Faculty

Dr. Conradt earned his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology with a concentration in Developmental Psychology from the University of Toledo under the mentorship of Dr. Kamala London-Newton. Dr. Conradt’s research interests are in the area of forensic developmental psychology and focus on children’s eyewitness memory and testimony, forensic interviewing procedures with children, and disclosure of child abuse. Current research pursuits include: (1) the effect of the emotional context on children’s memory and vulnerability to an interviewer’s misleading suggestions and (2) memory and cognitive development in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and the overall eyewitness capabilities of this developmental population.

Profile
Email

Dr. (Gross) Costopoulos' career has been in the area of forensic psychology. She comes to Florida Tech after serving as the senior forensic psychologist for the Sexually Violent Predator Program of Florida (also known as the Jimmy Ryce Act). Previously she served at a forensic psychiatric inpatient unit at Florida State Hospital where she conducted therapy and assessments, and testified to the court on issues of residents' competency to stand trial, commitment for hospitalization and other forensic matters. While there, she received a number of awards for her outstanding work and contributions.

Dr. Costopoulos is coordinating a number of studies examining the efficacy of programs in the community managing mentally ill offenders. Current research includes evaluating aggression in an inpatient forensic settings and examination of theoretical concepts of psychoanalytic conceptualization of violent criminal behavior.

Profile
Email

Dr. Edkins earned her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Kansas. Dr. Edkins' primary research interest is the intersection of psychology and the legal system, especially as it pertains to decision making. She has assessed juror decision making models and constructed a juror attitude questionnaire to predict how jurors will react to various aspects of a trial. Her research program also focuses on the topic of plea bargaining. Specifically, what role does race play in the plea bargains that defense attorneys secure for their clients, and can plea deals be enticing enough to induce innocent people to plead guilty?

Dr. Edkins also assists The FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit and The Academy Group with various research projects including the analysis of hostage-taker motivations and the relationships that convicted child molesters had with their respective wives/girlfriends.

Profiles
Email

Dr. Demara (Mari) B. Bennett earned her Doctorate in Psychology, Clinical Specialization, from the Florida Institute of Technology. She joined the faculty at Florida Tech following extensive clinical experience providing psychological evaluation, treatment, and clinical supervision within community mental health, inpatient, outpatient, and private practice settings. Professional interests include child and family psychology with specialization in differential diagnosis of pediatric mental health concerns, including neurodevelopmental disorders such as Autism Spectrum Disorder, trauma disorders, and child maltreatment. 

Dr. Bennett serves as Director of the Family Learning Program (FLP), one of only 14 DOH-sponsored sexual abuse treatment programs in Florida, providing treatment for children, siblings, and nonoffending caregivers, and clinical training for Clinical Psy.D. students in trauma assessment and evidence-based sexual abuse and trauma treatment. Dr. Bennett also teaches Introduction to Child Advocacy and Critical Issues in Child Advocacy, two of the three required courses for completion of the Child Advocacy Studies Certificate.

Profile
Email

After receiving her B.S. in Biology at Florida State University, Dr. Talbot completed her Ph.D. in Cognitive Sciences at Georgia State University. Throughout her academic career, her overarching research goal has been to study the ultimate (evolutionary) and proximate (behavioral, biological, and developmental) mechanisms underlying sociality. Dr. Talbot’s graduate research focused on face recognition and social knowledge in nonhuman primates and was supported by the National Science Foundation, American Psychological Association, as well as a number of internal awards. Dr. Talbot joins us from the Neuroscience and Behavior Unit at the California National Primate Research Center at the University of California, Davis, where she worked as a postdoc on a collaborative bio-behavioral project examining naturally occurring low-sociability in rhesus monkeys as a model for the core social deficits seen in people with autism spectrum disorder, specifically targeting the underlying mechanisms of social functioning.

Profile
Email

Applied Behavior Analysis Undergraduate Program Coordinator

Dr. Harvey earned his B.A. in Psychology from West Virginia University with an emphasis in Applied Behavior Analysis. Dr. Harvey earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in special education from the University of Oregon under the mentorship of Dr. Robert Horner, developing school-based behavioral supports. Dr. Harvey completed a NIH sponsored post-doctoral training at Vanderbilt University under the direction of Dr. Craig Kennedy. Dr. Harvey has worked in a variety of animal laboratories, school systems, and with individuals with developmental disabilities and/or autism (children, adolescents, and adults) for over 25 years.

Dr. Harvey’s research interests are centered around the Physiological and behavioral indices associated with developmental disabilities, the use of technology and behavior analysis in educational settings, behavioral skills training (BST), and the identification and implementation of evidence-based practice. Dr. Harvey teaches both undergraduate and graduate level courses in behavior analysis.

Profile
Email

Forensic Psychology Program Coordinator

Mr. Jones is a retired law enforcement supervisor and currently serves as coordinator of the undergraduate forensic psychology program. His research interests are law enforcement leadership & management, recruiting & retention, and violent crime. Mr. Jones consults with law enforcement in promotional processes, leadership, and applied research. He is a guest lecturer at the FBI National Academy, a member of the Futures Working Group. Current research efforts are focused on applied research in collaboration with the FBI on perpetrator motivation and violent crime.

Profile
Email

Applied Psychology Program Chair (online)

Maria Lavooy earned an undergraduate degree in Biology, with Biopsychology as her main area of interest and study. It was this interest that led her to the Behavior Genetics Mouse Lab at Miami University, Ohio, where she earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology. She brings more than 25 years of teaching experience, half of them in online instruction, to Florida Tech. She has been an active member of Psi Chi, The International Honor Society in Psychology, since her undergraduate years and is currently serving on their Board of Directors and Executive Committee in the capacity of President-Elect. Her recent research interests, in addition to online teaching and learning, include confronting behavior and diversity, with a primary focus on gender issues.

Profile
Email

Humans sometimes make economic decisions that go against their own self interests. Why, for example, do people gamble when everyone knows they are going to lose money? In my research, I look for the evolutionary origins of these decision-making biases. It may be that these patterns of behavior were useful in our evolutionary past. In order to explore these types of issues, I research decision-making in nonhuman primates. I am particularly interested in how decision-making processes are influenced by the social dynamics within groups.

Currently, I am researching a number of topics within behavioral economics with the animals housed at the Brevard Zoo. At the zoo, my work is conducted with spider monkeys and ring-tailed lemurs.

I teach courses in the animal behavior concentration for psychology undergraduates.

ProfileEmail

Dr. Addante earned a PhD in Neuroscience at UC Davis as a Diversity Fellow of the American Psychological Association in 2011. His work has combined using EEG in small, specialized populations including amnesic patients and astronauts, and has also developed sensitive new measures to study brain states that both predicted future cognition and developed ways to improve memory non-invasively. He has served on NASA analog missions as both Crew & Principal Investigator on psychological research studies of human cognition & teamwork in isolated, confined, and extreme environments analogous to long duration space flight. 

Research in our lab investigates the cognitive neuroscience of human memory, brain states for improving performance and metacognition. Recent discoveries from our team have reported the first neural correlates of the Dunning-Kruger effect, as well as revealed non-conscious memory contributions to cued-recall measures of memory.  Other studies have revealed which memory processes are impaired in amnesia deficits of clinical neuropsychological patients, discovered brain states that predict successful memory prior to a memory stimulus occurring, and our teams then drew upon this knowledge to improve memory performance with interventions such as audio-visual entrainment. We also take these approaches into mobile brain imaging environments of operational settings that include NASA missions and in-flight studies of pilots in general aviation.

He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in physiological psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and neuropsychology.

Profile
Email