Psychology

Portraits of three UC Davis alumnae, one blond and two with dark brown hair

Three Alumnae Named Sacramento Latino Change Makers

  • by Kathleen Holder
  • March 17, 2023
Melinda Guzman, Cathy Rodriguez Aguirre and Lydia Ramirez attended UC Davis at different times, pursued different majors in the College of Letters and Science, and followed different paths to successful careers in law, business advocacy and banking. Their paths converged at various times, most recently with a shared honor: each was named to The Sacramento Bee’s inaugural list of Top 25 Latino Change Makers for leading positive transformations in their communities.
Portraits of two UC Davis psychology and classics faculty

Camelia Hostinar and Tim Brelinski Receive Teaching Awards

  • by Kathleen Holder
  • March 08, 2023

Two faculty in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis have been recognized by their campus peers for outstanding teaching. Camelia Hostinar, associate professor of psychology, is a recipient of the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award:  Undergraduate. Tim Brelinski, a continuing lecturer in classics, received the Academic Federation’s Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award

Joyful baby with masked mom in a park

Babies Remember Faces Despite Face Masks, UC Davis Study Suggests

  • by Kathleen Holder
  • February 01, 2023
Babies learn from looking at human faces, leading many parents and childhood experts to worry about possible developmental harm from widespread face-masking during the pandemic. A new study by researchers in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science allays those concerns, finding that 6- to 9-month-old babies can form memories of masked faces and recognize those faces when unmasked.
A family portrait of a father with four children, one a baby on his knee

Resilience and 'La Familia'

  • by Kathleen Holder
  • November 02, 2022
Now in its 16th year, the California Families Project looks at the development of children of Mexican origin and a wide range of characteristics — individual, family, neighborhood, school and culture — that help them succeed in life. The landmark UC Davis study is the most comprehensive longitudinal study of its kind in the United States.
Blond female teacher, smiling at students in classroom, gestures at equations on blackboard

Faculty Develop New Calculus Course for Social Science Majors

  • by Kathleen Holder
  • September 12, 2022
Data increasingly drives research and policy on a broad array of pressing global issues, including climate change, misinformation in social media, and the future of the social safety net in our aging society. A new mathematics course in the works at UC Davis will help to prepare the next generation of social scientists to analyze and use data in mathematical models.
Three men and one woman at a reception, smiling at camera, one man holding a textbook.

Faculty Couple Attend Dutch Royal Reception

  • by Kathleen Holder
  • September 09, 2022
When Queen Máxima of the Netherlands visited San Francisco this week to celebrate her country’s economic ties with California, a UC Davis couple was on hand to celebrate their own Dutch connections and to represent the campus. Husband and wife psychology professors George “Ron” Mangun, who is American, and Tamara Swaab, who is Dutch, were invited guests at a Sept. 6 royal reception at San Francisco City Hall.
Female scientist looks into microscope

Scientists Pinpoint 1 Reason Why Women May Not Respond to Depression Treatments the Same as Men

  • by Karen Nikos-Rose
  • July 13, 2022
Although treatments for depression exist, sometimes these treatments don’t work for many who use them. Furthermore, women experience higher rates of depression than men, yet the cause for this difference is unknown, making their illnesses, at times, more complicated to treat. UC Davis researchers teamed up with scientists from Mount Sinai Hospital, Princeton University, and Laval University, Quebec, to try to understand how a specific part of the brain, the nucleus accumbens, is affected during depression.
Face of man with dark hair and eyes, green shrubbery in background

International Society Honors Memory Research Pioneer

  • by Kathleen Holder
  • June 27, 2022
Charan Ranganath, a professor of psychology and director of the UC Davis Memory and Plasticity Program, has been selected for a Psychonomic Society 2022 Mid-Career Award for his research on the science of human memory. Ranganath is one of three scholars worldwide chosen to receive the award from the international society.
A transparent brain.

Understanding Learning by Inference

  • by Andy Fell
  • June 22, 2022
Both humans and other animals are good at learning by inference, using information we do have to figure out things we cannot observe directly. New research from the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, shows how our brains achieve this by constructing cognitive maps.
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