Welcome to the Memory, Attentional Control and Aging Lab!
Lab News!
Dr. Huff will be reviewing graduate student applications for Fall 2024 admission!
Fall 2024
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We welcome 2 new graduate student admits to the lab this Fall! Alexa Tringali joins us from Olgethorpe University where she completed her BS degree, and Amelia Morehead heads south from Mississippi College where she completed her undergraduate work. Short bios are located under the People tab above. Welcome to both of you!
Our lab was also successful in obtaining external funding for a 2-year project grant from the Misophonia Research Fund organized through the REAM Foundation. This $455k grant will provide funding to examine the effects of misophonia sensitivities on attentional control, episodic memory, and well-being, while providing full funding for graduate students in my lab and in USM's speech/language pathology program.
2022-2023 Academic Year
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Lots of lab announcements for the 2022-2023 academic year!
First, congratulations to Jacob Namias for successfully defending his MA thesis examining the role of a mindfulness intervention on attentional control, working memory, and episodic memory. Jacob somehow managed to weave Bob Ross into one of his experiments as a control group which was impressive!
Second, the lab remained highly active at conferences this past year. Collectively, we presented a total of 7 conference talks including international conferences such as Psychonomics and the International Conference on Perception and Action, regional conferences such as the Southeastern Psychological Association (SEPA), and local conferences such as the USM graduate and undergraduate research symposia. Congrats to all of the students and colleagues that presented their work!
I also had the privilege of presenting the junior keynote at the Southeastern Workers in Memory (SWIM) symposium in April 2023 as part of the SEPA conference. It was a honor to present some of our lab's work and interact with excellent colleagues. I will be serving as president for the 2024 meeting and look forward to continuing the rich tradition of scholarship within this organization. Looking forward to SEPA 2024 in Orlando, FL!
Spring 2022
Congrats to Dr. Nicholas Maxwell! A fresh PhD graduate and Asst. Prof. at Midwestern State University (Fall 2022)!
Excellent job, Nick! We have very much enjoyed your 4 years in the lab and look forward to working with you in the future as a fellow colleague.
Student awards continued to pile up this Spring!
Congrats to Honors student Wryleigh Shearin-Anderson for being awarded the Phi Kappa Phi Silver Bowl award for the highest university GPA and the most credit hours completed for a graduating undergraduate student! The silver bowl is the highest scholastic achievement at USM. A remarkable achievement.
Photo of Wryleigh and her Silver "Platter" as her
Silver Bowl was on backorder. Photo taken with
friend and colleague Dr. Alyson Brink.
Students were also highly productive at conferences. Congrats to Jacob Namias, who won first place for his oral presentation of his MS Thesis at the Graduate Research Symposium. Additionally, congrats to RAs Garima Puri and Isabel Stoker who also won first place for their poster presented at the Undergraduate Research Symposium! Special thanks to Jacob Namias as well for mentoring Garima and Isabel on their quality poster presentations. Very proud!
Congrats to undergraduate RA Garima Puri for her successful application for a SPUR award! Garima will be examining the directed forgetting procedure and whether it can limit implicit associative activation processes. Looking forward to the project! This is the MACA lab's 9th SPUR student. Ya'all keep me busy!
MACA lab graduated 2 Honors students this Spring. Wryleigh Shearin-Anderson and Anie Mitchell! Anie's thesis is already submitted for publication and Wryleigh's will soon follow. Proud of you both!
We finally (!) returned to in-person conference action. Jacob and Nick did an excellent job presenting the CVOE project at the Cognitive Aging Conference in Atlanta this April. They even ironed their poster to "smooth" out those Vincentiles. ;) Well done!
Fall 2021
Congrats to Dr. Kendal Smith! Newly minted PhD and Asst. Prof. at Jackson State University (Fall 2022)!
Way to go Kendal; we are excited for your future career!
Introducing lrd: An R package and Shiny Application for autoscoring recall data!
PhD student Nick Maxwell has recently developed lrd to autoscore and plot cued-recall, free-recall, and sentence data. The upcoming tutorial will soon be published in Behavior Research Methods. Researchers are free to access the Shiny application by following the link at the top of the page. Instructions and example templates are available by following the links which redirect to our OSF page.
The lrd package was developed in collaboration with both Dr. Huff and Nick's former MS supervisor, Dr. Erin Buchanan. We are excited to introduce this useful tool which was designed to reduce the time cost associated with manually scoring recall datasets.
Please contact us using the contact link above with any questions/suggestions.
Spring 2021 Update!
Although we continue to recover from research disruptions from COVID-19, lab members refuse to slow down!
CONGRATS to Honors student Landry Smith for winning the School of Psychology's Outstanding Senior Award!
Additionally, CONGRATS to Graduate Student Nick Maxwell for winning the increasingly competitive Graduate School Travel Award which will be used to fund his travel to the Psychonomic Society conference to San Diego, CA this November!
Finally, CONGRATS to Honors Student Wryleigh Shearin-Anderson for winning an Eagle SPUR grant to provide funding for her Honors Thesis! Wryleigh keeps the lab's streak alive with the 7th MACA lab SPUR grant.
Way to go MACA lab members!
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When it rains, it pours! BOTH Honors alum Laura Pazos and Masters alum Matthew Gretz had their theses accepted for publication! Keep an eye out for Laura's thesis to appear in The Undergraduate Research Journal of Psychology at UCLA and Matthew's to appear in Memory. Way to go you two; very proud!
Lab member Anie Mitchell was just awarded the Outstanding Sophomore Award for the 2019-2020 academic year! Well deserved Anie!
Congrats to Landry Smith and Jessica Runnels!!! Both have successfully completed their honors theses on expectancy effects in memory and disease memory effects in older adults, respectively. Stay tuned for their thesis arriving in a peer-reviewed journal shortly. Well done!!!
In advisement news, Dr. Huff was just recognized as USM's Drapeau Center for Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year! This is an amazing honor which was only possible due to the very bright and motivated USM undergraduate students.
Updated Lab Pic! Spring 2020 Lab, DAYS before the COVID closure. VERY lucky to get this picture up!
Congrats to Landry Smith who was selected by the USM Drapeau Center for Undergraduate Research to attend the National Conference of Undergraduate Research in Bozeman, MT in March 2020! Landry was one of FOUR students selected through application and will receive an all-expenses paid trip to the center of the universe, but I am biased... MACA Lab represent!
Congratulations to Holly Estopinal for winning an Eagle SPUR award for Fall 2019! Way to go!
Spring 2019 is in the books! Lab end of the semester celebration is on the right!
2019 UGS Conference
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Another great showing by the MACA lab at the annual undergraduate research conference in April! First place poster by Emily Cates and a first place talk by Landry Smith! Congratulations guys!
Emily Cates impresses the judges with her first place poster!
Emily Cates, Laura Pazos, Ashley Wood, and Landry Smith pose for pictures after a successful day!
Psychonomics 2018!
Landry Smith, Kyla Cosentino, Alyssa Di Mauro, Ashley Wood, and Laura Pazos presented posters at Psychonomics in NOLA! Collectively, the lab presented 3 posters. Way to showcase the lab's research!
The lab celebration dinner is on the right!
2018 UGS Conference
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Excellent showing by the MACA lab at the annual undergraduate research conference in April! First place poster by Landry Smith and Kyla Cosentino and second place poster by Emily Stahly (co-advised honors student and honorary lab member)! The award was nice, but the money was nicer!
Way to go team!
Landry and Kyla wow the crowd with their 1st place poster presentation.
Alyssa Di Mauro showing off the importance of semantic priming. #SPURWINNER
Congratulations to Laura Pazos who continues to pile up the accolades! She recently was selected as the School of Psychology's Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award winner and now has also been accepted to the Summer Workshop in Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the University of Delaware!
Way to go Laura! Makin' it rain!
Emily Stahly shows off her impressive photo-shopping skills on her way to a 2nd place prize!
Laura Pazos presenting Experiment 1 of her honors thesis.
Another successful Eagle SPUR application! Alyssa Di Mauro received funding to examine semantic activation effects in mediated false memories for Fall 2018!
The lab came to support Anastasia's PHENOMENAL poster presentation at this Spring's Undergraduate Research Conference. The data were very well received! Nice work Anastasia!
Congratulations to Anastasia Peach who recently won an Eagle SPUR grant to complete her project on processing effects on false memories for older adults!!!! Way to go!!!
