Congratulations to Dr. Lighthall, on her selection for a 2024 Research Incentive Award (RIA) by UCF Faculty Excellence! The Research Incentive award recognizes outstanding research, scholarly, or creative activity that advances the body of knowledge in a particular field, including interdisciplinary research and collaborations. Faculty awards further acknowledge employee contributions […]
Lighthall
27 posts
This month, the University of Southern California Davis School of Gerontology Alumni Stories series highlights Dr. Lighthall’s work on vulnerability to deception and fraud in aging. In the story, Dr. Lighthall also describes the value of a multi-disciplinary gerontology education for addressing complex scientific questions and societal problems that relate […]
A new collaborative paper in Scientific Reports by Ebner Lab (UF) and Lighthall Lab members describes age differences in trust-related decision making and learning. Using a novel adaptation of the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), facial cues of trustworthiness were paired with IGT card decks such that they were either congruent […]
Dr. Lighthall partnered with One Senior Place on September 8th to provide the center’s members with practical advice on how to stay safe online. She presented current research on trust-based decision making. This background provided context to help seniors more effectively and safely manage their online activities.
The AD&D Lab will begin a new funded project, thanks to a new award to Dr. Lighthall from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The project entitled, “Measuring uncertainty mechanisms with fNIRS”, will support research and student training under the AFRL’s Minority Leaders Research Collaboration Program (ML-RCP). This study seeks […]
In their new publication in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, AD&D Lab Ph.D. student, Maggie Doheny and Dr. Lighthall describe new challenges and perspectives in cognitive neuroscience, with a focus on social cognitive neuroscience in the digital age. The paper reviews our current understanding of the social-cognitive neural network and summarizes […]
The AD&D Lab will be contributing to a new R01 project led by Dr. Ladda Thiamwong (UCF Nursing), funded by the NIH National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD). The project entitled, “Optimizing a technology-based body and mind intervention to prevent falls and reduce health disparities in low-income […]
New publication alert in the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences. The paper, “Facial trustworthiness perceptions across the adult lifespan” led by Didem Pehlivanoglu, describes the impact of perceiver and facial characteristics on facial trustworthiness perception across adulthood. The project included collaboration across five universities and two countries: University of Florida […]
Congrats to recent AD&D Lab Ph.D. graduate, Xiaoqing Wan, Dr. Lighthall, and UCF Statistics and Data Science colleague, Dr. Rui Xie, on their paper: “Consistent and Robust Predictors of Internet Use among Older Adults over Time Identified by Machine Learning” — which is in press at the journal of Computers […]
Local NPR station 90.7 WMFE featured a story about our Florida Consortium to Reduce Misinformation and Exploitation in Alzheimer’s Disease, funded by the Florida Department of Health. You can listen to the story and read the transcript here. The story highlights the consortium’s aim to develop a tool kit that […]
Read UCF Today’s story on our lab’s lead role in the Florida Consortium to Reduce Misinformation and Exploitation in Alzheimer’s Disease, funded by the Florida Department of Health! The story highlights our lab’s mission to determine risk factors for vulnerability to deception and develop tools for early detection of scam […]
Dr. Lighthall, along with MPIs Dr. Natalie Ebner (University of Florida) and Dr. Bob Wilson (University of Arizona), were awarded a Multi-PI R01 from the National Institute on Aging entitled, “Characterizing and Modulating Neurocognitive Processes in Learning to Trust and Distrust in Aging.” The goals of this project are to […]
In their new publication in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, “Aging in an “infodemic”: The role of analytical reasoning, affect, and news consumption frequency on news veracity detection” by Pehlivanoglu, Lighthall, Lin, Chi, Perez, Polk, Cahill, & Ebner find that age-related vulnerabilities to deceptive news may only become apparent in […]
Lead PI Dr. Lighthall, along with Co-PIs Dr. Natalie Ebner (University of Florida) and Dr. Bonnie Levin (University of Miami), were awarded a Consortium Grant from the Florida Department of Health’s Ed and Ethel Moore Alzheimer’s Disease Research Program. This four-year grant project will examine cognitive and neural mechanisms of […]
Congratulations to AD&D Lab collaborator, Dr. Didem Pehlivanoglu (UF), for receiving the APA Division 20 Postdoctoral Research Award. Her first-authored presentation entitled, “Aging in an “infodemic”: The role of cognition, affect, and experience on news veracity detection during the COVID-19 pandemic”, features findings from a collaborative project between the UF […]
In their new publication in Brain and Cognition, AD&D Lab Ph.D. student, Lindsay Conner and Dr. Lighthall, in collaboration with University of Florida co-authors Natalie Ebner (Professor of Psychology) and Marilyn Horta (Postdoctoral Fellow), present a novel fMRI task for isolating effects of memory processes on value mechanisms. Findings from […]
With UCF Psychology faculty, Drs. Bohil and Bedwell, Dr. Lighthall recently received funding from a DOD Defense Health Agency Small Business Technology Transfer grant. This collaborative project with SoarTech Inc. explores physiological-cognitive state sensing using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).
Dr. Lighthall’s new publication, “Neural mechanisms of decision‐making in aging“, provides an overview of how decision making changes during normal, healthy aging, and how age-related changes to the brain may alter decision processing across adulthood. The review synergizes evidence indicating different patterns of age-related change in regions that support bottom-up […]
In their new Frontiers in Psychology publication, “Reward Responsiveness and Inhibition Traits Differentially Predict Economic Biases in Gain and Loss Contexts”, AD&D Lab doctoral student, Kylie Fernandez, and Dr. Lighthall present new research indicating that, compared with affective states, motivational traits have a stronger influence on beliefs about risky choices. […]
The Aging Brain: Functional Adaptation Across Adulthood is now available from APA Books, with contributions from the AD&D Lab! This multidisciplinary volume examines structural and functional changes in the aging brain, and the mechanisms underlying such changes. Dr. Lighthall and Lindsay Conner collaborated with Dr. Kelly Giovanello (University of North […]