Lab News

.

November 2023

Alyssa, Rachel, and Dr. Chiew presented their research at the Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society in San Francisco!

New paper in Developmental Psychobiology! The impact of air pollution on neurocognitive development: Adverse effects and health disparities

.

September 2023

Congratulations to Rachel Brough on being awarded a APAGS/Psi Chi Junior Scientist Fellowship!!

.

July 2023

CONGRATS to Dr. Lyneé Herrera on her successful dissertation defense!! Lyneé is beginning a position as a Research Analyst for VF Corporation. We will miss you (and Murdy) around the lab and wish you the very best!

New paper in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging! Cognitive effort in depression: autonomic correlates and clues to potential rescue

.

June 2023

Maddie Leake, Audrey Ng, and Megan Lucyshyn presented their research at DU’s Undergraduate Research Showcase in May!

Graduating senior Maddie Leake will be beginning a new position at research assistant at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston! Congratulations Maddie, we will miss you and wish you the best!

Audrey Ng, Megan Lucyshyn, and Chase Spurbeck received Summer Research Grants from the DU Undergraduate Research Center to support their research in the MAC Lab! Congratulations Audrey, Megan, and Chase!

New paper in Cognition & Emotion! Positive biases and psychological functioning during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic

.

April 2023

Lyneé Herrera presented her research, conducted in collaboration with Maddie Leake, at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Affective Science in Long Beach, California!

New paper in Psychological Research! Contributions of transient and sustained reward to memory formation

Congratulations to lab friend and collaborator Hayley Brooks from the Sokol-Hessner Lab for successfully defending her dissertation!

.

November 2022

Lab trainees Alyssa Asmar, Kyle Thurmann, and Von Monteza presented their research at the Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society in Boston! Alyssa also presented her work at the Workshop on Mental Effort at Brown University, where her presentation was selected for a flash talk!

.

September 2022

We are thrilled to welcome new graduate students Alyssa Asmar (co-advised by Dr. Kateri McRae), Rachel Brough, and Von Monteza (co-advised by Dr. Peter Sokol-Hessner) to the lab!

.

July 2022

New preprint posted on PsyArXiv! Positive biases and psychological functioning during the COVID-19 pandemic

.

June 2022

Congratulations to our graduating seniors, Chad, Kyle, and Romel! We wish you the very best with all of your future endeavours!

Dr. Chiew presented the lab’s work as a faculty speaker at the Kavli Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience (topic: Motivated Cognition) at UC Santa Barbara!

.

May 2022

Chad Kashiwa, Maddie Leake, and Kyle Thurmann all presented their lab research at the DU Undergraduate Research Showcase!

Audrey Ng received a Summer Research Grant from the DU Undergraduate Research Center to support her research in the MAC Lab! Congratulations Audrey!

This past spring, Dr. Chiew presented the lab’s work in invited talks at Texas A&M University and Washington University in St. Louis!

.

March 2022

Lyneé Herrera and Maddie Leake presented their lab research at the virtual Annual Meeting of the Society for Affective Science!

.

January 2022

We are very excited to have finally launched our TMS study with our collaborators at the CU Anschutz TMS Lab! This is the first TMS study conducted by University of Denver investigators and is examining effects of neurostimulation on motivated cognitive control and memory. This research is funded by NIMH.

.

November 2021

New preprint posted on PsyArXiv! Motivated emotion regulation: impacts on effort, affect, and strategy selection

Dr. Chiew presented the lab’s work in a virtual seminar at Radford University!

.

October 2021

We are delighted to welcome Alyssa Asmar as new lab manager!

.

September 2021

The lab bids farewell to lab manager Sloan Ferron. After two amazing years of working together, Sloan is beginning a position as Clinical Research Coordinator at the Philadelphia VA/University of Pennsylvania. We also bid farewell to postbac Naomi Sellers, who is beginning a PhD program in Psychology (Language & Cognition) at University of Connecticut. We are very proud of your accomplishments!

.

August 2021

New preprint posted on PsyArXiv! A selective benefit of transient, but not sustained, reward to memory formation

.

July 2021

New paper published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General! Remembering Election Night 2016: Subjective but not objective metrics of autobiographical memory vary with political affiliation, affective valence, and surprise.

.

May 2021

Naomi Sellers presented her lab research at the virtual Annual Meeting of the Association for Psychological Science! Naomi’s poster is available here.

.

April 2021

Lyneé Herrera presented her research work at the virtual Annual Meeting of the Society for Affective Science! Lyneé’s flash talk on motivated emotion regulation is available on OSF here.

This past spring, Dr. Chiew virtually presented the lab’s work at invited talks at Columbia University, Brown University, Purdue University, and Eastern Oregon University.

.

January 2021

New paper published in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences! Revisiting positive affect and reward influences on cognitive control

.

November 2020

Sloan Ferron, Avery Gholston, and Bailey Harris all presented their research work at the virtual Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society!

.

September 2020

Lyneé Herrera successfully defended her MA thesis! Congratulations to Lyneé!!

The lab bids farewell to Avery Gholston, who will be starting graduate studies in the DU Professional Science Master’s program in Biomedical Science, Cory Vandenberg, who will be starting graduate studies in International Security at the DU Korbel School, and Bailey Harris, who will be beginning a new position as research assistant in the CAMS Lab at Yale School of Medicine! We are tremendously proud of all of your accomplishments.

.

August 2020

Congratulations to Sloan Ferron on being awarded a diversity supplement on our lab R15 grant from NIMH!! This supplement will support Sloan’s post-baccalaureate research training in social and cognitive neuroscience in the coming year with a mentorship team at DU and University of Colorado.

.

June 2020

New preprint posted on PsyArXiv! Remembering Election Night 2016: Subjective but not objective metrics of autobiographical memory vary with political affiliation, affective valence, and surprise

Bailey Harris presented her lab research at the 2020 DU Research & Scholarship Showcase and was one of two recipients of DU Psychology’s Trowill Award, for meritorious work in psychology. Congratulations Bailey!

Chad Kashiwa and Kyle Thurmann received Summer Research Grants from the DU Undergraduate Research Center to support their research in the MAC Lab! Congratulations Chad and Kyle!

.

March 2020

We are incredibly proud of graduate student Lyneé Alves AND former lab manager Kevin Summers on being awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowships!!! Congratulations!!

.

January 2020

New paper published in Emotion! Proactive versus reactive emotion regulation: A dual-mechanisms perspective

.

December 2019

Dr. Chiew was recognized as a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science!

.

October 2019

Dr. Chiew traveled to Fort Collins and gave a talk in the Molecular, Cellular, & Integrative Neurosciences Seminar Series at Colorado State University.

.

September 2019

Dr. Chiew was awarded a NARSAD Young Investigator Grant from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation! This funding will support research investigating motivation-cognition interactions in children with ADHD in collaboration with Dr. Lauren McGrath (DU LEARN Lab) and Dr. Bruce Pennington (Developmental Neuropsychology Lab) at the University of Denver. Students interested in potential graduate or undergraduate opportunities related to this line of research should email Dr. Chiew.

.

August 2019

We bid farewell to Kevin Summers as he leaves the lab to start a PhD in social psychology with Dr. Paige Lloyd at the University of Denver and are delighted to welcome Sloan Ferron as new lab manager!

.

May 2019

Avery, Madison, Bailey, and Cory presented their lab research at the 2019 DU Research & Scholarship Showcase!

Madison Eitniear was awarded DU Psychology’s Shaklee Trowill award for outstanding psychology honors thesis of the year! Congratulations to Madison!!

Bailey Harris was awarded a Summer Research Grant from the DU Undergraduate Research Center to support her research in the MAC Lab! Congratulations Bailey!

Lyneé Alves was awarded DU’s Graduate Education Doctoral Fellowship for Inclusive Engagement! Congratulations to Lyneé!

.

April 2019

Dr. Chiew was a presenter and facilitator at the Women’s Affective Science Institute at CU-Boulder! Having the opportunity to discuss research, career trajectory, and issues of diversity and inclusion with this fantastic group of women was a lot of fun.

New paper published in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience! Expected reward value and reward uncertainty have temporally dissociable effects on memory formation

  Lyneé Alves and Avery Gholston presented their research at the Annual Meeting of the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association!

.

March 2019

Lyneé Alves presented her research at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Affective Science in Boston! Check out her poster, “Motivational effects on item and source memory encoding during cognitive control performance”, in PDF here.

.

December 2018

New paper published in Journal of Aging Research! Relating Sensory, Cognitive, and Neural Factors to Older Persons’ Perceptions about Happiness: An Exploratory Study

New preprint posted on PsyArXiv! Proactive versus reactive emotion regulation: A dual-mechanisms perspective

.

November 2018

Avery Gholston and Cory Vandenberg were awarded Partners in Scholarship (PINS) awards from the DU Undergraduate Research Center to support their research in the MAC Lab! Congratulations to Avery and Cory!!

.

September 2018

We are delighted to welcome incoming graduate student Lyneé Alves and new lab manager Kevin Summers to the lab!

.

August 2018

Dr. Chiew was a presenting speaker in a symposium on Motivated Memory at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association.

.

June 2018

We are incredibly excited that our 3-year National Institute of Mental Health AREA grant has been funded! This grant will support our lab’s research into the neurobiological mechanisms by which motivation can influence cognitive control and memory using fMRI and TMS methods, in collaboration with colleagues at DU, University of Colorado, and Duke University. Students interested in potential graduate or undergraduate opportunities related to this line of research should email Dr. Chiew.

.

May 2018

Bailey Harris presented her research in the DU Undergraduate Research & Scholarship Symposium and won Best Oral Presentation! Congratulations Bailey!!

.

April 2018

Dr. Chiew was a presenting speaker in a workshop entitled “Motivation and Learning: What is Provocative And/Or Novel?” at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

.

March 2018

Dr. Chiew traveled to North Carolina and gave a talk at the Department of Psychology at Wake Forest University.

New paper published in PLoS ONE! Motivational valence alters memory formation without altering exploration of a real-life spatial environment

New preprint posted on Bioxriv! Expected reward value and reward uncertainty have temporally dissociable effects on memory formation

.

February 2018

Dr. Chiew traveled to Wyoming and gave a talk in the Neuroscience Seminar Series at University of Wyoming.

.

December 2017

Dr. Chiew traveled (up the road) to Boulder and gave a talk in the Institute of Cognitive Science Seminar series at University of Colorado-Boulder.

.

November 2017

Dr. Chiew was a presenting speaker in a symposium on Autobiographical Memory at the Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society.

.

September 2017

The MAC Lab opens its doors in DU’s Psychology Department!