URAP

Sonia Bishop - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

General to all projects listed: Computational models have been a powerful tool for studying decision-making in both psychology and neuroscience. They have recently become popular in psychiatry as well. Part of the appeal has been that computational approaches delineate individual differences in decision-making that can explain why people...

Sonia Bishop - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Computational models have been a powerful tool for studying decision-making in both psychology and neuroscience. They have recently become popular in psychiatry as well. Part of the appeal has been that computational approaches delineate individual differences in decision-making that can explain why people with different psychiatric disorders (such...

Sonia Bishop - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

General to all projects: Computational models have been a powerful tool for studying decision-making in both psychology and neuroscience. They have recently become popular in psychiatry as well. Part of the appeal has been that computational approaches delineate individual differences in decision-making that can explain why people with...

Sonia Bishop - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     

In this project, we are using multi-feature encoding models to analyse functional magnetic resonance imaging data collected when participants look at naturalistic examples of emotional faces. The goal is to better understand how tuning to facial information (expression, gender, age etc) varies across the cortical surface of the human...

Silvia Bunge - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

The Building Blocks of Cognition Laboratory, led by Prof. Silvia Bunge, is investigating how we can help children learn to read, interpret, and reason with graphs more effectively, leveraging insights from cognitive psychology. This project involves behavioral methods. You can learn more about the lab's main lines of research here...

Anne Collins - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Over the course of millions of years, the human brain has been intricately shaped by the process of evolution, transforming it into an unparalleled learning system capable of adeptly navigating complex and ever-changing natural environments. While its remarkable learning abilities surpass those of cutting-edge machine learning algorithms, the...

Anne Collins - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Habits are inflexible patterns of behavior that have become deeply ingrained through repetition. When it comes to situations we are likely to encounter often, habitual control can be effective and efficient. When passing by the Campanile en route to class, you might turn left automatically, and eventually arrive at your...

Anne Collins - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

From founding a startup to climbing the tallest peaks, people set a wide range of objectives for themselves. How do people decide which goals to set? How do they manage progress towards different – and perhaps competing – objectives? The proposed research plans to investigate goal setting in a range of naturalistic...

Anne Collins - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Navigating complex natural environments presents a robust challenge to even the most advanced artificial systems, yet humans can often handle these same challenges effortlessly. What algorithms underly these human capabilities to learn and generalize so efficiently? My research investigates the learning algorithms implemented by the human brain to efficiently act...

Arianne Eason - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

In the UC DREAMS Lab, directed by Professor Eason, we research how our social and cultural contexts shape attitudes and behavior, and reinforce inequality. Our social, cultural, and developmental psychology lab is hiring research assistants to help with several projects this semester. Across projects, we investigate prejudice, attitudes, stereotyping, discrimination...

Arianne Eason - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

In the UC DREAMS Lab, directed by Professor Eason, we research how our social and cultural contexts shape attitudes and behavior, and reinforce inequality. Our social, cultural, and developmental psychology lab is hiring research assistants to help with several projects this semester. Across projects, we investigate prejudice, attitudes, stereotyping, discrimination...

Jan Engelmann - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

We address questions about the evolution and development of socio-cognitive skills by comparing humans to other animals (mostly chimpanzees, our closest living relatives) and by studying how children develop. How do children reason? How strongly is reasoning embedded in social, cognitive processes? The goal of this project is to...

Alison Gopnik - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

All research in the Gopnik Cognitive Development and Learning Lab is broadly focused on children's development of cause and effect reasoning and how they learn from and about other people. We are looking for dedicated and motivated undergraduate students interested in pursuing a graduate degree in developmental psychology or a...

Richard Ivry - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Research in our laboratory addresses how people learn new motor skills. We study this topic using behavioral and computational methods with healthy and neurologically impaired humans. The neurological studies examine the contribution of different brain structures, especially the cerebellum and basal ganglia, in motor learning to develop functional hypotheses regarding...

Richard Ivry - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Aims: While humans are remarkably adept at adjusting their movements to operate in uncertain environments, motor control remains a major challenge for AI systems. This project aims to study the computational rules underlying human motor control to improve algorithms for human-like robots: 1. We will conduct longitudinal studies to...

Richard Ivry - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

The goal of this project is to test the efficacy of a new non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) device that has been developed at Berkeley. NIBS methods have been around for about 40 years and involve applying weak electrical or magnetic fields to the scalp (non-invasive) in order to...

Sheri Johnson - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

We aim to test whether time-restricted eating (in which a person eats during the 10 most active hours of their day) or Mediterranean diet can help reduce symptoms and improve quality of life for people with bipolar disorder...

Sheri Johnson - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: Off Campus

The goal of this study is to consider cognitive influences on misophonia...

Sheri Johnson - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

The goal of this study is to use cognitive training and cognitive behavioral training to promote better emotion regulation. We are testing a novel program, N-ACT, which involves 8 sessions of practicing executive control tasks while exposed to pictures designed to invoke emotion. In each session, clients will also...

Sheri Johnson - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

CALM Program researchers in UC Berkeley's psychology department are seeking a highly-motivated advanced undergraduate (or graduate) student for a volunteer Research Assistant (RA) position. Our team conducts multi-method research examining behavioral and biological mechanisms linking emotion-related impulsivity to mental health problems. We aim to recruit an RA...

Celeste Kidd - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

The Kidd Lab studies learning and belief formation using a combination of computational and behavioral methods. In our behavioral experiments, we measure how humans look, explore, play, and learn starting in infancy and continuing throughout childhood. We use eye-trackers to measure visual fixations, touchscreens to study exploration in kid...

Don Moore - Professor, Business, Haas School, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Have you ever scored lower on a test than you expected, lost a competition to a competitor you thought you would trounce, been certain about a fact only to have Google prove you incorrect? People are frequently overconfident. Understanding overconfidence can help us become more accurate about our self-perceptions...

Don Moore - Professor, Business, Haas School, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Human judgments are routinely biased. Can artificially intelligent agents correct for this human bias and achieve greater accuracy in their judgment...

Don Moore - Professor, Business, Haas School, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

The scientific world is changing quickly as scientists improve their research practices and correct errors in the published record. This project seeks to test the replicability of published work that is now suspect. This is a chance to play a role in a project in the vanguard of open science...

Don Moore - Professor, Business, Haas School, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Have you ever read a research article and wondered if the authors truly tested the research question they purported to test? The focus of this project concerns the evaluation of research methodology. You would work primarily with a senior graduate student in the lab on her research. It is an...

Steven Piantadosi - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

We are currently working on a series of studies that use behavioral methods to research mathematical development in children. These studies investigate: 1) the relationship between early mathematics and attention; and 2) the development of algorithmic reasoning in early mathematics. They are funded by the NSF’s Division of Research on...

Juliana Schroeder - Professor, Business, Haas School, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

Founded in 2004, the Experimental Social Science Laboratory (Xlab) conducts experiment-based investigations of issues of interest to social scientists. Xlab supports UC Berkeley’s world class research by providing resources such as access to participant pools, experiment coordination, payment support, access to softwares, grants, and more. It also provides technical...

Juliana Schroeder - Professor, Business, Haas School, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Technology is rapidly changing, giving humans more options than ever to decide how to communicate with each other. Whereas online options to engage with others are expanding, in-person contact seems to be decreasing. How are these changes affecting the way people connect with each other? How does this affect...

Juliana Schroeder - Professor, Business, Haas School, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

If humans are social animals, then why do they choose to remain disconnected with people sometimes? Here we explore when people don’t want to connect with others, such as when they are strangers. In one set of studies, we asked strangers to have conversations on public transportation (e.g., buses, cabs...

Juliana Schroeder - Professor, Business, Haas School, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Human-GAI Interaction is inevitably becoming more common. We seek to address the following research questions: 1. What are the pros and cons of mandatory disclosure of non-political deepfake commercials? Would the disclosure affect people's trust towards the political information they see? 2. How could GAI aid crowd-based...

Mahesh Srinivasan - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

The goal of this program is to provide a comprehensive, hands-on research experience to highly motivated students, while making valuable contributions to cognitive science. Our lab's research explores how linguistic, cognitive, and social abilities arise during human development. A central goal of our research is exploring how...

Mahesh Srinivasan - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

This project explores how Hindu and Muslim children in India develop religious concepts and beliefs. Our project is part of a larger international, cross-cultural study. We are interested in questions including how children develop concepts of religious and supernatural entities, how children reason about religious norms, how religious beliefs...

Mahesh Srinivasan - Professor, Psychology

Status: Check back for status     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

During 2020-2021, families were often forced to change their daily routines and encountered newfound or exacerbated life stressors. We are interested in exploring whether these changes impacted parent-child conversations each day. This study researches parents’ and children’s daily routines during the COVID-19 pandemic through surveys that measure activities...

Mahesh Srinivasan - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: Off Campus

Differences in academic achievement between high and low socioeconomic status (SES) children arise at a very early age. Understanding the factors that give rise to these differences is essential for understanding the intergenerational transmission of poverty. The East Bay Financial Needs Study (EBFNS) tests the idea that the psychological experience...

Frederic Theunissen - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Our laboratory studies vocal communication in animals and would like to develop an automatic classifier for bird calls using advanced machine learning techniques...

Frederic Theunissen - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

The apprentice(s) will prepare and analyze neural tissue to assist graduate students and staff scientists with ongoing projects. This will include slicing, mounting (on microscope slides), and imaging of brain tissue to verify where electrodes were placed during electrophysiological recordings, as well as other projects. Apprentice(s) will learn...

Frederic Theunissen - Professor, Psychology

Status: Check back for status     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Project Description: The zebra finch has a very rich vocal repertoire of communication calls that are used in distinct behavioral contexts: peer recognition and localization, mate interactions, offspring care, etc. We previously gathered a huge bank of these calls, classifying them along semantic categories, i.e. groups of calls with the...

David Whitney - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

The human perceptual system processes faces in an unique manner. Humans perceive faces holistically (i.e. as a whole) rather than as a set of separate features. The face inversion effect is one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for holistic processing of faces. Upright faces are identified faster than...

David Whitney - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

The recent advent of autonomous vehicles (AV) in the last decade has changed the traditional role of drivers. Currently, autonomous cars being developed and commercialized are not fully autonomous. In fact, commercially-available AV take control of only some of the driving functions, such as speed, or are highly automated...

David Whitney - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Accurately knowing the timing of different events happening around us is a crucial ability of all human beings. In natural scenes such as movies or everyday life, dynamic events could happen either in the left or right visual field. Given that information coming through our left visual field will be...

David Whitney - Professor, Psychology

Status: Check back for status     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

The ability to quickly and accurately perceive emotion is essential in our daily lives. However, how does the brain process multiple sources of emotional information when making emotional judgments? The brain must take into consideration facial expression, tone of voice, body movement, contextual information, and even beliefs in its judgment...

Fei Xu - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

The Berkeley Early Learning Lab, under the direction of Professor Fei Xu, researches statistical inference, Bayesian reasoning, conceptual representation, belief revision, social cognition, and language acquisition in infants and children aged 4 months to 10 years. Children participate in our studies at our Berkeley Way West lab, at preschools, and...

Fei Xu - Professor, Psychology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

This projects explores the origins of referential communication by analyzing the properties of parent-infant and parent-child interactions and infants' sensitivity to parents & contingent responsiveness. We use a combination of methods, including video annotation of video-recorded parent-infant dyads, eyetracking experiments, and behavioral experiments. The age range for...

Qing Zhou - Professor, Psychology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Professor Qing Zhou’s Family and Culture Lab (https://zhoulab.berkeley.edu/) aims to investigate cultural, contextual, and temperament influences on socio-emotional/mental health, academic, executive function, and language development from childhood to young adulthood, with a particular focus on children/youth of immigrant families. We have multiple ongoing research projects investigating...