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J. Bruce Overmier, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Psychology E-mail: psyjbo@umn.edu

Research Interests:

Overmier and his students are generally concerned with how hedonic events not currently present can regulate and modulate later recognition and choice responding. These are fundamentally questions of the nature and functional properties of reinforcers and representations of them. One way they study this is through discriminated conditional choice behaviors wherein each different stimulus response sequence eventuates in a different reward. With appropriate variations, this paradigm allows one to assess, for example, whether an expectancy has only general motivational properties or whether it has cue properties. Other research focuses on how the anticipation of aversive events increases the vulnerability of an organism to other challenges and psychosomatic dysfunctions such as gastric ulcer.

Selected Publications:

Estévez AF, Vivas AB, Alonso D, Marí-Beffa P, Fuentes LJ, Overmier JB. Enhancing challenged students' recognition of mathematical relations through differential outcomes training. Q J Exp Psychol (Colchester). 2007 Apr;60(4):571-80.

Linwick DC, Overmier JB. Associatively activated representations of food events resemble food outcome expectancies more closely than they resemble food-based memories. Learn Behav. 2006 Feb;34(1):1-12. 

Lyte M, Opitz N, Goehler LE, Gaykema RP, Overmier JB. Recommended housing conditions and test procedures can interact to obscure a significant experimental effect. Behav Res Methods. 2005 Nov;37(4):651-6.

Milde AM, Arslan G, Overmier JB, Berstad A, Murison R. An acute stressor enhances sensitivity to a chemical irritant and increases 51CrEDTA permeability of the colon in adult rats. Integr Physiol Behav Sci. 2005 Jan-Mar;40(1):35-44.

Overmier JB, Murison R, Milde AM. Sensitization and conditioning as contributors to gastrointestinal vulnerability. Auton Neurosci. 2006 Apr 30;125(1-2):22-7.

Hochhalter AK, Overmier JB, Gasper SM, Bakke BL, Holub RJ. A comparison of spaced retrieval to other schedules of practice for people with dementia. Exp Aging Res. 2005 Apr-Jun;31(2):101-18.

Overmier JB, Murison R. Trauma and resulting sensitization effects are modulated by psychological factors. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2005 Nov;30(10):965-73.

Holden JM, Overmier JB, Cowan ET, Matthews L. Effects of lipopolysaccharide on consolidation of partial learning in the Y-maze. Integr Physiol Behav Sci. 2004 Oct-Dec;39(4):334-40.

Recent Graduate Students

Leslie Schwandt-Schuh (Ph.D., Psychology, 1991). Assistant Professor of Psychiatry & Pharmacology, Wayne State Univ, Detroit, Mich.

Lisa M. Savage (Ph.D., Psychology, 1993). Assistant Professor of Psychology, State University of New York, Binghamton, N.Y.

Michael McDonald (Ph.D. Psychology). Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN.

Whitney A. Sweeney (Ph.D., Psychology, 1999). Assistant Professor of Psychology, Beloit College, Beloit, WI.