Sharon Himmanen
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology at Cedar Crest College | Cedar Crest College
Allentown, PA, UNITED STATES
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology at Cedar Crest College
Media
Publications:
Documents:
Videos:
Audio/Podcasts:
Biography
Prior to coming to Cedar Crest College, Dr. Himmanen taught as an adjunct instructor of Psychology at Hunter College and Lehman College in New York, and spent two years as a substitute assistant professor at Queens College in New York. For nearly twenty years she worked on a series of NIH and NSF funded projects with Dr. Karyl Swartz. These projects were among the first to use video monitors fitted with touch-sensitive screens to study cognitive processes in non-human primates, and included investigations in list learning and concept learning in rhesus and stumptail monkeys and the use of strategies for list learning in rhesus monkeys and orangutans.
During this time, Dr. Himmanen studied face perception and memory for conspecific faces as well as mirror behavior by rhesus monkeys. Dr. Himmanen has also conducted research with human participants providing data on familiarity, visual complexity, name agreement and imagineability for items on the Boston Naming Task, a diagnostic tool often used to the assessment of individuals with impairments caused by cerebral pathology.
Her research interests include face perception and recognition in human participants.
Industry Expertise (4)
Education/Learning
Mental Health Care
Research
Writing and Editing
Areas of Expertise (5)
Biological Pyschology
Comparative Animal Behavior
Face Recognition
Experimental Methodology
Statistics and Methods
Education (2)
City University of New York: Ph.D., Psychology
Washington College: B.A., Psychology
Links (2)
Event Appearances (1)
Cross Modal Transfer of the Same-Different Concept from Odorant Stimuli to Auditory Stimuli in the Rat (Rattus Norvegicus)
Undergraduate Conference in Psychology LVAIC
2013-04-20
Articles (1)
An Investigation of the Prevalence of Insomnia in College Students and its Relationship to Trait Anxiety
College Student Journal
2014-10-01
A number of empirical studies have established that insomnia, poor or inefficient sleep, can significantly impact physical and psychological well-being of college students, as well as interfere with their academic success. A major contributor to the experience of insomnia is that of persistent anxiety. In this study, we investigated the prevalence of insomnia in first-year college students, and explored the correlation between insomnia and trait anxiety. Data revealed a significant prevalence of insomnia in our sample (N = 100). There was also a strong correlation between trait anxiety and insomnia, in addition to a strong correlation between sleep-onset latency (e.g., pre-sleep experience) and sleep quality (e.g., post-sleep experience). Implications of the findings in addition to suggestions for improving students' sleep hygiene and quality are discussed.
Social