Affiliated Research Centers, Labs, and Initiatives

Cognitive psychology

Cognitive Modeling Laboratory | Travis L. Seymour

The Cognitive Modeling Lab focuses on cognitive systems in the brain that facilitate our ability to act strategically and optimally. Our studies involve human behavior in laboratory and real-world task settings using techniques including traditional behavioral measures (e.g., response time and accuracy), electromyography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and computational modeling/simulation to reveal important features of how the mind works and predict human performance on a variety of simple and complex tasks.

Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory | Megan Boudewyn

The Cognitive Neuroscience Lab uses electrophysiological methods (EEG/ERPs), transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and other methods to study how language interacts with other cognitive processes. Current research topics include attention lapse during language comprehension, the intersection of cognitive control and language comprehension processes, and how impairments in these processes impact cognition in disorders such as schizophrenia.

Hausman Memory and Metacognition Lab | Hannah Hausman

The Hausman Memory and Metacognition Lab explores how people learn best, how they think they learn best, and why there is a frequent disconnect between the two. In particular, it investigates how students assess their learning of complex concepts—like mathematics—and makes study decisions accordingly. Our lab is also interested in what teachers know about effective learning techniques and how their knowledge influences their teaching practices.

High-Level Perception Lab | Nicolas Davidenko

In the High-Level Perception Lab, we investigate questions about the interface of perception, memory, and communication. What makes some faces easy or hard to remember? How do we integrate visual and auditory cues in face-to-face communication? What can virtual reality perception teach us about reality perception?

IntERPrET Lab | Liv Hoversten

The IntERPrET Lab researches language processing, including how bilinguals monitor and select languages for comprehension and production, focusing on the neurocognitive mechanisms involved. We also study reading processes in monolinguals and bilinguals, exploring how information is extracted from text and its role in successful comprehension. Through projects like the Accented Disfluency Project, SpID Project, and WuThi Replication Project, we investigate the complexities of language control, speech disfluencies, and language processing across various contexts.

Memory Laboratory | Benjamin C. Storm

The Memory Lab focuses broadly on human memory, with a special focus on the causes and consequences of forgetting. We are particularly interested in the role of forgetting in resolving competition during retrieval, overcoming fixation in thinking and problem-solving, updating autobiographical memory, and facilitating new learning, especially in the context of the interactions between memory and technology. This work contributes to a more complete understanding of how people learn, think, and remember.

Samaha Lab | Jason Samaha

The Samaha Lab uses psychophysics and computational modeling, in concert with tools from cognitive neuroscience, to measure and manipulate the human brain. We seek to understand the neural basis of visual consciousness, attention, perceptual decision-making, metacognition, and working memory and are particularly interested in the role of neural oscillations in these domains.

Spontaneous Communication Laboratory | Jean E. Fox Tree

In the Spontaneous Communication Lab, we study the production and comprehension of verbal and nonverbal behavior across a variety of communicative settings, like face-to-face communication, virtual communication, vicarious learning, and written communication. We explore topics like sarcasm, fake news, and interaction with nonhuman agents, using research methods including corpora analyses, reaction time experiments, referential communication tasks, questionnaires, and analyses of speech produced under controlled conditions.

Yamashiro Lab | Jeremy Yamashiro

The Yamashiro Lab conducts cognitive psychological research into how social frames shape human memory. We study how conversational remembering can drive convergence onto shared representations across dyads and larger social network structures, and we explore topics like collective memory, collective future thought, social representations of history, and moralized remembering, with a focus on mnemonic influence, temporal thought, and biases.

Developmental psychology

Baby Lab | Su-hua Wang

The Baby Lab studies how interactive technologies affect children’s communication, learning, and development. For example, we have studied technologies that facilitate cleft speech therapy at home and the gaps between children’s experiences with the Internet of Things (IoT) and industry security measures. We also explore how young children understand others’ actions and intentions. Our research highlights the importance of contextual framing in social cognition, demonstrating that preschoolers share more when tasks are framed collaboratively.

Callanan Lab | Maureen Callanan

The Callanan Lab investigates how preschool children develop cognitive and language skills through everyday conversations with their parents. Focusing on diversity in family discussions, particularly around science and nature, the research explores how children learn word meanings and develop theories about the world. Studies take place in natural settings, such as at home or in children’s museums, to better understand how informal learning experiences shape early childhood development.

CRECE Lab | David Menendez

The CRECE Lab studies cognition, representation, education, culture, and environment. We’re interested in how culture influences child development, how people think and learn about STEM concepts, and how we can modify books, lessons, or educational materials to help children understand science better. In our studies, children typically answer questions about STEM topics, like metamorphosis, genetic inheritance, evolution, illness, death, mathematical operations and symbols, and astronomy.

Culture and Tech Lab | Adriana Manago

We explore the positive correlations between social media use, social connectedness, and well-being among young people. Our lab has studied the implications of social media technologies, including how close friends use mobile devices during face-to-face interactions and how adolescents manage closeness and independence in relationships with parents. International collaborations include examining cross-cultural differences in social media communication and bridging social capital with colleagues in Japan and France.

Diversity in Development Lab | Hyesung Grace Hwang

We explore how social environments shape social biases and early emerging understanding of social exclusion and social inequities. For example, racial discrimination tendencies are not present at birth and are likely malleable early in life. Language and accents are also incredibly consequential group markers that even young children use to divide our social world and are a source of social biases. We also explore how children begin to comprehend the consequences of such social categorizations.

Health Equity in Youth Lab | Danny Rahal

This lab studies how social identities impact daily experiences and responses throughout development. Adolescence involves social stressors that can elicit bodily responses over time, negatively impacting health. We examine how cultural and societal treatment influences adolescent experiences and responses, aiming to understand if these differences contribute to health disparities. Our research indicates that youth from marginalized backgrounds often feel lower in the social hierarchy, which affects their responses to academic and social stressors.

IDEAA Lab | Margarita Azmitia

The IDEAA Lab focuses on identity development and education in adolescents and adults. Our lab investigates how minorities’ gender, ethno-racial, social class, and social relationships impact educational transitions, including how they may utilize resources that influence academic and mental health outcomes. We are interested in using mixed methodologies to contribute to our understanding of minority students’ sense of belonging and well-being and its impacts on graduation rates.

Leaper Lab | Campbell Leader

The Leaper Lab investigates gender development and sexism across the lifespan, focusing on how social interactions in families, peer groups, schools, media, and relationships shape gender expectations and identities. The lab’s research explores how children’s experiences differ based on gender, influencing social and cognitive skill development, preferences, and competencies. Key research topics include sexism, gender and academic achievement, close relationships, language, and the intersection of gender with race and ethnicity.

Rogoff Research Group | Barbara Rogoff

The Rogoff Research Group investigates the organization of teaching and learning in family settings and schools. We are examining the idea that in Indigenous-heritage communities of Central America and North America, children are supported in learning by keenly observing ongoing community events and contributing to collaborative group engagement. With increasing participation in Western schooling, the learning approaches of both Mayan and US Mexican-heritage participants resemble those of middle-class U.S. European-heritage participants.

Social psychology

Center for Economic Justice and Action | Heather Bullock

Collaborative Research for Equity in Action (CREA) | Rebecca Covarrubias

Collaborative Research for Equity in Action (CREA) investigates how dominant institutional policies and practices undermine minoritized students’ educational, social, and mental health outcomes and how to reverse those effects through culturally informed approaches, including highlighting students’ cultural strengths. This research offers new perspectives on understudied populations and utilizes multiple methodologies, including experiments, longitudinal designs, surveys, focus groups, interviews, and program evaluation. Our work analyzes intersections between class, race/ethnicity, and college generational status.

Community Psychology Research & Action Team | Regina Langhout

The Community Psychology Research & Action Team (CPRAT) engages in participatory action research in a local community. The team has been working in the area since 2007. In all cases, the research questions and plans are jointly determined with community collaborators but are always related to community-based empowerment or groups with historically little power gaining control over the resources that affect their lives.

Haney Lab | Craig Haney

The Haney Lab applies research in psychological data and theory to better understand the criminal legal system. Focusing on issues such as death penalty decision-making, the psychological effects of imprisonment and solitary confinement, and the social and historical causes of criminal behavior, the lab uses diverse research methods to examine the intersection of psychology and justice. The lab aims to contribute to meaningful reform in criminal legal practices.

Migration, Identity, & Education Lab (MIEL) | Saskias Casanova

Our lab uses social, psychological, educational, and interdisciplinary perspectives to understand the diverse experiences of immigrant-origin students and students of color by highlighting their understudied social identities and the cultural strengths they bring to their educational experiences. We conduct rigorous research about the learning experiences of students of color and students of immigrant origin, focusing on their intersectional lived experiences, stigmatization and adaptation, cultural wealth, collective resilience processes, and development related to learning.

Narrative and Identity Research Group (NIRG)

The Narrative and Identity Research Group (NIRG), formed in 2003 by Sarbin and Thorne, holds workshops for students and faculty to present narrative data and jointly discuss analytic and interpretive issues. NIRG provides a unique, supportive space for analyzing and interpreting qualitative data like conversations, interviews, and field notes. It encourages participation from students and faculty across psychology and other disciplines, fostering curiosity about narrative theory and qualitative methods.

Psychology of Activism | Shelly Grabe

The Psychology of Activism lab’s research involves training a new generation of feminist researchers to use social psychology’s theoretical and methodological perspectives to make applied contributions to positive social change for women. The mentorship I provide for students fits within our department’s larger goals in social psychology of preparing social scientists to produce applied research on justice-related issues in different cultural, political, and policy contexts through a variety of research methods.

Race and Social Justice Lab | Courtney Bonam

The Race and Social Justice Lab focuses on race as a social process from both a social and community psychology perspective. We examine race as a fluid social construct shaping human imagination, perception of people and physical space, and social interaction. We are especially interested in race as it shapes the everyday experiences of individuals and communities in the United States in ways that may perpetuate or alleviate racial inequality.

Sexual And Gender Diversity Laboratory | Phil Hammack

Our research focuses on topics like newer or more visible sexual and gender identities in the 21st century, experiences of stigma among those expressing intimate diversity, and queer men’s health and identity development in the 21st century. Embedded in our work is a particular interest in generational and intersectional patterns of experience, the role of social technologies in experience and development, and legal, institutional, and social policies regarding sexual and gender diversity.

Siwar Hasan Aslih Lab | Siwar Hasan Aslih

Our studies seek to understand intergroup relations, collective action, political behavior, and emotions. The lab’s research examines the motivations and barriers to participating in collective action, addressing individual-level and structural factors. We also investigate public reactions to collective action and its repression, as well as the dynamics of allyship between disadvantaged and advantaged groups. In the area of emotions, we are interested in future-oriented and self-conscious emotions among disadvantaged groups. This work intersects with psycholinguistics, focusing on how language shapes perceptions of self and others within intergroup dynamics.

Quantitative methods and clinical psychology

Bonett Lab | Doug Bonett

The Bonnett Lab specializes in quantitative psychology, focusing on developing and refining statistical methods. Recent research areas include interval estimation problems, categorical data analysis, sample size planning, and techniques for combining and comparing results from multiple studies. By advancing quantitative methods, the Bonnett Lab aims to improve data analysis practices within psychology and contribute to more robust findings in the field.

Emotion, Cognition, & Psychopathology Lab | Hannah Raila

Our research explores connections between emotion (e.g., how happy we are) and cognition (e.g., what we pay attention to) in the context of psychopathology. We study visual biases in what information we detect in our environment, what factors predispose us to certain visual biases, and how this affects how we feel. Our research leverages tools from cognitive psychology including eye tracking, virtual reality (VR), and continuous flash suppression (CFS), with applications for psychopathology.

Quantitative Methods for Psychology Lab | Hanna Kim

The Quantitative Methods for Psychology Lab focuses on advancing and evaluating quantitative methods in psychology and the social sciences. Current projects include developing causal mediation techniques to assess the impact of educational programs on child development and using latent variable modeling to analyze psychological dynamics in close relationships. The lab is dedicated to addressing practical challenges in interdisciplinary research by adapting diverse methods and data sources to tackle complex, real-world problems.