The Psychology Newsletter for Spring 2013 (.PDF, 690 KB) covers updates for the Science IV and V Buildings, profiles some of our faculty and alumni (both Graduate & Undergraduate), and highlights our Honors students and awards winners from 2012.
Research training and research experience are strongly emphasized in the Cognitive Psychology Program. The strength of the research programs has made the Psychology Department one of the strongest and most successful departments in the University. Students learn to initiate, execute and interpret independent projects as members of a cognitive-area faculty member's laboratory. Graduate students across all areas benefit from a highly productive research atmosphere in the department. Students are exposed to a wide variety of research programs by direct participation, research seminars in which both faculty and students participate, and colloquia by researchers visiting from other institutions.
There are two areas of excellence that are emphasized in our Cognitive Psychology Program.
One of these areas is perception and language (Connine, Gerhardstein, Inhoff, Klin, Pastore, Van Petten). The research in this area includes issues related to perceptual processes involved in both auditory and visual perception and complex processes involved in language processing (e.g., auditory and visual word recognition), reading and text comprehension.
The second specialization focuses on learning and memory (Gerhardstein, Klin, Kurtz, Miller, N. Spear, Westerman). The research in this area includes issues related to basic learning, memory and memory illusions, and the linking of basic memory processes to complex cognitive tasks (e.g. reading, causal reasoning, object recognition and categorization).
Research in these two areas has been applied to issues related to human factors and several faculty and students have collaborations with local industry. Many current and former graduate students have extended their exposure to applied dimensions of cognitive psychology via paid internships in industrial settings. Students from our program have participated in internships at many industrial settings.
Our faculty conducts highly productive research programs with long histories of grant funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and other granting agencies. Most faculty of the area are also involved in work conducted under the auspices of two University research centers – the Center for Cognitive and Psycholinguistic Sciences and/or the Center for Development and Behavioral Neuroscience. The centers promote cross-disciplinary research and include the participation of scientists in Europe, Asia and South America as well as other universities in the United States and from other departments at Binghamton University. Graduate students in associated laboratories benefit from the research centers in the form of travel and research support.
