Staff News and Recognition
Allison Land has reached the 20-year service credit milestone at UCSC, most of which she has spent as department manager. I know I speak for everyone when I say that words cannot describe how much we value and appreciate you!
Graduate Student Milestones
Dissertations
Monique Crouse: Learning Routine Visual Search Sequences
Craig Fellers: Effects of Offloading on Concurrent Prospective Memory Tasks
David Gordon: Even though we were kids, it felt like we did have a voice: Childhood counternarrative development and maintenance into emerging adulthood
Sam McHugh: What’s Wrong with Being Wrong? Making Sense of Parent Perceptions of Misconceptions.
Audrey Morrow: The Speed of Sight: How Characteristics of Alpha Oscillations Relate to Rhythmic Sampling and Time Perception
Mercedes Oliva: Examining creativity: The role of examples and executive function in idea generation
Vanessa Oviedo: The Liking Gap in Computer-Mediated Communication
Daniel Rodriguez Ramirez: Enacting Transformative Change: Insights from the "Understory of Movements"
Desiree Ryan: The Impact of Economic Inequality and Political Polarization on Attitudes toward Democracy
Andrew Takimoto: The Roles of College Organization Support, Navigational Capital, and Academic Self-Efficacy in LFGCS’ Perceived Persistence to Graduation
Dissertation Proposals
Logan Barsigian: Experiences of Transgender, Nonbinary, and Gender Non-Conforming People in Historically Women-Centered Queer Communities: A Narrative Analysis
Ghazaleh Mahzouni: Examining Individual Differences in Multisensory Temporal Binding Window in Misophonia
Mercedes Oliva: Creativity in the Face of Examples, as Explained by Executive Function
Kat Quinteros: First-generation Latina Women Graduate Students Embracing Contradictions in Conocimiento for Fuller Understandings of Their Identity
Qualifying Exams
Moira Davis: Institutional trauma: Psychological mechanisms that normalize abuse in prisons
Matt Evans: The Musical Brain: Perception, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Imagery of Music.
Carrie Watson: Exploring Transformative Shifts in Social Media: Empowering First-Generation College Students Through Bridging Social Capital
Alix MacDonald: Community Psychology as a Paradigm Shift: Considering Ontological (In)security in Student Responses to Destabilizing Dominant Narratives
Anna Baker-Olson: "No Roles to Fill": Gender and Sexual Socialization of LGB Emerging Adults
Annie Schwartzstein: Becoming Partisan: The Development of Children's Social Preferences Based on Political Group Markers
April Pilipenko: Selective Effects of Ongoing Alpha-Band Activity on Magno- and Parvo-Mediated Detection
Ghazaleh Mahzouni: Negative Reactions to Misophonia Tigger Sounds Can Be Modulated by Positive Attributable Visual Sources
Jexy An Nepangue: How Learners Correct Mistakes: The Influence of Feedback Timing
New Positions
Graduate Student Melina Singh (Advisor: Heather Bullock) has started a two-year postdoctoral appointment as a Kenyon College Teacher-Scholar Science Fellow.
Graduate Student Desiree Ryan (Advisor: Heather Bullock) has started a tenure-track appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at San José State University.
Graduate Student Daniel Rodriguez Ramirez (Advisor: Regina Langhout) has started a tenure-track appointment as Assistant Professor in the Psychology and Child Development Department at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
Graduate Student Mercedes Oliva (Advisor: Ben Storm) has started a tenure-track appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Portland.
Graduate Student Sam McHugh (Advisor: Maureen Callanan) has started a Postdoctoral Research position at Brown University.
Honors, Awards, and Grants
Professor Su-hua Wang and Associate Professor Rebecca Covarrubias were awarded an NSF IGE Grant: Mobilizing Community Cultural Wealth to Transform STEM Graduate Education ($999,985). IGE: Innovations in Graduate Education.
Associate Professor Rebecca Covarrubias is co-PI and lead of one of four components of a large Department of Education Title V Part A HSI grant ($2,999,989) awarded to UCSC titled The Centering Undergraduate Latinx Thriving with University Racial-Equity Action (CULTURA). Her component will focus on HSI Servingness Research Internships: with Undergraduate Participatory Action Research that will connect HIS Servingness research with UCSC practitioner actions/programs.
Professor Nicolas Davidenko received a two-year grant from the Misophonia Research Fund ($497,000) to study the role of visual and auditory mental imagery as a potential intervention for misophonia.
Graduate Student Jajaira Reynaga received a J. Frank Yates Student Travel Award to attend the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society.
Graduate Student Sam Basch received an SRCD Student and Early Career Council Dissertation Award.
Professor Gina Langhout is the PI for the William T Grant Institutional Challenge Grant Continuation.
Graduate Student Barry Yao received a Culture and Cognition Preconference Travel Award.
Leadership Roles, Community Engagement, Public-Facing Scholarship, News Media, and More
Owing to the amazing work of many Psychology faculty over many years, the construction of a new family student housing complex and Child Care Center on campus has begun. The expanded childcare facility will allow UCSC to serve the children of students, faculty, and staff and support Psychology Department teaching and research.
Professor Barbara Rogoff organized meetings of Mayan research participants in San Pedro la Laguna, Guatemala, to discuss research findings, and one of the meetings was aired on local television.
New research on absolute pitch and musical imagery by Graduate Student Matt Evans and Professor Nicolas Davidenko was featured in dozens of news outlets, including the UCSC newscenter and Forbes magazine. They were also interviewed for the Psychonomic Society’s podcast “All Things Cognition.”
Emeritus Professor Bill Domhoff was interviewed by Comet and Oubenal in a paper published in revue Française de sociologie titled “Power Structure Research: An Interview with G. William Domhoff, May 24, 2023.”
Professor Craig Haney and his work related to the use of solitary confinement was featured in numerous media outlets, the No Stupid Questions podcast, 13WMAZ news, and the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.
Assistant Professor David Menendez was interviewed as part of an article in The Forward in August 2024 about his work on children’s understanding of death.
Professor Phil Hammack was featured in the University of California News in an article titled “Welcome to the world of radical authenticity—how the internet is bringing sexual and gender diversity to the fore.”
In August, Professor Phil Hammack begun his term as President of the Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology (SQIP).
Professor Margarita Azmitia has been actively volunteering at Grey Bears to deliver food to farm workers in Watsonville.
Continuing Lecturer Andrea Cook presented on the importance of teaching nutritional psychology to college students at the WPA annual conference in San Francisco.
Graduate Student Daisy Cervera was elected Vice President of the 2024-25 UCSC Graduate Student Commons Executive Board.
New Publications
Graduate Student Matt Evans and Professor Nick Davidenko published a new paper in Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics titled “Absolute pitch in involuntary musical imagery.”
Graduate Student Jexy An Nepangue published a new paper in Clinical and Experimental Dermatology titled “Evaluating the relationship between depression, suicidal thoughts, and ulcerative colitis in acne patients on isotretinoin: A case-control study.”
Graduate Student Vera Umansky and Professor Maureen Callanan published a new paper in Frontiers in Education titled “Parents’ spatial talk to boys and girls in museum settings: Variations by science topic and exhibit scale.”
Assistant Professor David Menendez published a new paper in Journal of Experimental Child Psychology titled “A bird’s-eye view of research practices in mathematical cognition, learning, and instruction: Reimagining the status quo.”
Assistant Professor David Menendez published a new paper in PLOS ONE titled “Children’s questions and teachers’ responses about COVID-19 in Turkey and the US.”
Assistant Professor David Menendez published a new paper in Journal of Child and Family Studies titled “COVID-19 and child adjustment: The role of coparenting conflict and child temperament.”
Assistant Professor David Menendez published a new paper in Cognitive Development titled “Children’s biological causal models of disability.”
Assistant Professor David Menendez published a new paper in Child Development titled “The social aspects of illness: U.S. children’s and parents’ explanations of the relation between social categories and illness.”
Assistant Professor David Menendez published a new paper in Education Sciences titled “The role of visualizations in adults’ learning about genetic inheritance.”
Graduate Student Elise Duffau and Professor Jean E. Fox Tree published a new paper in Personal and Ubiquitous Computing titled “Expecting politeness: Perceptions of voice assistant politeness.”
Emeritus Professor Thomas Pettigrew published a new book titled “Anti-black racism in America: Is it declining?” The book is being published by Oxford University Press and will be available April, 2025.
Graduate Student Vanessa Oviedo published a new paper in Computers in Human Behavior Reports titled “social connectedness in spatial audio calling contexts.”
Graduate Students Vanessa Oviedo and Jajaira Reynaga published a new paper in Scientific Reports titled "Transcutaneous cervical vagus nerve stimulation enhances second-language vocabulary acquisition while simultaneously mitigating fatigue and promoting focus.”
Professor Su-hua Wang and Graduate Student Isabelle Gross published a new paper in Journal of Children and Media titled “Exploring modalities and functions of social interaction initiated by toddlers in the U.S. during touchscreen play.”
Professor Su-hua Wang published a new paper in Developmental Psychology titled “Parental guidance fosters hands-on learning by infants in culturally different ways.”
Professor Su-hua Wang and Graduate Student Sam Basch published a new paper in Advances in Child Development and Behavior titled “A cultural perspective of action-based learning by infants and young children.”
Graduate Student Sam Basch and Professor Su-hua Wang published a new paper in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Cognitive Science titled “Causal learning by infants and young children: From computational theories to language practices.”
Professor Barbara Rogoff published a new paper in Review of Research in Education titled “Mutually constituting, fractal: Individual and cultural aspects of holistic process.”
Former Graduate Student Itzel Aceves-Azuara and Professor Barbara Rogoff published a new chapter in the Handbook of Childhood Studies and Global Development titled “Mothers’ reflections on generational changes in childhood in a Mayan town.”
Professor Cam Leaper published a new paper in British Journal of Developmental Psychology titled “The development of ambivalent sexism: Proposals for an expanded model.”
Professor Phil Hammack and Associate Professor Adriana Manago published a new paper in American Psychologist titled “The psychology of sexual and gender diversity in the twenty-first century: Social technologies and stories of authenticity.”
Professor Phil Hammack published a new paper in Sexuality & Culture titled “‘Be dog have fun’: Narratives of discovery, meaning, and motivation among members of the pup subculture.”
Graduate Student Carrie Ann Watson and Professor Margarita Azmitia published a new paper in Parenting: Science and Practice titled “First-generation college students’ intergenerational narratives of redemption and upward mobility.”
Former Graduate Student Emily Hentschke and Professor Heather Bullock published a new paper titled “Habitat for humanity Monterey Bay: Examining the impact of affordable housing on multigenerational economic security, family well-being, and civic engagement.”
