Speaker Series

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome
Nelson Roque, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Central Florida
for a public lecture entitled
Cognitive Assessment in the Cloud:
A Word on Reproducibility, Approaches, and Lessons Learned
Thursday, October 6, 2022
12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 105
Lunch and refreshments will be provided

Mobile and web-based applications on personal devices can serve as powerful tools to assess research participant and patient health, simultaneously improving patient experiences, lowering barriers to participation, and delivering key data to analyze trends and enhance patient care through earlier intervention. Cloud-based infrastructure provides a highly-scalable and available means to collect, store, and share data, and deliver seamless experiences for application end-users. Join us to learn how Dr. Nelson Roque is leveraging AWS to deliver mobile and web-based assessments to measure changes in patient cognition over time and translating results into improved research and teaching outcomes. Dr. Roque will share challenges and lessons learned in developing research infrastructure on AWS.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Christopher Chabris, Ph.D.

Professor and Co-Director, Behavioral Insights Team, Geisinger Health System

for a public lecture entitled

Nobody’s Fool: Why We Get Taken In and What We Can Do About It

Thursday, October 20, 2022

12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 105

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

How did Bernie Madoff get away with a $65 billion Ponzi scheme for 15 years? How did Diederik Stapel publish 58 fake social psychology studies? Is it possible for an amateur to cheat their way to a grandmaster title in chess? And why does anyone still answer emails from a “Nigerian prince?” Fraud, cheating, and scams of various kinds often seem obvious in retrospect, yet people fall for the same kinds of tricks over and over. I will discuss the psychology of how we get taken in, including some cognitive habits that render us vulnerable to deception, as well as several hooks fraudsters use to attract our interest and trust. The talk will include examples drawn from cases in a variety of fields, as well as lessons for how to spot and avoid deception—and how to apply insights from psychological science to everyday life. This talk will be a preview of the book Nobody’s Fool, by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, to be published next year by Basic Books in the U.S. and by other publishers worldwide.

The Union College Psychology and Biology Departments welcome
Thomas R. Zentall, Ph.D. (Union ’63)
Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky

for a public lecture entitled
An Animal Model of Human Gambling Behavior:
It’s All About the Size of the Potential Reward, not its Probability and the Excitement of Winning

Thursday, February 2, 2023
12:45–1:50 PM • Olin 115
Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Human gambling generally involves suboptimal choice because the expected return is usually less than the investment. Contrary to optimal foraging theory, we have found that animals, too, choose suboptimally under similar choice conditions. Pigeons, like human gamblers, show an impaired ability to objectively assess overall probabilities and amounts of reinforcement when a rare, high value outcome (analogous to a jackpot in human gambling) is presented in the context of more frequently occurring losses. Specifically, pigeons prefer a low-probability, high-reward outcome over a guaranteed low-reward outcome representing a higher overall reward. Furthermore, manipulations assumed to decrease impulsivity (pigeons maintained at lower levels of motivation for food and pigeons given enriched experience) result in decreased suboptimal choice. They do so presumably because they function to decrease attraction to the signal for the low-probability, high-reward outcomes and allow them to consider the more global probability of reinforcement associated with each alternative.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Jenny Weil Malatras, Ph.D.

Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Union College

for a public lecture entitled

The Scientist-Practitioner: Bridging clinical practice and research on family stability

Thursday, February 16, 2023

12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 105

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

The family environment is an inherent part of any discussion of psychological development, as it plays a critical role in children’s emotional and social development. Although various aspects of the family environment have been implicated in the emotional development and adjustment of youth, specific factors and mechanisms through which family context influences development continue to be explored. Pinpointing those factors that put young people at risk or that protect them from maladjustment add to our understanding of psychological development in youth and young adulthood and enhance opportunities for intervention. The present talk is intended to help describe the relationships between family contextual influences—in particular, aspects of family stability including major family life changes and the regularity of daily activities and routines—and emotion regulation and adjustment. Special attention will be given both to defining the construct of family stability and its relationship to psychosocial adjustment and to providing an example of the application of the scientist-practitioner model where psychologists, as equally well-rounded clinical scientists and practitioners, use empirical research as a basis for applied work and use the experience of clinical practice to guide research questions and advance scientific thinking. Clinical case examples will be used to help elucidate concepts.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome
Corinne Moss-Racusin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Skidmore College
for a public lecture entitled
Roadblocks and Roadmaps to Sustainable Occupational Gender Diversity

Thursday, March 2, 2023
12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 105
Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Despite efforts to promote gender diversity, women remain underrepresented within STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields traditionally occupied by men. Similarly, men are underrepresented in HEED (Healthcare, Early Education, and Domestic) roles typically performed by women. This persistent occupational gender segregation can constrain individuals’ professional pathways, undermine the quality of organizational outputs, and reinforce the existing gender status quo. In response, my work: 1) Identifies the ways in which prevalent gender biases impede sustainable occupational gender diversity (i.e., the lasting, substantial presence and valued engagement of individuals from across the gender identity spectrum), and 2). Develops innovative and effective diversity interventions aimed at reducing ongoing occupational gender segregation. In this talk, I will first present experimental evidence of gender bias in both STEM and HEED, before exploring its direct consequences for women’s and men’s enthusiasm for counter-stereotypic occupations. I will then discuss a program of ongoing research (including future directions) focused on generating and testing evidence-based interventions aimed at increasing awareness of and reducing these gender biases. The broader goal of this work is to remove gendered obstacles so that individuals across the gender identity spectrum are freer to pursue their genuine goals and talents.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome
Christopher Niemiec, Ph.D.
Associate Professor Department of Psychology, University of Rochester

for a public lecture entitled

Self-Determination Theory:
An Approach to Enhancing Motivation and Wellness Across Life’s Domains

Thursday, April 27, 2023
12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 105
Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Whether we realize it or not, living well is—in large part—an issue of motivation. At times, people struggle to find energy for goal pursuits, to mobilize effort for high-quality performance, and to persist at important tasks and activities. At the same time, modern society is replete with myriad strategies to energize and direct behavior. One approach is to use external motivators—grades in the classroom, bonuses in the workplace, contingent love in the home, and so on. Yet people can be motivated from within as well, especially when afforded opportunities to regulate their own behavior, to master new skills, and to collaborate with others. An extensive corpus of empirical findings from self-determination theory has shown that tapping into autonomous motivation helps to harness individuals’ effort, persistence, and performance. An important question, then, concerns how to optimize motivation to enhance wellness across life’s domains. Join this lecture with Christopher P. Niemiec, Ph.D. for an overview of self-determination theory and application of cutting-edge research across life’s domains. All are welcome!

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Psyche Loui, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Creativity and Creative Practice, Department of Music, Northeastern University

for a public lecture entitled

Why Music Moves Us: New Directions in Music for Brain Health

Thursday, May 11, 2023

12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 105

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Music is an integral part of every human society, and musical experiences have been associated with human health and well-being since antiquity. Recent use-inspired research on Music-Based Interventions (MBIs) include receptive (music listening) and active (music making) programs designed to make measurable changes to human health and well-being. Designing these interventions consistently and with measurable benefits require addressing the question of dosage, which refers to the duration and intensity (dosage) of the intervention. I argue that cognitive neuroscience can inform the question of dosage in MBIs by quantifying the effects of receptive and active music interventions on predictive coding in the central nervous system. As a ubiquitous feature of biological systems, predictive coding is posited to underlie perception, action, and reward. I will present recent work that encompasses behavioral testing, neuropsychological assessments, and neuroimaging (EEG and fMRI) studies in my lab on how and why humans across societies learn to love music, uncovering the role of different types of prediction on the activity and connectivity of the reward system. Given that music taps into a relatively domain-general reward system which in turn motivates a variety of cognitive behaviors, I will also consider how this knowledge can be translated into MBIs for those with neurological and/or psychiatric disorders, presenting preliminary results on Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome
Marta Mielicki, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Teaching Professor, Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University

for a public lecture entitled
Impacts of Presentation Format on Mathematical Problem Solving

Thursday, September 23, 2021
12:45 – 1:50 PM • Karp 105
Note: No food/drink due to COVID policy

The way a task or problem is presented can change how people think about it. Mathematical problems can be presented in different formats, such as with graphs, equations, figures, tables, etc. The way math problems are presented can help or hurt performance. In this talk, I will discuss three studies I conducted with participants of different ages that explore how presentation format impacts mathematical problem-solving performance by either activating different knowledge or eliciting different solution strategies. This line of work has important implications for education and for other applied domains where people use math, like health decision making.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome
Jennifer Beer, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin

for a public lecture entitled
What Makes You So Overconfident? Lessons from Brain and Behavior

Thursday, October 7, 2021
12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 105
Note: No food/drink due to COVID policy

Human judgment is notoriously imperfect. We even make mistakes when judging our favorite subject: ourselves! It is striking that flawed self-judgment most frequently takes the form of self-flattery. Decades of research show that people tend to be overconfident about themselves, that is, they exaggerate the strengths (and downplay the weaknesses) of their personality, abilities, and expertise. Scientists have rigorously debated the mystery of why people tend to be so overconfident. Whereas some researchers have described overconfidence as the result of a strong desire to protect self-esteem, others have focused on how lazy thinking gives rise to overconfidence. This talk covers a series of behavioral and brain studies aimed at reconciling the ongoing debate. Our results suggest that both camps are right. Overconfidence is typically accomplished with little mental effort. Overconfidence does not always reflect a desire to protect self-esteem. Yet when overconfidence arises to protect self-esteem, it is accomplished through a unique neural pathway. Discussion will also focus on how these results advance neuroscience, which has ignored the ways in which people see themselves in a biased fashion.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Lawrence Ian Reed, Ph.D.

Clinical Assistant Professor, New York University

for a public lecture entitled

The Communicative Functions of Facial Expressions of Emotion

Thursday, October 21, 2021 12:45 – 1:50 PM • Karp 105

Note: No food/drink due to COVID policy

Previous research suggests that some facial expressions of emotion serve a communicative function by signaling private feelings and action tendencies. Further, some expressions such as smiles and scowls affect receivers by increasing the credibility of accompanying verbal and/or written statements. Here, I will discuss the credible signaling hypothesis and the evidence in support of it. This will include a discussion of experiments using economic games to create strategic situations in which facial expressions of emotion might benefit signalers and receivers. These experiments test whether a signaler’s emotional expressions increase the credibility of promises, threats, claims of danger, and assurances of trustworthiness. The results speak to the hidden strategies behind spontaneous and deliberate expressions and their effects on receiver’s behavior.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Gregory Cox, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University at Albany

for a public lecture entitled

Salience by Competitive and Recurrent Interactions: Linking "How" and "Why" in Visual Search

Thursday, January 13, 2022

12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 105

Note: No food/drink due to COVID policy

A challenge in the study of cognition is to relate "how" cognition works at the level of individual neurons with "why" cognition takes place at the level of goal-directed whole-organism behavior. Computational modeling helps address this challenge by linking the dynamics of cognitive processes that produce behavior to the dynamics of the neurons that implement those processes. In this talk, I describe a computational model called Salience by Competitive and Recurrent Interactions (SCRI). SCRI is a theory of how neurons in the Frontal Eye Fields (FEF) integrate localization and identification information over time to form a dynamic representation of the relative salience of objects across the visual field. This representation is treated as "evidence" which is accumulated by other neurons in FEF to decide where to make saccadic eye movements during visual search. SCRI accounts for the millisecond-by-millisecond spiking activity of individual---and often idiosyncratic---FEF neurons in terms of the computational mechanisms exhibited by each neuron. Meanwhile, simulated neural activity from SCRI, coupled with a Gated Accumulator Model of FEF movement neurons, reproduces the details of saccade response times of macaques during various forms of visual search. In this way, SCRI helps to "close the loop" between neural activity and behavior, building bridges between different ways of understanding cognition.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Conor O’Dea, Ph.D.

Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Union College

for a public lecture entitled

The Masculinity-based model of Aggressive Retaliation in Society (MARS)

Thursday, February 3, 2022

12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 105

Note: No food/drink due to COVID policy

I present a theoretical model, the Masculinity-based model of Aggressive Retaliation in Society (MARS). Masculine honor cultural ideologies foster a norm that young men should swiftly and decisively respond against threats to their masculinity. I contend that better understanding how these top-down expectations that are placed on young men interact with bottom-up processes such as hormones, brain area activation, and brain area connectivity will help explain the risk factors behind extreme forms of retaliatory aggression, including shootings in modern society, and why the vast majority of these heinous crimes are committed by young men. These predictors have been established in the literature individually as causes of violence and aggression, but I contend that these may function as additive risk factors and their deadly combination that may lead to retaliatory aggression as a perceived last resort for affected boys and young men.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Natasha Ludwig ('08), Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Clinical Neuropsychologist, Kennedy Krieger Institute

for a public lecture entitled

Pediatric Neuropsychology: Measurement Considerations for Special Populations

Thursday, April 14, 2022

12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 105

Lunch and refreshments will be provided!

Children with medical conditions impacting brain development often benefit from neuropsychological services; however, neuropsychological measures appropriate for those who are very young and/or severely impacted are often limited. This talk will focus on measurement issues in pediatric neuropsychology from the perspective of an early career clinician and researcher. Two primary areas will be discussed including 1) measurement of early social cognition in toddlers at risk for autism spectrum disorder and 2) measurement of cognitive and functional skills in severely affected children with a history of brain injury or developmental and epileptic encephalopathy (DEE). The utility of leveraging partnerships with patient advocacy groups within this realm will also be discussed.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Charles H. Hillman, Ph.D.

Department of Psychology and the Department of Physical Therapy, Movement, & Rehabilitation Sciences, Northeastern University

for a public lecture entitled

Childhood Physical Activity and Excess Adiposity on Brain and Cognition

Thursday, May 5, 2022

12:45 - 1:50 PM • Karp 105

Lunch and refreshments will be provided

There is a growing public health burden of unhealthy behaviors (e.g., physical inactivity, excessive energy intake) among children of industrialized nations. Children have become increasingly inactive, leading to increases in the prevalence of being overweight and unfit. Poor physical activity behaviors during childhood often track throughout life and have implications for the prevalence of several chronic diseases during adulthood. Particularly troubling is the absence of public health concern for the effect of physical inactivity on cognitive and brain health. It is curious that this has not emerged as a larger societal issue, given its clear relationship with childhood obesity and other health disorders that have captured public attention. My research program has investigated the relation of health behaviors (e.g., physical activity, exercise) and their physiological correlates (e.g., aerobic fitness, adiposity) to cognitive and brain health in preadolescent children. My techniques of investigation involve a combination of neuroimaging, behavioral assessments, and scholastic outcomes in an effort to translate basic laboratory findings into everyday life.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Chadly Stern, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

for a public lecture entitled

Is Conformity Stronger Among Conservatives, Liberals, or Neither?

Thursday, September 24, 2020 1:10 - 2:25 via Zoom

Effectively navigating daily life requires people to operate within a shared understanding of the world (e.g., calling an animal that barks a “dog”) and to follow collectively agreed upon norms (e.g., queueing in a store line). Throughout the course of history, conformity has also been used to enforce political agendas. As a result, social and behavioral scientists began to ask whether a desire for conformity varies across the political spectrum. This question has fostered generative debate for nearly a hundred years. Some perspectives have highlighted ideological asymmetries (i.e., differences) in a desire for conformity, whereas others have proposed that preferences for conformity are mostly symmetrical among liberals and conservatives. In this talk, I argue that political liberals and conservatives diverge in a basic psychological desire to affiliate and connect with like-minded others. As a result, conservatives place greater value on constructing shared attitudes and beliefs than do liberals. I outline findings supporting this perspective with regard to both perceived and actual attitude similarity in political groups. I then discuss a series of recent studies examining ideological differences in attitude conformity during real time interactions. I highlight implications of these findings for both political behavior and mundane social interaction.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Tomi-Ann Roberts, Ph.D.

Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology, Colorado College

for a public lecture entitled

Objects in Mirror are Closer than They Appear

Thursday, October 8, 2020 1:10 - 2:25 pm via Zoom (ID: 832 634 7213)

In this talk, Roberts will review over 20 years of theory, research, and advocacy on objectification, sexualization, and self-objectification, springing from her co-authored Objectification Theory, the most cited article in the 40-year history of the APA journal Psychology of Women Quarterly. In 2017 she was featured in many media sources, including the New York Times, regarding her experience as a college student and aspiring actress being sexually harassed by Harvey Weinstein. Her own experiences, and bearing witness to countless examples of so many of us being diminished by the cultural attitude that women’s sexualized bodies are the most important thing about them, continue to motivate her research, applied consulting work, and advocacy efforts as a scholarly voice in the #MeToo movement to promote girls’ and women’s right to their own bodies, and to their seen and heard contributions to the world as fully-fledged human beings.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Gordon Pennycook, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Hill/Levine Schools of Business, University of Regina

for a public lecture entitled

Simple Accuracy Nudges Can Reduce Misinformation Sharing

Thursday, October 15, 2020

1:10 - 2:25 via Zoom (ID: 832 634 7213)

Why do people share false and misleading news content on social media, and what can be done about it? Even though true headlines are rated as much more accurate than false headlines, headline veracity has little impact on sharing. Although this may seem to indicate that people share inaccurate content because, for example, they care more about furthering their political agenda than they care about truth, we propose an alternative attentional account: Most people do not want to spread misinformation, but the social media context focuses their attention on factors other than truth and accuracy. Indeed, when directly asked, most participants say it is important to only share news that is accurate. Accordingly, we find that subtly inducing people to think about accuracy increases the quality of the news they subsequently share. These results, together with recent data on why people fall for fake news, challenge the narrative that people no longer care about accuracy. Instead, the findings support an inattention-based account wherein people fail to implement their preference for accuracy due to attentional constraints – particularly on social media. Furthermore, our research provides evidence for scalable anti-misinformation interventions that are easily implementable by social media platforms.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Sa-kiera Hudson, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale University

for a public lecture entitled

Sexual Orientation and Race Substantially Alter the Prescriptive Nature of Gender Stereotypes

Thursday, January 28, 2021

1:10 - 2:25 pm via Zoom (ID: 832 634 7213)

Gender stereotypes persist in society. Many of these stereotypes are prescriptive, indicating how men and women should behave in social situations. Research on the nature and impact of such prescriptive gender stereotypes usually use generic labels like “men” and “women” and implicitly assume these labels activate general representations concepts that can be easily applied to all members within those categories. However, prototypicality biases like heterocentrism and Eurocentrism makes it more likely that the prescriptive stereotypes of “men” and “women” are normative stereotypes specifically of straight and White people (in an American context). Thus, there is an open question as to whether current understandings of prescriptive gender norms apply to sexual and ethnic minorities. Across two studies (total N = 1074), we assessed gender prescriptive stereotypes for men and women of different sexual orientations (Study 1) and races (Study 2). Results show evidence of heterocentrism but not Eurocentrism, as prescriptive stereotypes of men and women most closely aligned with those of straight men and women. Furthermore, observed gender differences in prescriptive stereotypes were smaller or non-existent for sexual and ethnic minority targets compared to straight and White targets, suggesting that theories around the dyadic, synergic nature of gender stereotypes between men and women might be restricted to straight and White men and women.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium

welcome

Aidan Wright, Ph.D. Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh

for a public lecture entitled

Contemporary Reflections on the Science of Narcissism

Thursday, February 11, 2021

1:10 - 2:25 via Zoom (ID: 832 634 7213)

Narcissism is one of the oldest concepts in psychiatry and, despite being a clinical concept, it has garnered intense lay interest. This broad interest reflects, in part, the significant and potentially serious social consequences associated with narcissism. In the latter part of the last century, the scientific study of narcissism ballooned. However, in the process, the accumulating body of research has raised questions about the definition of narcissism. Specifically, whether narcissism is only about grandiosity (e.g., entitlement, arrogance, egocentrism) or whether there is a vulnerable (e.g., contingent self-esteem, defensive withdrawal, shame proneness) at its core. In this talk, I will discuss a program of research that examines the processes associated with narcissism in the naturalistic settings of people’s daily lives. I will present results from a series of studies that highlight the interplay between grandiosity and vulnerability, but also the difficulty of studying the mechanisms underlying complex constructs.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Brent Hughes, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Psychology Department, UC Riverside

for a public lecture entitled

The Neuroscience of Motivated Cognition

Thursday, April 8, 2021

1:10 - 2:25 via Zoom (ID: 832 634 7213)

This talk will focus broadly on the phenomenon of motivated cognition, under which goals and needs guide individuals’ thinking towards their desired conclusions. These motives range from the need to feel good about oneself to the desire to affiliate with others, they exert an influence across different stages of processing, and they have far-reaching consequences. In this talk, I will show how combining behavioral, computational, and neuroimaging techniques can provide insights into how motivated cognition shapes information processing.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Tim George, Ph.D.

Visiting Assistant Professor, Psychology Department, Union College

for a public lecture entitled

Thinking, Old and New: Experimental Investigations of Creative Cognition

Thursday, April 22, 2021

1:10-2:25 via Zoom (ID: 832 634 7213)

This talk will discuss investigations of the cognitive mechanisms supporting creative thought. When prompted to generate novel ideas, mental fixation can easily arise because the information that comes to mind most readily is typically the least original. A central question of my research is how to reduce the negative influence of obvious ideas. One set of experiments investigates the conditions under which exposure to example ideas either stimulates or hinders originality. Another more recent branch of metacognitive research explores factors that inflate one’s confidence in future creative problem solving performance. This recent work includes studies demonstrating that bullshit receptivity (the tendency to misperceive meaningless statements as profound) is associated with inflated confidence, but decreased performance, on creative problem solving tasks.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Betty Lin, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Psychology Department, University at Albany

for a public lecture TBD

Thursday, May 13, 2021

More details to follow soon.

Sarah Gaither, Ph.D.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome
Sarah Gaither, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University

for a public lecture entitled
Multiple Identities: Multiple Sources of Threat & Belonging
Thursday, September 19, 2019
12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 005

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

We all have multiple identities—race, gender, age, sexual orientation, occupation, etc. However, psychology research has traditionally focused on the effects stemming from one identity (i.e., race OR gender), rather than trying to measure how belonging to multiple groups may actually shift our behavior or change how we react when under threat. With today’s society becoming increasingly diverse, it is important for research to examine how exposure to and interactions with diversity affects the various perspectives and experiences we have. In my talk, I will explore: 1) how belonging to multiple groups shapes how we respond to identity-relevant threats; 2) how a multifaceted sense of self may boost flexible thinking; and 3) how interactions with diverse others can shift our definitions of ingroup. In sum, this talk will push our existing notions of identity research to be more inclusive of multiple identification and the variation that exists across diverse settings.

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John Edlund, Ph. D.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome
John Edlund, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychology, Rochester Institute of Technology

for a public lecture entitled
Being a Responsible Scientist: Study Design, Statistics, and Communication
Thursday, October 3, 2019
12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 005

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

The recent crisis of confidence in psychology has caused the field to carefully evaluate our practices and encourage those that promote responsible science. Some considerations researchers should take include: anticipating how will participants experience the research (from consent to debriefing and beyond), engaging in responsible statistics (avoiding p-hacking, HARKing, and multiple waves of analysis), and embracing the importance of replication and general scientific transparency (such as open materials and data).

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Max Krasnow, Ph. D.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Max Krasnow, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Psychology, Rochester Institute of Technology

for a public lecture entitled

Human Musical Origins in Parent- Offspring Conflict: Testing the Attentional Investment Theory of Musical Evolution

Thursday, November 14, 2019

12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 005

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Humans are not the only species to use music, but features of human music are unique among species in many ways. How did music evolve in our lineage? I will present a recent theory developed that accounts for the evolution of a particular form of music: infant directed song. On this theory, infant directed song evolved through arm- race coevolution between caregivers and infants over signals of attentional investment. This theory makes novel predictions about the features of infant directed song, the universality of those features across cultures, the effects of infant directed song, the universality of those effects, and about the fingerprints of intra-genomic conflict that should be found in the genetics underlying our musical psychology. I will present data testing these predictions, finding confirmatory evidence in each case.

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Mitch Earleywine, Ph.D.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Mitch Earleywine, Ph.D.

Professor of Psychology, University at Albany

for a public lecture entitled

The Unparalleled Evils of Cannabis

Thursday, January 16, 2020
12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 105

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Confusion about cannabis abounds. Data from my lab and others suggest that the plant is neither the heinous generator of all ills nor the magical panacea that many assert. Purported links to troubles, including addiction, neuropsychological deficits, respiratory illness, and mental health problems are likely smaller than media would suggest or easily sidestepped with simple interventions. In contrast, medical effects of the plant or its derivatives, especially for cannabidiol, are comparably exaggerated or easily achieved with less expensive products. I will also report recent work suggesting that demands for abstinence might prove ill-advised and an alternative approach to safe use has considerable potential.

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Darlingtina Esiaka, Ph.D.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Darlingtina Esiaka, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology, Union College
for a public lecture entitled
The Dark Side of Modernity: Felt Obligation in the Context of Eurocentric Global Modernity

Thursday, February 6, 2020
12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 105

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Life in Eurocentric global modernity emphasizes neoliberal individualist understandings of relationality associated with a sense of voluntary connection and freedom from obligation. Although people in their (re)productive prime may find these constructions of relationality to be liberating, their negative consequences are more evident for people—like elders—whose well-being depends on care from others. My work draws upon understandings of everyday life in Ghanaian, Nigerian, Chinese, and U.S. settings (both European American and African American), characterized by relatively less and more engagement with Eurocentric global modernity, as a foundation for examining patterns of felt obligation to parents. Using empirical research conducted across these settings, I illuminate the (typically) obscured cost of modern individualistic ways of being on human relatedness and discuss its implications for eldercare within close interpersonal networks.

Julia Strand, Ph.D.

The Union College Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium welcome

Julia Strand, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology, Carleton College
for a public lecture entitled
The Many Faces of Listening Effort

Thursday, March 5, 2020
12:45–1:50 PM • Karp 105

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

When listening to speech in noise, listeners face a tremendous perceptual challenge. They must distinguish the voice of the speaker from background noise, rapidly map the sounds they hear onto lexical representations in memory, and parse the accent and speaking style of the talker. Although listening to speech in quiet settings may feel like it occurs instantly and effortlessly, listening to speech in noise typically requires deliberate allocation of cognitive resources, referred to as "listening effort." In this talk, Dr. Strand will describe her research on listening effort, with a focus on two questions: 1) What exactly are measures of listening effort measuring? and 2) How does seeing the face of the talker affect listening effort?

Charles Hillman, Ph.D.

Rachel Magin ('14), Psy.D.

Dominique Vuvan, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Skidmore College

Music is an incredible tool for the study of human cognition. This lecture will review work from the Skidmore Music and Cognition Lab guided by three lines of inquiry. First, how does the cognitive system make predictions, and how might different musical contexts shape predictions during listening? Second, how might music serve as a model to investigate the neural substrates of consciousness? Third, how do people differ in their musical processing, and how might the study of these individual differences help us understand neurocognitive function more generally? I will discuss research that employs multiple methods including behavioral measurement, event-related potentials, and brain imaging, in order to make direct connections between the study of musical processing to more abstract questions about human nature.

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Chad Rogers, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Union College

Classical studies in perception have often emphasized the hierarchical flow of information from the “bottom-up” or from the “top-down,” where “bottom” refers to basic sensory contributions to perception and “top” refers to complex perceptual inference. In speech perception, the role of non-sensory based inference in perception in part explains how the brain so often decodes speech quickly, effortlessly, and with tremendous variation in sensory input. Older adults in particular, may be the most likely major population demographic to benefit from non-sensory based inference in their daily perception of speech. The current talk presents several behavioral and neuroimaging experiments that examine the role and caveats of non-sensory based inference in young and older adults.

Chad Rogers recently joined Union College as an Assistant Professor in the Fall of 2018, and is primarily interested how humans are able to understand and decode spoken language. In particular, his work focuses on how we listen to speech changes as we grow older. His work has led to the discovery of the False Hearing effect in older adults, where older adults are more likely than the young to mistakenly report hearing words that are consistent with their prior expectations. Before coming to Union, Chad worked as a Staff Scientist in the Department of Otolaryngology at Washington University in St. Louis, where he examined how functional and structural changes in the brain predict language abilities in young and older adults. His work represents an intersection of cognitive psychology, gerontology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, and communication sciences. Chad is also an avid basketball player and musician, although his proficiency in both is dwarfed by his enthusiasm.

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Walter Boot, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Florida State University

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Lisa Anderson, Ph.D.
Research Fellow, Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota

David Pizarro, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychology, Cornell University