NANCY ALVARADO

Curriculum Vitae

EDUCATION

B.A. University of California, Los Angeles (1971), History
M.S. California State University, Fullerton (1989), Counseling Psychology
M.A. University of California, Irvine (1992), Psychology, Thesis: The Interpretation of Symbolic Meaning in Visual Images
Ph.D. University of California, Irvine (1993), Psychology (Cognitive)
Dissertation: The Labeling of Emotion, Committee: Louis Narens (Chair), William H. Batchelder, Roy D’Andrade, Linda J. Levine.

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

Associate Professor of Psychology (2007-present), Assistant Professor of Psychology (2002-2007). Department of Psychology and Sociology, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Associate Project Scientist (2005-present), Assistant Project Scientist (1997-2005). Department of Psychology, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA. Conducting ongoing studies of facial expression processing, pain expression and assessment, and emotion-related cognition.

Visiting Research Scientist (2000-2002). IBM, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Hawthorne, NY. Team member on Project Joshua Blue (2000-2006) – an artificial intelligence semantic spreading activation network designed to simulate human cognitive abilities. Also collaborated on studies of frustration with Dr. Rosalind Picard of MIT’s Media Lab (Affective Computing Section). Consultant on affective computing, computer animated agents with facial expressions of emotion, development of a stimulus database for training machine recognition and simulation of affect in the voice, design of studies measuring user experience with “everywhere displays” projected onto objects in the environment, and design of innovative web interfaces and interactive learning using museum kiosks.

Visiting Assistant Professor (1998-2000). Pitzer College, Claremont, CA.

Lecturer (Fall Semester, 2000). Pomona College, Claremont, CA.

Lecturer. (1997-1998). University of California, Irvine, and California State University, Fullerton.

Visiting Assistant Professor (1996-1997). Department of Psychology, Salem State College, Salem, MA.

Postdoctoral Fellow, NIMH Training Program in Emotion Research (1993-1996). First year joint appointment at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, San Francisco, Human Interaction Laboratory, working with Dr. Paul Ekman. Second and third year joint-appointment at Harvard University working with Dr. Jerome Kagan and MIT working with Dr. Nancy Etcoff.

Research Assistant (1992), Teaching Assistant(1989-93), School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine. Wrote a funded grant application awarded to Louis Narens and under his supervision conducted a study of cultural diversity in the interpretation of symbolic meaning in art.

GRANTS

Salience of Movement Cues in Decoding Facial Expressions. Principal Investigator, NIMH Grant 1R03MH060113-01, 1999-2001.

Cultural Differences in Pain Expression and Assessment. Principal Investigator, NIH MBRS/SCORE Grant S06 GM053933, 2006-2009.

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

American Psychological Society (APS)
Western Psychological Association (WPA)
International Society for Research on Emotions (ISRE)
International Society for Facial Expression (ISFE)
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Special Interest Group on Computer
Human Interaction (SIGCHI)
American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
Sigma Xi

PSYCHOLOGY PUBLICATIONS

Alvarado, N. (1994). Empirical validity of the Thematic Apperception Test. Journal of Personality Assessment, 63, 59-79.

Alvarado, N. & Jameson, K.A. (1996). New findings on the contempt expression. Cognition and Emotion, 10, 379-407.

Alvarado, N. (1996). Congruence of meaning between facial expressions of emotion and selected emotion terms. Motivation and Emotion, 20, 33-61.

Alvarado, N. (1997). Arousal and valence in the direct scaling of emotional response to film clips. Motivation and Emotion, 21, 323-348.

Alvarado, N. (1998). A reconsideration of the structure of the emotion lexicon. Motivation and Emotion, 22, 329-344.

Alvarado, N. & Jameson, K.A. (2002). The use of modifying terms in the naming and categorization of color appearances in Vietnamese and English. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2, 53-80.

Alvarado, N. & Jameson, K.A. (2002). Varieties of anger: The relation between emotion terms and components of anger expressions. Motivation and Emotion, 26, 153-182.

Harris, C.R. & Alvarado, N. (2002). Pain facial expression: Individual variability undermines the specific adaptationist account. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, 461-462.

Jameson, K.A. & Alvarado, N. (2003). Differences in color naming and color salience in Vietnamese and English. COLOR Research and Application, 28, 113-138.

Jameson, K.A. & Alvarado, N. (2003). The relational correspondence between category exemplars and names. Philosophical Psychology, 16, 23-47.

Alvarado, N. & Jameson, K.A. (2005). Confidence judgments on color category best exemplars. Cross-Cultural Research, 39, 134-158.

Harris, C.R. & Alvarado, N. (2005). Facial expressions, smile types, and self-report during humor, tickle, and pain. Cognition and Emotion, 19, 655-669.

Sayim, B., Jameson, K.A., Alvarado, N. & Szeszel, M. (2005). Semantic and perceptual representations of color: Evidence of a shared color naming function. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 5, 165-220.

PSYCHOLOGY CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND POSTERS

Alvarado, N., Jester, R.B., Harris, C.R. & Whitaker, J.F. (2008). Cultural differences in the expression of pain. Poster presentation at the Association for Psychological Science (APS) Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.

Alvarado, N., Jester, R.B. & Harris, C.R. (2008). Cultural differences in facial expressions of pain in a cold pressor task. Presentation at the 12th European Conference on Facial Expression, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.

Alvarado, N. & Tucker. J.L. (2007). Manipulation of attention as a mechanism for repressive-defensive coping. Poster presentation at the Association for Psychological Science (APS) Annual Conference, Washington , D.C.

Alvarado, N. (2006). Color categorization and naming: Cognitive and cross-cultural investigations. Symposium moderator at the Association for Psychological Science (APS) Annual Conference, New York, NY.

Alvarado, N. & Jameson, K.A. (2006). Culture contributes little to the semantic structure of English and Vietnamese emotion terms. Poster presentation at the Association for Psychological Science (APS) Annual Conference, New York, NY.

Alvarado, N. (2006). Dynamics of facial expressions affect observer judgments. Poster presentation at the Emotion Preconference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Annual Conference, Palm Springs, CA.

Jameson, K.A. & Alvarado, N. (2005). Semantic and perceptual representations of color and a cognitive color-naming function. Poster presented at the annual conference of the American Psychological Society, Los Angeles, CA.

Alvarado, N. & Harris, C.R. (2005). Facial expression and repressive-defensive coping style. Poster presented at the annual conference of the American Psychological Society, Los Angeles, CA.

Alvarado, N. & Horner, D. (2005). Multiple choice tests: Do students follow their "common sense"? Participant in symposium "Teaching Matters, Too" organized by J.S. Mio. Presentation at the annual conference of the Western Psychological Association, Portland, OR.

Alvarado, N., Aunskul, A., Bedinian, R., Johnson, M., & Wong, A. (2005). Encoding of features in facial expressions of happiness. Poster presented at the annual conference of the Western Psychological Association, Portland, OR.

Alvarado, N. & Horner, D. (2004). Revisiting principles of teaching in the light of cognitive psychology. Poster presented at the annual conference of the Western Psychological Association, Phoenix, AZ.

Alvarado, N. & Jameson, K.A. (2004). The role of confidence judgments in lexical comparisons across cultures: The search for a measure of codability. Presentation at the annual conference of the Society for Cross Cultural Research, San Jose, CA.

Jameson, K.A., Sayim, B., & Alvarado, N. (2003). Asymmetries between cognitive and perceptual representations of color: Consequences for theories of color naming. Invited presentation at October symposium: Color Perception: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives. Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Sayim, B., Jameson, K.A. & Alvarado, N. (2003). Color naming relations in perceptual color space. Poster presented at the annual conference of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

Alvarado, N. & Bowen, A. (2003). Manipulation of attention affects the source memory of repressive-defensive copers. Poster presented at the annual conference of the American Psychological Society, Atlanta, GA.

Jameson, K.A. & Alvarado, N. (2002). Investigations of color naming and color perception: The search for cross-cultural cognitive universals. Workshop on Anthropology of Colour: Colour as a Phenomenon of Culture. 7th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Alvarado, N. & Jameson, K.A. (2002). Color naming and modifier use in Vietnamese and English. Symposium participant, “Culture, Cognition and Color,” Society for Cross-Cultural Research, Annual Conference, Santa Fe, NM.

Harris, C.R. & Alvarado, N. (2001). Socrates was right: Tickle evokes pain and pleasure. Poster presented at the annual conference of the American Psychological Society, Toronto, Canada.

Jameson, K.A. & Alvarado, N. (2000). Color naming and categorization in Vietnamese and English. Poster presented at the annual meeting of The Psychonomic Society, New Orleans, LA.

Alvarado, N. & Jameson, K.A. (1999). Varieties of anger. Poster presented at the annual meeting of The Psychonomic Society, Los Angeles, CA.

Alvarado, N. (1995). Congruence of meaning between facial expressions of emotion and selected emotion terms. Poster presented at the annual conference of the American Psychological Society, New York.

Alvarado, N. (1995). Consensus among repressives on the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory. Poster presented at the annual conference of the American Psychological Association, session cosponsored by Divisions 8 and 5 (Personality and Measurement), New York.

COGNITIVE SCIENCE & COMPUTER SCIENCE PUBLICATIONS, CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND POSTERS

Adams, S.S., Alvarado, N., & Burbeck, S. (2003). Project Joshua Blue: The central role of emotional cognition in simulating a conscious mind. Poster presented at the Seventh Conference of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, ASSC7, Memphis, TN.

Podlaseck, M., Pinhanez, C., Alvarado, N., Chan, M. & Dejesus, E. (2003). On interfaces projected onto real-world objects. Proceedings of CHI2003, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Special interest group on computer-human interaction (SIGCHI).

Alvarado, N., Adams, S.S., Burbeck, S. & Latta, C. (2002). Beyond the Turing Test: Performance metrics for evaluating a computer simulation of the human mind. Proceedings of PerMIS’02, Workshop on Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems, National Institute for Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD. (Invited presentation following ICDL.)

Alvarado, N., Adams, S.S., Burbeck, S. & Latta, C. (2002). Beyond the Turing Test: Performance metrics for evaluating a computer simulation of the human mind. Proceedings of The 2nd International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL’02), Cambridge, MA, IEEE Computer Society.

Chan, M., Podlaseck, M., Alvarado, N., Schonberg, E., Hoch, R., Spraragen, S. & Riecken, D. (2002). A personalized navigation tool for online listening and free browsing: The Glass Engine. Proceedings of ED-MEDIA 2002, World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications; Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), Denver, CO. Received Outstanding Paper Award.

Latta, C., Alvarado, N., Adams, S.S., & Burbeck, S. (2002). An expressive system for animating characters or endowing robots with affective displays. Society for Artificial Intelligence and Social Behavior, 2002 Annual Conference, Symposium on Animating Expressive Characters for Social Interactions, London, UK.

Adams, S.S., Alvarado, N., Burbeck, S. & Latta, C. (2002). Bootstrapping semantics in an autonomic computing system. Fourth International Workshop on Computational Semiotics for Intelligent Systems, Joint Conference on Information Systems (JCIS), Chapel Hill, NC. An expanded version will be published as a chapter in a book based on the proceedings, edited by A. Meystel, to be published by John Wiley & Sons.

Alvarado, N., Adams, S. S., Burbeck, S. & Latta, C. (2001). Project Joshua Blue: Design considerations for evolving an emotional mind in a simulated environment. Emotional and intelligent II: The tangled knot of social cognition (pp 1-2). Papers from the 2001 AAAI Fall Symposium, Technical Report FS-01-02. Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press.

Adams, S. S., Burbeck, S., Alvarado, N., & Latta, C. (2001). Project Joshua Blue: Common sense via common experience. Anchoring symbols to sensor data in single and multiple robot systems. Papers from the 2001 AAAI Fall Symposium, Technical Report FS-01-01. Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press.