Posted Thursday, May 09, 2013
Professor Paul Quinn was selected to receive the 2013 Francis Alison Award, UD's highest faculty honor. Congratulations!
Click here to read the full UDaily article: http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2013/may/alison-award-quinn-050813.html
Posted Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Graduate student Briana Kennedy recently won "Best Research Presentation" for work conducted at UD at the 2012 Sydney Postgraduate Psychology Conference. The title was "Early perceptual disruption from emotional distractors: An emotion-induced blindness study using ERPs." Her competition included approximately 60 Ph.D. students from across the city, including those from the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales.
Congratulations!
Posted Friday, January 04, 2013
Click on the link below to read a great article featuring the research of Professor Paul Quinn in the December issue of the UD Messenger:
http://www.udel.edu/udmessenger/vol20no3/
Posted Monday, September 10, 2012
Click the link below to read a great UDaily article on the research of Dr. Paul Quinn:
http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2013/sep/infants-faces-091012.html
Posted Monday, June 04, 2012
Two graduating seniors in the Psychology Department have won 2012 Sigma Xi Undergraduate Thesis Awards:
Sage Boettcher
Honors thesis: Exploring the Neural Basis of Emotional Induced Blindness Using Event-Related Brain Potentials
Thesis Director: Prof. James E. Hoffman
Abstract
Sage studied the electrical activity of the brain that is associated with a phenomenon known as "emotion-induced blindness". This occurs when people are searching a rapidly presented sequence of outdoor scene pictures for a target picture (a rotated scene). They are quite accurate at this except for the case when an irrelevant negative picture, such as a wolf baring its teeth, appears shortly before the target. In this case, people are quite sure that the target was never presented, hence the name emotion-induced blindness. Sage found that electrical signals emanating from visual areas of the brain were completely suppressed during emotion-induced blindness, indicating a perceptual basis for the effect. Her experiment and data analyses were technically sophisticated and her results have important implications for understanding how emotion controls attention.
Lisa Dokovna
Honors thesis: Identifying sensitive developmental periods for the effects of neonatal alcohol exposure on the context pre-exposure facilitation effect.
Thesis Director: Prof. Mark E. Stanton
Abstract
Lisa studied spatial cognition in a rodent model of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. This disorder is caused by alcohol consumption during pregnancy and is a leading cause of intellectual disability in the world. Rodent model research helps to identify the causes and cures for this disorder. Lisa's senior thesis advanced this research by identifying a very narrow period in development when alcohol exposure impairs spatial learning and by identifying drug treatments that can reverse this impairment in developing rats. Her research may help to develop treatments that can improve learning and memory in children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.
Founded at Cornell University in 1886, Sigma Xi is the largest Scientific Honors Society in the world, with more than 60,000 members distributed across 500 local chapters in this country and abroad. Each year, the UD Chapter of Sigma Xi grants no more than 5 thesis awards university-wide. The award is based on scientific merit, quality of exposition, and consistency with the Sigma Xi mission -"To enhance the health of the research enterprise, foster integrity in science and engineering, and promote the public's understanding of science for the purpose of improving the human condition."
