Dr. Nichole Lighthall
Assistant Professor of Psychology, College of Sciences
Director of Adult Development & Decision Lab
Dr. Nichole Lighthall is an Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Applied Experimental and Human Factors program. She holds a BA in psychology from the UC Berkeley and a PhD in gerontology from the University of Southern California, where she worked with Dr. Mara Mather. Before coming to UCF, Dr. Lighthall completed her postdoctoral training at Duke University in the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience with Drs. Roberto Cabeza and Scott Huettel. The goal of her research program is to develop a neural model of decision processing that can be used to identify age-related vulnerabilities and pathways to compensation. She is particularly interested in how age-related changes to cognitive and affective components of decision making impact decision processing and quality.
Lab Website | 407-823-2216 | nichole.lighthall@ucf.edu
Dr. Mark Neider
Associate Professor of Psychology, College of Sciences
Director of Applied Cognition and Aging Lab
Dr. Mark Neider is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Central Florida. He received his B.A. in Psychology from Hofstra University. He also holds a M.A. in Psychology and a Ph.D. in Cognitive/Experimental Psychology from Stony Brook University. After completing his doctorate, Neider spent five years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the interdisciplinary Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on understanding human perception and cognition in realistic contexts, and then using that understanding to develop training interventions and technological innovations for improving human performance in real world tasks and environments. Neider’s lab studies behavior across the age spectrum, from pre-adolescent children to the elderly. To examine behavior in the most realistic contexts possible, his lab utilizes a number of research methodologies including traditional behavioral paradigms, advanced eye tracking methods, driving simulation, and virtual reality.
Associate Professor of Psychology, College of Sciences
Director of Categorization & Decision Lab
Dr. Corey Bohil is an associate professor in the Psychology Department’s Applied Experimental and Human Factors Program. He received his M.A. in cognitive psychology from Arizona State University, and his Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Bohil completed a postdoctoral fellowship in quantitative psychology at the University of Illinois, and was a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies & Media at Michigan State University. Dr. Bohil’s research focuses on the cognitive processes that underlie categorization and decision making. Recent topics of research include the contributions of separate learning systems in the brain to category rule learning, and the influence of base-rate (relative prevalence) and reward information on decision criterion learning. His research makes use of computational modeling techniques, as well as functional near-infrared spectroscopy for neuroimaging of cortical activity.
Assistant Professor of Psychology, College of Sciences
Director of Attention & Working Memory Lab
Dr. Joe Schmidt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Central Florida. He received his Ph.D. in Experimental & Cognitive Psychology in 2012 from Stony Brook University. After receiving his doctorate, he spent two years as a Post-doctorate Research Fellow at the University of South Carolina’s Institute for Mind and Brain. After his Post-doctorate position, he spent over a year as a Research Support Specialist at SR Research. His primary research interest focuses on the interaction of memory and attentional systems and how they affect our broader cognitive functions. By simultaneously tracking eye movements and recording EEG/ERP he can measure both overt and covert shifts of attention which can then be related to the amount and intensity of memory representations. Much of his research focuses on how changes to a target representation held in memory affect our ability to guide attention to a target object in the world around us. Given that memory and attentional processes are involved in most tasks, his research interests are quite broad. Additionally, some recent collaborations include investigating saccade-contingent change-blindness in video viewing, investigating oculomotor control and attentional processes in stroke patients who suffer from aphasia and alexia, relative to age-matched and college-aged controls, as well as investigating attentional processes in infants, children, adolescents, and adult mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder and/or fragile-X disorder.
Dr. Janan Smither is a Professor of Psychology and Associate Director of the Applied/Experimental & Human Factors Psychology doctoral program at the University of Central Florida. Dr. Smither received her Ph.D. (1985) and M.A. (1980) degrees in Experimental Psychology from Johns Hopkins University. Before joining the faculty at UCF in 1990, she was a senior research scientist at Computer Sciences Corp. in Silver Spring, MD where she served as the lead human factors psychologist on the Multi-Satellite Operations Control Center Operations Interface Analysis project for NASA. In 1998, Dr. Smither established an assistive technology information and referral center at UCF that served the elderly and disabled community in Orlando, FL and the surrounding four counties. Dr. Smither served as director of the FAAST center for five years. Currently, she is the director of the Technology and Aging Lab with over 25 years of experience in the teaching, practice, research, & development of complex human-machine systems. Her research interests include technology and aging; technology and functional independence; aging & driving; HCI, simulation technologies, and training systems. With over 110 publications her research has been funded by a variety of agencies including NASA, NHTSA, the Department of Safety and Motor Vehicles, DOT, & the National Institute on Aging.
Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, College of Sciences
Director of Biomechanics, Rehabilitation, and Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Laboratory
Dr. Helen Huang received her B.S. in materials science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She worked at Michelin North America as a materials engineer prior to her graduate studies. She was a postdoctoral fellow on the University of Colorado NIH T32 Aging Grant, and an assistant research scientist in the Human Neuromechanics Laboratory directed by Daniel Ferris at the University of Michigan, prior to joining UCF in December 2015.
Huang directs the UCF Biomechanics, Rehabilitation, and Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Laboratory. Members of the BRaIN Lab team include students from biomedical engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and biomedical sciences. The BRaIN team studies motor adaptation and neuromechanics of gait and locomotor tasks. Their research currently focuses on investigating brain dynamics underlying motor adaptation, gait, balance and interlimb coordination in young and older adults. The BRaIN team also works on developing robotic exercise devices for gait rehabilitation and fall interventions, and on developing new methods for recording and analyzing electroencephalography (EEG) and electromyography (EMG).
Dr. Daniel Paulson
Assistant Professor of Psychology, College of Sciences
Director of Orlando Later-Life Developmental Research Lab
Dr. Daniel Paulson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Central Florida. His primary clinical interests include caregiving and dementia evaluation with older adults. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in psychology at Virginia Tech in 2002 and his Master’s degree in Psychological Sciences from James Madison University in 2005. He then moved to Detroit where he completed the PhD program in Clinical Psychology at Wayne State University. His graduate training at the renowned Institute of Gerontology was supported by an NIH T-32 award in Aging and Urban Health. He went on to complete the Charleston Consortium Internship Training Program in South Carolina before moving to Orlando. At UCF, Dr. Paulson teaches graduate coursework in the APA-Accredited Clinical Psychology PhD program, and is developing interdisciplinary collaborations for both research and clinical practice.
Dr. Mustapha Mouloua
Professor of Psychology, College of Sciences
Director of Transportation Research Group
Dr. Nelson Roque
Assistant Professor of Psychology, College of Sciences
Dr. Nelson Roque, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology’s Human Factors and Cognitive Psychology Program. He received his PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Florida State University. Dr. Roque completed a two-year NIA T32 postdoctoral fellowship at Penn State University’s Center for Healthy Aging, training in cognitive aging, psychosocial outcomes, and intensive longitudinal methods. Dr. Roque’s research focuses on the cognitive process of visual attention, particularly, how to reliably measure it, how it relates to individual difference factors (e.g., age, sleep quality, lifetime pollutant exposure), and translating insights from theoretical work in visual attention to applied contexts (e.g. medication errors). His research makes use of mobile assessment methods (i.e., delivery of cognitive assessments online and via mobile devices), and passive sensing of context (e.g., GPS lifespace, naturalistic driving behaviors, and pollutant exposure) to better understand cognition in daily life across the lifespan.