The Staub lab (aka the UMass Eyetracking Lab) had a busy and productive 2024-2025. Kuan-Jung Huang completed his PhD in summer 2024. His thesis investigated the circumstances under which readers Chinese recognize multiple characters in a single glance. Kuan-Jung is now an NSF-funded postdoctoral scholar at the University of Maryland. New PhD student Ryan Buggy joined the lab in Fall 2024, coming to UMass from The Reading League, a nonprofit organization that works to improve implementation of the Science of Reading in the classroom. Since arriving at UMass, Ryan has been working on a large-scale replication project that evaluates competing theoretical accounts of how a word's predictability (as measured using a large language model such as GPT-2) influences reading. The project assesses whether the relationship between a word's predictability and the time the eyes spend on the word is linear or logarithmic; if predictable words are 'pre-activated' during reading, a linear function is expected, but if predictable words are simply more easily understood, a logarithmic function is expected.
Much of our other current work is focused on understanding readers' failure to notice certain kinds of errors in the text, such as repeated, omitted, or transposed function words. Readers' tendency to miss these errors suggests rapid integration of 'top-down' and 'bottom up' sources of information. We have been carrying out both behavioral and eye movement experiments investigating what factors modulate how often errors are overlooked, and the relationship between failing to notice an error and readers' eye movements. This year, several undergraduate research assistants in the lab were co-authors on published or submitted papers on this topic. Harper McMurray and Anthony Wickett co-authored with Adrian Staub a paper that appeared in Cognitive Psychology ("Perceptual inference corrects function word errors in reading: Errors that are not noticed do not disrupt eye movements") and Alan Chen, Emily Peck, and Tasha Taylor co-authored with Adrian Staub a paper that appeared in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review ("Estimating the rate of failure to notice function word errors in natural reading").
Another set of undergrad research assistants, Ellie Deutsch, John Greene, and Jillian Hammond, are co-authors with Adrian Staub on another recently submitted paper ("The 'Sentence Superiority Effect' is due to guessing"). This paper reports evidence that, contrary to some previous reports, readers are not better able to identify a very briefly presented word when it is presented in a grammatical sentence. This work was also presented at the Psychonomics Society Conference in November.
Current collaborators from other labs include Cory Shain (Stanford), Tamar Gollan (UCSD), Steven Luke (BYU), and Brian Dillon (UMass Linguistics).
Individual Differences in Development Lab (IDDLab)
Quick outline of new papers or research being done:
How do we become unique individuals? In IDDLab, we apply quantitative statistical modeling strategies to investigate variation in human development from early childhood through adulthood. We conduct research on facets of human development spanning cognition, emotion, behavior and biology. This includes examination of genetic, neurological, and physiological factors and how these interact with environments in families, neighborhoods and schools, as well as cultural differences. Current topics include: self-regulation, executive function, temperament, physiology, and behavioral/emotional problems.
Overview of graduate student research, defenses, or mentoring activities:
Ann Folker, MS: within-individual changes and fluctuations over time in family environments and how these variations affect child and adolescent development; defending dissertation in March 2025.
Christina Bertrand, MS: links between physical activity, fitness, and executive function development across adolescence; defending dissertation in April 2025.
Zola Gong, MS: links between the home and family environment with executive function development in adolescence in multiple cultural contexts; 1st-year PhD student.
Mentoring of undergraduates includes mentoring students who are participating in our lab’s undergraduate research assistantship training, the department’s ADRAP and RAMP programs, and in the summer NSF-funded “RIDE REU” program in the UMass College of Engineering.
Undergraduate research projects:
Various undergraduate research projects include a focus on extraction, cleaning, and analysis of physiological data collected from ECG and fNIRS brain imaging devices. Students also participate in data analysis projects focusing on survey and behavioral observation data.
Arien Khan is completing an honors thesis examining factors that contribute to development of gender and sex identity, and how learning about the science of gender and sex influences learner’s understanding of these aspects of identity.
Collaborations with other labs, universities, organizations, etc.:
IDDLab is a quantitative developmental science research team that focuses on innovations in statistical modeling of complex developmental processes. At this time, we are focusing on data analysis and dissemination of results from several large ongoing collaborative longitudinal studies around the world on which Prof. Deater-Deckard serves as a co-investigator or consulting investigator.
Main Collaborative Projects:
Parenting Across Cultures/Parents and Adolescents Across Cultures (PAC) with Jennifer Lansford, Duke University, and many colleagues in nine countries.
Neurobehavioral and Psychosocial Predictors of Health Risk Behaviors in Adolescence and Young adulthood (with Jungmeen Kim-Spoon & Brooks King-Casas and colleagues at Virginia Tech).
FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study (with Riikka Korja and colleagues at University of Turku, Finland).
Lab alumni updates:
Dr. Yelim Hong (PhD, 2024) is in a postdoctoral fellow position in the College of Education at the University of Texas Austin.
Dr. Sarah McCormick (PhD, 2022) is in a postdoctoral Future Faculty Fellow position in the Center for Cognitive and Brain Health at Northeastern University.
Dr. Mamatha Chary (PhD, 2020) is a curriculum design researcher at BEGiN in Philadelphia, PA.
Dr. Mengjiao Li (PhD, 2019) is a senior user experience researcher at Google in Seattle, WA.
Dr. Shereen El Mallah (PhD, 2018) is a research assistant professor in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia.
The Family Relationships, Affective Science, and Minority Health (FAM) Lab aims to better understand how family relationships can yield benefits for mental health among youth from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds. The lab, directed by Dr. Evelyn Mercado, approaches this topic from a biopsychosocial framework, conducting research that taps into psychological, social, and biological factors influencing the health and wellbeing of families. One of the primary research studies underway is examining how Latino/a/x parent-youth dyads experience interpersonal and structural racism, and the implications of these experiences on biomarkers of health such as salivary cortisol and insulin. This study is co-led by Dr. Airín Martínez of the UMass Amherst School of Public Health who brings her expertise in structural racism and health disparities. Dr. Mercado presented findings from this study as an invited speaker at the “Encuentro Nacional de Psicólogos Infantiles” in Queretaro, MX where she delivered her presentation in Spanish. In 2024, Dr. Mercado won the CNS Excellence in Undergraduate Student Mentoring award.
Graduate students in the FAM lab work on ongoing research studies and secondary data analysis. Aylin Fernandez, a third year graduate student, is using data from the California Families Project to examine the interplay between cultural processes and Spanish use among Latinx mother-child and father-child dyads for her master’s thesis. Senior biology major Jessie Zeng is assessing the social support networks of students of color, using data from a qualitative research study led by FAM lab alumni Dr. Marielena Barbieri. Undergraduate and graduate students have presented their findings at the Society for Research on Child Development, Society for Research on Adolescence, and the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development. Further FAM Lab projects highlight the effective collaborations between graduate students and undergraduate research assistants (RAs). Psychology major and honor’s student Roger Hauck and Aylin Fernandez co-lead a team of RAs analyzing ECG and cardiac impedance data collected for a pilot study led by Dr. Mercado which examined biological synchrony across systems (Autonomic Nervous System, Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis) during parent-youth interactions and in response to lab-based stress paradigms. Roger Hauck, a junior psychology major, is conducting his honors thesis using this physiological data, and over the summer attended a MindWare Technologies training workshop to learn more in-depth techniques on the analysis and collection of cardiac data. First year graduate student, Anamaría Rey-Bollentini, is currently developing a scoping review of the existing research on dating violence among Latinx youth. She leads a team of undergraduates from both the FAM Lab and the Vital Lab, who screen papers and meet weekly to discuss whether certain papers meet the review’s objective of identifying culturally relevant protective and risk factors.
Community-engaged research and outreach is a primary focus for the FAM Lab. For the past two semesters the lab has partnered with the Morning, Movement, and Mentoring Program (MMMP), a before-school program for 6-8th graders at the Amherst Middle School funded by Amherst Recreation. FAM Lab RA’s attend the program multiple times a week to serve as peer mentors, provide homework help, and build strong connections with the students. The FAM lab also regularly hosts high school students from surrounding communities to tour the lab and do hands-on demonstrations. Most recently, youth leaders from Pa’lante Transformative Justice in Holyoke, toured the lab space and had the chance to engage in mock experiment protocols where they play the role of the researcher and gain firsthand experience on how to conduct research studies. In the past, the FAM lab has teamed up with programs on campus such as Upward Bound and the Public Health Equity Young Scholars Summer Enrichment Program, to bring youth to campus for a full day to experience the ins and outs of conducting psychological research in the FAM lab!
FAM lab Alumni News
Dr. Syropoulos is an incoming Assistant Professor in the School of Sustainability in the College of Global Futures at Arizona State University. Dr. Marielena Barbieri accepted a position at the Mather Institute in Chicago post-graduation.