The Psychonomic Society, an international community of cognitive psychologists, has awarded Dr. Amy Belfi, an associate professor of psychological science at Missouri S&T, with its Early Career Award.

This international community of experimental and cognitive psychologists named Belfi as a Fellow of its society in 2023. Its Fellows program recognizes members who demonstrate clear evidence of independent scholarship, active engagement in methodologically rigorous and theoretically interesting high-level research, and indications of an imminent national or international reputation for excellence in the psychological sciences.

The society supports several academic journals. Belfi has published a paper in Behavior Research Methods, one of the Psychonomics journals, titled “The famous melodies stimulus set.” The article aimed to identify a set of highly familiar musical melodies that connect the United States population in knowledge, such as the melody “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

Belfi says that she was surprised to earn this award from the society, and advises her students to find a topic they love and research questions they are deeply interested in so that they can focus on doing solid scientific research.

“When I started researching music, I was advised that it was too “niche” of a topic to be accepted by the field at large,” says Belfi. “I didn’t really care, because I thought it was important work, so I kept pursuing what I wanted to pursue.”

Belfi’s research covers a broad range of topics in the field of music cognition, including music and autobiographical memory, musical imagery, aesthetic judgments of music, and musical anhedonia. She uses various techniques to investigate these subjects, including behavioral studies, functional neuroimaging, psychophysiology, and neuropsychological approaches.

“It is really amazing to see how music psychology has moved closer to the mainstream of cognitive psychology more broadly,” says Belfi. “I’m really proud to be doing this work and that it is being recognized by the broader discipline of psychology.”

Belfi earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from St. Olaf College and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Iowa. She joined Missouri S&T from New York University, where she served as a postdoctoral associate.

About Missouri S&T

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to the Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.