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
- Vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia
- Neurovascular function in the hippocampus
- Chronic hypertension and cerebral ischemic stroke
- Healthy aging and age-related dementias
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
Vice Provost and Dean of The Graduate School; Professor
Academic Affairs, Office of the Executive VP and Provost; Graduate School; Psychology
Research Interests
- Stress responsive systems
- Neuroendocrinology
- Neural-immune interactions
- Alcohol
- Developmental neurobiology and brain aging
Marvin Diaz
Associate Professor and Behavioral Neuroscience Area Head
Psychology
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 the risk for depression in infants, children, adolescents and adults
- Understanding the risk for depression and related outcomes (e.g., suicidal and nonsuicidal self-injury) across multiple units of analysis
Jennifer Gillis Mattson
Professor
School of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering; Psychology
Research Interests
- Lifespan issues for neurodivergent and autistic individuals
- Service provider and parent training, support and professional development
- Dissemination and adaptation of evidence-based practices that benefit autistic individuals in limited-resource settings
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
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
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
- behavioral interventions
- brief motivational interventions
- substance abuse
- college student drinking
Richard Mattson
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
- Childhood preventive health: Promoting health and well-being early in the life course
- Psychosocial determinants of health: How environments influence child health disparities
- Psychophysiology: Using wearables to measure body signals and rhythms
- Pediatric cardiovascular behavioral medicine: Understanding childhood risk trajectories
- Data science: Open-access methods for reproducible and transparent science
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
- Semantic plasticity
- Category learning and concept use
- Structure learning and representation
- Semantic generalization
- Neural mechanisms underlying flexible
semantic cognition in humans - Neuroimaging (fMRI)
- Computational modeling
Cyma K. Van Petten
Professor
Psychology; The Linguistics Program
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
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
