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Cognitive Neuropsychology of Daily Life (CNDL) Laboratory

Cognitive Neuropsychology of Daily Life (CNDL) Laboratory

Contacts

Department of Psychology
3695 Cullen Boulevard, Suite 204
Houston, TX 77004-5022
713.743.6415
spwoods@uh.edu

News & Events

2023

  • August 2023: The lab’s research on the neuropsychological aspects of using patient health portals was featured by National Public Radio. 
  • May 2023: We’re honored to celebrate with Dr. Anastasia Matchanova as she completed her Ph.D. and will now be embarking on a 2-year post-doctoral fellowship at the San Diego VA!
  • May 2023: We’re excited to announce that Jennifer Thompson successfully defended her dissertation on the validity of a new telephone-based measure of everyday functioning in older adults.
  • March 2023: Join us in welcoming Romi Penheiro, M.Cog.Sci to the CNDL team! Romi will be joining us as a first-year student in Fall 2023.
  • March 2023: Hooray for Jennifer Thompson, who matched for internship at the West Los Angeles VA!

  • June 2022: CNDL says bon voyage (but never goodbye!) to Michelle A. Babicz, who completes her Ph.D. this summer. Next up for Dr. Babicz is a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Tampa VA.
  • May 2022: Dr. Woods was honored with the Excellence in Research, Scholarship, & Creative Activity award for full professors at UH.
  • May 2022: Three cheers for Anastasia Matchanova, who successfully defended her dissertation on the cognitive aspects of sharing COVID-19 misinformation!
  • March 2022: Congratulations to Anastasia Matchanova, who matched for internship at the UCSD/San Diego VA site. We’re all jealous of the amazing weather you’ve got in store over the next year!
  • March 2022: We are excited to welcome Elliott Gomez to the CNDL lab. Elliott will join the UH clinical psychology program as a first-year student in Fall 2022.
  • March 2022: Congratulations to Anastasia Matchanova, who matched for internship at the UCSD/San Diego VA site. We’re all jealous of the amazing weather you’ve got in store for you in 2022-23!

  • June 2021: We are proud and saddened to say farewell to Kelli L. Sullivan, who graduates with her Ph.D. this month. Sullivan will be completing her residency at Brown University, and we are so excited for her!
  • June 2021: We’re so happy for Jennifer Thompson, whose paper on the differential effects of HIV disease on Black Americans has been accepted for publication in The Clinical Neuropsychologist!
  • May 2021: Congratulations to Michelle Babicz, whose dissertation project on the role of cognition and health literacy on the uptake and use of information on COVID-19 has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Psychology!
  • May 2021: The lab is excited for Samina Rahman, whose first first-authored paper has been accepted for publication in Neuropsychology! This study examined the effects of age and cognition on online banking skills and was co-authored by CNDL alumnae Kordovski and Tierney!
  • March 2021: The CNDL lab is excited to announce that Andrea Mustafa from San Diego State University has agreed to join the lab in the fall as a first-year student in the clinical psychology program. Welcome to Houston, Andrea!
  • March 2021: Congrats to Anastasia Matchanova for her published paper on the role that prospective memory plays in online pharmacy navigation among older adults with HIV disease. This paper arose from her master’s thesis and appears in the latest issue of The Clinical Neuropsychologist.
  • March 2021: Hooray for Michelle Babicz, who matched for an internship at the James A. Haley VA in Tampa!

  • July 2020: Congratulations to Jennifer Thompson on her first lead-authored publication, which examined the role of location learning and memory in the daily lives of older adults. This study was accepted for publication in Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology.
  • July 2020: CNDL is simultaneously proud and sad to announce three newly minted doctors from the lab who are now moving on to postdoctoral fellowships: Congratulations to Kordovski (Johns Hopkins), Sheppard (VA Puget Sound) and Tierney (Houston VA)!!!! Thank you for everything you’ve done for CNDL and UH over the years. We can’t wait to see what your bright futures have in store.
  • June 2020: Congratulations to Briana Johnson for winning the Lee Martin scholarship for her academic achievements in psychology as an undergraduate at UH!
  • June 2020: Michelle Babicz recently published her Master’s thesis, which examined the incremental value of a novel vestibular/ocular motor screening test for detecting concussion in youth. This paper was accepted for publication in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine.
  • June 2020: Vickie Kordovski’s study on the neuropsychological correlates of Internet health search behavior was published in Perceptual & Motor Skills. This pilot study served as the foundation for her dissertation, which she has now successfully defended. Way to go, Vickie!
  • March 2020: The CNDL lab is excited to welcome Ilex Beltran-Najera to the lab as a Ph.D. student in the clinical psychology program (neuropsychology major area of study). Welcome Ilex!
  • March 2020: Congratulations to 6th year CNDL student, David Sheppard, whose TCN publication on the mediating effects of prospective memory on age and everyday functioning was selected as TCN/AACN Student Project Competition Award Winner! 
  • March 2020: Michelle Babicz’s lead authored paper on the role of apathy in the determinants of medication adherence in HIV was accepted for publication in the Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings.

  • November 2019: 5th year CNDL student Vickie Kordovski led the publication of a new paper in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology. This study, which was co-authored by CNDL students Kelli Sullivan and Savanna Tierney, showed that HIV and aging were associated with stable impairment in prospective memory functioning in the lab and symptoms in daily life over the course of one year.
  • November 2019: “The CNDL lab is excited to join Claudio Soto, Roberto Arduino and Rodrigo Hasbun in an NIA-funded study (AG061069) that will examine the presence of misfolded protein aggregates in the brain and biological fluids of persons with HIV disease. The CNDL team was involved in constructing the battery for the determination of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders and will lead the human subjects data collection at the Thomas Street Health Center.” 
  • September 2019: CNDL is delighted to welcome first-year doctoral student Jennifer Thompson to the lab!
  • September 2019: 2nd year CNDL student Anastasia Matchanova was lead author on a new paper published in the Journal of NeuroVirology, which is the first to formally operationalize and evaluate the Frascati criteria (Antinori et al., 2007) for everyday functioning declines in support of diagnosing HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders.
  • September 2019: In collaboration with colleagues at UAB and the UH CARMA lab, CNDL recently published a paper in International Geropsychiatry showing that HIV is associated with lower knowledge of dementia, particularly among persons from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds (Woods et al., in press).
  • September 2019: A new CNDL paper published in Neuropsychology shows that the time-based prospective memory performance of older adults with HIV can be improved by effectively supporting strategic processes at encoding (i.e., visualization/implementation intentions) and cue detection (i.e., salient alarms) (Woods et al., in press).
  • September 2019: Congratulations to 4th year CNDL student Kelli Sullivan, whose lead-authored paper entitled “Psychometrics and Validity of the Survey of Memory-Related Quality of Life in HIV Disease” has been accepted for publication in Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology. This study established the factor structure, measurement invariance, stability and construct validity of a new questionnaire designed to assess the impact of memory symptoms on quality of life.
  • May 2019: CNDL is delighted to welcome Briana Johnson, who was one of four psychology undergraduates accepted into the APA-funded Career Opportunities for UnderGraduate ResearcherS (COUGRS) program.
  • May 2019: Congratulations to David Sheppard for his latest publication in TCN, entitled “Prospective memory partially mediates the association between aging and everyday functioning.”
  • April 2019: CNDL is happy to report that Leandro Ledesma has been awarded a UH Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) for 2019. Congrats!
  • April 2019: Cheers to Michelle Babicz on her paper, “Where have I heard that before? A validity study of source memory indices from the California Verbal Learning Test - 2nd edition,” which will appear in The Clinical Neuropsychologist.
  • February 2019: CNDL is proud to announce that 5th year student David Sheppard (VA Puget Sound Healthcare System) and 4th year students Vickie Kordovski (VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System) and Savanna Tierney (Michael E. DeBakey Houston VA Medical Center) have all matched at APA-accredited CN internships! Way to go!        
  • February 2019: Kelli Sullivan, Michelle Babicz and Anastasia Matchanova all represented CNDL at the 47th Annual Meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society in NYC!
  • January 2019: Congrats to 2nd-year CNDL student, Michelle Babicz, who published a paper entitled, “Does the Key Task measure prospective memory? Cautionary findings from parallel studies in HIV disease and older adults” in Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology. This paper represents a collaboration between CNDL and the Healthy Ageing Research Program at the University of Western Australia in showing that a commonly used single-item task that purports to assess prospective memory may not be measuring what we think it measures.

  • December 2018: Fourth-year CNDL student, Savanna Tierney’s paper entitled, “Extrapyramidal Motor Signs in Older Adults With HIV Disease: Frequency, 1-year course, and Associations With Activities of Daily Living and Quality of Life” was accepted for publication in the Journal of NeuroVirology. Her study revealed that older HIV+ adults show higher frequency of mild extrapyramidal signs compared to younger individuals (but not older HIV- persons) and are at higher risk of incident extrapyramidal signs relative to HIV- persons (but not younger HIV+ persons). When present in older HIV+ adults, extrapyramidal signs are of mild severity but increase the risk of daily functioning problems and lower physical quality of life.
  • November 2018: Saniah Kazimi’s first-authored poster presentation was selected for the Jeffrey B. Lindeman Memorial Research Award at the 2018 fall symposium of the Houston Neuropsychological Society. The poster, entitled "Prospective Memory Mediates the Association Between Age and Everyday Functioning,” was co-authored by CNDL graduate students David Sheppard and Anastasia Matchanova.
  • September 2018: CNDL welcomes 1st year student Anastasia Matchanova to the lab!
  • October 2018: CNDL student David Sheppard’s paper entitled, “Frequency and Correlates of Subjective Cognitive Impairment in HIV Disease” was recently accepted for publication in AIDS and Behavior. This manuscript was written as part of the Scientific Writing course taught by Professor Carla Sharp of the clinical psychology department. Borrowing from literature of typically aging individuals, this study evaluated the frequency of subjective cognitive impairment (SCI) between 188 HIV+ and 133 HIV- individuals without objective neurocognitive impairment or current mood disorders. HIV+ individuals were nearly 5 times more likely to have SCI compared to HIV-adults; and among HIV+ persons, SCI was related to lower performance-based episodic memory scores and higher rates of problems in global everyday functioning. Findings reveal the presence of an early marker for increased risk of developing major neurocognitive disorders as HIV+ individuals age.
  • October 2018: Kelli Sullivan and Michelle Babicz both represented CNDL with posters at the 38th Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Neuropsychology in New Orleans, LA.
  • July 2018: The CNDL team is pleased to contribute a systematic review of the literature on the neuropsychological aspects of Internet navigation skills to a special issue of The Clinical Neuropsychologist, which asks the question: Are modern neuropsychological tests really “modern”? Rising 4th year students Vickie Kordovski and Savanna Tierney and 2nd year student Michelle Babicz all worked hard to scour the literature on this important topic. The 17 studies published so far suggest that performance-based tests of Internet navigation skills show a lot of promise as modern measures of everyday functioning, but much more work remains to be done in order for these tests to be clinically useful.
  • April 2018: Fourth-year CNDL student David Sheppard’s paper, “Does Intra-Individual Neurocognitive Variability Relate to Neuroinvasive Disease and Quality of Life in West Nile Virus?” was recently accepted for publication in the Journal of NeuroVirology. This study was performed in collaboration with investigators at The University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston and Baylor College of Medicine, and examined 84 adults with a range of clinical West Nile Virus. Intra-individual neurocognitive variability was elevated among individuals with West Nile Virus encephalitis and across the sample greater intra-individual neurocognitive variability was associated with lower physical, but not mental, health quality of life.
  • February 2018: CNDL members represented UH at the 46th Annual Meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society in Washington D.C. Vickie Kordovski, David Sheppard and Savanna Tierney presented posters, and second-year Kelli Sullivan gave a wonderful talk on her recently published intraindividual variability paper. Way to go CNDL Team!
  • January 2018: Congratulations to third-year Savanna M. Tierney whose first-authored paper, “Real-World Implications of Apathy Among Older Adults: Independent Associations With Activities of Daily Living and Quality of Life” was accepted for publication in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology. Among 83 community-dwelling older adults, results revealed that higher levels of apathy were significantly associated with a wide range of mild ADL problems and lower quality of life, independent of mood, chronic medical conditions, global cognition and age. Findings suggest that apathy confers an increased risk of problems in the independent management of daily activities and poorer well-being among community-dwelling older adults. CNDL team starting the year strong!
  • January 2018: Second-year CNDL student Kelli Sullivan's paper, "Intraindividual Variability (IIV) in Neurocognitive Performance is Associated with Time-Based Prospective Memory in Older Adults," was accepted for publication in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology. This study supported the hypothesis that cognitive control (as measured by IIV across a clinical cognitive screening battery) plays a role in strategically-demanding time-based prospective memory in both lab and naturalistic settings, but not in event-based prospective memory. Congrats to Kelli and our University of Western Australia collaborators!

  • November 2017: The CNDL lab was well represented at the Houston Neuropsychological Society's Annual Symposium. We were fortunate to have all CNDL members present posters on current projects at this meeting of local neuropsychologists!
  • September 2017: We are excited to announce that our paper, “A Systematic Review of Prospective Memory in HIV Disease: From the Laboratory to Daily Life,” has been accepted for publication in a special issue of The Clinical Neuropsychologist on prospective memory. Gunes Avci was the lead author of this critical review on which the entire CNDL team contributed. The review sheds light on the following aspects of HIV-associated deficits in prospective memory: 1) prevalence, severity and cognitive mechanisms; 2) associations with sociodemographics (e.g., age), HIV disease severity and common comorbidities (e.g., depression); 3) influence on everyday functioning (e.g., medication adherence, quality of life) and 4) approaches to improving prospective memory in this vulnerable population. Congratulations CNDL team!
  • August 2017: CNDL is happy to announce that rising 3rd year student Savanna Tierney has successfully defended her thesis (titled, “Semantic Memory in HIV-associated Neurocognitive Disorders: An Evaluation of the ‘Cortical’ versus ‘Subcortical' Hypothesis”) and has been awarded her master's degree. Congrats Savanna!
  • August 2017: Third-year CNDL student Savanna Tierney’s paper, “Semantic memory in HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders: An evaluation of the ‘cortical’ versus ‘subcortical’ hypothesis,” was recently accepted for publication in Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology. The study observed that persons with HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders across the lifespan were moderately impaired in naming objects and famous faces as compared to the HIV+ participants without HAND and HIV adults. Results converge with the recent idea that HIV may produce deficits in cognitive functions that are supported by posterior cortical brain networks.
  • July 2017: Congratulations to third-year CNDL student Victoria Kordovski whose first-authored paper entitled, “The Effects of Aging and HIV Disease on Employment Status and Functioning” was accepted for publication in Rehabilitation Psychology. Results of the study, which included 358 HIV+ (163 older, 195 younger) and 193 HIV (94 older, 99 younger) adults, revealed effects of age and HIV employment status, with older HIV+ adults evidencing the highest rates of disability and lowest rates of employment. Among those who were employed, work performance of older HIV+ adults differed only from younger HIV adults. Taken together, findings suggest additive adverse effects of HIV disease and older age on employment status, but not necessarily current work functioning.
  • July 2017: Congratulations to rising third-year CNDL student Victoria Kordovski whose first-authored paper, “Is the Newest Vital Sign (NVS) a Useful Measure of Health Literacy in HIV Disease?” was accepted for publication in the Journal of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care. In a sample of 78 HIV+ adults, the NVS showed good internal consistency, was moderately correlated with two widely used measures of health literacy and was related to plasma HIV RNA and various indicators of health care management. These findings provided fairly strong support for the use of the NVS as a screening tool for health literacy in HIV disease.
  • July 2017: Fourth-year CNDL student David Sheppard’s paper, entitled “Construct Validity of the UCSD Performance-based Skills Assessment-Brief Version (UPSA-B) in HIV Disease” was recently accepted for publication in Applied Neuropsychology: Adult. This study observed that individuals with HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND) demonstrated lower functional capacity than HIV+ persons without HAND on the UPSA-B. Among all HIV+ individuals, UPSA-B scores were significantly related to a capacity measure of medication management, all neurocognitive domains assessed and education, but not to manifest everyday functioning (e.g., unemployment), health-related quality of life or HIV disease severity. Thus, findings provided overall mixed support for the construct validity of the UPSA-B in HIV.
  • April 2017: Congratulations to 3rd-year CNDL student David Sheppard, who was honored as a 2017 recipient of the UH Glenn Sternes Clinical Student Research Award!
  • April 2017: Congratulations to 5th-year CNDL student Marika Faytell on successfully defending her dissertation, “Investigating the interrelationships between fatigue, memory impairment, and medication adherence among persons living with HIV disease.” Special thanks to her committee members, Clayton Neighbors, Paul Massman and Russ Crutchley for their guidance.
  • April 2017: CNDL is delighted to announce that Michelle Babicz will join the lab in Fall 2017 as a first-year Ph.D. student in the clinical psychology Ph.D. program!
  • March 2017: Third-year CNDL student David Sheppard’s 1st authored paper, entitled “Accelerated and Accentuated Neurocognitive Aging in HIV Infection” was recently accepted for publication in the Journal of NeuroVirology. This study compared neuropsychological performance of a group of older HIV+ individuals (average age 55 years) to a group of age-matched HIVs (average age 56 years) and and a group of older-old HIVs (average age 74 years). The older HIV+ group performed more poorly than the age-matched HIV group (i.e., accentuated aging), but not differently from the older-old HIV group on digit span and initial recall of a supraspan word list. In other words, this study shows that the basic auditory attention of an average 55 year old with HIV disease is at the same level as an average 74 year old who is HIV negative. These findings partially supported a model of accelerated neurocognitive aging in HIV-infection.
  • February 2017: The CNDL lab is well represented at the February meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society in New Orleans, with posters from Marika Faytell (5th year), Vickie Kordovski (2nd year) and Savanna Tierney (2nd year), as well as a paper presentation from David Sheppard (3rd year).
  • January 2017: We are excited to report that second-year graduate student Savanna Tierney and her CNDL colleagues published paper in the Journal of NeuroVirology titled, “A Comparison of the Sensitivity, Stability, and Reliability of Three Diagnostic Schemes for HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders.” Results of this project revealed discrepancies in the overall agreement across the three diagnostic criteria at baseline and over a 14-month test-retest period. Findings suggest that the Frascati criteria may be more sensitive to HIV serostatus and to everyday functioning problems than are the Gisslen or DSM-5 criteria. Congratulations CNDL team!

  • September 2016: CNDL is delighted to welcome first-year Ph.D. student Kelli Sullivan to the lab!
  • September 2016: Congratulations to third-year CNDL graduate student David Sheppard who published a first-authored paper in the Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology titled, “Random Number Generation in HIV Disease: Associations with Neuropsychological Functions and Activities of Daily Living.” Findings from this project indicate that individuals living with HIV disease evidence moderate difficulties in inhibiting statistically unlikely non-random sequences, which showed medium associations with higher-order verbal abilities and may contribute to greater declines in everyday functioning.
  • September 2016: Congratulations to fifth-year CNDL graduate student Marika Faytell, whose first-authored paper, "Calendaring and alarms can improve naturalistic time-based prospective memory for youth infected with HIV” was accepted for publication in Neuropsychological Rehabilitation. Results showed that combined use of cellular telephone-based strategies (i.e., creating a calendar entry, setting a daily alarm) was associated with improved performance on a naturalistic time-based prospective memory task in a sample of HIV-positive young adults. Findings indicated that HIV-infected youth may benefit from similar strategies for successful execution of future intentions in daily life.
  • June 2016: Congratulations to second-year CNDL graduate student David Sheppard whose first-authored paper entitled, "Does older age confer an increased risk of incident neurocognitive disorders among persons living with HIV disease?” was selected from 20 manuscripts to receive one of the inaugural student research awards from The Clinical Neuropsychologist and American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology. This project utilized retrospective data and examined the combined effects of age and HIV infection on the risk of incident neurocognitive disorders. Findings indicated that independent of age, HIV infection conferred a nearly fivefold risk for developing a neurocognitive disorder over approximately one year
  • April 2016: Congratulations to second-year CNDL graduate student David Sheppard whose first-authored paper entitled: "Pill burden influences the association between time-based prospective memory and antiretroviral therapy adherence in younger but not older HIV-infected adults” was accepted for publication in the Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care. This project utilized retrospective data to determine that in time-based prospective memory in younger HIV+ adults was positively related to adherence only in participants with lower pill burdens. Younger HIV-infected individuals with higher pill burdens may overcome the normal effects of time-based PM on adherence through compensatory medication taking strategies, while suboptimal use of these strategies by younger HIV-infected individuals with lower pill burdens may heighten their risk of ARV non-adherence secondary to deficits in time-based PM.
  • February 2016: Congratulations to first - year graduate student Vickie Kordovski whose 1st-authored abstract entitled, "Effects of HIV Disease and Aging on Employment Status" has been accepted for presentation at the American Psychological Association’s Annual Convention in Denver, CO (August 2016).
  • February 2016: Congratulations to CNDL lab 4th-year student, Marika Faytell, who matched at the VA Boston Healthcare System for her clinical internship!
  • January 2016: Congratulations to first-year CNDL graduate student Savanna Tierney who published a first-authored paper in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, entitled “Retrieval Cue and Delay Influence the Relationship Between Prospective Memory and Activities of Daily Living in Older Adults.” Through analysis of retrospective data, findings from this project indicate that decrements in strategically demanding cue monitoring and detection over longer prospective memory delays are independently associated with mild problems in everyday functioning among older adults.

  • November 2015: Congratulations to second-year CNDL graduate student David Sheppard who published a first-author paper in the Journal of NeuroVirology, titled “Elevated rates of mild cognitive impairment in HIV disease” (doi: 10.1007/s13365-015-0366-7). This first-year project utilized retrospective data to discover that older HIV-infected persons were over seven times more likely to have an MCI designation than their seronegative counterparts. Within the older HIV+ cohort, MCI was associated with older age and mild difficulties performing instrumental activities of daily living (iADLs).
  • November 2015: Professor Woods was appointed as an associate editor of the journal Neuropsychology Review (impact factor = 4.6).
  • November 2015: Congratulations to fourth-year CNDL graduate student Marika Faytell whose first-authored paper, "Visualization of future task performance improves naturalistic prospective memory for some younger adults living with HIV disease” is now in press in Neuropsychological Rehabilitation. This experiment showed that a brief visualization exercise at encoding led to significantly better naturalistic prospective memory task performance for young HIV+ individuals who had measurable deficits in prospective memory ability.
  • November 2015: Congrats to CNDL students Katie Doyle, Vickie Kordovski, David Sheppard and Savanna Tierney, who each have a 1st-authored abstract that has been accepted for presentation at the February 2016 meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society (INS) in Boston, MA.
  • June 2015: CNDL lab members co-authored four posters that have been accepted for presentation at the 35th Annual Conference of the National Academy of Neuropsychology in Austin (Nov. 4-7, 2015).
  • April 2015: CNDL is delighted to welcome two new Ph.D. students into the lab. Victoria Kordovski, M.A. and Savanna Tierney will join the lab in Fall 2015.
  • February 2015: CNDL lab members co-authored 10 posters at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society in Denver, Colorado. 
  • January 2015: CNDL is pleased to welcome two new members into the lab: Gunes Avci (Research Assistant Professor) and Marika Faytell, M.A. (clinical Ph.D. student).

  • November 2014: David P. Sheppard presented his poster, “Gender differences in the risk of Mild Cognitive Impairment in HIV Disease” at the Houston Neuropsychological Society’s fall symposium.
  • September 2014: CNDL officially opened its doors!