Cate,
I want to know how we
perceive and remember our visual environment. We spend so much time in it,
after all. Currently I'm interested in learning how different regions of the
brain responsible for spatial attention, analysis of visual form, and
associative memory work together to create a seamless experience of
environment. I have worked with unilateral neglect patients to study
competitive mechanisms of attention in the posterior parietal lobe. I am also
beginning to study how we perceive and recognize complex visual scenes with
many elements.
Chang, Norma
I'm
a second-year student interested in investigating any aspects of cognition that
relate to math and science education, having taught high-school chemistry and
math for five years. I am currently
studying the effect of presenting spurious correlations between relevant and
irrelevant features on the concepts and strategies that students learn. In my
non-academic life, I enjoy the performing arts (violin, piano, jazz dance,
ballroom) and the outdoors (hiking and paddling), so I would love to hear
recommendations of where to go and what to do.
At the moment I am
investigating the application of memory principles to face recognition, looking
at the effects of irrelevant features in identifying people of the same and
opposite races. I am also looking at the effect of fan (multiple associations
for irrelevant features) on face recognition. I am currently building a huge
database of faces with hats, glasses, etc. As a first year I am still fine
tuning my area of research, but things such as memory failure, learning
principles, and metacognition interest me. I am also
delving into some neuroscience on the side.
Eyer, Julie
BLURB
Fincham, Jon
Too cool
to send me any personal information. Gosh He is still here after
all these years.
Geng, Joy
Objects are rarely
encountered in isolation. Rich networks of perceptual and semantic information
are continuously present and contribute to the interpretation of our visual
experiences. My research interest deals with the question of how context
(defined as information that is not essential for the immediate task, but that
is spatially or temporally nearby) modulates visual perception and recognition
of objects.
Graham, Steve
All of my research
interests relate, in one way or another, to close interpersonal relationships.
My primary interest at this time is understanding the ways in which people
think about close relationship partners (romantic partners, friends, roommates,
etc.). I am currently conducting studies that should
provide insight (via reaction times and self-reports) into how people organize
positive and negative information about their partners in memory. My particular
interest in these studies is understanding the impact of self-esteem on these
mental representations. Other interests include
understanding the behavioral mechanisms by which people come to form close
relationships and understanding the barriers to forming close relationships
faced by people with disabilities.
I
am a 2nd year doctoral candidate in the Department of Social and Decision
Sciences and the Department of Psychology. I study behavioral decision making,
a hybrid discipline of Psychology and Economics. My main research interest is
to understand the specific mechanisms through which emotion and cognition
interactively shape judgment and choice.
Second year. I study the fun stuff; problem solving, transfer of
learning, dynamic tasks and the like. I have been looking at strategy
transitions in the
Hahn, Erin (
BLURB
Cortical plasticity. That's my thing. Doesn't it just make you want to groooove; to sway to that funky sound? Yeah well, we can't
all be interested in the same thing. I however, have been stylin'
my way toward an understanding of how the cortex reorganizes itself after
damage. I've almost got it all figured out. I'm thinking that I'll work on
antigravity next. Did I mention that I use neural network models? Things I like
to do in
Kwok, Ken
I hail from sunny
Maia, Tiago
Language is a privileged
domain in which to study the fundamental issues of domain-generality versus
domain-specificity, nativism versus empiricism, and modularity versus
embodiment. I am interested in exploring these issues in the related contexts
of language acquisition (e.g., do children learn language based on general
learning mechanisms, such as picking up statistical regularities in the input,
or based on innate linguistic knowledge?) and language evolution (e.g., is
language a uniquely human characteristic because only humans evolved the required
innate linguistic knowledge, or because only humans evolved the
non-language-specific cognitive abilities necessary for language?). I am also
interested in concepts and categories, mainly from a developmental perspective,
as well as in several other topics in cognition. My main methodology is the
combined use of computational models (mostly connectionist and
statistical/probabilistic) and behavioral techniques.
I am interested in how
perceptual systems organize themselves to perform useful tasks. More
specifically, I am studying auditory perception in its relation to speech
perception. I use a combination of experimental (adult human behavioral) and
computational (self-organizing connectionist networks) techniques. When I am
not working I can be found playing volleyball or basketball, at the movies or
at a concert, or at one of the many low-priced dessert- and/or beer-dispensing
venues of sunny
Moss, Jarrod
BLURB
I have broad
interests that span social and health psychology. My current
research focuses on some
of the psychological ramifications of living with
a chronic
illness. In particular, I am studying
the effects of a chronic
illness on identity
formation, perception of stigma, quality of life, and
relationships. I am primarily interested in the experience
of adolescents
and adults with
Type 1 diabetes, but I also intend to study other illness
groups.
I am interested in all
aspects of cognition (including less traditional areas like emotion and
motivation). Currently I have been working on learning ACT-R 5.0 and learning
LISP. Some research ideas I have involve mental rotation (which I did
undergraduate research in) and motivation (which I understand from the
perspective of the economist, because I have a BA in econ). I have many hobbies.
Pressman, Sarah
My primary interest in in how and why people get sick under stress (a broad
interest but i'm only in first year!). Currently, I
am involved in a project examining the impact of stress, social support
factors, health behaviors, and mood on the production of antibody following flu
and meningitis immunization in freshman. Of particular interest to me is where
the individual differences in stress response arise from and how we develop our
own personal strategies for coping with stress (biological and psychological).
Reynolds, Kerry
Several things fascinate
me about the connection between the mind and the body. I'm interested in the
way that people adjust psychologically to illness. Also, I'm also interested in
the way that certain psychological characteristics (especially gender roles and
feelings of control) are associated with health outcomes. I am working with
Small, Deoborah
I am a 3rd year
doctoral candidate in the Department of Social and Decisions Sciences and the
Department of Psychology at
Email: dsmall@andrew.cmu.edu
Mailing address: Deborah Small
Porter
Hall 208
Carnegie
Mellon University
Pittsburgh,
PA 15213
Office: Porter
Hall, Rm. 319-A
Office Phone: 412-268-1207
Or you may find
me in the lab: Baker Hall, Rm. A55b
I work principally at the Center
for the Neural Basis of Cognition with
Research
on mechanisms of speech perception.
Vander Wyk,
McClelland and Rumelhart started a big fight in the 80's about how people
process language, and in particular how they inflect verbs. I am involved in
showing that connectionist models of the linguistic system can account for
patterns of verb inflection performance in aphasics that are thought to be
inconsistent with the connectionist account and supportive of the traditional
view of language.
Wimisberg, Kobi
Decisions from all kinds, that's my stuff. I am a 3rd year student in the joint program to the
Departments of Psychology
and Social
& Decision Sciences, where I am affiliated with the Center
for Risk Perception and Communication. If
you are interested in the psychological aspects of Medical Decision Making
you are in the right place. And why is that? Because currently I am working with Baruch Fischhoff, Robyn Dawes,
Julie Downs,
and Robert
Cook on a fascinating study called "Which Disease Do You
Prefer?" Basically we are interested to know what
is the best way to measure people’s preferences among different health states. Great, isn't it? In addition, I
am working on Dynamic Decision Making and Military Decision Making
stuff with Cleotilde Gonzalez (shhh...can't
tell you, will have to kill you first), but if you promise not to tell anyone,
it’s about Situation Awareness and
how people recognize specific situations and translate them into decisions in
dynamic environments. I am also interested in the
boundaries between philosophy, psychology, and decision
making.
Advisor: Baruch Fischhoff
Email: kobi@cmu.edu
Office: PH 321
Lab: BH A5A
Phone:
x2869/4496