Faculty Areas of Research

   

Behavioral Neuroscience

Interpersonal Relationships

Clinical

Personality

Cognitive

School Psychology

Cross Cultural

Social Context

Developmental

Quantitative

Health

Other


Clinical

Faculty Name

Research Interests

Mary Bower Russa 

My current research focuses on parenting and child maltreatment.  I am collaborating on a large scale forensic project looking at psychosocial characteristics of maltreating parents in Kent County, as well as predictors of termination of parental rights for those parents.  I also do some limited research focused primarily on cross cultural predictors of violence and aggression with an international team.  

Lawrence Burns

A meaningful theme to be found in my work with perfectionism involves the issue of conceptualization. Coming out of a clinical tradition concepts of perfection have some historical baggage. Having been viewed with few exceptions as pathological one of the central questions of my work has been "Is perfectionism always pathological or can we have an adaptive or "healthy" perfectionism?"

Tara Cornelius

My research focuses on the functional processes that manifest in dating and marital relationships, particularly the manifestation of violence in intimate relationships. My lab examines how individual and relational variables contribute to and result from intimate partner violence, including emotion dysregulation and communication patterns. We also examine the use of digital mediums in intimate partner sexual behavior, including sexting and cyberaggression.

Luke Galen

My main research focus is the psychology of religion and secularity.  I study mental well-being and prosociality as a function of religiosity. I investigate how and why individuals attribute the origins of their moral motivation to religious, as opposed to secular factors.

Brian Lakey

Quantitative analyses of interpersonal relationships and mental health.

Amy Matthews

Child Clinical Psychology, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Applied Behavior Analysis

Jamie Owen-DeSchryver                                                                                                                                                                               

My research interests involve the implementation of behavioral and educational interventions for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).  I have conducted studies using strategies such as visual modeling, visual supports, self-management systems, peer supports and opportunities to respond (OTR) to improve social and behavioral outcomes, and increase independence and engagement for students with this diagnosis.

Mikhila Wildey

I am broadly interested in understanding dynamics in romantic relationships and specifically looking at traits of personality and psychopathology and how they influence the development of and dissolution of romantic relationships.

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Cross Cultural

Faculty Name

Research Interest

Mary Bower Russa

My current research focuses parenting and child maltreatment.  I am collaborating on a large scale forensic project looking at psychosocial characteristics of maltreating parents in Kent County, as well as predictors of termination of parental rights for those parents.  I also do some limited research focused primarily on cross cultural predictors of violence and aggression with an international team.  

Kristy Dean

My research examines the social nature of the self-concept.  In general, my research is based on two ideas:  1) the desire to connect with others is of central importance to how we define the self; and 2) social connection is a basic need that must be fulfilled, much like our need for food.

Wolfgang Friedlmeier

I am interested in identifying structures and processes how culture affects individual development from early on. Socialization is a main tool how culture is transmitted to the next generation. The main focus of my research is on emotion socialization in cultural perspective.   

Mihaela Friedlmeier

My main research interest is in the area of intergenerational relationships from a cross-cultural and life-span perspective. Main topics involve the transmission of values and beliefs across generations, and the importance of parenting.

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Developmental

Faculty Name

Research Interest

Naomi Aldrich

My research focuses on socio-cognitive development with an emphasis on factors influencing children's discourse about experiences of interpersonal rivalry, as well as social engagement and communicative behaviors in typically developing and at-risk samples.

Gwenden Dueker

My research interests center on understanding how we can best support parents and children to facilitate positive outcomes for families in Kent County.  I partner with community organizations to learn about the families that they serve and to help them evaluate the effects of their primary prevention efforts.  I also study the effects of early exposure to trauma on parenting behaviors.

Mihaela Friedlmeier

My main research interest is in the area of intergenerational relationships from a cross-cultural and life-span perspective. Main topics involve the transmission of values and beliefs across generations, and the importance of parenting.

Wolfgang Friedlmeier

I am interested in identifying structures and processes how culture affects individual development from early on. Socialization is a main tool how culture is transmitted to the next generation. The main focus of my research is on emotion socialization in cultural perspective.   

Tessa Jordan

My research interests are in developmental psychology, particularly cognitive development with a specific focus on conceptual development in early childhood. My primary line of research examines the nature of developmental change in preschool aged children's understanding of living things (plants and animals) and nonliving things (tools and toys).

Josita Maouene

I am interested in language and conceptual development in children 2 to 5. 

Jing Chen

I am interested in the infant and maternal characteristics that affect children’s early developmental outcomes and factors that influence autobiographic memory.

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Interpersonal Relationships

Faculty Name

Research Interest

Mary Bower Russa

My current research focuses parenting and child maltreatment.  I am collaborating on a large scale forensic project looking at psychosocial characteristics of maltreating parents in Kent County, as well as predictors of termination of parental rights for those parents.  I also do some limited research focused primarily on cross cultural predictors of violence and aggression with an international team.  

Gwenden Dueker

My research interests center on understanding how we can best support parents and children to facilitate positive outcomes for families in Kent County.  I partner with community organizations to learn about the families that they serve and to help them evaluate the effects of their primary prevention efforts.  I also study the effects of early exposure to trauma on parenting behaviors.

Brian Lakey

Quantitative analyses of interpersonal relationships and mental health.

Mikhila Wildey

I am broadly interested in understanding dynamics in romantic relationships and specifically looking at traits of personality and psychopathology and how they influence the development of and dissolution of romantic relationships.

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Behavioral Neuroscience

Faculty Name

Research Interest

Elizabeth Flandreau

There is a clear link between stress exposure and psychopathology; the presence of an "unhealthy" diet high in fat or sucrose may moderate this connection.  Presently, causal pathways through which diet moderates stress-induced psychopathology are difficult to assess because existing animal studies are confounded by obesity.  The Flandreau lab seeks to differentiate the impact of high fat from high sucrose diet on stress-induced behavioral and homeostatic changes in the absence of metabolic syndrome and link these findings to changes in gene-expression for brain / gut neuropeptides.  

Glenn Valdez

Broadly speaking, my research seeks how neurobiological stress systems are affected by long-term alcohol use and withdrawal.

Natashia Swalve

My research uses rodent models to explore how factors such as psychiatric illness (e.g. schizophrenia) and environmentla stressors (e.g. lead exposure) alter vulnerability to drug abuse.

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Cognitive

Faculty Name

Research Interest

Gwenden Dueker

My research interests center on understanding how we can best support parents and children to facilitate positive outcomes for families in Kent County.  I partner with community organizations to learn about the families that they serve and to help them evaluate the effects of their primary prevention efforts.  I also study the effects of early exposure to trauma on parenting behaviors.

Joel Quamme

I study human memory. I am interested in the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie our ability to remember prior events. 

Walter Sá

The psychology of thinking and reasoning.

Michael Wolfe

I am interested in the cognitive processes that people engage in while reading, and how people remember and use information they learn. Much of this work recently is focused on people reading information that relates to prior beliefs they hold. I am interested in when and how beliefs change as a result of reading, and whether people are aware of these changes. 

Mario Fific

My research interests center on developing a process tracing approach that allows for precise determination of the fundamental properties of mental processes underlying cognitive actions, such as visual/memory search, face recognition and decision making.

Jennifer Gross

Can YOU iMAGine an APP that HELPS you HEAR the RHYTHm of TEXT?  English has a rhythm, similar to how music has a beat.  Because the stress-alternating rhythm of English is not marked in print, it must be inferred when fluently reading aloud and silently.  At all ages, prosody sensitivity plays a role in reading abilities.  Our ongoing experiments are evaluating whether less fluent readers might benefit from marking stress explicitly in written English.  Our prosody training app may cultivate prosody sensitivity by transforming ordinary text to rhythmically enhanced text.  

Benjamin Swets

My research examines how the mind processes language when we engage in ordinary experiences such as carrying on a conversation and reading stories. I'm especially interested in how our memory systems support our use of language.

Christopher Kurby

I study how people perceive event structure in their experiences of everyday life, film, and narratives.

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Social Context

Faculty Name

Research Interest

Kristy Dean

My primary research interests center on the social and flexible nature of the self-concept and self-regulatory strategies, which I examine across three different (but related) areas of research.

Amanda Dillard

Broadly my research explores the roles of emotion and risk perception in motivating health behaviors and behavior change. I conduct research to examine these topics in contexts such as student drinking, smoking, tanning, and cancer screening.

Ernest Park

I study how people think, feel, and act when they work as members of a group.

Christine Smith

The majority of my research involves studying the influence processes within interacting decision making and problem solving groups.  I am also interested in social identity and the impact that large groups and crowds have upon individual behavior.  

Todd Williams

My research interests are currently focused on examining:
1) The measurement and social consequences of Machiavellianism
2) The social and cognitive factors related to belief change and awareness of belief change
3) The effects of existential anxiety and contingent self-esteem on social behavior

Luke Galen

My main research focus is the psychology of religion and secularity.  I study mental well-being and prosociality as a function of religiosity. I investigate how and why individuals attribute the origins of their moral motivation to religious, as opposed to secular factors.

Ellen Shupe

I am interested in research related to applied social and organizational psychology, including topics such as sexual harassment and inter-role conflict. I am also interested in research related to the psychology applied to teaching, particularly in regards to study abroad courses.

Eaaron Henderson-King

My research focuses is in two areas. The first is examining people's attitudes toward cosmetic surgery. The second area of research is in the area of intergroup relations and attribution theory.

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Quantitative

Faculty Name

Research Interest

Gwenden Dueker

My research interests center on understanding how we can best support parents and children to facilitate positive outcomes for families in Kent County.  I partner with community organizations to learn about the families that they serve and to help them evaluate the effects of their primary prevention efforts.  I also study the effects of early exposure to trauma on parenting behaviors.

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Personality

Faculty Name

Research Interest

Luke Galen

My main research focus is the psychology of religion and secularity.  I study mental well-being and prosociality as a function of religiosity. I investigate how and why individuals attribute the origins of their moral motivation to religious, as opposed to secular factors.

Lawrence Burns

A meaningful theme to be found in my work with perfectionism involves the issue of conceptualization. Coming out of a clinical tradition concepts of perfection have some historical baggage. Having been viewed with few exceptions as pathological one of the central questions of my work has been “Is perfectionism always pathological or can we have an adaptive or ‘healthy’ perfectionism?”

Mikhila Wildey

I am broadly interested in understanding dynamics in romantic relationships and specifically looking at traits of personality and psychopathology and how they influence the development of and dissolution of romantic relationships.

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Health

Faculty Name

Research Interest

Amanda Dillard

Broadly my research explores the roles of emotion and risk perception in motivating health behaviors and behavior change. I conduct research to examine these topics in contexts such as student drinking, smoking, tanning, and cancer screening.

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School Psychology

Faculty Name

Research Interest

Kristen Schrauben
(formerly Kristen Girard)

My research focuses primarily on school-based interventions for elementary students struggling academically. In addition, I explore how we can use feedback in combination with these academic interventions to motivate struggling students. Finally, I have a separate line of research related to my graduate teaching in which I examine the errors school psychology students make when learning to administer and score intellectual assessments.

Jennifer James

As my position focuses on providing supervision to graduate students in the field of school psychology, I am currently interested in research on best practice models of supervision. I also have a strong interest in crisis prevention and intervention in the schools.  

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Other

Major Class

Robert Deaner

Evolutionary; Sex Differences; Sports -- Most of my current research projects address one or more of the following: sex differences, sports, distance running, or the development of expertise.

Gwenden Dueker

Child maltreatment and family dysfunction -- My research interests center on understanding how we can best support parents and children to facilitate positive outcomes for families in Kent County.  I partner with community organizations to learn about the families that they serve and to help them evaluate the effects of their primary prevention efforts.  I also study the effects of early exposure to trauma on parenting behaviors.

Mary Bower Russa

Parenting and Child Maltreatment -- My current research focuses parenting and child maltreatment.  I am collaborating on a large scale forensic project looking at psychosocial characteristics of maltreating parents in Kent County, as well as predictors of termination of parental rights for those parents.  I also do some limited research focused primarily on cross cultural predictors of violence and aggression with an international team.  

Jennifer Gross

Psycholinguistics/Applied Cognition -- Can YOU iMAGine an APP that HELPS you HEAR the RHYTHm of TEXT?  English has a rhythm, similar to how music has a beat.  Because the stress-alternating rhythm of English is not marked in print, it must be inferred when fluently reading aloud and silently.  At all ages, prosody sensitivity plays a role in reading abilities.  Our ongoing experiments are evaluating whether less fluent readers might benefit from marking stress explicitly in written English.  Our prosody training app may cultivate prosody sensitivity by transforming ordinary text to rhythmically enhanced text.  

Michael Wolfe

Educational -- I am interested in the cognitive processes that people engage in while reading, and how people remember and use information they learn. Much of this work recently is focused on people reading information that relates to prior beliefs they hold. I am interested in when and how beliefs change as a result of reading, and whether people are aware of these changes. 

Lawrence Burns

Scholarship of Teaching -- A meaningful theme to be found in my work with perfectionism involves the issue of conceptualization. Coming out of a clinical tradition concepts of perfection have some historical baggage. Having been viewed with few exceptions as pathological one of the central questions of my work has been "Is perfectionism always pathological or can we have an adaptive or ˜healthy" perfectionism?"

Joel Quamme

Cognitive Neuroscience -- I study human memory. I am interested in the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie our ability to remember prior events. 

Christopher Kurby

Cognitive Aging -- I study how people perceive event structure in their experiences of everyday life, film, and narratives.

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Page last modified April 26, 2024