Current Projects

Current projects in the laboratory that graduate students are working on are as follows:

Dan
Dan's main current research project investigates how college students view the expected effects, benefits, and harms of psychedelic substances across different contexts for their use: clinical therapies, naturalistic use, and microdosing.

He's also investigating whether there is a relationship between alcohol motives and illicit-substance-use motives among college-enrolled polysubstance users

Katie
Katie's current work focuses on the role of romantic partner drinking on individual outcomes, such as their own drinking and internalizing symptomology. Specifically, she's looking at the role of an individual's perceptions of their partner's drinking (and drinking problems) modify these outcomes.  

She is also interested in examining how facets of romantic relationships (like satisfaction, quality, etc.) impact substance-use-related outcomes. 

Jeff
Current work largely centers on executive functions with three ongoing projects. The first examines the utility of a novel self-report executive function (EF) assessment and performance-based EF assessments against a open source impulsivity measure on various substance use outcomes. This work further reviews commonalities (as well as distinct features) between impulsivity and EFs. I am also investigating the role of glucocorticoids and genotype on changes in cognitive functioning to determine if genotype at HPA-axis-related single nucleotide polymorphisms are associated with changes in cognitive function. A final project considers the interplay between adverse childhood experiences (ACE) and substance use outcomes, mediated by EFs, to explore the role of ACEs and their individual contributions to the experience of problematic substance involvement. 

Antonio
Antonio is working on a study seeking to enhance and replicate a treatment study for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in adults. Treatment for these adults involves 10-12 sessions. In addition to standardized measures assessed monthly, assessment of symptoms and distress or dysfunction are measured through ecological momentary assessment (EMA) three times a day. EMA results will be utilized to inform the development of empirically tested cognitive-behavioral case formulation used for tailored (personalized) treatment planning for ADHD and the comorbid issues. Results will also be used to develop both concurrent and dynamic intraindividual network analyses (INA).

Mike
Mike is currently working on his dissertation, which involves the use of mixture modeling techniques to delineate group membership based on response patterns. Moreover, he is assessing different ways these subpopulations engage in alcohol-related behaviors. He is also interested in the etiology of the use of protective behavioral strategies among college students.