I will be accepting graduate students for Fall 2009.

In the Adult Development Lab, graduate students are part of a dynamic research team. We are part of the Cognitive Aging program in the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech. Graduate students in this program complete the School of Psychology’s graduate course and research requirements. 

 

In my lab, graduate students are offered many additional training opportunities, including:

  • conducting & publishing cutting-edge research in social cognitive development
  • assisting with reviewing journal article submissions
  • participating in grant writing
  • training and supervising research assistants
  • collaborating with other professors in the School of Psychology

National Institute of Aging grants give students the freedom to choose projects based on research interests. In addition, my lab provides many resources that facilitate graduate student productivity. These resources include paid research assistants who assist graduate students with their projects, support for conference travel, and graduate student funding.

 

In weekly lab meetings, graduate students discuss ongoing research projects; theoretical issues; controversial “hot” topics in social cognition, emotion, and everyday problem solving; as well as empirical design and statistical issues. Our weekly meeting times also provide opportunities to present ideas before designing an experiment, giving a talk, or submitting a paper for publication.

 

I regularly hold individual meetings with students about their various projects. In this way, research is closely supervised. At the same time, the format in our lab allows students to become autonomous scientists as they progress through the program.  In short, at every phase of the research process, graduate students are fully involved in the goal of broadening our understanding of social cognition and everyday problem solving from an adult developmental perspective.

 

 

Selected Thesis and Dissertation Citations

 

Theses

 

Horhota, M. (June, 2008). The role of stereotype activation and age on communication patterns and impression judgements in the context of interpersonal interactions.

 

Chen, Y. (1995, August). Age differences in stages of attributional processing.

 

Watson, T. L. (December, 1996). The effects of emotion, strategy focus, and personal orientation on everyday problem solving effectiveness.

 

Stein, R. R.  (May, 1999). The effects of age stereotype priming on the memory performance of older adults.

 

Cooper, C. L. (November, 2002). Age differences in dispositional attributions and elaborative inferences.

 

Heckman, A. L. (April, 2004). Age differences in emotion regulation in interpersonal situations: The role of affect complexity and expressivity.

 

Horhota, M. (November, 2004). Age differences in the correspondence bias: An examination of the influence of personal belief.

 

Mienaltowski, A. (September 2004). Mood and social judgments: The influence of affect on age-related differences in the correspondence bias.

 

Tehan, J. (November, 2005). Age-related differences in deceit detection: The role of emotion recognition.

 

Dissertations

 

Chen, Y. (May, 1998). Unwanted memory: Age differences in susceptibility to the influence of false information on social judgments.

 

Watson, T. L. (February, 1999). Can I get there from here (and can I get back)? A study of abilities and wayfinding performance.

 

Stein, R. (July, 2001). Negative age stereotypes and older adults' memory performance: An examination of age stereotype activation and underlying mechanisms.

 

Coats, A. H. (December, 2007). Age-related effects of online emotion regulation strategies on mood and memory.

 

Stanley, J. T. (May, 2008). Emotion recognition in context.

 

Horhota, M. E. (July, 2008). The role of stereotype activation and age on communication patterns and impression judgments in the context of interpersonal interactions.

 

Mienaltowski, A. S. (July, 2008). Age differences in interpersonal problem solving: Examining interpersonal conflict in an iterated prisoner's dilemma game.