Research

Lab goals

We seek to understand how memory works, how it changes between childhood and old age, and how it interacts with other aspects of cognition such as attention and metacognition. To investigate these issues, we deploy experimental and computational modeling techniques. Some of our current projects are described below.

Memory binding processes across the lifespan

The ability to bind, or link, different aspects of an experience is a fundamental process of memory that undergoes protracted development during childhood, as well as substantial decline due to adult aging. Binding may occur between features within the same object or between an object and other objects or aspects of its spatiotemporal context. In our work, we have investigated (a) early developmental improvements in memory binding in relation to children’s forgetting and interference between related memories, as well as (b) memory binding deficits in older adults. We have employed computational modeling approaches to characterize binding processes in both age groups and to make our mechanistic theories more transparent.

Representative publications:

Metacognitive confidence in memory-based decisions

Where does confidence in our memory decisions come from, and how does the need to make a confidence judgment impact the memory process itself? We have begun to address these questions by (a) implementing a computational model of confidence that is integrated with established models of decision-making, (b) characterizing mechanistic differences in young and older adults in confidence for source memory decisions, and (c) assessing interactions between memory and confidence decisions by varying the timing of confidence judgments.

Representative publications:

Dynamics of memory, attention, and cognitive control

Memory processes do not operate in a vacuum apart from other aspects of cognition. We are very interested in how memory is impacted by developmental changes in attention and cognitive control, as well as moment-to-moment fluctuations in these processes. In our lab, we have investigated developmental changes how memory interacts with visual attention and cognitive flexibility. We have also developed an experiment and modeling ecosystem to assess mechanisms of a wide swath of cognitive processes, including associative memory, cognitive control, perception, and reward-based learning, to help us investigate how these processes function and interact across the lifespan.