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College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Ebner Lab

Our Studies

Participate Today!

If you are interested, please contact us by phone at (352) 340-1680 or (352) 273-2134 or by email at psy-ebnerlab@psych.ufl.edu.

You may also fill out our contact registry. By consenting to this registry, you are allowing Ebner Lab to use your information to contact you about future studies you may qualify to participate in. This information will only be used to determine your eligibility for our studies and you are able to withdraw at any time without consequence.

Click here to complete our Contact Registry!


For the “In which lab are you enrolling” question, please enter: “web”

CURRENT STUDIES:

We are currently recruiting volunteers for the studies listed below.

Train Your Brain Study

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  • The focus of this study is to learn how you make decisions.
    This study includes: 4 on-campus MRI sessions and 1 on-campus non-MRI session. Participants will be compensated at the end of the study. For this study we are currently recruiting adults aged 18-100.
  • Click to View Official Study Flier

Florida Consortium Brain Study:

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  • The focus of this study is to learn how you make decisions.
    This study includes: 1 on-campus session (MRI session). Participants will be compensated at the end of the study. For this study we are currently recruiting men and women between the ages of 65-90 that have been either diagnosed with MCI or are healthy older adults
  • Click to View Official Study Flier

The Deciding Brain Study:

  • The focus of this study is to learn how you make decisions.
    This study includes: 2 on-campus sessions (an MRI session, and a Physiological session) and one remote questionnaire package to fill out. Participants will be compensated at the end of the study. For this study we are currently recruiting women and men between the ages of 18-39 or 60 years and older.
  • Click to View Official Study Flier

OxyAging Study:

  • Have you ever tried opioids (recreationally, prescription, or otherwise)? This project examines the effects of oxytocin and oxycodone on decision-making and behavior.
    This study includes 6 in-person sessions. Participants will be compensated for study completion. This study is currently recruiting women and men between the ages of 45-85 years old.
  • Click to View Official Study Flier

Non-Recruiting Projects/Studies:

Fake News Studies

Fabricated information mimicking news media, referred to as ‘fake news’, is an epidemic deception technique to manipulate public opinion (Pehlivanoglu et al., 2021). Older adults, and especially those with lower cognitive functioning, are particularly vulnerable to deception via fake news (Pehlivanoglu et al., 2022). Currently only technical solutions exist (e.g., fact checking), but fake news continues to break through, leaving human decision making as the last line of defense. Dr. Ebner, Dr. Pehlivanoglu, Dr. Cahill, and their team are working on developing a neural network model to identify deceptive features in news headlines and cognitive characteristics in the decision maker toward enhancing fake news detection.

Deepfake Detection

FINS faculty members Drs. Ebner, Cahill, and Woodard together with postdoctoral fellow Dr. Pehlivanoglu and their teams are working toward examination of human factors involved in deepfake detection. The main areas of investigation include the determination of how well humans can dissociate deepfake from real face images and videos; and the identification of psychological and cognitive processes (e.g., reasoning, attention) that underlie deepfake face detection. The group is also interested in understanding how human performance compares to machine (classification algorithm) in deepfake face detection.

List of Past Studies:

  • Understanding Cognition, Oxytocin and Pain in Elders (UCOPE)
    • The focus of this study is to examine the effect of Oxytocin on chronic pain in older adults with knee osteoarthritis
  • Self and Others Study
    • The focus of this study was to understand susceptibilities to deception and scams across the lifespan
  • Flexible Brain
    • The focus of this study was to learn more about how the brain works when we think
  • News Study
    • In this study, researchers examined perceptions of news articles
  • Decisions Study
    • In this study researchers examined decision-making in women and men, aged 65 and older
  • Authentication Study
    • In this study researchers examined which method of authentication on computers and other devices is easier to use.
  • Developer Code Perception Study
    • This study examined how developers interpret and reason about code and how this ability is associated with cognitive functioning and personality.
  • Daily Internet Study
    • This study examined daily internet use in young and older adults in aging.
  • Spam Study
    • This study examined the nature of spam (e.g., how it lures users into clicking or viewing malicious content) received by young and older internet users.
  • FACES Study
    • This study investigated the influence of a single-dose processing in young and older adults.
  • Social Memory Study
    • This study examined the extent to which the self-relevance of information (e.g., related to age or personality traits) affect memory in young and older adults.
  • Face-Name Memory Study
    • This study investigated the effect of positive and negative performance feedback on memory for faces and names in young and older adults.
  • Florida Lifestyle Project
    • This study focused on healthy decision-making, and the effects of mental time-travel (to the past and the future) on the healthiness of everyday lifestyle choices in young and older adults.