Successful Doctoral Dissertation Defenses

Junha Chang, Experience with Difficult Target Discrimination Makes Search Less Efficient: An Analysis Using Eye Movement, Cognition and Cognitive Neurocience, Advisor: Kyle Cave
Abigail Helm, Mental Fatigue: Examining Cognitive Performance and Driving Behavior in Young Adults, Developmental Science, Advisor: Jennifer McDermott

Successful Master's Thesis Defenses

Trina Harmon, Mobile Technology Use and School Readiness in Low-Income Preschoolers, Developmental Science, Advisor: David Arnold
Yelim Hong, Differential harsh parenting and sibling differences in conduct problems: The role of effortful control, Developmental Science, Advisor: Kirby Deater-Deckard
Kuan-Jung Huang, Visual, lexical, and syntactic effects on failure to notice word transpositions: Evidence from behavioral and eye movement data, Cognition and Cognitive Neurocience, Advisor: Adrian Staub
Jihyun Hwang, Children's understanding of the compositionality of number words, Developmental Science, Advisor: Joonkoo Park
Adrian Rivera-Rodriguez, Teacher's Discipline Practices and Race: The Effect of "Fair" and "Unfair" Discipline on Black and White Student's Perceptions and Behaviors, Social Psychology, Advisor: Nilanjana Dasgupta
Christina Rowley, Parental Conflict in the Context of Multiethnoracial Relationships, Clinical Psychology, Advisor: Maureen Perry-Jenkins

Awards and Honors

The PBS Graduate Studies Committee has selected Heather Kumove and Ana Uribe (first year graduate students in the Social and Clinical Psychology programs, respectively) to receive a 2020 Edna M. Dahlquist Scholarship. Read full article

Developmental Science student Yelim Hong receives The Ambassador of the Republic of Korea’s Korean Honors Scholarship, an award for Korean graduate students studying in the United States.

The APA Handbook of Contemporary Family Psychology has been selected as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2020 by Choice, a reviews publication of the American Library Association. Professor Kirby Deater-Deckard is an associate editor of the book.

Stylianos Syropoulos, advised by Benrhard Leidner, received an APA Division 48 Graduate Student Research Grant. His project “Individual Beliefs about Negative and Positive Peace: The Adaptation of a Harmonious and Dangerous Worldview and their Effect on Conflict Resolution” will examine how individuals’ worldviews may shape their likelihood to support peaceful interventions to intergroup conflict. He will also provide evidence that the psychological study of worldviews can be a valuable scientific avenue of exploration and a way to further promote the development of peace. The study will test beliefs about positive and negative peace at the individual level, having the potential to offer new strategies for conflict resolution.

Future Plans for PhD Graduates

Alice Coyne has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship position in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. Alice will work on NIH-funded trauma-related pathology and psychotherapy research under the guidance of Dr. Norah Feeny (and collaborators Drs. Adele Hayes and Lori Zoellner). Broadly, Alice's own research program aims to identify, and develop ways to capitalize on, patient, therapist, and dyadic characteristics and processes that enhance the efficacy of mental health care (MHC). More specifically, she studies personalized pathways to therapeutic change through answering the broad questions of how, for whom and in what contexts, and when delivered by whom does psychotherapy work? Across these foci, her work informs MHC decision making, treatment refinement, and training improvement.

Abigail Helm is now a clinical research coordinator in Dr. David Smelson's lab, Department of Psychiatry, UMass Medical School. The lab focuses on researching and treating co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders (CODs). The researchers there implement and study an evidence-based, time-limited integrated behavioral intervention called Maintaining Independence and Sobriety through Systems Integration, Outreach, and Networking (MISSION), which was developed by Dr. Smelson. As a part of the lab, Helm manages state and VA-based projects, serves as a data analyst, and supports grant submissions and publications.

Molly Mather has accepted a postdoctoral position at the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, under the mentorship of Sandra Weintraub. She will primarily be working on the ARMADA project (Assessing Reliable Measurement in Alzheimer’s Disease and cognitive Aging), and will also see patients for neuropsychological assessment in the Neurobehavioral and Memory clinic at Northwestern Medicine.