Our faculty are nationally recognized experts and dedicated teachers. Areas of strength include: behavioral neuroscience, pediatric psychology, OCD and social phobias, stress response systems, visual perception, memory, language and speech.

Meaghan Altman
Instructor of Integrative Neuroscience
Psychology

Christina Balderrama-Durbin
Associate Professor
Psychology
Research Interests
- Co-morbid psychological and intimate relationship distress particularly in response to acute stress and trauma
- The development implementation and evaluation of couple-based prevention/intervention programs for high-risk populations
- Couple-based assessment

Christopher R. Bishop
Professor/Director of Undergraduate Integrative Neuroscience Program
Psychology
Research Interests
- Parkinson's Disease
- Neuroplasticity
- Drug Development

Research Interests
- Development and evaluation of online prevention programs.
- Enhancing engagement in online prevention and intervention programs.
- Prevention of the negative consequences of family disruptions.
- Fostering adolescent coping skills as a prevention strategy.

Research Interests
- Effects of early life stressors
- Neuroendocrinology
- Mammalian physiology
- Evolution and behavior

Research Interests
- Nature and treatment of OCD and social phobia in adults and children
- Factors involved in the etiology and maintenance of OCD
- Role of sleep and circadian rhythms in OCD

Research Interests
- Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
- Functional and structural brain development
- Face processing
- Attention
- Typical and atypical developmental trajectories

Terrence Deak
Professor and Behavioral Neuroscience Area Coordinator
Psychology
Research Interests
- Stress responsive systems
- Neuroendocrinology
- Neural-immune interactions
- Alcohol
- Developmental neurobiology and brain aging

Research Interests
- Neurodevelopment
- Prenatal drug exposure
- Substance use disorder
- Neural circuits
- Sex as a biological variable

Research Interests
- Neural code for taste in the brainstem of lean and obese rats
- temporal coding of sensation

Research Interests
- Cognitive neuroscience of memory and aging
- PFC and hippocampal interactions
- Impact of aging and/or brain injury on relational memory
- Role of eye-movements in memory and its usage

Research Interests
- Clinical psychology
- psychological adjustment in young children
- behavioral medicine/pediatric psychology

Research Interests
- Alcohol
- Development
- Sex Differences
- Neuroimmunology
- “Whole-Body Neuroscience”

Research Interests
- Visual perception and memory and the development of abilities in these areas

Research Interests
- The development and expression of information-processing biases that increase risk for depression in children, adolescents, and adults
- Understanding risk for depression and related outcomes (e.g., suicidal and nonsuicidal self-injury) across multiple units of analysis

Research Interests
- Assessment and treatment issues for individuals with autism spectrum disorders across the lifespan
- service provider training and development

Thomas P. Harding
Lecturer/Director of the Psychological Clinic
Psychology
Research Interests
- Teaching and Training
- Judgment and Decision Making
- Forensic and Disability Assessment

Research Interests
- Preferential choice
- Reinforcement learning
- Naturalistic decision making
- Hierarchical Bayesian models
- Machine learning methods

J. David Jentsch
Distinguished Professor and Chair
Psychology
Research Interests
- Behavior genetics
- Drug addiction and alcoholism
- Impulsivity
- Incentive motivation
- Reinforcement and reward

Abbie Chapman Johnson, PhD
Assistant Professor
Psychology
Research Interests
- Vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia
- Neurovascular function in the hippocampus
- Chronic hypertension and cerebral ischemic stroke
- Healthy aging and age-related dementias

Matthew D. Johnson
Professor and Director of Clinical Training
Psychology
Research Interests
- Changes in marriages and family functioning
- Intimate partner violence
- Psychological science impacting public policy

Research Interests
- Adolescent stress and drug exposure
- Drug abuse vulnerability
- Kappa opioid receptors
- Dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin
- Alcohol use disorder
- Cocaine addiction
- Opiate abuse

Alexander Khislavsky
Visiting Assistant Professor
Psychology

Celia M. Klin
Dean of Harpur College
Harpur College of Arts and Sciences; Psychology
Research Interests
- Psycholinguistics
- reading
- comprehension and memory for text

Deborah Kreiss
Neuroscience, Research Assistant Professor
First-year Research Immersion Program
Research Interests
- Biological basis of pathology and treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
- Evaluation of animal models of anxiety and depressive disorders
- Physiological mechanisms mediating the therapeutic effects of psychoactive agents

Research Interests
- similarity and analogy
- neural network models of cognition
- knowledge representation
- education and transfer of learning
- machine learning

Research Interests
- Schizophrenia and schizotypy
- Severe personality disorders
- Personality neuroscience
- Quantitative/statistical methods
- Longitudinal research methodology
- Operational psychology and selection
- Insider risk detection

Research Interests
- Auditory cognitive neuroscience
- Human speech perception and communication
- Auditory attention, working memory, and category learning
- Neural dynamics and functional networks through fMRI and EEG

Research Interests
- Dissociation and dissociative disorders
- Experimental psychopathology
- Mindfulness/acceptance
- Effects of trauma
- Hypnosis
- Evidence-based psychotherapy
- Science vs. pseudoscience

Research Interests
- behavioral interventions
- brief motivational interventions
- substance abuse
- college student drinking

Richard Mattson
Associate Professor, Director of Undergraduate Program
Psychology
Research Interests
- Communication processes in intimate dyads
- Sexual consent and assault
- Intimate partner violence
- Gender and gender norms

Research Interests
- Episodic Memory
- Aging
- Structural and Functional Neuroimaging
- Biomarkers of Preclinical Alzheimer's Disease
- Health Disparities

Research Interests
- Sexual Socialization
- Reproductive Health Attitudes
- Body Image Development
- Healthy Sexual Behaviors and Decision Making

Research Interests
- Elementary information processing (animals/humans)
- Memory and forgetting
- Role of temporal relationships between events in elementary learning
- Pavlovian conditioning

Research Interests
- Eyewitness Testimony
- Eyewitness Confidence
- Police Interaction with Witnesses
- Jury Perceptions of these variables

Raymond G. Romanczyk
Distinguished Service Professor; Co-Director
Psychology; Institute for Child Development
Research Interests
- Autism spectrum disorders
- attention deficit and learning disabilities
- applied behavior analysis
- behavior therapy
- technology application to human services
- large scale service delivery systems

Research Interests
- Disorders of Memory
- Neurodegeneration
- Neuroplasticity and Neurotrophins
- Neurobiology of Reward

Research Interests
- Ability-related beliefs
- Individual and psychosocial factors associated with academic engagement
- Interventions promoting academic achievement
- Stereotyping and prejudice

Research Interests
- Language processing focusing on sentence comprehension and the interface between semantic processing and spoken word identification
- Memory with an emphasis on executive processes that contribute to memory and the role of prefrontal cortex

Research Interests
- Alcohol
- Social Interactions
- Stress
- Anxiety

Research Interests
- Alcohol use disorder
- Stress
- Cognitive function
- Synaptic transmission
- Neuroimmune signaling
- Sex differences

David F. Werner
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Psychology
Research Interests
- Alcohol and anesthetic action
- addiction
- neuroplasticity
- neuropharmacology
- molecular genetics

Deanne L. Westerman
Professor and Cognitive Area Coordinator
Psychology
Research Interests
- Human memory

Research Interests
- Health psychology and behavioral medicine
- Biopsychosocial model of health and illness
- Substance use (e.g., nicotine/tobacco; alcohol) and addictions
- Pain (e.g., clinical assessment; laboratory human experimental models)
- Mechanisms and effects of co-occurring substance use and medical conditions (e.g., chronic pain)
- Psychopathology and transdiagnostic constructs
- Translational research and intervention development
Adjunct Faculty
Emeritus Faculty
View Full Profile Cynthia M. Connine
Emerita Professor of Psychology and Linguistics
Psychology