Graduate Reception
Reception honoring Department graduates and their families. Will begin at end of graduation ceremonies
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Brain, Mind, and Behavior
A particularly exciting trend in recent years, one that has altered the face of psychology, has been the merger of issues, theories, and methodologies from research on the neural bases of behavior, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, social psychology, and related areas. We have substantial strength in these areas. Funded faculty laboratories investigate the sciences of brain, mind, and behavior from a variety of perspectives. These include studying the neural bases of behavior using animal models, neurocognitive approaches with human participants, behavioral genetics, and the development and testing of computational and mathematical models of underlying processes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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