatment failure (e.g., low distress tolerance); (3) the development of novel treatments of co-morbid depression and anxiety among substance users with behavioral activation strategies; (4) factors underlying drug choice differences (e.g., crack/cocaine vs. heroin) among inner-city substance users; and (5) mechanisms underlying AXIS II Personality Disorders (primarily Borderline PD and Antisocial PD), with a focus on inner-city substance using samples.
Laura MacPherson
Associate Professor
Cole Field House 2103E
Research Summary : Research Summary : Dr. MacPhersons clinical and research interests include a developmentally-informed examination of the progression and cessation of addictive behaviors among adolescents and young adults to improve youth-tailored interventions, as well as developing behavioral treatments for adult smokers with psychiatric comorbidities. Current projects and interests include: 1) developing and testing behavioral activation-based cessation interventions for adult and adolescent smokers with co-occurring psychopathology with a focus on reward processing mechanisms underlying treatment effects, 2) identifying trajectories of appetitive (e.g., risk taking propensity) and avoidant (e.g., distress tolerance) reinforcement based processes as they relate to changes in adolescent substance use and risk behaviors over time, and 3) developing behavioral assessments of negative reinforcement-based risk taking among youth.
Jonathan Mohr
Assistant Professor
BPS 2147K
Research Summary : I study manifestations and consequences of stigma, discrimination, and stereotypes in everyday life, particularly with respect to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. Some of my work is on the experiences both positive and negative of individuals from stigmatized groups, whereas some is on attitudes and behaviors toward members of stigmatized groups. I have a secondary research program on interpersonal relationships, with an emphasis on romantic relationships and the psychotherapy relationship. These two lines of scholarship intersect in my writing on same-sex couples and psychotherapy with sexual minority clients. My work is based on theoretical perspectives from social and personality psychology, including attachment theory, minority stress theory, and theories of collective identity formation.
Cynthia F. Moss
Professor
BPS 2123M
Research Summary : Echolocating bats produce ultrasonic vocalizations and process information carried by returning echoes to build a three-dimensional representation of the world using sound. They dynamically modify the features of their sonar signals in response to echoes from objects in the environment, and in my lab we take advantage of the specialized behaviors of bats to study perception, its neurobiological foundations, and the use of spatial information to guide action and memory of places. Using echolocation, bats can successfully maneuver rapidly through narrow spaces, which also requires agile flight control. Bats have fine hairs on their wings that are responsive to the air flow they experience in flight, and we are also studying the role of tactile signalling in adaptive flight behavior. Research methods in my lab include high speed 3-D infrared video tracking and synchronized microphone array recordings of free-flying echolocating bats along with neural recordings from behaving bats engaged in perceptual and spatial tasks.
Kevin Murnane
Associate Professor
BPS 1123E
Research Summary : Although health problems have curtailed my research career, I am interested in human memory generally and the different ways in which the variety of information that is available when information is both stored in and retrieved from memory can affect what is remembered.
Kent L. Norman
Associate Professor
BPS 3123F
Research Summary : His research is on human/computer interaction and cognitive issues in interface design. He has two online books, The Psychology of Menu Selection: Designing Cognitive Control at the Human/Computer Interface (1991, http://lap.umd.edu/poms) and The Switched On Classroom (1999, http://lap.umd.edu/soc). He is the developer of HyperCourseware", a Web-based prototype for electronic educational environments and is a co-author of the QUIS: The Questionnaire for User Interaction Satisfaction, licensed by the University to corporate and government usability labs. His latest book is Cyberpsychology: An introduction to the psychology of the human/computer interface (2008) published by Cambridge University Press. On the humorous side, Dr. Norman does research on "Computer Rage" and has appeared on the Kojo Nnamdi Show, Good Morning America and numerous talk shows and in news articles on this topic (http://computer-rage.org)
Karen M. O'Brien
Professor
BPS 2147D
Research Summary : Counseling psychologists have a rich tradition of advancing scholarly knowledge and providing services to healthy individuals in times of crisis or transition (Gelso & Fretz, 2000). As scientist-practitioners and as psychologists, we are invited to use our knowledge to better the lives of individuals and contribute to the improvement of our society (American Psychological Association, 2003). Through my research, teaching, and service, I strive to generate knowledge that can be used to address social concerns and individual problems, to educate students to achieve their research and clinical potential, and to actively contribute to the communities in which I live and work. I have two areas in which I seek to advance knowledge in counseling psychology. The primary focus of my research program is to further understanding regarding the circumscription of women in low status, low paid occupations. Recently, I have begun to investigate factors related to healthy functioning in adoptive families.
Kevin E. O'Grady
Associate Professor
BPS 3147F
Research Summary : My quantitative research interests focus on three specific areas: 1) psychometric theory, particularly the strengths and weaknesses of classical true-score theory for the measurement and assessment of individual differences; 2) The design and analysis of controlled clinical trials, and the use of the generalized linear mixed model in the analysis of such designs; and, 3) latent variable modeling, and in particular, the utility and limitations of latent variable growth curve and latent class growth mixture models in the assessment of change over time. My interests in substance abuse have focused on: 1) the etiology of such abuse, particularly those individual, familial, and social factors that place an individual at increased risk for the development of a drug-abusing lifestyle; 2) the development of conceptually-based prevention programs that seek to impact at-risk individuals, where such programs are based on information about the risk factors of the individuals involved, that is, prevention and intervention programs that are directed by the risk-factor information available from the participants (rather than the development of broader-based prevention programs that attempt to cast a larger net); and, 3) the development of conceptual models that explain responsiveness to drug-abuse treatment for drug-abusing individuals, where such models utilize the results of baseline assessment information to explain differential responsiveness to treatment.
Cheri Ostroff
Professor
BPS 3147B
Research Summary : Two inter-related themes characterize my research: Congruence and Levels of Analysis issues. Congruence deals with the notion that a good fit or alignment between characteristics of people and features of their work situation results in better work-related responses than when people and their situation do not fit or are misaligned. The levels perspective includes a focus on how individuals influence their groups and organizations, and how aspects of the organization influence the attitudes and responses of people. For example, how do individual employee perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors combine to impact overall organizational effectiveness? How do the culture, climate and practices of the organization influence job satisfaction, helping behaviors, performance and turnover?
Luiz Pessoa
Professor
Research Summary : I employ behavioral and functional MRI methods to study cognition and emotion (as manipulated, for instance, via the threat of shock), with an emphasis on the interactions between cognitive and emotional brain systems. In a similar way, I also study interactions between cognition and motivation (as manipulated, for instance, via cash reward). An additional focus of my research centers on the development of statistical and computational tools for the analysis of fMRI data, particularly methods to link moment-to-moment fluctuations in behavior to single-trial brain responses.
Elizabeth Redcay
Assistant Professor
Research Summary : My research examines the development and neural bases of communicative behaviors (e.g. joint attention, theory of mind, social interaction, language) and the interactions between these processes in both typical individuals and individuals with autism (a developmental disorder characterized by atypical communication). I ask how and the extent to which the brain systems underlying these behaviors become specialized and how this neural specialization is reflected in behavioral changes. To examine these questions, I use neuroimaging and behavioral methods with infants, children, adolescents and adults. In some of this research, I use paradigms in which participants engage in a real-time face-to-face communication during fMRI data acquisition, allowing for a more naturalistic social-communicative interaction.
Tracy Riggins
Assistant professor
BPS 2147E
Research Summary : Tracy Riggins (Assistant Professor) received her Ph.D. in Child Psychology from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota in 2005. Her graduate research focused on the development of declarative memory in the first decade of life using both behavioral and electrophysiological techniques (event-related potentials, ERPs). Dr. Riggins then completed two postdoctoral training fellowships at the University of California, Davis and University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. During these fellowships she extended her methodological training to include magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques. She had the opportunity to work with both typically developing children and adolescents as well as children with chromosomal abnormalities and children exposed to drugs prenatally. The research projects in Dr. Riggins's lab at College Park investigate the neural bases of cognitive development in both typically developing children and children with neurodevelopmental disorders using both behavioral and neuroimaging techniques (both event-related potentials, ERPs and structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging, MRI).
Matthew R. Roesch
Assistant Professor
Research Summary : My laboratory studies the neural mechanisms of cognition, and their disturbance in disorders such as addiction and schizophrenia. Specifically, we are interested in the neural underpinnings of reward, learning, motivation, conflict and attention. Current research in my lab seeks to address the following question: How does the brain guide decisions based on expected outcomes and violations in those expectations? We address these issues with a variety of approaches in behaving rats, including neurophysiology, pharmacology, lesions and drug self-administration.
Benjamin Schneider
Emeritus Professor
1363 Caminito Floreo, Suite G
Research Summary : For many years, Ben was the head of the Industrial and Organizational Psychology program at Maryland. He is presently Senior Research Fellow, CEB Valtera, and Professor Emeritus at Maryland. Ben has also taught at Michigan State University and Yale University and, for shorter periods of time, at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, on a Fulbright; University of Aix-Marseilles (France); Peking University (PRC); and in the Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College. Ben holds the PhD in psychology (University of Maryland, 1967) and the MBA (C.U.N.Y., 1964). His academic accomplishments include more than 150 professional journal articles and book chapters, as well as 12 books. Ben's interests concern service quality, organizational climate and culture, staffing issues, and the role of manager personality in organizational life. Ben was awarded the Year 2000 Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the 2006 Career Contributions to the Service Discipline Award from the Services Marketing Special Interest Group (SERVSIG) of the American Marketing Association, the 2009 Michael R. Losey Award from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) for career contributions to Human Resources, the 2009 Herbert J. Heneman Jr. Career Contributions Award from the Human Resources Division of the Academy of Management, and the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management. In addition to his academic work, Ben over the years has consulted with numerous companies, recently including Allstate, Eli Lilly, State Farm, and INGAA.
Harold Sigall
Emeritus Professor
BPS 3123E
Research Summary : My research explores various aspects of self-presentation, including the perceived morality of self-presentation, the goals of self-presentation, the unintended consequences of self-presentation, and self-presentational considerations in research measures. A related research interest I have is interpersonal relations. I also conduct research in certain problems related to stereotypes and stereotyping, including measurement of stereotypes and positive stereotypes. Final I have some interest in reactance theory.
L. Robert Slevc
Assistant Professor
BPS 1145B
Research Summary : I study the cognitive mechanisms underlying language processing (especially language production) in both normal and brain-damaged populations. One line of research investigates how systems such as memory and cognitive control underlie our impressive ability to translate ideas into sentences. A related interest is the extent to which this translation of ideas into speech is based on knowledge of our audience versus on a need to reduce our own cognitive demands. In a second line of research, I investigate similarities between the processing of language and of music. This includes work on whether language and music rely on similar (or even the same) processing mechanisms and also research on the relationship of musical ability to successful second language acquisition.
Barry D. Smith
Professor
BPS 1123D
Research Summary : Dr. Smith's laboratory focuses on the biological bases of personality and emotion. His research is based on an evolutionary approach to understanding the role of arousal in personality, emotion, and behavior. Arousal, processed and integrated in a number of neural systems, interconnected by neural networks, affects body systems that can be assessed using psychophysiological measures. Current research focuses on cardiovascular reactivity. Additional measures include EEG, electrodermal activity, and facial electromyography, among others. Current and recent studies have examined arousal aspects of smoking, the menstrual cycle, social support, PTSD, anxiety, and caffeine consumption. Dr. Smith currently teaches doctoral seminars in personality and psychopharmacology. Other teaching interests include adult psychopathology and research design.
Charles Stangor
Professor
BPS 1123C
Research Summary : Charles Stangor is professor of psychology in the social psychology area at the University of Maryland, and has also taught at the University of Tübingen in Germany. He received his B.A. from Beloit College in 1973, and his Ph.D. from New York University in 1986. Dr. Stangor is the recipient of research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and from the National Science Foundation. He has published 7 books and over 50 research articles and book chapters, and has served as an associate editor of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Dr. Stangor's research interests concern the development of stereotypes and prejudice, and their influences upon individuals who are potential victims of discrimination. He is a charter fellow of the American Psychological Society, and has served as the chair of the executive committee of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. Dr. Stangor regularly teaches Social Psychology (Psyc 221), Research Methods (Psyc 420) and, at the graduate level, Group Processes (Psyc 742). Dr. Stangor has also won a distinguished teaching award from the University of Maryland.
Forrest B. Tyler
Emeritus Professor
BPS 1123A
Research Summary : My current research focus is on the development and evaluation of prosocial community development projects. For the past several decades I have functioned primarily as a consultant to individuals and institutions actively creating and evaluating prosocial community approaches focused primarily on marginalized populations. A central aspect of this work has been in South America, India, New Zealand, and Jordan with homeless children and the disadvantaged children of marginalized families and/or families marginalized by their indigenous status. This research has been summarized in two books: Tyler, F. B. (2001). Cultures, Communities, Competence, and Change. New York: Kluwer/Plenum and Tyler, F. B. (2007). Developing Prosocial Communities across Cultures. New York: Springer.
Thomas S. Wallsten
Professor
BPS 3123D
Research Summary : As a cognitive psychologist with a penchant for formal models, Dr.Wallstens long-standing research interests are in behavioral decision theory, including the areas of judgment, choice, probabilistic inference, and measurement and communication of opinion. His teaching interests are in these areas, as well as in cognitive and mathematical psychology.
David D. Yager
Associate Professor
BPS 2123G
Research Summary : My lab studies the evolution of auditory systems. We use the praying mantis because of its unique cyclopean auditory system that is linked to a strong, complex, stereotyped evasive response. A particular focus is on how the CNS changes during the evolution of a sensory system to use new sensory information to control adaptive behaviors. We combine neurophysiological and behavioral experiments with a broadly comparative approach
