Department of Psychology

Dr. Paul Strand
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology

pstrand@tricity.wsu.edu

Research Interests:
Child Social Development, Culture and Development, Verbal Behavior, Behavior Analysis, and Family Therapy

My interests include the development of social competence and academic readiness during early childhood.  This involves exploring how emerging verbal capacities, emotional processes, and interpersonal experiences relate to these constructs.  This has led me, recently, to explore the intersection of social and language development of children from different language backgrounds.  We are exploring differential developmental pathways to social and school success for children from different language and cultural backgrounds.

Dr. Sarah L. Tragesser
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology

stragesser@tricity.wsu.edu

Research Interests:
Affective Instability; Interpersonal Problems; Alcohol Use Disorders; Electrophysiology; Substance Abuse Prevention; Cross-Cultural

My research is centered on the personality features related to emotion regulation, interpersonal problems, and alcohol use, with particular emphasis on affective instability and impulsivity. I use a variety of methods in my research, including neurocognitive measures (i.e., event-related potentials), ecological momentary assessments (with palm pilot surveys), vignettes, and longitudinal survey data. I work from a dimensional perspective, which assumes that most personality and mood disorders are extreme maladaptive variants of normal personality and emotion mechanisms. Therefore, along with my colleagues, I conduct research with both normal and clinical populations, and am interested in these issues in the context of normal adaptive functioning as well as in the service of alleviating mental health problems and their social consequences.   

Dr. Jim Wise
Clinical Associate Professor
Department of Psychology

jwise@tricity.wsu.edu