Research Projects

Andri Steinþór Björnsson: Social anxiety disorder (social phobia) and body dysmorphic disorder: Psychopathology, treatment development and validation of measures for these disorders.

Árni Kristjánsson: Visual Perception and visuomotor control using the methods of Cognitive Neuroscience: Eye movement recording, visual psychophysics, neuropsychology and neuroimaging.

Daníel Þór Ólason: My main research areas are in Health psychology and psychometrics. Specifically in problem/pathological gambling, Computer gaming, and stress (e.g. within the field of psychophysiology).

Einar Guðmundsson: Psychological measurement and assessment, child development, child temperament, cross-cultural psychology.

Fanney Þórsdóttir: Rating scales, response style, question design in multicultural surveys, mode effects research, internet panel surveys, the response process.

Freyja Birgisdóttir: Main research interests include the development of language and literacy from pre-school until adolescence and how the acquisition of these skills relate to other aspects of development, such as motivation, executive functions and self-regulation. In particular, her research projects focus on the longitudinal predictive role of early oral language skills, pre-literacy and early self-regulation in later reading development, as well as other aspects of academic achievement and positive youth development. Other research projects include investigations of relations between ADHD and reading comprehension and the influence of early language, birth and family risk factors on the development of self-regulation, literacy and academic achievement.

Guðmundur Bjarni Arnkelsson: Recent subject matter: Assessment of psychological instruments and achievement tests, screening, establishing cut-offs, association of social factors, cultural preferences and leisure activities, and school effectiveness. Recent methods include: Principal components and factor analysis, ROC analysis, multilevel models for both hierarchical and longitudinal data, and multiple imputation of missing data. 

Guðmundur Ágúst Skarphéðinsson: My research interests focus on clinical child and adolescent psychology and evidence-based assessment/treatments. Specifically, evaluating and improving clinical assessment and treatments of obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorders, and related disorders in children and adolescents.

Heiða María Sigurðardóttir: Neuroscience, cognitive science, visual cognition, object perception, shape perception, visual attention, plasticity and learning, perceptual expertise, developmental dyslexia.

Heiða María Sigurðardóttir is one of three co-PIs of the Icelandic Vision Lab (IVL, www.visionlab.is). Research in IVL focuses on all things visual, with a major emphasis on higher-level or “cognitive” aspects of visual perception. Current and/or past research has looked at several visual processes, including visual attention, eye movements, object perception, face perception, visual memory, visual statistics, and the role of experience/learning effects in perception. Some of the lab’s work concerns the basic properties of the workings of the typical adult visual system. IVL has also studied the perceptual capabilities of several unique populations, including children, synesthetes, professional athletes, people with anxiety disorders, blind people, and dyslexic readers.

Ragna Benedikta Garðarsdóttir: Social psychology of consumer culture and economic life: Materialism, environmental behaviour and attitudes, subjective well-being, body image, persuasion.

Ragnar P. Ólafsson: Vulnerability to recurrent depression, treatment and prevention of depression, the role of disgust and thought control processes in OCD.

Sigurður J. Grétarsson: Child development and child rearing, History of Psychology, Psychological theory, Psychology in modern society.

Sigurgrímur Skúlason: My research has focused psychometrics issues and test construction, for example the psychometric properties of measurement instruments, confirmatory factor models and validity issues. In my primary job at the Icelandic Directorate of Education I work with variety of testing programs, the Icelandic national assessments, the college admissions test for the University of Iceland and series of assessments related to reading. Additionally I have work on several original or adapted language development tests (MUB, MELB, Hljóðfærni and the Icelandic version of TOLD), the Icelandic adaption of WISC-IV, the BRIGANCE screens and some minor psychological scales. 

Steinunn Gestsdóttir: My research has focused on the development of intentional self-regulation, in particular, how self-regulation relates to successful adaptation to school and to the positive development of youth.

Urður Njarðvík: Clinical child psychology, especially Oppositional Defiance Disorder, ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorders. Urður’s studies focus on the relation between children’s emotion regulation and emerging behavior disorders; treatment of behavior disorders and ADHD; and comorbidity of behavior disorders, anxiety and depression.

Vaka Vésteinsdóttir: Research in survey methodology, with a focus on questionnaire construction and evaluation, especially the wording of questions, context effects and measurement bias, e.g., acquiescence and socially desirable responding in personality and attitude questionnaires. 

Zuilma Gabríela Sigurðardóttir: Behavior analysis and behavioral interventions, research in stimulus equivalence and their relation to language acquisition, methods that increase or foster generalization, evidence based methods to be used in schools to solve behavior and academic problems, safety of children in shopping-carts, safety in the work place and proactive techniques and methods that change safety behavior in different contexts.