A.B., 1991 Economics, Princeton University
M.A., 1998, Clinical (Medical) Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Ph.D., 2001, Clinical (Medical) Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Clinical Internship, 2001, Behavioral Health Careline, Veterans Affairs WNY Healthcare System, Buffalo, NY.

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Dr. Uswatte has two main areas of research. The first is the application of behavioral principles to the rehabilitation of movement after neurological injury. The second is the study of human psychological strengths such as hope, kindness, and gratitude.

His main line of research involves the development of real-world measures of motor behavior. The consensus in physical rehabilitation is that functional activity in the community is the most important treatment outcome. Furthermore, data suggest that there is often dissociation between motor performance in the laboratory and behavior at home. Dr. Uswatte has developed a new, objective measure of arm movement in real-world environments using portable, wireless accelerometers that measure movement in real time. The instrument has been adopted by a group of leading investigators in physical rehabilitation as an outcome measure in a national clinical trial in the United States of a new behavioral treatment for upper extremity hemiparesis in stroke patients. The aim of his current research is to extend the accelerometer measure so that an index of functional activity rather than simply movement can be obtained. The development of such measures will enable clinical researchers to best discriminate those interventions that make the greatest practical impact on the daily lives of persons with neurological injuries. Future research goals include developing parallel measures of real-world arm function in children with cerebral palsy and real-world measures of ambulatory activity and spatial neglect in person with stroke.

Dr. Uswatte also works in close collaboration with Dr. Edward Taub, University Professor in the Department of Psychology, UAB. Dr. Taub’s laboratory has developed and evaluated a new family of rehabilitation techniques, called Constraint-Induced Movement therapy or CI therapy, in the last 15 years. This behavioral therapy is based on behavioral neuroscience research conducted with monkeys. It was described in a recent review article as one of the few treatments in rehabilitation for which there was empirical evidence of efficacy. Current research projects include examining the relationship between the duration and intensity of training and CI therapy outcome, automating training, and applying this treatment approach to stroke survivors who have been too low functioning to be included in CI therapy protocols to date, i.e., those with only a flicker of active movement remaining in their more-impaired hand.

Dr. Uswatte’s second area of research is the study of human psychological strengths such as hope, kindness, and gratitude. Psychology, in the last half-century, has developed a rich body of knowledge about human frailties such as depression, anxiety, and other maladaptive mental states. Although humanistic and other psychologists have addressed human strengths, such as spirituality and a drive for self-actualization, “positive” aspects of human psychology have not, until relatively recently, been studied using empirical methods. Dr. Uswatte has three active programs of research that apply empirical methods to the study of human strengths.

The first research program, undertaken in collaboration with Dr. Terri Julian, Director of the Batavia VA Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) clinic in upstate New York, and Dr. Todd Kashdan, Department of Psychology, George Mason University seeks to obtain new information about psychological strengths and resiliencies, such as optimism, hope, and gratitude, in veterans. Researchers, to date, have explored only a portion of the spectrum of psychological functioning in this population, with a specific focus on psychopathology. In effect, the research has largely excluded positive aspects of mental health with the consequences that a) possible treatment-related changes in psychological strengths have not been documented, and b) positive psychological functioning has not been a systematic target of intervention. We are conducting an initial, exploratory study at the Batavia VA that examines the role of hope, gratitude, and curiosity as resiliency factors in the psychosocial adjustment of Vietnam was veterans with and without PTSD.

The second research program aims to explore cultivating kindness an alternate approach to reducing aggression. A current area of much interest in adolescent psychology is aggression and its reduction. The approach typically adopted is to teach adolescents skills such as distraction techniques and cognitive reframing that permit them to suppress or transform their anger, as well as to change their social environments to facilitate this process. What this project proposes is to a take a different approach to these problems. Rather than teaching adolescents to be less aggressive or angry, this project proposes to help children to be more kind and caring. The aim, in a rough sense, is to “grow” kindness and thereby “crowd out” aggression. These are the overarching or ultimate goals of the project. It is currently in its infancy and the immediate goals are to develop appropriate measurement instruments. The approach planned is to use structured focus groups to develop emic measures of kindness or prosocial behavior and related constructs. The next step would be to examine the relationship of kindness to other benevolent behaviors and to aggressive behaviors. (A significant literature exists on prosocial behaviors in children from infancy through age twelve. However, a much smaller amount of research on caring and kindness has been conducted with children of middle school age.) Dr. Richard M. Shewchuk from the Department of Health Administration, Dr. David Schwebel, Dr. Todd Kashdan, and Ms. Azor Hui are collaborators.

A third research program aims to explore the role of psychological strengths such as kindness, gratitude, and curiosity in enhancing the relationships between persons with disabling injuries and their partners, the mental and physical health of such couples, and the retention of gains made in rehabilitation by the partner with the disability. Drs. Timothy Elliott, Laura Dreer, Todd Kashdan and Ms. Azor Hui are collaborators.

Dr. Uswatte’s research has been funded primarily by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, National Institutes of Health, James S. McDonnell Foundation, American Heart Association, and Positive Psychology Network.

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS:

Uswatte, G., Miltner, W. H. R., Foo, B., Varma, M., Moran, S., & Taub, E. (2000). Objective measurement of functional upper extremity movement using accelerometer recordings transformed with a threshold filter. Stroke, 31, 662-667.

Elliott, T. R., Uswatte, G., Lewis, L., & Palmatier, A. (2000). Goal instability and adjustment to physical disability. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 47, 251-265.

Morris, D. M., Uswatte, G., Crago, J., Cook, E., & Taub, E. (2001). The reliability of the Wolf Motor Function Test for assessing upper extremity function following stroke. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 82, 750-755.

Taub, E., Uswatte, G., & Elbert, T. (2002). New treatments in neurorehabilitation founded on basic research. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3, 228-236.

Taub, E., Uswatte, G., & Morris, D. M. (2003). Improved motor recovery after stroke and massive cortical reorganization following constraint-induced movement therapy. Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinics of North America, 14, S77-S91.

Uswatte, G. & Taub, E. (2005). Implications of the learned nonuse formulation for measuring rehabilitation outcomes: Lessons from Constraint-Induced Movement therapy. Rehabilitation Psychology, 50, 34-42.

Uswatte, G., Foo, W. L., Olmstead, H., Lopez, K., Holand, A., & Simms, M. L. (2005). Ambulatory monitoring of arm movement using accelerometry: an objective measure of upper-extremity rehabilitation in persons with chronic stroke. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 86, 1498-1501.

Uswatte, G., Taub, E., Morris, D. M., Vignolo, M., & McCullough, K. (2005). Reliability and validity of the upper-extremity Motor Activity Log-14 for measuring real-world arm use. Stroke, 36, 2496-2499.

Taub, E., Lum, P. S., Hardin, P., Mark, V., & Uswatte, G. (2005). AutoCITE: Automated delivery of CI therapy with reduced effort by therapists. Stroke, 36, 1301-1304.

Taub, E., Uswatte, G., King, D. K., Morris, D. M., Crago, J. E., & Chatterjee, A. (in press). A placebo controlled trial of Constraint-Induced Movement therapy for upper extremity after stroke. Stroke.

Kashdan, T. B., Uswatte, G., Julian, T. (in press). Gratitude and hedonic and eudaimonic well-being in Vietnam War veterans. Behavior Research and Therapy.

Kashdan, T. B., Julian, T., Merritt, K., & Uswatte, G. (in press). Social anxiety and posttraumatic stress in combat veterans: relations to well-being and human strengths. Behavior Research and Therapy.

TEACHING INTERESTS:

Dr. Uswatte’s teaching interests include research methods, statistics, and the psychology of strengths and virtues (positive psychology).

CLINICAL SPECIALIZATION:

Dr. Uswatte’s area of clinical specialization is rehabilitation psychology.