Nikola Prendergast Lucas
Faculty
Biography
Dr. Nikola Prendergast Lucas is an Assistant Professor in the Behavioral Science program at UAGC. and has been teaching with UAGC since 2020. She holds an Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a minor in Comparative Literature, a Master’s in Research Psychology specializing in Physiological Psychology, and a Doctoral degree in Experimental Psychology/ Behavioral Neuroscience. While her earlier research investigated hippocampal injury and recovery in animal models, later work has focused on less invasive methods of studying the brain. Her dissertation examined functional connectivity in brains of children diagnosed with autism using electroencephalography. Dr. Lucas has been teaching at the university level and conducting research for 17 years
Current Research and Presentations:
Shanok, N. S., Jones, N. A., & Lucas, N. N. (2019). The nature of facial emotion recognition impairments in children on the autism spectrum. Poster presented at the Society for Research in Child Development Conference, Baltimore, MD, March, 2019.
Lucas, N.N., Pineda, M. & Jones, N. A. (2013). Atypical patterns of EEG activity and functional connectivity in children with autism. Poster presented at the Society for Neuroscience Conference, San Diego, CA November 2013.
Lucas, N. N., Pineda, M., Marsh, K. L., & Jones, N. A. (2013). Processing of emotional expressions and neural activity in preschool-age children. Poster presented at the Society for Research in Child Development Conference, Seattle, WA, April 2013.
Saunders, N. N. & Lee, D. W. (2004). BDNF increases cell proliferation in the injured adult zebra finch hippocampus. Poster presented at the Society for Neuroscience Conference, San Diego, CA, October 2004.
Burton, K.A., Dies, P.J., Badolian, H.B., Dehn, D.J., Saunders, N. N., & Amirkhan, J.H. (2001). Criterion validity of a new measure of stress. Poster presented at the Western Psychological Association Meetings, Maui, HI, April 2001.
McGinnis, D., Saunders, N. N., Burns, R. J., & Dean, H. (2000). Metacognition and unfamiliar word comprehension: Task specific and global metacognitive correlates. Poster presented at the Western Psychological Association Meetings, Portland, OR, April 2000.
McGinnis, D., Saunders, N. N., Imperio, S., Yang, T., & Christian, S. (2000). Examining evidence evaluation processes in UFO and health scenarios. Poster presented at the Western Psychological Association Meetings, Portland, OR, April 2000