Faculty

Dr Astheimer's research explores the relationship between attention and language processing in children and adults.

Dr. Atari runs the Culture and Morality Lab (CAM-L) at UMass Amherst. The Culture and Morality Lab examines how culture shapes moral values and norms using various methods, including computational techniques, lab experiments, and fieldwork. Our current research falls under three interrelated lines. The first line of research examines the "how" and "why" of cultural variation in psychological variables both across historical time (i.e., historical psychology) and space (i.e., cross-cultural psychology).

Dr. Aulet studies visual cognition and cognitive neuroscience, especially spatial and numerical cognition, using behavioral and neural (fMRI and fNIRS) methods.

Dr. Bickford regularly teaches Introductory Psychology, Social Psychology, Personality Theory, and Psychology of the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Experience. He also mentors and supervises instructors in online teaching of psychology and often teaches online versions of his regular courses through the Division of Continuing and Professional Education.

I study various aspects of visual cognition, including visual attention, visual search visual comparison, symmetry, and bias in visual processing, using behavioral methods and eyetracking.

Dr. Cheries runs the Infant Cognition Laboratory at UMass, which conducts studies to examine what our concepts are like in the first year of life, prior to the influence of language, culture, and formal education. His research currently concentrates on three main aspects of early knowledge

Dr. Cohen studies reasoning, judgment, decision-making, and computational modeling.

Dr Constantino directs the Psychotherapy Research Lab, teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on theories and techniques of psychotherapy, and supervises clinicians in training. Across these roles, Dr. Constantino is committed to integrating rigorous science with high quality practice and training.

My research program aims to advance the understanding, prediction, and prevention of suicide. My research is grounded in the theoretical orientation that suicidal thoughts and behaviors are dynamic, complex, and heterogeneous and I use new technologies, such as smartphones and wearable biosensors, to capture and model these factors. My program of research has three specific lines of interest: (1) describing the form and functions of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, (2) identifying dynamic risk and protective factors for suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and (3) developing personalized and

Research in our lab shines a light on unspoken assumptions about social groups, often called implicit stereotypes or biases, and the ways in which they impact people’s evaluations o

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.

Dr. Davies teaches courses in clinical psychology and research methods. Her research and teaching interests include anxiety and related disorders, trauma and stress, and the intersection of science and practice. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and also an undergraduate advisor in the department.

Dr Deater-Deckard studies variation in human development from early childhood through adulthood.

Dr. Dixon-Gordon is a clinical psychologist and associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of Massachusetts. Research in her lab focuses on the role of emotional processes in the development and maintenance of psychopathology, with an emphasis on borderline personality disorder (BPD).

My research integrates culture, development, and mental health to investigate the effects of early-life exposure to interpersonal violence in diverse populations.

Dr. Gonzales-Backen’s work focuses on the interface of ethnicity and adolescent development within cultural and family contexts.

Dr. Grabell’s research focuses on emotion regulation and its relation to cross-diagnostic symptoms of psychopathology in early childhood. He is particularly interested in the fine details of how the emerging emotion regulation system works and which parts of this system aren’t functioning well in young children on the cusp of persistent mood and behavior problems. His lab uses a multi-method approach comprising developmentally sensitive neuroimaging techniques, psychophysiological measurement, wearable and mobile devices, and detailed behavioral coding.

My primary role in the department is to coordinate the Junior Year Writing in Psychology program. As the coordinator, I facilitate delivery of the course and mentor the graduate student instructors who teach many of the sections, in addition to teaching my own section. I also teach Neuroscience-focused courses, such as Drugs & Behavior (Fall) and the Neuroscience Lab (Spring).

Linda M. Isbell, PhD is a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her BA from the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1993) and her MA (1995) and PhD (1999) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She joined the UMass faculty in 1999. Dr. Isbell’s research primarily examines the interaction between affect and cognition and focuses extensively on the impact of affective experiences on social cognitive processes.

Dr. Jesse investigates how humans recognize speech from hearing and seeing a speaker. Dr. Jesse was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1999. She has received a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2005, working with Dr. Dominic Massaro. Dr. Jesse then worked as an independent researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands, funding her research program through several awards from the German Research Foundation, the Max Planck Society, and through a career award (VENI) from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. Dr

The ultimate goal of Dr Karatsoreos's research program is to understand the factors that either promote resilience or increase vulnerability to environmental challenges.

Dr Kwak's research focuses on how humans learn, adjust, and make decisions within a new environment. In particular, they're interested in how these abilities change across the lifespan and in neurological diseases and what the neural and physiological underpinnings of these behaviors are.

Our studies address cognitive aging and women's health issues. We study a nonhuman primate to better understand neurocognitive aging and pathological aging processes, such as those involved in Alzheimer's disease (AD). 2/3 of AD cases in humans are women. For this reason, we also aim to understand how changes in sex hormones, especially estrogens, affect brain and cognitive aging in females.

2014, PhD, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Dr. Lickel’s research focuses on how people interpret events in intergroup conflicts and how these interpretations affect their emotions, self-concepts, and support for different social and political policies. A key assumption in his work is that understanding people’s emotions is important for unlocking the processes that amplify or reduce intergroup conflict.

Dr. Christopher Martell (Ph.D. 1988 Hofstra University) is the Clinic Director of the Psychological Services Center and a lecturer in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at UMass Amherst. Dr. Martell has specialized in the practice of empirically based psychological treatments.

Dr McDermott studies learning and 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.

Dr. Mercado's research seeks to better understand how close relationships buffer or increase risk for mental health outcomes in ethnic minority populations, with an emphasis on families of Latin American backgrounds. Her current work focuses on ways exposure to stress (e.g., discrimination) may impact the parent-adolescent relationship and youth adjustment through the application of a biopsychosocial lens.

Dr Moorman studies cellular and network mechanisms of motivation, learning, and executive functions.

Dr. Neil's research interests center on adoption.

Dr Park studies cognitive, neural (fMRI/EEG), and developmental mechanisms underlying the acquisition and emergence of uniquely human and culturally-transmitted abilities such as reading and mathematics.

Dr. Jamie Parnes conducts research focused on psychosocial determinants of cannabis and other substance use, with an emphasis on sexual and gender minoritized (SGM) individuals (e.g., LGBTQ+). His programmatic research focuses on 1) individual differences and mechanisms underlying the initiation and escalation of cannabis use, 2) cannabis/substance use, minority stress, and mental health among SGM individuals, 3) cannabis harm reduction and treatment, and 4) policy influences on cannabis use.

Flexibility and Plasticity in Maternal Brain Circuitry across Postpartum

Dr Perry-Jenkins runs the Work & Family Transitions Project.

We use experimental, developmental, and cross-cultural methods to study how people think, learn, and change according to their culture and language.

Associate Chair for Teaching and Advising

Dr. Ready is a board certified neuropsychologist.

Dr. Reid is an associate professor of social psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

We study hormone action and production in brain circuits using a variety of approaches.

The Richardson Laboratory studies the neurobiology of stress and addiction. Males and females show different vulnerability to stress-related disorders such as anxiety, depression, and addiction. This may be driven by sex differences in brain structure, chemistry, and circulating hormones.

Lisa Sanders studied developmental cognitive neuroscience with Dr. Helen Neville, selective attention with Drs. Steve Hillyard and Mike Posner, and neural organization of speech and auditory processing with Dr. David Poeppel. This training prepared her to develop her own research program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst beginning in 2005.

Dr. Rebecca Spencer graduated from the Purdue University Neuroscience graduate program, concentrating in neural control of movement. After graduating from Purdue with a PhD in neuroscience in 2002, she went to UC Berkeley where she was a postdoctoral fellow and research scientist in the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute until 2008. Her postdoctoral work on neural control of motor sequence learning was funded by an NIH NRSA. Subsequently, she was awarded an NIH Pathways to Independence Award (K99/R00) for studies on the age-related changes in sleep-dependent consolidation of motor learning.

Jeff Starns investigates how thought processes unfold over time in memory, decision making, and reasoning. He uses a computational modeling approach.

Adrian Staub studies psycholinguistics. In particular, he studies the process of fluent reading, often by means of eyetracking.

Dr. Stowe specializes in child and adolescent clinical psychology. She is particularly interested in disruptive behavior disorders in young children, assessment and treatment of ADHD, parenting issues, parent-child relationships, and the use of cognitive-behavioral and behavioral interventions with children and families. She is a licensed psychologist/health service provider and is a clinical supervisor and senior clinician in the Psychological Services Center (the Division of Clinical Psychology's teaching clinic).

Linda R. Tropp, PhD, is Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. For more than two decades she has studied how members of different groups experience contact with each other, and how group differences in status affect cross-group relations. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, Tropp has received distinguished research and teaching awards from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and the International Society of Political

Charlotte L. Wilinsky broadly interested in the intersection of child development, trauma, and the legal system. Their teaching interests center mainly on developmental psychology, including child and adolescent development. She truly enjoys working with students and her hope is that they leave her courses with a better understanding of how humans change due to both biological and environmental factors across the lifespan.

Ashley Woodman's research primarily focuses on the impact of raising a child with an intellectual or developmental disability (IDD) on parent and family well-being, as well as the impact of family processes on the social, emotional, and behavioral development of individuals with IDD over the life course. She is also interested in how people - including parents, students and community members - make meaning of disability (e.g., disability paradigms).

Candice's bio

One of my lines of research examines the sex-specific modulation of neural circuitry in the mammalian brain. Sex differences in the brain are often identified by dimorphisms in the size and number of neurons within specific regions; we have recently identified one region that also has sex-specific expression of one type of estrogen receptor.