Western Kentucky University

Department of Psychology


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Research Labs

 

Faculty Research Interests

Reagan Brown
My research interests are personnel selection, psychometrics, and statistics.

Pitt Derryberry
My research interests pertain to socio-cognitive development during adolescence and the college years with specific emphases on the development of moral judgment and self-understanding.
Website: Research of Ethical and Social Topics (REST) Lab

Lisa C. Duffin
My research interest spans the factors that impact academic quality at many different levels (i.e., program-level, group-level, and individual-level) and in many different contexts (i.e., university, K-12 schools, lab).
Website: The Academic Quality (TAQ) Lab

Rick Grieve
My research interests lie in the area of eating disorders, and right now I am investigating men's eating disorders, especially muscle dysmorphia. I am also interested in sport fan behaviors. I have a number of studies going in both areas through the Clinical/Applied Research (CAR) Group. 
Website: Clinical/Applied Research (CAR) Group

Lance Hahn
My primary research focus is on the semantic memory underlying word recognition. I use a very multidisciplinary approach that includes aspects of computation, behavior and neuroscience. Two representative projects are 1) behavioral and computational measures of word expectancy within a local context and 2) an examination of how gender and sex hormones influence the recognition of aggressive words.
Website: Semantics Lab

Sally Kuhlenschmidt
My research is identifying, classifying, and assessing faculty development practices in higher education institutions. I use specialized Internet search tools as well as informal contacts to identify units.

Elizabeth Lemerise
My research examines aspects of social and emotional development in preschool and elementary school children. Specific topics addressed are social and emotional development, peer relations, and social information processing. 
Lab: Social Development Lab

Diane Lickenbrock
My research interests focus on early social and emotional development, beginning in infancy, by focusing on the dynamics of the family. Using longitudinal designs, I examine how characteristics of the child and parents influence the development of emotion regulation and parent-child relationships. I am particularly interested in the role of the father in his child's development.
Lab: Children and Families Lab

Kelly L. Madole
My main interest is in conceptual development. Currently, my research is focused on the factors that influence our beliefs about social categories. I am also conducting research on how adults' reasoning about object categories is similar to reasoning about events. 
Lab: Cognitive Development Lab

Andrew Mienaltowski
I study social and emotional reasoning across adulthood. My lab is currently investigating how we recognize emotion in the facial expressions of others, as well as how socioemotional goals (e.g., love, friendship, competitiveness, etc.) and stress impact decision making.
Lab: Lifespan Social Cognition Lab

Sharon Mutter
My research interests center on how age-related changes in cognitive processes such as attention, learning, and memory affect older adults ability to acquire both causal and non-causal contingency knowledge. At the moment, we are investigating (1) age differences in the ability to transfer causal knowledge learned about one set of cues to a similar, but novel set of cues, and (2) age differences in causal learning following error-driven and simple associative learning tasks.
Lab: Cognition Lab

Farley Norman
The goal of my Laboratory's research is to understand visual and tactile perception. We study how human participants perceive the 3-D shape and motion of environmental objects. We also study how perception changes as people age and become older.
Lab: Vision and Haptics Lab

Tony Paquin
My research interests are: 1. The impact of culture on workplace behavior (e.g., productivity/organizational effectiveness, leadership, and incivility) in traditional and nontraditional organizations. 2. Psychometric issues in the translation and design of cross-cultural instruments. 3. Rater agreement in the context of performance appraisal.

Jenni Schelble
My research examines cognitive factors related to student learning and achievement. I am interested in how working memory capacity (the limited attentional resources we have available during effortful tasks) influences problem-solving and retrieval of information from long-term memory. Part of this work investigates methods for teaching effective strategies to individuals with low working memory capacity (i.e., fewer attentional resources).
Lab: Attention and Memory Lab

Amber Schroeder
My research interests focus primarily on (a) the examination of negative employee and organizational behavior (e.g., workplace deviance, cyberbullying, and discrimination), (b) the assessment of employee personality and culture and their impact on work outcomes, and (c) the use of social media in employment settings.
Lab: Industrial/Organizational Psychology Lab

Matt Shake
My research focuses on how cognitive aging affects language processing and comprehension. This includes research on how external factors (e.g., text structure, reading environment, etc.) and internal factors (e.g., reader goals, attentional capacity, etc.) affect older adults' ability to process and retain information that they read.
Lab: Adult Learning Lab

Betsy Shoenfelt
My research interests focus on factors that influence performance in business, industry, education, and sport. Recent research has focused on justice perceptions of disciplinary decisions in team settings,  influences on organizational citizenship behavior, identifying and developing team values, and the measurement and development of leadership skills.

Brandy Tiernan
My research focuses on self-regulation in a variety of contexts. Currently, I use event related potentials (ERPs) coupled with behavioral techniques to investigate the neural correlates of affect, emotion regulation, cognitive control and aging.
Lab: Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Lab

Aaron Wichman
I am interested in social cognition, and in how cognitions either can be perceived as threatening or as information to integrate into judgments. I try to understand when and how people come to think in these ways.

Steve Wininger
The majority of my research interests are in motivation, specifically in teaching people to self-regulate. My research spans three different contexts: exercise, learning, and sport. The three central outcome variables are exercise adherence, self-regulated learners, and peak sport performance. 
Lab: Motivation Lab

Qin Zhao
My research interests include metacognition, self-judgment, and self-regulation. Currently, the metacognition lab is examining how cognitive, motivational, and social factors influence metacognitive judgment of performance.
Lab: Metacognition Lab


Student Research Opportunities

A "yes" under openings for students means that the faculty member will consider allowing you to work in his/her lab. Please contact that individual faculty member to discuss further.

Faculty Name Lab Name Openings For Students
Undergraduate Graduate
Reagan Brown   No No
Pitt Derryberry Research of Ethical and Social Topics (REST) Lab Yes Yes
Lisa C. Duffin The Academic Quality (TAQ) Lab Yes Yes
Rick Grieve Clinical/Applied Research (CAR) Group Yes Yes
Lance Hahn Semantics Lab Yes Yes
Sally Kuhlenschmidt   No No
Elizabeth Lemerise Social Development Lab Yes Yes
Diane Lickenbrock Children and Families Lab Yes Maybe
Kelly Madole Clinical/Applied Research (CAR) Group Yes Yes
Andrew Mienaltowski Lifespan Social Cognition Lab Yes Yes
Sharon Mutter Cognition Lab Yes Yes
Farley Norman Vision and Haptics Lab Yes Maybe
Tony Paquin   Yes Yes
Jenni Schelble Attention and Memory Lab Maybe Maybe
Amber Schroeder Industrial/Organizational Psychology Lab Yes Yes
Matt Shake Adult Learning Lab Maybe Maybe
Brandy Tiernan Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Lab Yes Maybe
Aaron Wichman   Yes Yes
Steve Wininger Motivation Lab Yes Yes
Qin Zhao Metacognition Lab Yes Yes
 Last Modified 4/8/13