Master of Science in Psychological Science Program

University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign

2017 – 2025

The following selection of publications, manuscripts in process, and presentations include research that began while MSPS students (in bold) were enrolled in the MSPS program.

Publications

  1. Benjamin, A. S., *Yang, R., & *Ünal, B. (in press). Changes in recent practices in research and publishing: A view from JEP:LMC. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
  2. Buetti, S., Xu, J., & Lleras, A. (2019). Predicting how color and shape combine in the human visual system to direct attention. Nature Scientific Reports, 9, 20258.
  3. Carrica, L. K., Choi, C. Y., Walter, F. A., Noonan, B. L., Shi, L., Johnson, C. T., Bradshaw, H. B., Liang, N. C., & Gulley, J. M. (2023). Effects of combined use of alcohol and delta-9-tetrahydrocannibinol on working memory in Long Evans rats. Behavioural Brain Research, 449, 114475.
  4. Castro, A. A., DeHart, S., & Berenbaum, H. (2024). Pleasurable emotions and internalizing psychopathology: A multi-study examination of specificity and alternative explanations. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 63, 473-486.
  5. Chen, T., Knight, R. S., Center, E. G., Gratton, G., Fabiani, M., Savazzi, S., Mazzi, C., & Beck, D. M. (2023). Bypassing input to V1 in visual awareness: A TMS-EROS investigation. Psychophysiology, 60(S1), S57.
  6. Choi, J. W., Hong, W., Abela, J. R. Z., & Cohen, J. R. (2021). Comorbid Depression and Anxiety Symptoms in Chinese Adolescents: Testing the Explanatory Power of a Diathesis-Anxiety Model. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, 49(4), 503-517.
  7. Choi, J. W., Thakur, H., & Cohen, J. R. (2021). Cardiac autonomic functioning across stress and reward: Links with depression in emerging adults. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 168, 1-8.
  8. Choi, J. W., Thakur, H., Briley, D. A., Temple, J. R., & Cohen, J. R. (2022). Testing the factor structure and measurement invariance of the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale in adolescents across time, gender, and race/ethnicity. Psychological Assessment, 34(8), 752.
  9. Clevenger, J., Yang, P.-L., & Beck, D. M. (2019). An advantage for targets located horizontally to the cued location. BioRxiv, 740712.
  10. Cohen, J. R., Choi, J. W., Thakur, H., & Temple, J. R. (2021). Psychological distress and well‐being in trauma‐exposed adolescents: A residualized, person‐centered approach to resilience. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 34(3), 487-500.
  11. Crawford, C. M., Griffith, J., Young, J. F., & Hankin, B. L. (2021). Implicit Beliefs about Emotions in Youth: Associations with Temperamental Negative Emotionality and Depression. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 40, 121-144.
  12. DeHart, S., Thomas, J. G., & Berenbaum, H. (2025). Deprivation, contentment, and depression. Journal of Positive Psychology, 1-9.
  13. Ding, Y., Hults, C. M., Raja, R., & Simons, D. J. (2023). Similarity of an unexpected object to the attended and ignored objects affects noticing in a sustained inattentional blindness task. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 85, 2150-2169.
  14. Ding, Y., Simons, D. J., Hults, C. M., & Raja, R. (2024). Are familiar objects more likely to be noticed in an inattentional blindness task. Journal of Cognition, 7(1), 28.
  15. Fraley, R. C., Chong, J. Y., Baacke, K. A., Greco, A. J., Guan, H., & Vazire, S. (2022). Journal N-pact factors from 2011 to 2019: evaluating the quality of social/personality journals with respect to sample size and statistical power. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 5(4).
  16. Hults, C. M., Ding, Y., Tie, G. G., Raja, R., Johnson, W., Lee, A., & Simons, D. J. (2024). Inattentional blindness in medicine. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 9, 18.
  17. Jongman, S. R., Copeland, A., Xu, Y., Payne, B. R., & Federmeier, K. D. (2023). Older adults show intraindividual variation in the use of predictive processing. Experimental Aging Research, 49(5), 433-456.
  18. Kern, S., & Laurent, H. K. (2019). Childhood abuse predicts affective symptoms via HPA reactivity during mother-infant stress. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 107, 19-25.
  19. Kim, J. Y., Hsu, N., Newman, D. A., Harms, P. D., & Wood, D. (2020). Leadership perceptions, gender, and dominant personality: The role of normality evaluations. Journal of Research in Personality, 87, 103984.
  20. Knight, R. S., Chen, T., Center, E. G., Gratton, G., Fabiani, M., Savazzi, S., Mazzi, C., & Beck, D. M. (2024). Bypassing input to V1 in visual awareness: a TMS-EROS investigation. Neuropsychologia, 6(198), 108864.
  21. Monge, C. K., & Laurent, S. M. (2024). Signaling outrage is a signal about the sender: moral perceptions of online flaming. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 29(2).
  22. Patel, T. N., *Yang, R., Steyvers, M., & Benjamin, A. S. (2024). The metacognition of attention: Using self-scheduled breaks to improve sustained attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.
  23. Peng, Y., Zhu, Z., Hoiem, D., & Wang, R. F. (2023). Comparing Human Object Learning with Deep Neural Networks. Journal of Vision, 23(9), 4984-4984.
  24. Rudolph, K. D., Li, Y., Li, X., & Cai, T. (2023). Social goals as predictors of children's in vivo emotional responses to social challenges. Child Development, 94, 424-438.
  25. Rudolph, K. D., Monti, J. D., Flynn, M., & Goodwin, G. J. (2020). Maladaptive social consequences of emotional clarity deficits in early adolescence. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 40(8), 1226-1243.
  26. victimization. Developmental Psychobiology, 63, 481-495. doi:10.1002/dev.22022.
  27. Rudolph, K. D., Monti, J. D., Modi, H., Sze, W., & Troop-Gordon, W. (2020). Protecting youth against the adverse effects of peer victimization: Why do parents matter? Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 48, 163-176. 10.1007/s10802-019-00576-9
  28. Rudolph, K. D., Skymba, H. V., Modi, H. H., Davis, M. M., Sze, W. Y., Rosswurm, C. P., & Telzer, E. H. (2021). How does peer adversity “get inside the brain?“ Adolescent girls‘ differential susceptibility to neural dysregulation of emotion following.
  29. Rudolph, K. D., Skymba, H. V., Modi, H. H., Davis, M. M., & Sze, W. Y. (2023). Biological embedding of peer experiences: The contribution of peer adversity to stress regulation. In P. A. C van Lier, & K. D. Deckard (Eds.), Biosocial interplay during elementary school: Pathways toward maladaptation in young children. Springer. DOI : 10.1007/978-3-031-07109-6
  30. Sahakyan, L., Kwapil, T. R., & Jiang, L. (2019). Differential Impairment of Positive and Negative Schizotypy in List-Method and Item-Method Directed Forgetting. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149, 368-381.
  31. Sbrilli, M. D., Haigler, K., & Laurent, H. K. (2021). The indirect effect of parental intolerance of uncertainty on perinatal mental health via mindfulness during COVID-19. Mindfulness, 12(8), 1999-2008.
  32. Simons, D. J., Hults, C. M., & Ding, Y. (2024). Individual differences in inattentional blindness. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
  33. Skymba, H. V., Graham, C. N., Modi, H. H., Davis, M. M., Troop-Gordon, W., Heller, W., & Rudolph, K. D. (in press). Emotion mindsets and emotion regulation self-efficacy: Moderation by emotional competence and gender. Merrill-Palmer-Quarterly, 70 (Invited article for 70th anniversary special issue).
  34. Spielmann, J., Feng, S., Briley, D. A., & Stern, C. (2022). Mental health contributors among transgender people in a non-WEIRD society: evidence from China. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 13(3), 747-757.
  35. Vahedi, M., Howell, K. L., Fraley, R. C., Gillath, O., & Deboeck, P. R. (in press). The association between using figures for attachment functions and subjective well-being. Social Psychological and Personality Science.
  36. Wang, Y., Buetti, S., Cui, A. Y., & Lleras, A. (in press). Color-color feature guidance in visual search. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.
  37. Xu, Z. J., Lleras, A., Gong, Z. G., & Buetti, S. (2024). Top-down instructions influence the attentional weight on color and shape dimensions during bidimensional search. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 31376.
  38. *Yang, R., *Patel, T. N., Fairbairn, C. E., & Benjamin, A. S. (in press). The impact of alcohol intoxication on extended vigilance and rest-break recovery. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.
  39. Zhu, C., Simons, D. J., Levin, D. T., & Ding, Y. (in press). Action mismatches across movie edits minimally impact perceived smoothness and change detection. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.

 

Selected Presentations

  1. Ballew, K., Xu, J., Lleras, A., & Buetti, S. (2019, May). An individual differences investigation of the relationship between visuospatial working memory capacity and inefficient search. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society. 
  2. Brinks, A. S., Hoffman, E. M., Yin, X., Carrica, L. K., Gulley, J. M., & Juraska, J. M. (2024, October 7). Influences of exposure to methamphetamine during adolescence on dopamine receptor expression in parvalbumin interneurons of the mPFC in intact and ovariectomized female rats. [Poster presentation]. Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting 2024, Chicago, IL, United States.
  3. Chan, A., Karpel, H., Herera, C., Goodwin, G.J., Thienemann, M., Farhadian, B., Willet, T., Mellins, E., Frankovich, J. (2019, April). Children with sudden onset neuropsychiatric symptoms: inflammation markers, arthritis, enthesitis and concurrent autoimmune/inflammatory diseases.Poster presented at the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance Annual Scientific Meeting, Louisville, KY 
  4. Chong, L.L., Clevenger, J., Diddi, D., Wang, Z.Y., Chong, M.J., Beck, D. (2019). Confusions in Humans and State-of-the-Art Deep Convolutional Neural Networks. Poster presentation at the 26th Object Perception, Visual Attention, and Visual Memory Conference (OPAM), Montreal, Canada. 
  5. Crawford, C.M., Eckland, N.S., & Berenbaum, H. (2019, March). Emotion awareness predictors of the concordance between actual and ideal affect. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Affective Science, Boston, MA. 
  6. Crawford, C. M., Griffith, J. M., Young, J. F., & Hankin, B. L. (2019, September). Implicit beliefs about emotions in youth: Associations with temperamental negative emotionality and depression. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Research in Psychopathology, Buffalo, NY. 
  7. Crawford, C. M., Griffith, J. M., & Hankin, B. L. (2019, April). Caregiver depression and anxiety: Associations with youth emotion regulation strategy use. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, Chicago, IL. 
  8. Finnegan, M.K., Kern, S., Newberry, D., Heller, W., Laurent, H. (2018, November). Addressing the Atlas Concordance Problem in fMRI. Poster presented at the Annual Convention for the Society for Neuroscience, San Diego, CA. 
  9. Gong, Z., Xu, J., Lleras, A., & Buetti, S. (2024, May 18). Instructions affect the way feature dimensions combine to guide search. [Poster presentation]. Vision Sciences Society, St. Pete Beach, FL
  10. Goodwin, G.J., Modi, H. H., Skymba, H. V., Davis, M. M., Weldon, A. L., Heller, W., Rudolph, K. D. (2019, September). Fixed Emotion Mindsets Contribute to Gender Differences in Internalizing Symptoms. Poster presented at Society for Research on Psychopathology, Buffalo, NY. 
  11. Griffith, J. M., Crawford, C. M., Oppenheimer, C. W., Young, J. F., & Hankin, B. L. (2019, April). Parenting and youth onset of depression across three years: Examining the influence of observed parenting on child and adolescent depressive outcomes. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, Chicago, IL.
  12. Hoffman, E. M., Brinks, A. S., & Juraska, J. M. (2024, April 23). Impact of noncontingent methamphetamine exposure and female sex hormones on parvalbumin cell expression in the medial prefrontal cortex. [Poster presentation]. UIUC Annual Master’s in Psychological Science Research Fair, Champaign, IL, United States.
  13. Hoffman, E. M., Brinks, A. S., Yin, X., Carrica, L. K., Gulley, J. M., & Juraska, J. M. (2024, October 7). Impact of noncontingent methamphetamine exposure during adolescence on the number of parvalbumin interneurons in the mPFC of intact and ovariectomized female rats. [Poster presentation]. Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting 2024, Chicago, IL, United States.
  14. Hoang, T. M., Neville, H. A., Smith, A. F., Valgoi, M., Schlosser, M., Cha-Jua, S. K., & Fiesta, J. (2018, August). Police recruits’ motivation to hear and evaluate messages in multicultural education: Do racial beliefs matter. Poster to be presented at the 125th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco. 
  15. Howell, K. L., Vahedi, M., and Fraley, R. C. (2024, February). Can we separate the character from the creator? An exploratory study on parasocial relationships. Poster presented at the SPSP Annual Conference in San Diego, CA. 
  16. Hua, A., Liu, Q., Rodriguez, V. (2025, May). Psychometric Evaluation of the Regulating Emotions in Parenting Scale (REPS) in Sexual and Gender Minority Parents. [Poster Presentation]. 2025 Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention. Washington, D.C.
  17. Hua, A., Rodriguez, V.J., Liu, Q. (2025, May). Psychometric Evaluation of the Multidimensional Assessment of Parenting Scale in Sexual and Gender Minority (SGM) Parents. In S. Kang (Chair), Parenting and mental health: Effects on child outcomes in diverse family structures. [Symposium]. 2025 Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting. Minneapolis, MN. 
  18. Huang, T., Liu, M.S., Gaither, S.E., Straka, B.C. (2024 Spring). Exclusion as a Catalyst for Identity and Group Formation for Multiracial people. Poster Presented, Midwest Undergraduate Cognitive Science Conference.
  19. Jongman, S., Xu, Y., and Federmeier, K. D. (2021). Does reading unexpected words lead to engagement of cognitive control? Paper presented at the 34th annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, March 4-6 (virtual meeting).
  20. Kern, S., Laurent H. (2019, March). Childhood Maltreatment History Predicts Mother’s Trauma-Related Symptoms via HPA Axis Regulation With her Infant. Poster to be presented at the Biennial Meeting for The Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore, MD. 
  21. Knowles, J., Liu, M.S., Straka, B.C., Gaither, S.E. (2024, Spring). Multiple Identities As a Pathway to Improve Interracial Interactions and Cognitive Flexibility. Poster Presented, The Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s Annual Convention.
  22. Knowles, J., Liu, M.S., Straka, B.C., Gaither, S.E. (2023, Fall). Multiple Identities As a Pathway to Improve Interracial Interactions and Cognitive Flexibility. Talk Presented, Society of Southeastern Social Psychology Conference.
  23. Liu, M.S., Gaither, S.E., Straka, B.C. (2025, Spring). The Role of a Multiple Identity Mindset in Enhancing Cross-Race Interactions, Poster Accepted, The Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s Self/Identity Preconference.
  24. Liu, M.S., Straka, B.C. (2025, Spring). Racialized Emojis: Exploring Racial Biases in Online Interactions, Poster Presented, The Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s Annual Convention.
  25. Liu, M.S., Gaither, S.E., Straka, B.C. (2025, Spring). Cyberball Paradigm: Exploring Social Exclusion for Multiracial People. Poster Accepted, The Midwestern Psychological Association’s Annual Convention.
  26. Liu, M.S., Guo, Y., Straka, B.C., Schmader, T. (2024, Spring). Developing Tools to Manipulate Different Types of Fit: Workplace Statements Evaluation. Poster Presented, The Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s Annual Convention.
  27. Liu, M.S., Knowles, J., Gaither, S.E., Straka, B.C. (2024, Spring). Enhancing Cross-Race Interactions: The Influence of a Multiple Identity Mindset. Poster Presented, The Midwestern Psychological Association’s Annual Convention.
  28. Lleras, A., Xu, J., & Buetti, S. (2018, May). How do differences across visual features combine to determine visual search efficiency in parallel search? Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society.  
  29. Lu, Y., Park, J., Fairbairn, C. E., & Zhang, R. (2024). Effects of BAC feedback on BAC level and self-estimation accuracy. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Research Society on Alcohol in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
  30. Meyers, M., Kim, J.-Y., Newman, D. A., & Mullaney, K. (2024, April), Leadership Influence Tactics and LMX: Dyadic Effects from a Social Relations Model. Poster presentation at the 39th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Chicago, IL.
  31. Moore, M., Goodwin, G. J., Anderson, E., Zwilling, C., Talukdar, T., Hillman, C.H., Cohen, N.J., Kramer, A.F., Barbey, A.K. (2020, May). Individual differences in personality traits and meta-traits are associated with features of intrinsic brain networks. Poster to be presented virtually at Cognitive Neuroscience Society. 
  32. Murdie, L., Liu, M.S., Gaither, S.E., Straka, B.C. (2024 Spring). Skin-Tone Modifiers and the Consequences on Different Groups of People. Poster Presented, Midwest Undergraduate Cognitive Science Conference.
  33. Park, J., Han, J., Lu, Y., & Fairbairn, C. E. (2024). Effects of alcohol on speech prosody in social context. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Research Society on Alcohol in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
  34. Park, J., Han, J., Lu, Y., & Fairbairn, C. E. (2024). Can we detect alcohol intoxication using the voice? Poster presented at the Research Fair 2024 of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA.
  35. Peng, Y., Zhu, Z., Hoiem, D., & Wang, R. F. (2023, November). Object learning with simultaneous presentation in humans and deep neural networks. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, San Francisco, CA.   https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2791528 
  36. Peng, Y., Zhu, Z., Hoiem, D., & Wang, R. F. (2023, May). Comparing human object learning with deep neural networks. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Pete Beach, FL
  37. Peng, Y., Zhu, Z., Hoiem, D., & Wang, R. F. (2022, November). Comparing human continual learning with deep neural networks. Talk given at the Biologically Informed Artificial Intelligence Competition Award Ceremony at the Beckman Institute, Remote.
  38. Ross, J., Hovakimyan, N., & Wang, R. F. (2022).  The Effect of Drone Dimensions and Speed on Perceived Human Safety.  Poster at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, November 17-20, 2022, Boston, MA, USA.
  39. Tu, N., Phan, W. M. J., Song, Q. C., Rounds, J., & Gregory, C. (2018, June). Examining the incremental validity of career fit on work outcomes. Poster presentation at the Society for Vocational Psychology 2018 Conference. 
  40. Wang, C., Hwang, S., Lin, Y., & Fisher, C. (March, 2025). Is there transfer of verb-bias learning from comprehension to production? Poster to be presented at the 38th Annual Conference on Human Sentence Processing, University of Maryland, College Park.
  41. Wang, C., Lin, Y., & Fisher, C. Does verb-bias learning transfer from comprehension to production? Poster presented at the International Workshop on Language Production, Pittsburgh, PA, June 2022.
  42. Weiner, D.S., & Laurent, S. M. (2019, February). For worse or for better, the richer or poorer: Documenting the (counter-intuitive) wealth-based moral judgment gap. Poster presented at the meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Portland, OR. 
  43. Youn, K., & Park, J. (2025). A study on the effectiveness of Appreciative Inquiry in the social welfare sector. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the International Conference on Internet of Things and Convergence in Takamatsu, Japan. (…It’s presented while in the MSPS program, but not directly related to my lab).
  44. Xu, J., Ballew, K., Lleras, A., & Buetti, S. (2019, May). Do people’s visual ability skill predict search efficiency under difficult search conditions? Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society. 
  45. Xu, Y., Troyer, M., Limachya, R., Jongman, S. R., Segaert, K., and Federmeier, K. D. (2022). Does producing language induce more prediction during comprehension? Poster presented at the 14th annual meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language, Oct. 6-8, Philadelphia PA
  46. Xu, J., Lleras, A., & Buetti, S. (2018, May). Is there a relationship between object recognition ability and visual search efficiency? Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society. 
  47. Yang, P. L., Clevenger, J., & Beck, D. M. (2018). A horizontal advantage for attention: enhanced performance for targets located horizontally to an exogenous cue. Poster presentation in the 25th Object Perception, Visual Attention, and Visual Memory conference (OPAM), New Orleans, USA