The Psychological Sciences faculty are interested in the dynamic processes of human development from infancy through adulthood, how these processes influence functioning of the individual, and the individual's relationships with others. Faculty research interests and ongoing research activities are focused in developmental psychology and cognitive psychology. Brief descriptions of the research areas of faculty members are presented below.
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Developmental research and course opportunities span topics in social-emotional, cognitive, and language development. Faculty research in social-emotional development includes the study of social relations in childhood and adolescence, childhood aggression, emotional regulation, children’s attitudes and behaviors related to food and weight, children’s self-perceptions, parent-child relations and family processes, intimate relationships in adolescence and adulthood, autism, and child psychopathology. Research in cognitive development includes infant perception, development of social cognition, cognitive processing during infancy and childhood, and neurocognitive development. Language development research includes the study of language acquisition, language disorders, preverbal communication, and infants’ and children’s speech and auditory processing.
Research opportunities and supporting coursework in this area include topics in traditional cognitive psychology as well as cognitive neuroscience. Faculty research includes studies on visual, taste, and face perception, memory, music cognition, text comprehension, and speech and discourse. Within the area of cognitive neuroscience, research is ongoing in neurolinguistics, aging, working memory, neurobiology of learning, memory and emotions, computational neural modeling, and functional brain imaging.
