PBS faculty and their trainees conduct cutting-edge interdisciplinary research and are recognized as world-class contributors to their fields. In addition, we have numerous faculty and teaching assistants who have been recognized for excellence in mentoring and teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels. All of these efforts are supported by the outstanding staff and students who are key to the success of our department.
Most members of our department are present in this directory, which can be filtered by Research Areas, Center and Institute Affiliations, and/or Positions. To see groups of researchers with similar interests, regardless of their research areas, try entering relevant search terms below.
Fast Track Masters Student
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Professor Emeritus
Attitudes, intentions, and behavior; knowledge; automatic vs. reasoned action.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Professor
Technology and learning in preschoolers; early math skills in low-SES children; understanding and preventing academic and behavior problems.
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Lecturer
My research uses neuroimaging techniques to explore the relationship between attention and language processing across the life span.
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience, Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Assistant Professor
Our lab focuses on understanding circuit functions for social behavior and social recognition throughout life.
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Professor Emeritus
Vision and attention in reaching; motor learning; manual search in toddlers; working memory and executive function in support of search.
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Senior Lecturer, Coordinator of Online Instruction
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Professor Emeritus, Alumnus
We studied the effects and mechanisms of action of steroid hormones on the brain and behavior, as well as the effects of environmental and pubertal influences on those effects.
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Professor
Teaching of undergraduate statistics, Western philosophical and Eastern mystical approaches to Consciousness. Putting the finishing touches on a text titled Introductory Statistics Using R.
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Graduate Student
Research interests: early development of ADHD, parenting children with disruptive behavior disorders
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Graduate Student
I study Psycholinguistics, and am interested in sentence processing more specifically.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Graduate Student
Research interests include international justice mechanisms, reconciliation processes, how the human rights framework impacts conflict resolution, and understanding conflict
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Neuroscience and Behavior Graduate Student
Role of medial prefrontal cortex in response execution and inhibition
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience, Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Post-doc
Research interests include:
Sleep and memory consolidation across development and environmental influences on sleep in early childhood.
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience, Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental Science
Fast Track Masters Student
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Graduate Student, Departmental Honors Alumni
I study mathematical models of decision making.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Professor
I study various aspects of visual cognition, focusing on visual attention, visual search, and the interference between targets and distractors in complex visual scenes.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Graduate Student
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Graduate Student
Daniel Chapman completed his PhD at UMass in the summer of 2018. His research interests include environmental decision-making, natural resource management, risk analysis, and science communication.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Graduate Student
Early life parenting effects; development of self regulation; fathering
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Graduate Student
I'm interested in how motivation affects human behaviors especially at the decision-making process observed under EEG and fMRI.
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Lecturer, Honors Program Director
Early conceptual development; Infants' understanding of objects, agents, and the socio-moral behavior of other people.
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Professor Emeritus
I have been on the UMass faculty since 1968, primarily doing research on sentence comprehension, both reading and listening.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Associate Professor
Reasoning, judgment, decision-making, and computational modeling.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Professor, Graduate Program Director
Psychotherapy process, outcome, integration; patient, therapist, relational factors; patient-centered care; measurement-based care; psychotherapy training, dissemination; adult depression, anxiety
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Assistant Professor
The neural and cognitive mechanisms of memory and visual perception, investigated using computational models, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), and behavioral studies.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Graduate Student
Psychotherapy process, outcome, and integration; common treatment factors, including the patient-therapist relationship; interpersonal variables; therapist effects; psychotherapy feedback research
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Graduate Student
Research Interests: Parent-Child Relationships; Child Development; Racial and Ethnic differences, Risk and Resiliency factors - cumulative stress, parenting, paternal involvement.
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Professor
Prejudice and stereotyping; nonconscious mental processes; social cognition.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Lecturer
My teaching interests include the development of cognitive control and executive functions, and the factors that influence mechanisms underlying these abilities in both typical and atypical cases.
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Graduate Student
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Professor
Child/Adolescent Social-Emotional and Cognitive Development; Self-Regulation; Developmental Psychopathology; Family/Peer Relationships and Environments; Behavioral Genetics and Individual Differences.
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Graduate Student
My research program is focused on racial and ethnic disparities in risk for Mild Cognitive Impairment, Alzheimer's disease, and other dementias.
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Professor Emeritus
Basic condititioning research and associated neural processes, implications of basic processes for complex behavior, biobehaviorally constrained neural-network simulations
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Graduate Student
I am currently interested in the early development of neural mechanisms underlying self-regulation and motivation in typical and atypical populations.
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience, Developmental Science
Professor and Interim Dean, College of Education
I study deception and honesty as social presentational strategies in everyday life, as well as examining the factors that underlie and promote academic success in college students.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Visiting Assistant Professor
Neural and hormonal mechanisms underlying animal communication; auditory processing, vocal production, social context, motivation, bioacoustics.
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Professor Emerita
Visual Neuroscience and Comparative Neuroanatomy
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Post-doc
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience, Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental Science
Assistant Professor
Early-life Exposure to Trauma and Violence; Developmental Psychopathology of PTSD; Culture and Mental Health; Intervention Adaptation and Evaluation
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Post-doc
Research interests: learning and memory, behavioral neuroendocrinology, aging and cognition
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Graduate Student
Pro-Environmental Behavior, Activism, Social Identity, Dietary Behavior
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Assistant Professor
Early childhood psychopathology; normative vs. impaired emotion regulation; functional near-infrared spectroscopy; pediatric irritability; early childhood therapeutic interventions
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Professor, Rudd Family Foundation Chair
Research focuses on relationships in adoptive families across time, openness in adoption, and on identity development and adjustment in adolescents and young adults.
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology, Developmental Science
Graduate Student
I am Fulbright Scholar and Ph.D. student in the Developmental Science Program. I am interested in the relationship between internal numerical representations and symbolic representations of number.
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Professor Emeritus
Issues in clinical training and supervision; psychotherapy integration; ethical issues in professional psychology; teaching of psychology; psychology and sports
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Graduate Student
Research interests: nonsuicidal self-injury; borderline personality disorder; emotion regulation; interpersonal functioning; dialectical behavior therapy
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Graduate Student
My dissertation explored variations in onset and course of perinatal depressive symptoms. Additionally, I considered the ways in which fathers enhance women's perinatal well-being.
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Professor
Early development of ADHD and disruptive behavior disorders in preschool children and toddlers. Interests include executive function, emotion regulation, parenting, and culture.
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology, Developmental Science
Fast Track Masters Student
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Graduate Student
I am currently studying the impact of mobile technology on children's cognitive function. I am also interested in the various factors which influence children’s ability to delay gratification.
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Research Assistant
My dissertation research is focused on the orbitofrontal cortex's (OFC) role in alcohol preference and seeking. I am utilizing both in vivo electrophysiology and DREADDs to test my hypotheses.
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Associate Graduate Student, level 3
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Graduate Student
psycho-/neurolinguistics; sentence processing
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Professor
My research focuses on human perception and memory using a variety of experimental methods (e.g., behavior, ERP, and fMRI) and computational models (e.g., Bayesian and Neural Network).
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Professor
Affect and cognition; social cognition; stigma and mental illness; diagnostic error in medicine; political psychology.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Graduate Student
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Professor Emerita
Moral psychology; political psychology; social justice; social cognition.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Associate Professor
My research focuses on speech perception, with a special emphasis on audiovisual speech perception.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Graduate Student
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience, Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Graduate Student
My current research focuses on the association between specific deficits in impulsivity and risk-taking behavior in individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Adjunct Research Asst. Professor
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Assistant Professor
Reward-based learning and decision making; Motor learning and performance; Developmental changes in adolescence; fMRI; EEG; EMG; eye tracking; hormone assays.
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Associate Professor
Effects of sex hormones on cognitive function, particularly in the context of aging and menopause.
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Associate Professor
After a PhD in social psychology at The New School for Social Research and a postdoc at the University of California at Davis, I joined UMass's Psychology of
Peace and Violence Program in 2011.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Visiting International Exchange Graduate Student
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Graduate Student
My research focus is the development of self-regulation and how it is influenced by familial and social factors. I'm also interested in quantitative methods in developmental science.
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Professor
Peace psychology. Emotion, social cognition; intergroup relations.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Graduate Student
I am interested in neuromodulators that affect adult auditory learning, especially sex steroids and dopamine. I employ songbirds in my research to understand how their brains learn new sounds.
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Graduate Student
Family dynamics, parent-child attachment, identity development, cultural socialization
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Graduate Student
I am currently interested in the role of sleep on learning and memory in typically developing children.
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Graduate Student
My research focus is on understanding the neural mechanisms of psychological disorders. Focusing on how memory, and emotion regulation can be affected by trauma and aging.
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Assistant Professor
Development of social cognition across human and nonhuman primates; cognitive bias; intergroup relations; race, gender, social status; stress and resilience
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Director of Psychological Services Center, Lecturer
Dr. Martell's scholarly activity has focused on the development of behavioral activation in the treatment of depression and on applying CBT in an affirmative fashion with LGBT clients.
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Assistant Professor
Brain mechanisms of emotion regulation in older adults; emotion regulation; fMRI; functional connectivity; mindfulness; autobiographical memory; emotion dysregulation in clinical disorders.
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Graduate Student
Impact of aging on cognition and emotion
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Post-Doc
I am interested in all aspects of adoption and foster care. Previous research has focused on ethnic-racial socialization, identity formation, openness and searching, emotion regulation of adoptees.
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology, Developmental Science
Graduate Student
EEG/ERP; fNIRS; temperament; emotion regulation; environmental influences on development; individual differences
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Associate Professor
Learning and the development of attention and executive functions across early to middle childhood; self regulation, emotion processing, and the influence of early adversity on development; EEG; ERP.
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology, Developmental Science
Graduate Student
Intergroup Violence, Prejudice, Group Identification, Conflict Narratives, Collective Trauma, Activism, Social Justice
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Assistant Professor
Close relationships and health across sociocultural contexts; Discrimination and health in ethnic minority and immigrant children and adolescents.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Associate Undergraduate Advisor, Senior Lecturer
My primary role in the department is teaching and advising. My background is in neuroscience and behavior.
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Professor Emeritus
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience, Developmental Science
Assistant Professor
Cellular and network mechanisms of motivation, learning, and executive functions. Psychiatric diseases resulting from disruption of these neural systems.
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Graduate Student, Departmental Honors Alumni
Areas of research include: the patient-therapist relationship, expectations, & other common treatment factors; psychotherapy training; adult depression and anxiety; qualitative methodology
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Professor Emerita
Research interests focused on the development of memory and cognition in infants, toddlers, and preschool children.
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Professor Emeritus
No longer actively engaged in cognitive research but still working on issues in statistical analysis, currently focusing on mixed-effect models of data analysis.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Graduate Student
Amy is a third year graduate student. Her research interests include adult attachment, negotiation, and partners' shared experiences and emotions.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Professor
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience, Developmental Science
Graduate Student
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Graduate Student
Aging, memory and emotion regulation, novel neuropsychological markers of MCI and Alzheimer's Disease
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Graduate Student
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Alumni, Fast Track Masters Student
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Assistant Professor and Honors Faculty
Cognitive, neural (fMRI/EEG), and developmental mechanisms underlying the acquisition and emergence of uniquely human and culturally-transmitted abilities such as reading and mathematics.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental Science
Assistant Professor
Flexibility and Plasticity in Maternal Brain Circuitry across Postpartum
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Professor
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology, Developmental Science
Professor Emerita
Social cognition; emotion; close relationships.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Professor Emeritus
Word recognition, eye movement control in reading, visual scene perception, attention in driving, statistical reasoning.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Professor Emerita
As a developmental psychopathologist, my research examines the interaction of neuroendocrine, social, and psychological factors in depression and anxiety disorders throughout the human life span.
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Associate Chair of Teaching, Learning and Advising; Chief Undergraduate Advisor
Professor
Dr. Ready earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Univ of Iowa. Internship and clinical neuropsychology fellowship were at Brown Univ. She is board certified in Clinical Neuropsychology.
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Assistant Professor
Influences of social factors, including peers and stigma, on health behaviors and outcomes. Improving health promotion interventions.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Associate Professor
We study hormone action and production in brain circuits using a variety of approaches.
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Associate Professor
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience, Developmental Science
Professor, Department Chair
Recognition memory and reasoning. Research tools include signal detection analyses and event-related potentials.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Professor Emeritus
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology, Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Graduate Student
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Associate Professor, Associate Chair for Research
Neurocognitive research on basic auditory perception, speech perception, and selective attention with the goal of helping listeners (including children and older adults) understand speech in noise.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental Science
Graduate Student
Research interests: Interplay of cognitive and emotion changes in older adulthood; emotion regulation in late life; disorders of aging; perceptions of age and emotional well-being
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Graduate Student
Tejas received his MS in CSE from IIIT Hyderabad. He is interested in developing computational models using Machine Learning techniques to explain neural functions.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Graduate Student
social change, collective action, intergroup contact
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Graduate Student
I study adolescent development and how binge drinking during this period affects developing pathways and myelination of these circuits.
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Associate Professor
Physiology and cognitive functions of sleep in development and aging; learning and memory; sleep (polysomnography); activity monitoring (actigraphy).
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience, Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental Science
Postdoctoral Researcher
I study auditory systems neuroscience and social behavior in songbirds.
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience
Associate Professor
I explore human memory as it unfolds in time by applying computational models that predict both accuracy and response time data. I also investigate methods for improving statistical reasoning.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Professor Emeritus
Group violence, mass killing, genocide; post-conflict healing and reconciliation; bystanders; youth violence; raising altruistic children.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies
Psycholinguistics, including lexical and syntactic processing in comprehension; eye movements in reading.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Professor Emerita
Internal versus External locus of control. Gender differences in health. Women and Depression.
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology
Graduate Student
First Year PhD student. My research focuses in examinations of intergroup conflict, violence, perceived safety and morality.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Professor
Prejudice reduction, intergroup contact, status inequalities, disadvantage and discrimination, collective action, social change, peace and reconciliation.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Graduate Student
I am interested in the neuroscience of language, literacy, and auditory processing in typically developing children and those with language disorders.
Research Area(s):
Behavioral Neuroscience, Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental Science
Post-Doc
intergroup conflict, peace, collective action, and solidarity.
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Professor Emeritus
Cognition, cognitive neuroscience, statistical reasoning and analysis.
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Office Manager (The Psychology of Peace and Violence Program)
Research Area(s):
Social Psychology
Professor Emerita
Personality and cognitive processes thru adulthood. Projects include a longitudinal study of personality from college thru retirement and the Age Friendly University.
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Graduate Student
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Lecturer, Program Director DDHS
Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families
Research Area(s):
Developmental Science
Graduate Student
My current research interests focus on nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) and other maladaptive emotion regulation strategies.
Research Area(s):
Clinical Psychology
Graduate Student
Research Area(s):
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience