Research is a central component of our training program and it begins in the first year. Across Clinical Neuropsychology, there are multiple research models including imaging, experimental paradigms, community- and university-based data collection, and secondary data analyses. Students work with their research supervisor to develop their thesis project beginning in their first year, which is defended prior to the beginning of the third year. After students successfully pass their comprehensive exams at the end of their third year, they usually propose their dissertation and focus on completing data collection before they leave for internship. In addition to the specific thesis and dissertation projects, students work within and across their research groups on presentations and publications.
Recent thesis and dissertation topics among our students have included emotionality in TBI, validating a quantitative task to assess reading tendencies in monolingual and bilingual children, the comparison of self-reports of mindfulness with psychophysiological indicators, the use of stand-alone and embedded performance validity tests in a medico-legal setting, the role of semantic richness in episodic memory, and the impact of self-management strategies on neurocognitive performance in individuals with diabetes.
For information about individual research groups, please consult our faculty webpages.