Rate My Professor Jonathan Banks

Jonathan Banks, Ph.D., serves as Associate Professor and Director of the Experimental Psychology Graduate Program in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Nova Southeastern University’s College of Psychology. He joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor in August 2011 and was promoted to Associate Professor in April 2016. Prior to his academic career at NSU, Dr. Banks held the position of Project Coordinator at the National Research Center on Rural Education Support, Center for Developmental Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from January 2005 to August 2007. His educational background includes a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of North Texas (2011), an M.S. in Psychology (Developmental Psychology Program) from North Carolina State University (2004), and a B.A. in Psychology from North Carolina State University (2001).

Dr. Banks’ research specializations encompass working memory, attentional control, and mind wandering, with particular emphasis on the influences of acute and chronic stress, sleep deprivation, and interventions such as mindfulness meditation and expressive writing on cognitive functioning. He investigates mechanisms underlying stress-related impairments in working memory and executive functions. Notable publications include “Many Labs 3: Evaluating participant pool quality across the academic semester via replication” (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2016), “The protective effects of brief mindfulness meditation training” (Consciousness and Cognition, 2015), “Stress and cognitive functioning during a pandemic: Thoughts from stress researchers” (Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 2020), “Individual Differences in Dimensions of Mind Wandering: The Mediating Role of Emotional Valence and Intentionality” (Psychological Research, 2022), and “The role of affective interference and mnemonic load in the dynamic adjustment in working memory” (Memory and Cognition, 2023). Dr. Banks has earned the 2024 Provost Award for Research at Nova Southeastern University, as well as the Outstanding Graduate Student and Outstanding Teaching Fellow awards from the University of North Texas Psychology Department in 2011. His teaching interests include statistics, research methods, cognitive psychology, and physiological psychology. Additionally, he contributes to NSU’s biostatistical consulting group with expertise in latent variable modeling, hierarchical linear models, and regression.