Accomplishments: Department of Psychology
Doctoral student Alexis Rice (Psychological and Brain Sciences) has been awarded multiple competitive honors from the UNLV Graduate College. She is the recipient of the 2026 Patricia Sastaunik Scholarship and the Janine Lee Memorial Scholarship, recognizing her academic excellence and contributions to research. Rice was also awarded the 2026…
Doctoral students Alexis Rice and Shanika Wickramarachchi (both Psychological and Brain Sciences) presented a roundtable at the 2026 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Convention in Los Angeles, CA. Their presentation, titled “Feeling Out of Place: A Mixed Methods Investigation of the Imposter Phenomenon Among BIPOC and LGBTQ…
On April 10, 2026, Shanika Wickramarachchi and Alexis Rice (both Psychology) presented “‘Feeling Out of Place’: Impostor Phenomenon Among BIPOC and LGBTQ STEM College Students” in a roundtable at the 2026 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting in Los Angeles.
The study, co-authored with Richard Chang, Diana Beltran, Gloria…
Graduate student Hoor Ul Ain and faculty mentor Kara Christensen Pacella (Psychology) recently published a new paper in the International Journal of Eating Disorders titled, "Eating Disorder Symptom Severity Decreases in Fasting Muslim Women in the United States During Ramadan: A Preliminary Longitudinal Study." This paper was based on Ain's…
Former Ph.D. students Samantha R. O’Connell, Grace E. Wilson, Dan H. Berkowitz and professors Erin E. Hannon, Joel S. Snyder (all Psychology) published an article in Imaging Neuroscience, reporting two event-related brain potential studies showing that primary motor cortex is not modulated by listening to music that makes people want to move or…
Researchers from the Auditory Cognitive Development Lab and the Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Lab co-authored a large-scale study attempting to replicate findings from 164 papers across the social and behavioral sciences.
The study showed that only about 50% of findings were replicable, similar to another landmark study about the…
Sam Inayat (Psychology; Neuroscience) published an article in Scientific Reports (Springer-Nature) titled “Distinct neural signatures of hippocampal population dynamics during locomotion-in-place.” The study investigates how brain activity changes during different movement states, focusing on the hippocampus, a region critical for memory,…
Lex de Asis (Psychology) and Adrianna N. Tsao (Biological Sciences; Neuroscience) were named 2026 Barry Goldwater Scholars.The Goldwater Scholarship is the nation’s premier undergraduate award for students pursuing research careers in the natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics. This year, 1,485 students from 482 institutions were nominated…
Bailey Way and Shane Kraus (both Psychology), along with their colleagues, have recently completed a comprehensive landscape scan titled The Landscape of Pornography Use by Men in the United States. This work is now published online as part of an ongoing, grant-funded project supported by the American Institute for Boys and Men.
Both the executive…
Shane Kraus (Psychology) and colleagues published five recent scholarly papers.
The first paper, "A critical appraisal of how to employ – or not to employ – the Sexual Risk Survey in international populations," was published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
The second paper, "The Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder Scale (…
Tiange Xu (International Gaming Institute), Mehmet Erdem (Hospitality), Brett Abarbanel (International Gaming Institute; Hospitality), and Shane Kraus (Psychology) recently published a paper, "A Methodological Scoping Review for Video Analysis in Hospitality Research," in the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights. This study reviewed 37…
Bailey Way, Todd Jennings and Shane Kraus (all Psychology) and colleagues recently published a paper, "Psychometric Evaluation of the Nonmainstream Pornography Use Extent Scale," in Sexual Health and Compulsivity.