Faculty Research in the Psychology Department

Tim Beyer is a developmental psychologist who is interested in how we make sense of what we hear. His research generally focuses on language comprehension in both monolinguals and bilinguals. He uses eye-tracking and reaction time measures to investigate the real-time processing and comprehension of language, focusing on how language minorities use standard American English grammatical morphology. More details about Tim's research can be found at www.tim-beyer.com.

Topics of Interest:

• Language comprehension, production, & processing
• Monolingual, bilingual, & multilingual experiences
• Stereotypes, bias, affect as they relate to language
• Cross-cultural comparisons
• Developmental comparisons
• Cross-linguistic comparisons

I am open to supervising student research in...

• Summer, Fall and Spring

Erin Colbert-White is Associate Professor of the Department of Psychology at the University of Puget Sound. Her research concerns features and outcomes of social interactions in a variety of social species. She studies parrot–human social relationships at the individual and group level in her work with parrots. This includes in-depth qualitative and quantitative measures of interactions between one parrot and its owner and work on nonverbal behavior and cue use across multiple individuals. The overarching purpose is to investigate the extent to which parrots adopt human-like social and verbal behavior.

With other species, her interests are also concerned with social cognition. This includes intra-species social behavior such as assessing empathy or altruism and inter-species social behavior such as social referencing cue use by dogs. More details about her research can be found at www.erincolbertwhite.com.

Topics of Interest:

• Human-Nonhuman social relationships
• Animal cognition
• Human interaction with AI
• Animal Behavior
• Social Cognition
• Communication
• Zoo-based research

I am open to supervising student research in... 

• Summer, Fall

Andrew Madison is a cognitive psychologist whose research focuses on flow state and the connection between addictive social media behaviors and factors such as impulsivity and mindfulness. Metacognition is also a common theme throughout his research. He uses survey methodology and standardized cognitive evaluations.

Topics of Interest:

• Flow state
• Addiction to social media
• Impulsivity
• Mindfulness
• Executive functioning
• Metacognition

Jennifer McCullen’s research broadly concerns the role of emotion regulation as a source of risk and resiliency for mental health. She is interested in investigating how we can best assess positive and negative emotion regulation strategies to elucidate their relation to indices of mental health, including symptoms of stress, trauma, anxiety, and depression. She uses both qualitative and quantitative methodologies and aims to create tools pertaining to emotion regulation that are transportable to vulnerable and underrepresented populations to inform psychological assessment and intervention. Her work has primarily engaged adolescents although she is interested in emotion regulation skills and abilities across the lifespan.

Topics of Interest:

• Emotion regulation
• Investigating how emotional regulation relates to mental health
• Mental health risk & resilience
• Questionnaire development
• Developing or adapting questionnaires related to various areas of interest
• Intervention

I am open to supervising student research in...

• Summer, Fall, Spring

David Moore is a clinical psychologist whose research interests include adolescent and adult development, relationships, and teen parenting. One primary focus is romantic relationships, looking at communication patterns and other factors related to relationship satisfaction and stability, as well as psychological and physical health. Based on his extensive use of mindfulness practices in clinical practices and also the development of a course offered at Puget Sound on the science and practice of mindfulness, Professor Moore has also recently begun investigating the effects of mindfulness and best practices in teaching mindfulness to college students.

Topics of Interest:

• Clinical Psychology
• Adolescent & adult development
• Romantic relationships
• Teen parenting
• Mindfulness & meditation
• Stress, health, & wellness
• Methods including surveys, questionnaires, observational data, & interviews

I am open to supervising student research in...

• Summer, Fall, and Spring

Melvin Rouse’s research looks at how hormones, the brain, and reproductive behavior interact. His lab uses songbirds as a model system. This model is unique in that it allows for the ability to study how gonadal hormones act to modulate patterns of learning and behavior, as well as how hormones affect the perception of behavior. These studies demonstrate the influence of the endocrine system on brain plasticity, learning, and social behavior. Rouse teaches in the areas of behavioral neuroscience, hormones and behavior, research methods and statistics, and comparative neuropsychology.

Topics of Interest:

• Hormones & behavior
• Social neuroscience
• Sex as a biological variable
• Neuroethology
• Ornithology

I am open to supervising student research in...

• Summer

Rachel Song is a social psychologist whose research investigates how people respond to their cultural and physical environments in ways that reinforce (or reduce) social inequities. She studies how people react to growing diversity in their neighborhoods, how people make sense of their role in systems of privilege and oppression, and how culture shapes these processes. Her research uses multiple methods including field surveys, experiments, text analyses, and often draws inspiration from other disciplines including sociology and ethnic studies. More information about Rachel’s research can be found at rachelxsong.com

Topics of Interest:

• Self and Identity
• Race and Racism
• Inequality
• Intergroup Relations
• Cultural Psychology
• Gentrification, segregation, and neighborhood change

Open to supervising student research in: 

• Summer and Spring