Research Facilities

Haggar Hall

Adolescent Psychology Lab

Lab Director: Dr. Daniel Lapsley
B23 Haggar Hall

The Adolescent Psychology Lab researches various topics in adolescent development, including emergent adulthood and youth. For exanple, we study various aspects of risk-taking and decision-making; self; ego; identity; moral psychology; and adolescent personality. Current projects include:

  • University Service Learning and Generative Well-Being at Mid-Life
  • Invulnerability and Risky-Decision Making
  • Moral Vocation and Youth Purpose
  • Implicit Moral Cognition

Adolescent Socio-Emotional Development Lab

Lab Director: Dr. Dawn M. Gondoli

Attention and Attention Disorders Lab

Lab Director: Dr. Bradley S. Gibson

Cognition and Emotion Lab

Lab Director: Dr. Gerald Haeffel
B19 and B20 Haggar Hall

Researchers in the Cognition and Emotion Lab take an interdisciplinary approach to understanding why some people seem highly susceptible to depression, whereas others appear to be highly resistant. Our work is guided theoretically by the cognitive theories of depression, which state that differences in cognitive interpretation of life events determine who will become depressed and who will not. Understanding the specific cognitive processes that cause depression should lead to improved treatments and well as to greater insights into the mind-mood connection.

To learn more, please visit http://www.nd.edu/~ghaeffel/.

Cognition, Learning, and Development Lab

Lab Director: Dr. Nicole McNeil
B19 and B20 Haggar Hall

We study cognition, learning, and development in the areas of problem solving, mathematical reasoning, and symbolic understanding. To answer our research questions, we rely primarily on controlled experiments in the lab and in schools. Participants in our experiments cover a wide age range (preschool through adult). Some of our studies focus on key theoretical issues in the field of cognitive development. Other studies focus on real-world applications related to learning and instruction. All of our projects are in the service of a more general goal—understanding the mechanisms that propel and constrain cognitive development.

To learn more, please visit: http://www.nd.edu/~nmcneil.

Culture and Family Processes Lab

Lab Director: Dr. Irene J. Kim Park
111-113 Brownson Hall

The Family Studies Center

Lab Director: Dr. E. Mark Cummings
201 Brownson Hall
The Family Studies Center is conducting multiple funded research projects examining the effects of family functioning on children’s and adolescents’ development. Students joining our lab will have multiple opportunities to obtain experience in many aspects of family research, including hands-on experience working directly with families, administering psychological assessments, and learning about family research methodology. In addition, there are many opportunities for one-on-one interaction with faculty and graduate students, and opportunities to attend and present professional posters at conferences. Among the on-going projects, one study is concerned with family assessments for children entering adolescence, first seen at Notre Dame when the children were in preschool. A newly funded study is highly relevant to clinical and applied concerns for children and their families, providing an evidence-based prevention program aimed at teaching parents and their adolescents how to handle conflict through constructive communication techniques. Students working in our lab find excellent preparation for post-graduate education, and are often successful in these pursuits.

 

Language Lab

Lab Director: Dr. Kathleen M. Eberhard

Memory Lab

Lab Director: Dr. G.A. Radvanksy

Moral Psychology Lab

Lab Director: Dr. Darcia F. Narvaez

Motivation and Learning Lab

Lab Director: Dr. Julianne C. Turner

Notre Dame Socio-Emotional Development Lab

Lab Director: Dr. Julia Braungart-Rieker

Notre Dame Study of Health and Well-Being

Lab Director: Dr. Cindy Bergeman

Ready for Kindergarten!

Lab Director: Dr. Jeanne Day

Social Cognition Lab

Lab Director: Dr. Alexandra F. Corning
Basement of Haggar Hall

Our lab team is conducting a number of studies related to understanding the conditions under which discrimination is perceived and what the psychological effects of discrimination are. Some of the questions we seek to answer are: What are the contextual factors that influence perceptions of events?  Why is that people perceive the same event differently?  What are the immediate and long-term effects of perceiving discrimination in the environment, and is ignorance really bliss? 

To learn more, please visit: http://www.nd.edu/~acorning.

Spatial Cognition and Spatial Language Lab

Lab Director: Dr. Laura Carlson
250 Haggar Hall

Research in the lab seeks to understand spatial cognition, visual cognition, and the cognitive processes underlying deception. The research on spatial cognition focuses on the processes and representations that underlie the speaker's selection of a spatial description and a listern's comprehension of the spatial description, with particular focus on reference object selection and spatial term selection. The research on visual cognition examines what happens to our understanding of the world during a disruption of visual input. The newest line of reserach focuses on the cognitive processes that operate when one tries to deceive another through language.

To learn more, please visit: http://www.nd.edu/~lcarlson/lab/

Stress and Depression Laboratory

Lab Director: Dr. Scott Monroe