About
Mirela Cengher, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst–Doctoral Level and a licensed behavior analyst in Maryland. Dr. Cengher began working with children with developmental disabilities as an undergraduate student in Romania and later moved to the United States for graduate training in behavior analysis. She earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.Dr. Cengher has over 20 years of combined research and clinical experience with individuals with developmental disabilities. Her research program integrates verbal behavior and stimulus control, with a focus on variables that influence the acquisition of verbal behavior and the emergence of derived relations. More recently, her work has emphasized bilingual language acquisition in individuals with developmental disabilities. Her research is supported by internal and external funding, including awards from the Organization for Autism Research, the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, and the Sherman Center for Early Learning in Urban Communities.
Dr. Cengher serves as Associate Editor for Behavior Analysis in Practice and The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, is an editorial board member for several journals, including the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, and is actively involved in professional leadership (e.g., Program Chair for Division 25 of the American Psychological Association).
Research interests
I am interested in examining variables, such as motivation or stimulus control, that affect the acquisition and emergence of verbal behavior.Teaching interests
I am interested in teaching behavior analytic courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels.Education
- Postdoc, Behavior Analysis — Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Kennedy Krieger Institute (2019)
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Ph D, Psychology
— The Graduate Center, City University of New York (2018) The Effects of Presession Attention on the Acquisition of Tacts and Intraverbals
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MA, Behavior Analysis
— Queens College, City University of New York (2012) The Effects of Presession Attention on Tacting
- MA, Psychology — Hyperion University (2010)
- BA, Psychology — University of Bucharest (2008)