The Translational Lab focuses on when and why decision-making goes awry in depression and anxiety disorders and on developing potent and scalable interventions to improve it. 

We leverage careful experimental design, reinforcement learning and sequential sampling computational models, and intervention analogues (and soon full self-guided interventions) toward these ends. Some topics of particular interest:

Understanding Why, When, and How Decision-making Goes Awry

Assessing how people vulnerable to depression attend to, remember, interpret, and learn from situations is very different than assessing vulnerability to physical disease via a blood test. We are interested in questions such as: How do people's beliefs, values, and learning history influence how they allocate cognition to make decisions? How does cognition and decision-making change while experiencing different emotions and while in different contexts during daily life? [key papers]

Training A Computational Lens on Rumination and Worry

Why do we ruminate? Why do we worry? What is shared and what is distinct between these thinking patterns? [key papers]

Developing Clinical Principles and Translating them into Powerful Treatments

There is a rich history of translating behavioral science into effective and widely disseminated psychotherapies. How can we translate the recent remarkable advances in the decision sciences into clinical principles to develop potent, precise, scalable interventions? [key papers]

The Translational Lab, directed by Pete Hitchcock, is located in the Psychology Department at Emory University. Please see Join the lab for more information about open positions. Update: We are recruiting PhD Students to begin Fall 2026! Prospective Graduate Student FAQ