Spotlight on the Psychological Science Department

The Department of Psychological Science is a community of teacher-scholars, staff, and students dedicated to the mission of creating, evaluating, disseminating, and applying psychological knowledge and skills, with the goal of understanding and improving the lives of individuals, organizations, and communities.  Our 20 faculty and 4 lecturers aspire to achieve excellence in teaching and research in the science of psychology.  All of our faculty have active, nationally and internationally recognized research programs.  The majority of these programs have the support of major funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

Psychological Science is one of the largest undergraduate majors at the University of Vermont, with over 600 majors and 150 minors.  Our courses serve students from each of UVM’s undergraduate colleges and contribute to the newly formed Bachelor of Science degree in Neuroscience.  Each year, nearly 100 of our majors pursue independent studies in research laboratories; several go on to win awards for research, such as the APLE and Suiter awards.

The department has one of the three Ph.D. programs in the College of Arts and Sciences and one of the largest Ph.D. programs at UVM.  Our 20 faculty contribute regularly to their discipline, averaging over three peer-reviewed publications per faculty member per year.  Over 60 percent of our faculty hold extramural research grants, which all together total $12 million.  Indeed, this department alone generates approximately 40 percent of the extramural research dollars in the College of Arts and Sciences! 

Our department also reaches out across disciplines to generate interdisciplinary, collaborative programs of research.  Our faculty play a central role in the University’s Neuroscience, Behavior and Health Spire of Excellence, and have active collaborations with faculty in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, the College of Medicine, the College of Engineering, and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.  In addition, our faculty have substantially contributed to the newly formed Ph.D. in Neuroscience.

The departmental focus on science cuts across our four clusters – behavioral neuroscience, clinical psychology, developmental psychology, and social psychology – and accounts for our recent change in name from the Department of Psychology to the Department of Psychological Science.  Our new name reflects more accurately our commitment to empirically-based approaches to psychology, and teaching psychology to undergraduate and graduate students.  Indeed, our students receive regular and consistent instruction on the science of psychology throughout all stages of their coursework.

In the Behavioral Neuroscience area, faculty study the relationship between behavior and biological processes with specific research interests in the neurobiological mechanisms of Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning, stress and anxiety, and sex differences in learning and emotion.  Mark Bouton, Robert B. Lawson Green and Gold Professor of Psychology and University Scholar, conducts NIH-funded research seeking to understand the basic mechanisms of learning, memory, and emotion that are represented in Pavlovian and instrumental learning.  His work has sought to understand extinction and other inhibitory processes in learning and memory, and how "contexts," or cues that are present in the background whenever learning and remembering occur, control them.  Lecturer Judith Christensen teaches advanced courses in motivation and cognition.  She was the former Clinical and Educational Director at the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center in the Vermont Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services. William Falls, the chairperson of the Department, examines the neurobiological mechanisms of resilience to stress and anxiety and is specifically interested in understanding the mechanisms through which voluntary exercise confers resistance to stress and reduced anxiety.  John Green is the Director of the Experimental Ph.D. program.  His NIH-funded research program investigates the neural and the psychological mechanisms underlying learned behaviors.  He is particularly interested in understanding the contributions of the cerebellum, the striatum, and the prefrontal cortex to learning, as well as the effects of voluntary exercise.  Jom Hammack, a recipient of the Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award, conducts NIH-funded research examining the neurobiological mechanisms of stress, emotion and resilience.  He is currently exploring the involvement of serotonin and stress-related neuropeptides in mediating the behavioral consequences of exposure to stressful stimuli, as well as the neurochemical changes mediating stress-resilience.  Donna Toufexis carries out NIH-funded research on sex differences and sex hormone effects on emotional learning and anxiety behavior.  Her focus is the development of animal models of endocrine-related psychopathologies including post-traumatic stress disorder and post-partum depression.

In Clinical Psychology the faculty examine psychological distress, its influences, and healthy adaptation.  Keith Burt explores the interplay of normal and abnormal development, especially across adolescence and the transition to young adult life.   He is specifically interested in relations between competence (e.g., academic success, social relationships, and work success) and broad dimensions of psychopathology (e.g., internalizing and externalizing problems).  Karen Fondacaro directs the Behavior Therapy and Psychotherapy Center, our training clinic for the Ph.D. in clinical psychology, where she is responsible for managing the clinic and supporting a scientist-practitioner model of training for pre-doctoral clinicians.  Her clinical work and research is focused on mental health in Vermont’s growing population of refugees, and interpersonal violence as occurs with child victimization, sexual abuse, trauma, domestic violence, and criminality.  Rex Forehand is the Heinz and Rowena Ansbacher Professor of Psychology, University Distinguished Professor of Psychology, and University Scholar.  His research, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), focuses on family stress (e.g., parent depression, interparental conflict) and child psychosocial adjustment. He is also interested in parenting prevention and intervention efforts to enhance child adjustment in the context of family stress.  Betsy Hoza is the Bishop Joyce Professor of Human Development and a University Scholar.  Her research, funded by the NIMH, examines the social, academic, and self-system functioning of children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) from a developmental psychopathology perspective.  The majority of her research is designed with the goal of applying what is learned toward developing better evidence-based treatments for children with ADHD.  Matthew Price, who joined the faculty in 2013, focuses on creating innovative strategies to expand the reach of clinical care for victims of traumatic events and those suffering from anxiety disorders.  A goal of his research is to develop and evaluate novel interventions delivered through widely available technologies such as mobile devices, remote sensors, and websites.  Alessandra Rellini analyzes sexual function and dysfunction in men and women using state-of-the-art psychophysiological measures. Among many specific research projects, funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), she is examining emotional states and emotional vulnerabilities on sexual function and sexual responses and the predictors of sexual revictimization in adults with a history of childhood sexual abuse.  Kelly Rohan, the Director of the Clinical Ph.D. program, received NIMH funding to study cognitive-behavioral models of depression onset, maintenance, and recurrence; cognitive-behavioral therapy for depression; as well as subtypes of recurrent depression, including seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and menstrual distress.  Sondra Solomon focuses her research on the psychosocial sequelae of HIV/AIDS in rural areas and the psychological impact of visible and concealed physical distinctions. Her work on HIV/AIDS in rural areas is currently funded by a NIH grant that is in its 10th year.  Timothy Stickle researches the factors that are associated with the development of serious emotional and behavioral problems in childhood and adolescence, with particular focus on the factors that put children at risk for antisocial and aggressive behavior and how this knowledge may be applied to improve assessment, prevention, and treatment of antisocial and aggressive behavior problems. 

In the Developmental Psychology area faculty investigate the development of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, including the interplay between biological and environmental influences, and draw on the theoretical framework of developmental psychopathology.  Jamie Abaied studies the complex processes through which parents contribute to children's development, with a particular focus on parents' contributions to children's stress reactivity, coping, and psychopathology. Her work seeks to explain why children who are exposed to similar parenting experiences follow diverse developmental pathways.  Lecturer Shamila Lekka teaches advanced courses at the interface of developmental and clinical psychology, including health psychology and psychology of families.  Her primary research interest is in the origins and outcomes of parent-child relations in early childhood.  Dianna (Annie) Murray-Close examines gender differences in children’s and adolescents' social development, with an emphasis on the development of aggressive behavior.  Her work specifically explores forms of aggression that are more common among girls (i.e., relational aggression) in addition to forms that are more typical in boys (i.e., physical aggression).  Alice Schermerhorn used National Institute of Child Health and Human Development-funded research to focus on the associations between exposure to stressors like interparental conflict and children’s socio-emotional development and adjustment.  Her work seeks to identify the mechanisms underlying stress-adjustment problem associations in children and which children are at greatest risk when exposed to stress. 

In the Social Psychology area our faculty study the interplay between the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others and people's thoughts, feelings, behaviors, physiology, and health.  Susan Fenstermacher is a lecturer in Psychological Science and a UVM Sustainability Fellow.  She teaches intermediate and advanced courses in both social and developmental psychology and her research explores both the internal (cognitive, genetic, neuropsychological), and external (social, environmental/contextual) mechanisms contributing to individual differences in observational learning and processing of social stimuli, and the interaction of these mechanisms across development.  University Scholar Carol Miller utilizes NIH-funded research to investigate how people who are devalued and stigmatized by society cope with the prejudice and discrimination they face. Among Carol’s current projects are studies of how people with HIV/AIDS cope with the stigma of this illness, the relationship of community attitudes toward people with HIV/AIDS, and perceptions of stigma by people with HIV/AIDS who live in those communities.  Elizabeth Pinel is the Director of the Undergraduate Program in Psychology.  Her NSF-funded research looks closely at the conditions that enable prosocial harmony.  In particular, she studies whether moments of shared subjective experience – I-sharing – quell people’s own self-needs and thus enable them to perspective-take, empathize, and resolve conflict with others.  Liz’s research concentrates on the role that I-sharing plays in liking for strangers and loved ones alike, and thus has implications for a wide range of relationship types.  Sylvia Perry, our newest faculty member, will join the faculty in the fall.  Funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, she will analyze bias awareness in children and adults and the role it plays in decision making and intergroup relationships.  Lawrence Rudiger, Senior Lecturer, teaches introduction to psychology, research methods and organizational psychology.  His research interest is in the area of university teaching and he actively pursues new modes and methods for improving learning in the classroom.