Jennifer M.B. Fugate, Ph.D. 
Associate Professor of Health Services Psychology (PSYD) 

Dr. Fugate studies emotion perception and is trained in the cognitive underpinnings of how people construct emotion through their language (Ph.D., Emory University, 2008).  Dr. Fugate directs the ABLE (affective, behavior, learning and embodiment) lab for able mind and body: https://fugatejennifer.wordpress.com/. She has three major lines of research: 

The Effect of Emotion Words on Varying Levels of Cognitive Processing 
In this line of research, my students and I show how emotion words influence emotion perception, at various levels of cognitive processing (e.g., labeling, perceptual memory, visual awareness). In different experimental paradigms, we change access to emotion words to test how such words affect people’s abilities to perceive emotions from faces. Specifically, emotion words actively determine not only how subsequent information will be processed, but also whether it will be processed at all. 

Increasing Emotion Word Knowledge and Granularity 

In this line of research, my students and I train people to learn new, more nuanced emotion words to become more precise with their emotional language. As a result, people show more adaptive emotion perception and improved emotional well-being.

Embodied Cognition in the Classroom and Teaching Research Skills

The goal of this research is to improve student learning by understanding embodied cognition as it can be applied in the classroom. Together with my colleague at the University of Massachusetts, we have developed a novel framework for translating embodied cognitive principles to classroom learning. In our most recent academic endeavor, we co-edited a book on embodied learning in the classroom across disciplinary fields. We feature our work and related work from our colleagues on the following site: https://embodiedcognitionandlearning.com/.