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APS Summer Research Sponsors
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Name: Catherine Meige Arrington, PhD
School: Lehigh University (PA)
Contact Information: kate.arrington@lehigh.edu
Sponsor’s Research Interests:
Human cognition is noteworthy for its flexibility in adapting to changes in external environments and internal goals. This ability is particularly apparent in multitask environments. Executive control processes are involved in selection, implementation, and monitoring of other cognitive processes in such environments. In my lab, we examine how internal and external factors influence task performance in multitask environments, in particular the choice to perform one task versus another. Internal factors include the representation of specific tasks and the larger multitask environment, the executive processes involved in preparing the cognitive system to optimally perform a task, and the control processes engaged in selecting a task from among multiple available behavioral pathways. External factors include the availability and salience of external stimuli.
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Name: Peter B. Crabb, PhD
School: Pennsylvania State University, Hazelton
Contact Information: pbc1@psu.edu
Sponsor’s Research Interests:
I am a social psychologist who studies the involvement of technology in social behavior and personality processes. Current research projects that offer significant student involvement focus on (1) technology and aggression and (2) technology and gender roles. Both projects involve archival research methods and do not involve human subjects. Student researchers can expect to gain theoretical knowledge, mastery of archival research methods, and expertise in the appropriate data analysis techniques.
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Name: Lisabeth F. DiLalla, PhD
School: Southern Illinois University
Contact Information: ldilalla@siu.edu
Sponsor’s Research Interests:
Dr. Lisabeth DiLalla, Ph.D., is a Professor in the School of Medicine and the Department of Psychology at Southern Illinois University. Dr. DiLalla tests 1- to 5-year-old twin and triplet families in her lab to assess children’s cognitive skills, interpersonal behaviors, temperament, and family environment. Her research on preschoolers has focused on aggressive and cooperative peer behaviors, behavioral adjustment to school, and play and imagination. Additionally, parent-child interaction styles are videotaped and coded to examine their inter-relationship with children’s social development. Other research interests include delinquency and cognitive development. Dr. DiLalla focuses on twins in her research in order to better understand the contributions of genes and environment to the behaviors she studies.
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Name: Laurel M. Fisher, PhD
School: House Ear Institute
Contact Information: lfisher@hei.org
Sponsor’s Research Interests:
The Institute is engaged in patient-oriented translational research involving hearing loss, allergies, and balance problems. While the research is primarily medical, the experimental methods taught in Psychology classes provide the foundation for obtaining and analyzing evidence in an interdisciplinary environment (Cacioppo. November, 2007, Observer).
Two real-world problems are the objects of my research: Persons with difficulty understanding speech in noise despite having “normal” hearing and Meniere’s Disease (a hearing and balance disorder). I am interested in understanding the role of brainstem structures for processing of speech in noise, either through advanced MRI techniques or non-invasive clinical measures. The Meniere’s Disease project requires precise specification of the phenotypic variability in a clinical population in order to link genotype information.
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Name: Linda A. Henkel, PhD
School: Fairfield University (CT)
Contact Information: lhenkel@mail.fairfield.edu
Sponsor’s Research Interests:
How is it that people remember events that never happened, why do they forget events that did happen, and when do they misremember details about what they experienced or how they experienced it? The imperfections in memory are not random, but follow predictable patterns based on cognitive principles. I am a cognitive psychologist who specializes in research on memory errors and distortions. I have published research on topics such as confusions between real and imagined memories, self-enhancing memory biases, and cognitive aging. I also study cognition in applied contexts, such as how jury members are able to intentionally forget information they are asked to disregard, how information regarding disputed confessions weigh into their verdicts, and how various factors such as presentation of photographs may lead to false confessions.
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Name: Verlin Hinsz, PhD
School: North Dakota State University
Contact Information: Verlin.Hinsz@NDSU.edu
(701) 231-7082
Sponsor’s Research Interests:
My expertise is in social and organizational psychology. My research centers on small group processes, judgment and decision making, and task motivation. My research on group processes examines how we can predict group responses based upon knowing the preferences of the members, the member characteristics, and how groups process information. In judgment and decision making, we look at social and informational factors that lead to choices and subsequent actions (e.g., goal choice, commitment, and task performance). Additional research examines the factors (e.g., intentions, habits, attitudes, traits) that contribute to motivating behavior in work settings, particularly where safety and security are involved. I have had numerous successful collaborations with talent undergraduate students that have resulted in presentations and publications.
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Name: Alishia Huntoon, PhD
School: Oregon Institute of Technology
Contact Information: alishia.huntoon@oit.edu
(541) 885-1673
Sponsor’s Research Interests:
My research interests cover many topics related to social psychology. As our world is becoming smaller and more interconnected, how we operate with one another and cooperate will impact the world to come. Prosocial issues, such as conservation and volunteering, are very important in our society and expand beyond our own towns, states, and countries. There are many useful influence techniques uncovered by research that can aid us in increasing these prosocial behaviors. Situational factors are important and interesting, however, so are personality variables. I am also interested in personality research that may tie into prosocial behaviors and social influence, as well as a topic on its own. Additionally, I am interested in gender and human sexuality issues.
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Name: Randall E. Osborne, PhD
School: Texas State University, San Marcos
Contact Information: ro10@txstate.edu
(512) 245-8236
Sponsor’s Research Interests:
1.) Personality and demographic characteristics that predict who will falsely confess to a crime. We are looking at Locus of Control, gender, religious ideology, etc. and seeing which students will confess to crashing a computer during the research - thereby losing extra credit points and who will file an appeal - potentially to receive full credit. Gender match between participants and researchers, major, computer competency, etc. is also being assessed.
2.) We are assessing police cynicism, attitudes toward why people commit crimes and beliefs about the degree to which justice is "served" in our system. Supervisor ratings of officer performance, assessments of "promotability", etc are also being gathered at the campus, local, urban and Federal (DEA) levels.
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Name: Hajime Otani, PhD
School: Central Michigan University
Contact Information: otani1h@cmich.edu
Sponsor’s Research Interests:
I am currently pursing two lines of research. One line is concerned with repeated testing of one’s memory. When a test is repeated, memory performance sometimes increases over repeated tests, even though participants are not exposed to the study material between tests. I want to know where “additional” items are coming from. Ultimately, I want to know how to get at “available” but not “accessible” memories. Another line is concerned with the effect of emotion on memory. We have been investigating the mechanisms that give memorial advantage to emotionally arousing stimuli. It appears that emotionally arousing negative stimuli (i.e., unpleasant) are encoded automatically whereas emotionally arousing positive stimuli and emotionally neutral stimuli require effortful processing.
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Name: Mark S. Schmidt, PhD
School: Columbus State University (GA)
Contact Information: schmidt_mark@colstate.edu
Sponsor’s Research Interests:
My research program addresses the interface of biology and cognition. I am currently correlating spatial and memory abilities with the 2D:4D finger length ratio, an indicator of prenatal androgen exposure. I am interested in numerosity perception in both human and non-human animals. We recently studied lateralization of numerosity perception and found a small right hemisphere advantage. I plan a follow-up study using event-related potentials of the brain (ERPs). We also recently completed a study of the ability of rats to acquire conceptual two-choice number discriminations. The rats acquired discriminations in the range of 2-6, including a difficult 4:5 discrimination. I am also interested in studying the effects of putative cognition-enhancing drugs on learning and memory using rats. |
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