Lara Jones

Lara Jones

Associate Professor

larajones@wayne.edu

Rm. 8306.4  (8th floor of 5057 Woodward)

Curriculum vitae

Department

Psychology

Lara Jones

Research interest(s)/area of expertise

  • Verbal Analogy:  relational representation, semantic distance, predictors of individual differences in performance

     

  • Smartphone Use:  Individual differences in smartphone use as predictors of mind-wandering and other cognitive processes

  • Emoji: Predictors of valence, familiarity, use; emojis as affective primes

  • Narcissism and self-esteem: As predictors of self-related memory; as predictors of achievement motivation

Research

Most recently, my research program has extended to investigating individual differences in smartphone use (e.g., its relation to mind-wandering and mindfulness; sex differences in smartphone use) and in emoji valence perception (i.e., how positive or negative a facial or smiley emoji appears to be).

I'm also interested in personality and cognitive processes. More specifically, my research examines how narcissism and self-esteem predict self-related memory and preference for agentic (self-focused) vs. communal (other-focused) traits. Two ongoing projects examine how narcissism and self-esteem are differentially related to achievement motivation in men and women.

Another current line of my research focuses on verbal analogy -- specifically, on the predictors of verbal analogy performance and other reasoning tasks. Within this line of research, my collaborators and I have examined item factors of verbal analogy such as semantic distance, the type of analogical relation (categorical, compositional, causal), and distracter salience (how closely related the incorrect answer is to the C-term in an A:B::C:D analogy). We have also investigated the impact of individual differences on verbal analogy and relational reasoning performance, namely, crystallized intelligence, working memory, creativity, and autistic traits.

Education

  • Ph.D., Psychology (Cognitive-Experimental Program), University of Georgia, 2007
  • M.S., Psychology (Cognitive-Experimental Program), University of Georgia, 2004
  • B.S., Psychology (Minor: Cognitive Science), University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2002
  • Masters in Human Resources, University of South Carolina, 1997
  • B.S., Human Nutrition & Foods, Virginia Tech, 1995

Selected publications

  • Wunder, Z.I., & Jones, L.L. (in press). Mindful metacognition: Attention, beliefs, and skills in the acceptance of experiences. Mindfulness.
  • Jones, L.L., Kmiecik, M.J., Irwin, J.L., & Morrison, R.G. (2022). Differential effects of semantic distance, distractor salience, and relations in verbal analogy. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-022-02062-8
  • Jones, L. L., Wurm, L. H., Norville, G. A., & Mullins, K. L. (2020). Sex differences in emoji use, familiarity, and valence. Computers in Human Behavior, 108
  • Jones, L. L., Norville, G. A., & Wright, A. M. (2017). Narcissism, self-esteem, and the phenomenology of autobiographical memory. Memory, 25, 800-815
  • Jones, L. L., & Estes, Z. (2015). Convergent and divergent thinking in verbal analogy. Thinking & Reasoning, 21, 473-500
  • Jones, L. L., & Brunell, A. B. (2014). Clever and crude but not kind: Narcissism, self-esteem, and the self-reference effect. Memory, 22, 307-322
  • Estes, Z.*, Jones, L. L., & Golonka, S. (2012). Emotion affects similarity via social projection. Social Cognition, 30(5), 582-607.
  • Jones, L. L., & Golonka, S. (2012). Different influences on lexical priming for integrative, thematic, and taxonomic relations. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6:205
  • Jones, L. L., & Estes, Z. (2012). Lexical priming: Associative, semantic, and thematic influences on word recognition. In J. S. Adelman (Ed.), Word Recognition (Vol. 2). Hove, UK: Psychology Press

 

Citation index

Google Scholar

Courses taught by Lara Jones

Fall Term 2024 (future)

Winter Term 2024 (future)

Fall Term 2023

Winter Term 2023

Fall Term 2022

Winter Term 2022