Listening and learning, walking and working – the ability to concentrate underlies all that and more. A $1.6 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to the UC Irvine Department of Cognitive Sciences and the University of Southern California’s Department of Psychology will fund research that could lead to a better understanding of human concentration and suggest ways to improve it. Barbara Dosher (pictured), UCI cognitive sciences professor and School of Social Sciences dean, leads a research team with collaborator Zhong-Lin Lu of USC that will study normal attention processes to gain insights into attention deficits in those who exhibit abnormalities.   More »

Joseph L. White, UC Irvine professor emeritus of social science, has been named San Francisco State University's 2008 Alumnus of the Year. He will be honored at the university's 107th annual commencement May 24. White has been widely recognized for his extensive contributions to psychology and is a founding member of the Association of Black Psychologists. He is considered by many the 'father' of black psychology and a pioneer in changing psychology to respect and understand the black community. In 2004, he received the UCI Alumni Association's highest honor --the Lauds and Laurels Extraordinarius Award. He is highly regarded for his teaching, research and mentoring of generations of students.   More »

Stress and fear in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks may be making Americans sicker, according to a new study by UC Irvine researchers. Researchers Roxane Cohen Silver and Alison Holman (pictured) found that acute stress responses to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon have been linked to a 53 percent increase in cardiovascular ailments over three years following the attacks. Most of the study participants watched the attacks on television and had no personal connection to the victims. "We must consider the potential public health impact of indirect exposure to extreme stress since the majority of our respondents were exposed to the attacks only by watching television,” Silver said.   More »

Myron Braunstein, professor emeritus of cognitive sciences at UC Irvine, has received a $500,000, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to study how people perceive motion based on characteristics such as speed and object size. Using motion pictures of real-world scenes, Braunstein and co-investigator George Andersen from UC Riverside – a former student of Braunstein’s – measure participants’ abilities to gauge motion in a 3D environment, based on varying speeds, sizes and other characteristics of moving objects.   More »

A new study by UC Irvine psychologist Elizabeth Loftus shows that digitally altered photos influence our memories and attitudes toward public events. In the study, 299 participants viewed doctored and original photos depicting the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest in Beijing and a 2003 anti-war protest in Rome. Those who viewed the digitally altered photos remembered the events as being bigger and more violent than they really were, suggesting that viewing doctored photographs might affect people’s memories of past public events.The study, published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, was designed by Loftus along with University of Padua researchers Franca Agnoli and Dario Sacchi.   More »

UC Irvine psychologist Roxane Cohen Silver will receive the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Service at the group's leadership conference in October. The honor, bestowed to one individual annually, was initiated by the APA Board of Scientific Affairs to recognize outstanding service to psychological science. Silver is a national expert in the field of stress and coping and has spearheaded the longest-running national study of psychological responses to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. She serves on a federal advisory committee created by the Homeland Security and State departments that is developing travel policies for people visiting the United States. The APA cited her "dedicated pursuit ... of bringing the value of psychological science to the government's attention and the public eye" and her role in "mentoring students and faculty."

Despite years working with troubled teens, psychologist Elizabeth Cauffman was surprised by the results of her new survey of kids in juvenile detention centers. Detained girls face very different psychological issues than average teen girls and, in some ways, more severe problems than incarcerated boys. Although girls generally internalize problems, Cauffman found that girls in detention are twice as likely as boys to externalize problems with aggression or anger, and just as likely as boys to report worrisome levels of alcohol or drug use. The study, which appears in the July issue of Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, will help state officials and staff members at youth correctional facilities better understand the mental health of troubled teens in their care.   More »

Jeanett Castellanos, a lecturer in UC Irvine’s Social Sciences and Chicano/Latino Studies and director of the Social Sciences Academic Resource Center, was named recipient of the Samuel M. Turner MENTOR Award by the American Psychological Association. MENTOR stands for Minority Education, Nurturing, Training, Organizational advocacy and Research. The award honors a psychology faculty member who has demonstrated a commitment to teaching and training clinical psychologists to work more effectively with ethnic minority clinical populations. Castellanos, who earned bachelor's degrees in psychology and sociology from UCI in 1994, will receive the award during the APA convention in San Francisco this August.   More »