SENIOR PROJECT (PSYC/NEURO 500/501)

Supervised research on a specific problem in psychology or neuroscience based on proposals submitted to the department by the end of a student’s junior year. I will supervise research projects developed from psychological and neuroscience research, with year-long projects focusing on topics related to those described below after choosing a question-appropriate methodology from psychophysics, eye tracking, and/or stereoscopic display (to induce, e.g., depth perception, binocular rivalry). On rare occasions (i.e., when students have both experience and a reasonable proposal), senior projects using EEG will be permissible, though students should discuss the possibility prior to enrolling with Prof. List. Writing a thorough literature review of primary research on an approved topic is appropriate for those interested in a one-semester commitment.

MULTI-SENSORY INTERACTIONS
Interactions between modalities (e.g., vision, audition, haptics) can change behavior. For example, spatially- or temporally-coincident signals from different modalities make us better able to respond to those signals, than if they are not coincident. However, many questions remain when considering how other perceptual features (e.g., size, luminance, pitch, shape, texture) might interact across modalities. Will listening for a discordant note in a song make you better able to spot a misplaced piece in a puzzle? Will looking at a (cylindrical) glass help you manually find your (also-cylindrical) chapstick in your cluttered bag?

PERCEPTION, ATTENTION AND AWARENESS
Our experience of perceiving the world around us is generally effortless. However, the information processing stages and underlying neural mechanisms that result in such a rich experience are not fully understood. Topics of investigation might address: How stable sensory input can lead to different perceptual interpretations, so-called “multi-stable percepts� (e.g., binocular rivalry, ambiguous motion, Rubin’s face-vase); how short-term experience influences what we perceive or focus on (through priming, probabilistic information or adaptation); what types of information influence our perception or attention without our awareness (i.e., subliminal or unconscious processing).

Next anticipated time I will teach it: 2017-18

TITLES OF SUPERVISED SENIOR PROJECTS

2015-16 Neuroscience

1. Charlotte Beers The Effect of Multiple Concussions on Social Affect Recognition
   

2. Casey Brown Matching Across the Senses
   

3. Glen Donovan Memory Influences on Color Judgments
   

4. Joy George Perceptual Learning Styles and Foreign Language Vocabulary Retention
   

5. Morgan Lane Can Emotional Induction Shift Political Preferences? (Fall only)
   

6. Alex Mitko EEG of Creativity and Reward: Working Hard or Hardly Working
   

2014-15 Neuroscience

1. Jonathan De Jesus Epilepsy and Depression (Fall only)
   

2. Carly Poremba Breaking into Awareness: The Effect of Postdiction on Our Conscious Perceptions
   

3. Christopher Loan Memory is Modulated by Subconscious Faces
   

4. Sandhya Rao Vision and Haptics in Spatial Learning
   

2014-15 Psychology

1. Jack Wildman Prehospital Pain Management: Attitudes of Mohawk Valley Advanced Life Support Providers
   

2014-15 Neuroscience

1. Elliot Greenham Covert Shifts in Attention Affect Pupil Dilation (Spring only)
   

2. Victoria Harbour Emotional Ethics: The Contribution of Emotion and Cognition to Moral Judgment
   

3. Sidika Kajtezovic Do the Deaf See Better than the Hearing? An Examination of Changes in Spatial Vigilance After Early Auditory Deprivation
   

4. Sarah Mehrotra Cognitive Control Plus Math
   

5. Emily Palen Taste (and then Find) the Rainbow: The Effects of Gustation on Visual Attention
   

2014-15 Psychology

1. Quan Wan Do Music Chills Sharpen or Dull the Rest of the World?