University of North Carolina Wilmington
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Psychology

 

Robert T. Brown
Professor
Psychology

 

Areas of Interest:

Education:

Ph.D., Yale University. Experimental Psychology.
A.B., Hamilton College. Psychology.

Bio:

Dr. Brown's favorite courses are Science & Pseudoscience (undergraduate: Psy 210; graduate: GLS 531), Psychology of Exceptional Children (Psy 322), and History & Systems of Psychology (Psy 405). They share emphases on the changing nature of scientific knowledge, need to evaluate claims, and extent to which ill-conceived and evaluated treatments have actually hurt rather than helped people. Dr. Brown uses hisextensive collections of quack medical and scientific instruments and antique books as classroom illustrations of past treatments and beliefs.

Brown has also written several chapters and some 100 encyclopedia and handbook articles on aspects of exceptional children. He recently published a critical analysis of research on effects of low levels of lead poisoning on children. Currently, he is writing a chapter on causes of handicapping conditions for a handbook and several articles on aspects of history of psychology. He also conducts research on 19th-20th century phrenological readings.

Publications:

Brown, R.T., Jackson, L.A. (1992). Ex-huming an old issue. Journal of School Psychology, 30, 215-221.

Brown, R.T. (1989). Creativity: What are we to measure. In J. Glover , R. Ronning, & C.R. Reynolds (Eds.) Handbook of Creativity. (pp. 3-32). New York: Plenum.

Brown, R.T. (1986). Etiology and development of exceptionality. In R.T. Brown & C.R. Reynolds (Eds.) Psychological Perspectives on Childhood Exceptionality: A Handbook. (pp. 181-225). New York: Wiley-Interscience.

Brown, R.T., & Reynolds, C.R. (1986). (Eds.) Psychological Perspectives on Childhood Exceptionality: A Handbook. New York: Wiley-Interscience.

Location: SB 110C
Phone: 910/962-3370
Email: brownr@uncw.edu

Karen Daniels
Assistant Professor
Psychology

 

Areas of Interest:

Education:

Ph.D., Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology

B.S., Psychology, University of Toronto at Scarborough

Bio:

I was born in Toronto, Ontario. I received my B.Sc. in psychology in 1997 from the University of Toronto at Scarborough. My senior thesis with Dr. Colin MacLeod examined the impact of directed forgetting instructions on implicit and explicit tests of memory (MacLeod & Daniels, 2000).

I received my Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2002. My dissertation, under the supervision of Dr. Randy Engle, used the distinction between controlled and automatic mental processes to explain individual differences in working-memory capacity.

From September 2002 to June 2004, I was a postdoctoral research associate at Washington University in St. Louis. In collaboration with Dr. Larry Jacoby, I explored the use of dual-process approaches for diagnosing and rehabilitating cognitive deficits in older adults.

I am currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Location: S&B, Room 105I
Phone: 910/962-7178
Email: danielsk@uncw.edu

Ruth Hurst
Assistant Professor
Psychology

 

Areas of Interest:

Education:

Ph.D., Clinical Psychology

Bio:

Dr. Hurst is new to the Psychology Department at UNCW. Her areas of interest and expertise are in applied behavior analysis, clinical behavior analysis, behavior genetics, and Asperger’s disorder.

She is currently teaching and will be providing practicum supervision within the newly established applied behavior analysis master’s program concentration. This is an important new area of concentration in the psychology department’s graduate program. The concentration was added to the department’s graduate curriculum in response to a well-documented, intense need for master’s level behavior analysts in NC and surrounding states.

In addition to herwork in applied behavior analysis, she is establishing a program of research designed to phenotype the behavior of mice having genotypes associated with human psychopathology; e.g., schizophrenia and autism. Her research uses behavior analytic preparations to better understand genetic influences on behavior (an extension of my doctoral dissertation work).

Based upon herinterest in Asperger’s disorder, she also plans to continue conducting research examining the characteristics of that disorder and its associated problems.

She looks forward to collaborating with colleagues and students as she initiates these programs of research at UNCW.

Location: S&B, 110 J
Phone: 910/962-4057
Email: hurstr@uncw.edu

Publications:

Hurst, R.M. & Nelson-Gray, R. (2006). Single-participant (S-P) design research. In J.C. Norcross, L.E. Beutler, & R.F. Levant (Eds.), Evidence-based practices in mental health: Debate and dialogue on the fundamental questions (pp. 64-73). Washington, DC; American Psychological Association.

James D. Johnson
Professor
Psychology

Areas of Interest:

Education:

Ph.D. Indiana University, 1984
B.A. North Carolina A&T State University, 198

Bio:

Earlier in my career, Dr. Johnson was very interested in the influence of various forms of stereotypes on perceptual and judgmental processes. He focused on the role of mass media in the origins and maintenance of such stereotypes. He realized that there was very little empirical attention given to the minority perspective in stereotyping literature. From his personal experiences, he realized that Blacks had clear and persistent stereotypes regarding Whites. He also discovered that there seemed to be some degree of variation in the endorsement of such Black antiWhite stereotypical beliefs. More important, this variation seems to have a profound influence on Blacks’ perceptions and behavioral interactions with Whites. Subsequently, Dr. Johnson, along with Dr. Len Lecci, developed one of the first measures of Black antiWhite bias based on the responses of a Black participant population. This four factor Johnson-Lecci scale (see Johnson & Lecci, 2003) has been shown to predict responses to ambiguously racist scenarios and peer-rated attitudes towards Whites.

Most recently, I have become very interested in the role of Black antiWhite bias on the health care related responses of Blacks. I was recently a part of a consortium that received a 3.5 million grant from NIH to assess why minorities in the Southeast tend not to seek or continue radiation treatment for cancer. One of the major components of the grant was to assess whether variations in responses on the Johnson-Lecci scale would predict health care seeking responses, and more important, health care outcomes. In his own lab, Dr. Johnson is presently investigating how variation on the Johnson-Lecci scale and physician race might interact to influence physician trust and health care seeking behavior.

Publications:

Dovidio, J., ten Vergert, M., Stewart, T., Gaertner, S., Johnson, J., Esses, V. (2004). Perspective and Prejudice: Mediating Mechanisms. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1537-1549.


Anderson, C., Berkowitz, L., Donnerstein, E. , Huesmann, L., Johnson, J.D., Linz, D., Malamuth, N., & Wartella, E. (2003). The Influence of Media Violence on Youth. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4, 81-110.

Johnson, J., Simmons, C., Trawalter, S., & Ferguson, T. (2003) . Variation in Black antiWhite bias and Target Distancing Cues: Factors that Influence Perceptions of “Ambiguously Racist Behavior”. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 609-622.

Johnson, J, & Lecci, L. (2003). Assessing antiWhite attitudes among Blacks and predicting perceived racism: The Johnson-Lecci Scale. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , 29, 299-312.

Location: S&B, 105C
Phone: 910/962-3066
Email: leccil@uncw.edu

Len Lecci, Ph.D.
Professor
Psychology

 

Areas of Interest:

Education:

Ph.D., Arizona State University. Clinical Psychology.

Clinical Fellow in Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.

M.A., Carleton University. Personality Psychology.

B.A., Carleton University. Psychology.

Bio:

The research in Dr. Lecci's lab emphasizes the factors that influence decision making in different settings. Two areas that he and Dr. James Johnson are currently researching are: 1) Decision making among jurors (e.g., what determines whether jurors will attempt to influence other jurors during a deliberation), and 2) Decision making among patients as they interact with doctors (e.g., what type of information do people pay the most attention to and believe). In these research projects they are typically interested in the interaction between some individual difference variable (such as degree of pretrial bias) and an experimental variable (such as the level of certainty in a verdict, as controlled through the manipulation of evidence).

Other ongoing projects in their lab include the assessment of memory functioning, with an emphasis on early detection of memory problems like dementia (see Memory Assessment and Research Services), and the creation of algorithms to better estimate validity coefficients for dichotomous outcomes.

Publications:

Lecci, L., & Cohen, D. J. (In press). Altered processing of health threat words as a function of hypochondriacal tendencies and experimentally manipulated control beliefs. Cognition and Emotion.

Lecci, L. & Wirth, R. J. (In press). Methodological and practical issues in the experience, induction and assessment of mood states. In A. V. Clark (Ed.) Causes, Role and influence of mood states. New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Lecci, L., & Myers, B. (2002). Examining the construct validity of the Original and revised JBS: A cross-validation of sample and method. Law and Human Behavior, 26, 455-463.

Johnson, J, & Lecci, L. (2003). Assessing antiWhite attitudes among Blacks and predicting perceived racism: The Johnson-Lecci Scale. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , 29, 299-312.

Location: S&B, 110e
Phone: 910/962-7262
Email: leccil@uncw.edu

 


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