Cognitive Psychology Program

All core cognitive faculty plan to admit new graduate students for 2019-2020. Note: Dr. Kane plans to admit applicants for the Terminal MA degree only. 

• For information on applying, click here.

Cognitive Psychology Faculty & Grad Students 

FACULTY LINKS AND RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Core Faculty Research Interests

• Peter Delaney [CLaM Lab]: learning, memory, problem solving
• Michael Kane [IDEA Lab]: executive control, individual differences
• Dayna Touron [Adult Cognition Lab]: aging, metacognition, learning
• Chris Wahlheim [MAC Lab]: memory, aging, event cognition
• Robert Wiley [Writing Brain]: learning, perception, plasticity, education

Closely Affiliated Psychology Faculty

• Robert Guttentag: development, memory, moral judgment
• Stuart Marcovitch: development, executive control, learning
• Paul Silvia: creativity, effort, personality

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

• Individual attention and mentoring from faculty
• Students typically receive 5 years of funding, including tuition remission
• Methods training in experimental design, experience and thought sampling, protocol analysis, eye-tracking and pupillometry, psychometrics
• Recent graduates have secured postdoctoral and tenure-track positions (e.g., Penn State University [Megan Jordano], Texas A&M-Commerce [David Frank], Western Carolina University [Matt Meier]
• Recent graduate seminars in Variation in Executive Control, Event Cognition, Cognitive Aging, Metacognition, Working Memory, Memory and Belief, and Forgetting

SELECTED 2016-18 PUBLICATIONS BY CURRENT/RECENT STUDENTS (student names bolded)

Delaney, P.F., Godbole, N.R., Holden, L.R., & Chang, Y. (2018). Working memory capacity and the spacing effect in cued recall. Memory, 26, 784-797.

Frank, D.J. & Touron, D.R. (in press). The role of task understanding on younger and older adults’ performance. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.

Jordano, M.L. & Touron, D.R. (2017). Stereotype threat as a trigger of mind wandering in older adults. Psychology and Aging, 32(3), 307-313.

Kuhlmann, B.G. & Touron, D.R. (2016). Aging and memory improvement from semantic clustering: The role of list presentation format. Psychology and Aging, 31(7), 771-785.

Kuhns, J., & Touron, D.R. (2018). Aging and cognitive skill learning. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology. Oxford University Press.

Meier, M.E., Smeekens, B. A., Silvia, P.J., Kwapil, T.R., & Kane, M.J. (2018). Working memory capacity and the antisaccade task: A microanalytic-macroanalytic investigation of individual differences in goal activation and maintenance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 44, 68-84.

Smeekens, B.A., & Kane, M.J. (2016). Working memory capacity, mind wandering, and creative cognition: An individual-differences investigation into the benefits of controlled versus spontaneous thought. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 10, 389-415.

Spirgel, A. S., & Delaney, P. F. (2016). Does writing summaries improve memory for text? Educational Psychological Review, 28, 171-196.

Wahlheim, C. N., Alexander, T. R., & Kane, M. J. (2019). Interpolated retrieval effects on list isolation: Individual differences in working memory capacity. Memory & Cognition, 47, 619-642.

Wahlheim, C. N., Smith, W. G., & Delaney, P. F. (2019). Reminders can enhance or impair episodic memory updating: A memory-for-change perspective. Memory, 27, 849-867.

Welhaf, M.S., Smeekens, B.A., Gazzia, N.C., Perkins, J.B., Silvia, P.J., Meier, M.E., Kwapil, T.R., & Kane, M.J. (in press). An exploratory analysis of individual differences in mind wandering content and consistency. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice.