The Links Between Executive Function, Negative Affect, and Sensation Seeking During Adolescent Substance Use Development
A collaboration between UMass Amherst and Virginia Tech launched a longitudinal project examining brain and behavioral outcomes in adolescents from 14-17 years of age. A recent dataset was analyzed by UMass researchers Ann Folker and Kirby Deater-Deckard.
AI Moral Stereotyping — The Context of Moral Psychology
A current project of graduate student Aliah Zewail involves identifying and mitigating Western biases that run rampant within the subject of morality coded into AI systems.
The ViTAL Lab Examines Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Young Adult Mental Health
Graduate researchers Minji Lee and Ana Uribe along with Assistant Professor Maria Galano of the ViTAL Lab have published a new study entitled "Racial and ethnic disparities in young adult mental health: Exploring the individual and conjoint effects of ACEs and campus climate."
Research Highlights
Research Bytes
Lead author Ciara Venter of the Work and Family Transitions Project has published the article "Life Events and Postpartum Depressive Symptoms Among Black and Latina Mothers: The Role of Protective Factors" in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. This study underscores the importance of interpersonal factors, specifically support from family and nurses, in shaping mental health outcomes for Black and Latina mothers amidst life stressors. Findings hold important implications for clinicians and healthcare practitioners that can inform perinatal interventions leveraging these resources for these minoritized groups.
Mohammad Atari will be at the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society (SANS) Conference on April 25th in Chicago, debating Prof. Mark Thornton of Dartmouth College on the topic "AI in Social and Affective Neuroscience: Caution or Acceleration?"
Professor Emeritus John Donahoe gave an invited lecture via Google Meet to behavioral and neuroscience groups in Ireland in March entitled "A new modern synthesis: Behavior analysis and neuroscience." The neuroscience group at the Cork Medical College ultimately withdrew their sponsorship when a student group protested the talk. The students argued that the sponsorship should be withdrawn because an international applied behavior-analysis society refused to reject the use of aversive stimuli in the treatment of severe behavioral disorders such as head-banging and dermatophagia (skin biting). The full talk can be accessed here.
2008 research on altruism co-authored by Ervin Staub, professor emeritus of psychology and founding director of the Psychology of Peace and Violence Program, is cited in an article about “Why communities only seem to come together during a crisis, according to science.” Fast Company
Kende, J., Gagliolo, M., van Laar, C., Tropp, L. R., & Phalet, K. Through the eyes of my peers: Sharing perceptions of unequal treatment in ethno–racially diverse classrooms. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000718
Spool, J.A., Lally, A.P. & Remage-Healey, L. Auditory pallial regulation of the social behavior network. Communications Biology 7, 1336 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-07013-8. Check out Jeremy Spool's X thread explaining the paper.
Awards and Honors
Awards of Note
Graduate students Mar Nikiforova and Sean Conway received Psychonomic Society 2024 Graduate Travel Awards. Congratulations! They will present their research at the upcoming Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society from November 21-24, 2024.
Neuroscience and Behavior graduate students Annabelle Flores Bonilla and Hyejoo Kang won Trainee Professional Development Awards from the Society for Neuroscience. The Trainee Professional Development Award (TPDA) recognizes undergraduate and graduate students and post baccalaureate and postdoctoral scholars who demonstrate scientific merit and excellence in research. They received a travel stiped to the Neuroscience 2024 Annual Meeting and presented their research during a special poster session. TPDA recipients also join an online cohort and receive access to professional development opportunities on Neuronline in the year following the award.
Second-year clinical psychology graduate student, Anuj Mehta, was awarded a $500 Psychotherapy Research Award from the Division 29 (Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy) of the American Psychological Association. This student grant will help defray the cost of Anuj's travel to the Society for Psychotherapy Research conference in June 2025, where he will present his study, "Baseline social inhibition and age in relation to the within-patient alliance-outcome association in psychotherapy for depression."
Chiung-Yu (Lisa) Chang is awarded the Graduate School Fall 2024 Predissertation Grant of $1,300 to support data collection for the project "Phonetic cue weighting under divided attention."
Fırat Şeker has received an honorarium for being selected to participate in the ASREC 2025 Graduate Student Workshop on the Introduction to the Economics of Religion. He has also received a travel award from the SCORE Project for Advancing Research on Religion and Cooperation (SPARRC) to attend the Methodology Workshop on Causal Inference in La Jolla, CA.
Aliah Zewail has received a $500 honorarium to attend the annual Association for the Study of Religion, Economics and Culture (ASREC) conference and graduate workshop at George Mason University in March.
Irina Orlovsky, a current doctoral candidate in the clinical division working under the clinical mentorship of Dr. Rebecca Ready and research mentorship of Dr. Rebecca Spencer, is scheduled to graduate this summer. In fulfillment of next steps, she has accepted a post doc position in clinical neuropsychology at Harvard Medical School with Mass General Brigham.
Doctoral Dissertation Defenses
Marielena Barbieri, Unveiling Contemporary Discrimination: Insights from Racially and Ethnically Minoritized Adolesce, Advisor: Evelyn Mercado
Grace Cho, Exploring how defeat and entrapment mediate the link between social comparison and suicidal thoughts across ethnoracial backgrounds, Advisor: Rebecca Ready
Master's Thesis Defenses
Tihitina Bekele, Moderating Effects of Autistic Traits on the Relationship Between Parenting and Child Emotional Regulation, Advisor: Ashley Woodman
Mar Nikiforova, Uneasy on the eyes: Manipulating the appeal of androgynous faces through categorization, Advisor: Jeffrey Starns
Hector Sosa, When Do Personal Stories of Successful Individuals Inspire vs. Deflate Underrepresented Students in STEM?, Advisor: Nilanjana Dasgupta
Victoria Vizzini, Influence of Cognitive Flexibility on Gender Stereotyping of Spatial Activities, Advisor: Jennifer McDermott
Semester Notes
Every Tuesday and Thursday morning between 10 and 20 Psych 380 students gather at 7:30 AM in the ILC Café for “breakfast club” with Professor Richard Halgin. Topics include course material, the field of psychology, and general topics of interest. Students then head into the auditorium for lectures which begin at 8:30 AM.
Graduate students enjoy a trip to Six Flags.
‘Care Talk’ Examines CNS and SPHHS’s Battle Against Food Insecurity in Springfield, MA
In an attempt to address food insecurity and improve health outcomes in the region, the Center for Research on Families at UMass’s College of Natural Sciences (CNS) and the School of Public Health & Health Sciences (SPHHS) are collaborating with community partners in Springfield to implement a “produce prescription” program, in which people with variable food security are given access to fruits and vegetables. Read full article
In the Media
Nilanjana Dasgupta writes that the results of the November election show that Americans of different income levels and social classes don’t understand each other. “If we want to change our country for the better, we need to step out of our bubbles and walk into new local spaces where we mix with people who are different from us,” she says. Dasgupta’s just-published book, “Change the Wallpaper: Transforming Cultural Patterns to Build More Just Communities,” addresses this in more detail.
Linda Tropp addresses incivility across the United States in this interview from APA's Monitor on Psychology.
Agnès Lacreuse, a primatologist at UMass Amherst, has long been intrigued with animal behavior, particularly how nonhuman primates are remarkably similar and dissimilar to humans. This curiosity drove her to study neurocognitive aging in marmosets, focusing on sex differences in cognitive function, menopause, and Alzheimer’s disease.
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