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.
Christina Balderrama-Durbin
Assistant 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
- 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 including childhood experiences cognitive factors and sleep/circadian rhythms
- Role of information-processing biases in anxiety
Cynthia M. Connine
Emerita Professor of Psychology and Linguistics
Psychology
Research Interests
- Spoken word recognition
- Speech perception
- Language processing
- Psycholinguistics
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
- Fetal alcohol
- alcoholism
- synaptic transmission
- emotional processing
- anxiety
Research Interests
- Neural code for taste in the brainstem of lean and obese rats
- temporal coding of sensation
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
- Attention
- Cognitive Control
- Eye
Tracking
- Event-Related
Potentials
Peter C. Gerhardstein
Professor and Cognitive and Brain Sciences Coordinator
Psychology
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
- Word recognition
- eye-voice coordination
- subvocal speech
- Perceptual processes during reading
- Oculomotor control during reading
- Neurological structures and cognitive processes
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
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
- Alcoholism
- alcohol and behavior
- behavior therapy
- psychopathology
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
Research Interests
- The conceptualization and assessment of satisfaction in relationships and the causes and consequences of dysfunctional relationship communication.
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
- Individual and psychosocial factors associated with academic engagement
- Women and underrepresented minorities in higher education
- Stereotyping, prejudice, and intergroup relations
- Interventions promoting academic engagement
Research Interests
- Developmental behavioral neuroscience; characteristics and neurobiological mechanisms of the ontogeny of alcohol ingestion and alcohol reinforcement during early ontogeny; very early learning and the ontogeny of memory
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 Director of Undergraduate Program
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
Melissa Morales
Assistant Professor, Pharmaceutical Sciences
School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Brian A. Rooney, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor
Decker College of Nursing and Health Sciences
