Anna is currently a senior at the University of North Georgia. She is finishing her bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in communications. Her research interests include behavioral health and its influence on negative physical and mental health outcomes. Anna became a part of Hale Vision Lab in 2023 while working on an academic project with Dr. Hale, Principal Investigator, and fellow Hale Vison Lab Undergraduate Research Assistant, Courtney Nutt. This project involves the relationship between the Birthday Number Effect and self-esteem that is currently under peer-review by the Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research. Anna helped to design and conduct the study as well as co-author the manuscript. Anna is the treasurer of the Psi Chi Honors Society for the 2023-2024 school year and has been an active member since 2022. Anna’s career goals involve becoming a Licensed Professional Counselor and broadening her experience in behavioral psychology. In the future, she hopes to apply her experience as an undergraduate research assistant and pursue a PsyD in Health Psychology, with a focus on evidence-based practices of integrated behavioral health. 

Tanner is a senior at the University of North Georgia majoring in psychology with minors in criminal justice and business. His psychology areas of research interest include cognition and psychopathology. Tanner joined the Hale Vision Lab in the Fall of 2022. Since then, he has been an active researcher on multiple projects. In the fall and spring of 2022, Tanner participated in a project investigating the role of color priming on visual short-term memory (VSTM) in a partial-report paradigm. After completion of the study, he presented his findings in 2023 during a poster presentation at the Vision Science Society (VSS) conference in St. Pete Beach, FL. Tanner has also participated in the University of North Georgia’s Faculty Undergraduate Summer Engagement (FUSE) program in the Summer of 2023 where he and a fellow research assistant investigated the visual memory of scenes and art in a virtual reality (VR) environment. Further, they investigated how familiarity, aesthetic value, and change type affect visual long-term memory (VLTM) accuracy in a change/no-change paradigm. During this program, Tanner helped design and create the experiment, recruit participants, collect participant data, analyzed data, and is currently working on a manuscript for publication. He plans on presenting this study in 2024 in a poster session at VSS. Tanner has received the National Eye Institute Early Career Scientist Grant and the Center for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Grant to help fund his travel to VSS in the Spring of 2022. Tanner is currently a member of the student conduct hearing panel at the University of North Georgia where he represents UNG’s student body in deciding cases of academic misconduct. He is also an active member of the Vision Science Society and Psi Chi International Honors Society in Psychology. After graduation, Tanner plans on using his research experience from Hale’s Vision Lab to pursue a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. He hopes to contribute to the current research on the impact social media addiction has on adolescence.  

Patsy is a fourth-year student at the University of North Georgia. She is currently working toward her bachelor's degree in psychology with a minor in human services. Her interests are focused on cognitive and abnormal psychology. In the spring of 2021, Patsy began working in the Hale Vision Lab under the direction of Dr. Ralph Hale. After joining Hale Vision Lab, Patsy started as a student panelist for the Office of Student Integrity as well as a mentor for the Peer Mentorship Program at the University of North Georgia. In the summer of 2021, she was hired as a paid research assistant through UNG’s Faculty Undergraduate Summer Experience (FUSE) program. In this eight-week program, she worked alongside Dr. Hale and a fellow research assistant to develop a research project, recruit participants, collect data, clean and analyze data, and present progress and findings after each milestone (four presentations in all). This project focused on the relationship between ambiguous figure/ground organization and a visual phenomenon called the watercolor illusion (WCI). The results from this project were presented in a poster session at the Southeastern Psychological Association (SEPA) in March of 2022. Later that semester, Patsy presented a follow-up study related to the WCI in a poster session at the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), an international visual perception conference. This study and presentation further examined the interactions between the WCI, luminance contrast, and figure/ground organization. UNG’s Center for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (CURCA) awarded travel grants to fund travel to both SEPA and VSS. Patsy continued to study relationship between the WCI, luminance contrast, and figure/ground organization in various conditions throughout Fall 2022 and into Spring 2023. Patsy collaborated to write a manuscript detailing these recent WCI experiments, which was submitted to a high-impact journal for publication consideration in early 2023. Through a travel grant funded by CURCA, she presented the lab’s research in a poster session at SEPA in March of 2023. She later presented a three-part study on the WCI in a poster session at VSS in May of 2023, where she was awarded the National Eye Insitute Research Travel Grant. Patsy will begin her independent research project in the fall of 2023 under the guidance of Dr. Ralph Hale, in which she will investigate the spatial and object variability of mental imagery and aphantasia. Following graduation, Patsy plans on attending graduate school to obtain a PhD in psychology. Her hope is to apply her experience in research as a policy analyst to improve accessibility across the nation.  

Erin is graduated from UNG in 2023, majoring in Psychology and minoring in Neuroscience. She has an interest in cognitive psychology related to attention, memory, sensation, and perception. She is chapter president for UNG Gainesville Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), an international organization that aims to mend the many incomprehensible policies related to drugs in this country. She participated in SSDP’s Psychedelic Pipeline mentorship program as a mentee where she created a harm reduction peer support group with the support of UNG’s counseling center. Additionally, she volunteers with Dancesafe, a harm-reduction organization. Her research interests include visual perception and the way we use our memory to interpret new stimuli. In Fall 2020, she started a novel research project on fragile memory. During Spring 2021 she presented her research at UNG’s Annual Research Conference (ARC) and plans to present new findings at additional conferences in the near future. She was awarded the 2021 Outstanding Psychology Student Researcher award for the Gainesville campus. She was also accepted into the University of Georgia's Summer Undergraduate Research Experience in Neuroscience (NSURE) program, an NHI-funding training program designed to provide an immersive biomedical research experience for the next generation of underrepresented students in the biomedical sciences. Erin plans to pursue a Ph.D. to further her research in these many areas of interest. In 2022, Erin co-authored a publication in the Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research. Click here to read that article. 

Miranda is a graduated student at the University of North Georgia with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in business administration. She has interests in the field of social psychology as demonstrated in a study titled “How phubbing affects group interaction” where she examined college student perceptions of phone usage in social interactions. Due to her interests in behavioral health, Miranda has worked locally with Avita Community Partners in Gainesville, GA at the Women’s Treatment and Support Program. This opportunity has helped her gain hands-on training with substance abuse in nearly a dozen women and children - an opportunity that has provided useful insight into her future goals and aspirations related to mental health. Miranda has also acquired a passion in environmental psychology including specifically how outdoor activities, fresh air, and interactions with nature can help those struggling with depression and anxiety disorders. Miranda also fosters a love of animals which has led to a desire to research animal behavior, animal cognition, the evolution of social behaviors, animal perceptual processes, and the efficacy of emotional support animals. As well as being a full-time student, Miranda works full-time in the service industry. Additionally she works part-time as a Lab Assistant for the Psychology Department at UNG. She is a member of the UNG’s First Year Foundation Peer Mentor group, engaging with over ten assigned freshmen mentees per semester. Miranda plans to complete a doctoral program in Clinical Psychology where she hopes to answer a variety of behavior, health, and cognition-related questions through her research in the program.