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Research opportunities for students

You can participate in psychological studies using the SONA Research Participation System. Before you  for studies, check with your course syllabus to see how much credit can be earned for a particular course.

3D Tours of Research Labs

Faculty Research in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

, Assistant Professor  
Cultural Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Educational Psychology, Social Psychology,  

• Examining the effect of a self-affirmation intervention on introversion and extroversion among minority students and the mediating effect of personality on stereotype threat, academic disengagement, and resilience of minority students 

, Professor  
Clinical Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Educational Psychology, Memory, 

Psychology, School Psychology,  

• Research on the brain and working memory, and clinical development disorders 

, Assistant Professor  
Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Dyadic Relationships, Early Childhood, Early Intervention,  

• Examining the impact of dyadic relationships (i.e., parent-child, parent-teacher, and teacher-child) on the development of children's social-emotional skills and executive function in early childhood 

, Associate Professor 
Educational Psychology, Goals and Motivation, Political Psychology, Social Change, Social Psychology, STEM, System Justification, Understanding Group Differences,  

• Examining how stereotypes, biases, and sociopolitical events influence perceptions of male-dominated fields and individuals within these fields 

, Assistant Professor 
Cognition, Eyewitness Memory, Memory and Education, Memory Processes, Self-regulated Learning, STEM Learning,  

• Examining how memory functions in both forensic and educational contexts, what factors influence the accuracy of eyewitnesses, and the way that retrieval practice (e.g., testing, quizzing) might enhance memory 

, Assistant Professor 
Child Development, Cognitive Development, Cognitive Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Educational Psychology, Learning Sciences, Metacognition, Numerical Cognition, Numerical Development, Self-directed Learning, Self-regulated Learning, Self-regulation,  

• Investigating four project lines: (1) how children and adults learn, their metacognition, and their self-regulated learning, (2) people's representations of fractions, integers, and non-symbolic magnitudes with fNIRS, (3) attitudes and anxiety about math with different types of numbers, and (4) health risk comprehension with visual models 

, Assistant Professor  
Developmental Psychology,  

• Examining the development of emotional eating in young children and how it relates to parent feeding practices and the development of emotion regulation using both behavioral and non-invasive brain imaging techniques(fNIRS) 

, Associate Professor  
Health Behavior Change, Relationship Processes, Self-monitoring, Self-regulation, Social & Personality Psychology,  

• Behavior change and relationship processes that impact physical & psychological well-being 

, Professor 
Complex Problem Solving, COVID-19, Creativity, Culture and Cognition, Dynamic Decision Making, Terrorism, Virtual Environments,  

• Dynamic decision making & complex problem solving, creativity, shootings & terrorism, and cross-cultural studies 

, Associate Instructor   
Behavioral Neuroscience, Psychology,  

• Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure the effects of mindful meditation on emotional processing, to discover brain areas involved in self-monitoring & self-regulation, and to examine cognitive control during stereotype-reduction training (only accepting BNS majors with a GPA of at least 3.5) 

, Associate Professor  
Animal Behavior, Animal Behavior and Cognition, Avian Sociability, Developmental Niche Construction, Developmental Systems Theory, Organismal Agency, Social Behavior and Development In Animals,  

• Social networks, development, & welfare in spoonbills, longitudinal social trajectories in developing Gouldian finches, and development of social behavior in giraffes  

, Professor  
Chronic Illness, Experimental Psychology, Health Psychology, Human Environment Interaction, Illness Representations, Psychological Stress, Psychophysiology, Trauma,  

• Biobehavioral indicators of stress & PTSD and concussion assessment 

, Professor  
Adaptive Memory, Cognitive Psychology, Memory Processes,  

• Aspects of human memory, including how true and false memories are formed as well as evolutionary underpinnings of the human memory system 

, Assistant Professor  
Alzheimer's Caregiving, Attachment Theory, Behavioral Interventions, Grief, Living Bereavement, Personal Relationships, Psychoneuroimmunology, Social Loss, Social Psychology,  

• Investigates how various forms of social loss (e.g., the death of a loved one, or caring for a partner with a chronic health condition) impact people’s mental, physical, and spiritual health using data to index biomarkers of immunity and parasympathetic nervous system activity, to help capture how loss-related psychological processes impact us “under the skin” 

, Associate Professor 
Adolescent Psychology, Anti-racism And Social Justice, Anxiety, Applied Behavior Analysis, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Behavior Analysis, Behavior Change, Behavior Modification, Behavioral Interventions, Child Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Educational Policy, Educational Politics, Evidence-based Practice, Issues Related To The School-to-prison Pipeline, Mental Health, Neurodiverse Youth, Psychology, School Discipline, School Policing, School Psychology, School Safety, Social Justice & Equity In Schools, Stress Management, Wellness Preventions & Interventions,   

• Examining the training & role of police in schools, threat assessment in schools, Florida’s school-to-prison pipeline, barriers to full scale implementation of the practice model for school psychologists, the impact of the critical shortage of school psychologists in schools, and the implementation of restorative justice in Duval County public schools 

, Assistant Professor  
Cognitive Aging, Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, Neuroimaging, Neuromodulation, Noninvasive Brain Stimulation,  

• Explores the effects of noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) on brain function and behavior in healthy adults and patient populations with cognitive impairment, working with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)—NIBS techniques that alter the brain’s neuroplasticity—to improve cognitive and memory function 

, Professor  
Developmental,  

• Program assessment of "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day" & "Girls and Boys Can Do Engineering!" and children's decisions about the present & future allocation of resources 

, Professor  
Community-based Transformational Learning, Data Science, Lay-epistemology, Meta-analysis, Research Methodology, Terrorism, Transformational Learning,  

• How people seek or avoid evidence, transformational shifts in understanding, recidivism, terrorism, and how experts make decisions 

, Assistant Professor  
Community Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Family Formation, Family Planning, LGBTQ, LGBTQ Family Formation and Family Planning, Non-traditional Parenthood,  

• Interested in how social and environmental contexts shape the lives and life aspirations of LGBTQ+ people of various backgrounds, with the hope that this work can make a positive impact on the LGBTQ+ community and on society overall 

, Professor  
Climate Change Perceptions, Environmental Identity, Pro-environmental Behavior, Risk Perceptions,  

• Attitudes, beliefs, and emotions related to pro-environmental behavior & environmental policy support  

, Professor 

Cognitive Psychology, Human Factors, Human Factors and Engineering Psychology,  

• Taking a theoretical approach to explore how an action is represented cognitively and how various features that represent an action can impact the execution of the action in a rapid reaction time task and identifying functional factors that contribute to decreased driving proficiency and increased accident rates, as well as exploring potential design concept and cognitive interventions to improve driving safety and performance 

, Associate Professor 

 Adolescent Health, Child Psychology, Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Clinical Psychology, Community-based Research, Developmental Psychology, Health and Environmental Behavior Change, Health Behavior Change, Health Disparities and Inequities, Health Psychology, Mental Health,  

• Evaluating the effects of an obesogenic environment on adolescents' and young adults' physical and mental health in low socioeconomic status neighborhoods 

, Associate Professor  
Child Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Psychological Science, Psychological Testing, Psychology, Psychopathology, Psychotherapy, Stress Management,  

• Treatment effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral interventions on one’s ability to cope with stress