Dr. Caitlin Fausey brings home two prestigious awards!

First, Dr. Fausey received a Grammy research award for a project that she is working on with graduate student Jenny Mendoza and undergraduate student Sabrina Haskinson. This project focuses on characterizing the auditory world of infants. Read more about this exciting project and others that are being conducted in Dr. Fausey’s lab at the Learning Lab website.

Second, Dr. Fausey was honored with an Ersted Award for Distinguished Teaching for her outstanding quality as an instructor at the UO.

Congratulations, Dr. Fausey!

Dr. Paul Slovic will be giving a “Quack Chats” talk on Wednesday, April 26th at 6:00PM. The event will take place in the Falling Sky Pizzeria on campus (in the Erb Memorial Student Union building).

Dr. Slovic will be discussing his work on the emotional ‘numbing’ that is experienced when tragedies affect large numbers of people; “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” The title of his talk is “Genocide and the Arithmetic of Compassion”. You can read more about the event in Around the O or attend at 6:00PM at Falling Sky Pizzeria.

The 88th annual meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association featured Dr. Jennifer Freyd’s work as the conference theme. “Institutional Betrayal: Inequity, Discrimination, Bullying, and Retaliation in Academia” includes thematic panel discussions on institutional betrayal, a component of Dr. Freyd’s betrayal trauma theory which she describes as, “wrongdoings perpetrated by an institution upon individuals dependent on that institution, including failure to prevent or respond supportively to wrongdoings by individuals (e.g. sexual assault) committed within the context of the institution.” Dr. Freyd herself will be featured as a speaker during the event, as part as the “Institutional Betrayal and Gender Shrapnel in Academia” discussion with Ellen Mayock, author of Gender Shrapnel in the Academic Workplace.

Dr. Jennifer Freyd

You can read more about Dr. Freyd and her work on her lab’s website, about the influence of Dr. Freyd’s work on the conference on Around the O, and about the full roster of events on the conference website.

UO Psychology professor Paul Slovic at his desk.

Professor Paul Slovic is featured in the most recent edition of Cascade magazine, for his work on how vast numbers can lead to desensitization in the context of human tragedy. As Dr. Slovic explains on his website, “Due to psychic numbing, our sympathy for suffering and loss declines precipitously when we are presented with increasing numbers of victims.” Read more about how Dr. Slovic studies the “arithmetic of compassion” and how it can affect human behavior in the Cascade online magazine, page 29.

Professor Caitlin Fausey presents a Guest Viewpoint in the Register Guard about the future of developmental science:

“Let’s dream big. A forward-looking spirit in the Eugene-Springfield area is strong, and the moment is right for collaborative innovation in developmental science. I envision a partnership preschool, outfitting rooms with the latest and greatest sensors, innovating in a safe space, and building a community of caregivers, educators and scientists jointly discovering more about how to build a brain.

One of the most exciting aspects of this new data science for development is how it brings folks together — children, parents, educators, engineers and scholars across disciplines.”

Excellent, thoughtful piece, Professor Fausey!

Come hear Assistant Professor Caitlin Fausey present a Quack Chat talk next week! She’ll describe what her research capturing day-to-day scenes that babies encounter is unveiling about the incremental steps that build the human visual system.

“One major way that we learn about the world is through our eyes,” Fausey said. “They capture our visual universe. Over the first few years of life, our bodies and activities change and so does our view of the world, literally — with taller bodies, longer arms, greater mobility and emerging social skills, the world that meets our eyes changes dramatically.”

Her talk will unveil three new discoveries about how the visual universe of babies comes together.

Her talk will begin at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the Erb Memorial Union’s Falling Sky Pizzeria.

We have some great news!

Professor Elliot Berkman received the 2017 Early Career Award from the Social Personality & Health Network for his work integrating social and personality psychology and health behavior research. Congrats, Dr. Berkman!

The award was announced at the annual Social Personality Health preconference to the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Meeting in San Antonio, TX.

PTSD Family Coach Mobile App

The National Center for PTSD has adopted the listening skills from research by Melissa Foynes (PhD, 2010) and Professor Freyd to be part of the VA’s PTSD family coach mobile app. The intervention was developed in Freyd’s Dynamics Lab to help family and friends be more effective listeners for loved ones with PTSD.

Congratulations, Drs. Foynes and Freyd, on this excellent translational science that is leading to real quality of life improvement for veterans and their families!

Read more about the research here, and about the VA’s National Center for PTSD’s mobile apps here.

On behalf of the entire department, the Psychology Committee for an Inclusive Community (CIC) is proud to present this door sign as a reminder that the Department of Psychology aspires to be a safe space that is an inclusive and welcoming environment for all.

The door sign can be viewed in full and downloaded through the embedded link below.

[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/psychology/files/2017/01/UO_PsychCIC_SafeHeart-zqh3de.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”]