SEE Lab

Faculty Advisors

Dr. Kerry L. Marsh

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Kerry Marsh is a Professor of Psychological Sciences who supervises graduate students in the Social program, and occasionally in PAC. Her training is in motivated cognition and attitude functions, but her current focus involves a more radically embodied and embedded approach to social psychology. Within SEE Lab, she conducts basic research on what action possibilities (affordances) built and natural environments provide for people both individually and collectively, with a particular interest in the dynamics of behavior settings. Current areas of applied person-environment interests include interactions between drivers, AVs, and pedestrians.

Contact: Kerry.L.Marsh@uconn.edu

Dr. Alexandra Paxton

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Alexandra Paxton is an Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences in the Perception, Action, Cognition Division. (She is also affiliated with the Center for the Ecological Study of Perception and Action; the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy; and the Connecticut Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences.) She takes a data-rich approach to understanding how people collaborate, bond, and fight. To do that, she weaves together a variety of data sources from the lab and the real world for a converging tapestry of the many ways in which language, movement, decisions, and emotions change during social contact. Understanding how context—including conversational goals, social connections, and physical spaces—shapes emerging behaviors is a primary goal of her research, embedded within rich traditions of dynamical and ecological perspectives on human behavior and cognition broadly.

She is also interested in developing methods to quantify social interaction, promoting open science research and education, and creating opportunities for cognitive scientists and psychologists who are interested in big data, naturally occurring data, and data science, with a special focus on data ethics.

Contact: alexandra.paxton@uconn.edu

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Graduate Students

Maria Boada

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Program: Social

Maria’s research explores human–nature interactions, particularly the relationship between exposure to natural environments and psychological well-being. Her cross-disciplinary interests include environmental psychology, place identity, ecopsychology, restorative environments, and human–nature ontologies.

Contact: maria.boada@uconn.edu

Alexa Ott

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Program: Social

Alexa's research centers on the person-environment relationship in a variety of contexts. Her work has explored the extent to which affective states or built vs. natural environments may influence one's possibilities for action as well as prototypicality and climate change attitudes. Currently, she is interested in investigating behavioral outcomes associated with the presence or absence of identity safety cues (ISCs).

Contact: alexa.ott@uconn.edu

Caleb Owen

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Program: PAC-Eco

Caleb’s research aims to understand how people move through learning and social environments by applying an socio-ecological framework across education, health, and performance. His interests lie in environmental affordances and team coordination that reduce school exclusions and speed crisis-to-care linkage; interpersonal synchrony, group identity, and motivation during collaboration and learning.

Contact: caleb.owen@uconn.edu

Lucia Rivas

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Program: PAC-Eco

My interests lie in the intersectionality of humans' identities and the way their sense of self, affiliations, and social roles affect how they relate to each other and their environment. I plan to investigate how people resolve conflict and manage expectations through communication to achieve desired relationship outcomes in specific situational contexts.

Contact: lucia.rivas@uconn.edu

Gray Thomas

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Program: PAC-Eco

Broadly, Gray's work aims to understand how one moves through the world by applying an ecological framework to several domains. This is evident in his work on prospective memory, interpersonal synchrony during conflict, dynamics of misinformation, habit formation, values-realizing theory, and skills training in a sports context. He is currently a Skills Acquisition Research Fellow with the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Contact: gray.ft@uconn.edu

Emma Wedell

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Program: Social

Emma's cross-disciplinary research interest s broadly pertain to equity at multiple levels: individual (e.g., substance use & other mental health disparities), interpersonal (e.g., intergroup dialogue), and structural (e.g., confrontation of institutional discrimination). In some of her current collaborations she seeks to investigate these topics via a dynamical systems approach.

Contact: emma.wedell@uconn.edu

Undergraduate Students

Julia Cahoon

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Major: Psychology

Julia Cahoon is a 2nd year undergraduate in the Dyscord and See lab. She assists with studies focusing on human interaction, and both verbal and non verbal communication. She is interested in perusing a clear in clinical psychology, and plans to complete her PhD in this field. She aspires to work in pediatric oncology as a counselor.

Luna De La Cruz Perdomo

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Major: Psychology and minor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Luna is interested in understanding how different environments—both built and natural—shape individuals’ emotions, cognition, and behavior. She is also interested in pursuing a PhD in Clinical Psychology with a focus on Ecological Psychology in hopes to become a therapist in the future.

Adrianna Dell’Aera

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Major: Psychology and a minor in HDFS

Adrianna is a senior undergraduate focused on behavioral and social psychology specifically. She is passionate about understanding how individual behavior is shaped by social environments and hopes to apply this knowledge in educational settings. Adrianna plans to pursue a career as a school psychologist, where she will help students to grow and facilitate learning not only academically but also socially and emotionally.

Katherine Lauro

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Major: Psychology

Katherine is an undergraduate student at UConn majoring in Psychology, with a strong interest in Social Psychology. She is particularly interested in understanding human behavior and how individuals interact in different social settings. Katherine is curious about the ways people’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are influenced by their environment and relationships. She aims to apply this knowledge to become a school psychologist, where she hopes to support students' emotional and social development.

Phoebe Mann

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Major: Psychology

Phoebe Mann is a third-year undergraduate in the Dyscord Lab. Within the lab she's worked with multiple graduate students in studies ranging from yoga's effects and interpersonal relationships. She is currently working towards a future law degree in the hopes of becoming a lawyer.

Anayah Owens

Major: Psychology

Anayah is most excited about the immersive virtual reality methods in the SEE Lab, especially considering how VR can make research feel more realistic and open up new ways to study interpersonal and environmental risk. Anayah is also very interested in work on motivation, persuasion, and relationships including: how people connect, communicate, and influence one another. After undergrad, I am interested in school psychology or neuropsychology because I want to make a difference in well-being, while also staying active in research and building a career that allows me to contribute to future studies.

Anirudh Rengarajan

Major: Psychology

Zuleydy Torres

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Major: Psychology

Zuleydy is a senior psychology major on the research track with a crime and justice minor. Her research interests broadly consist of perceptions of deviant behavior and the social contributions to criminality. She would like to pursue a master's in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and become a correctional counselor working directly with the inmate population.

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Faculty Affiliates

Dr. Laura S. Cuijpers, Assistant Professor, Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Groningen
Dr. Bert Hodges, Emeritus Faculty
Dr. Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi, Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Human Interactivity and Language Lab

Lab Alumni

Doctoral Students

Caitrín Hall (2025)
Megan Chiovaro (2023)
Shu Jiang (2023)
Cassidy Burt (2022)
Ashley Dhaim (candidate)
Annette Tucker (2020)
Ben Meagher (2014)

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Christina Bibinski, Heaven Buckham, Brittany Burkman, Zanab Chaudhary, Zohaa Chaudhary, Myla Denson, Sarah Ferrigno, James Fitzpatrick, Jeffrey Glassman, Seo Young Oh Camryn Ricard