Cognitive Science and Research


       This page is dedicated to my work and research interests in cognitive science and cognitive psychology. On the page you'll find some explanations about what I'm working on and what I am interested in.

This page is still under construction, but you can get a general idea of my interests here.

Skip to: [Current Research] [Attention and Memory] [Music Cognition] [Cognitive Science] [Curriculum Vitae]
Current Research
        I am currently a Research Assistant for Ingrid Olson at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. This section of the page explains the current projects I'm working on at the CCN. The research we do is mainly on visual attention and short term memory, using behavioral, fMRI, and patient testing methods.

Links:
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience
Ingrid Olson's Lab
Center for Functional Neuroimaging
Voxbo, an image analysis tool we use at Penn.
Matlab programs.
Matlab psychtoolbox.
We use matlab to create most of our experiments. This link leads you to some of the programs I have made. Feel free to use them, especially if you are learning the language.

Spatial Working Memory

       The first major project in the lab investigated the effect of training on spatial working memory performance, in collaboration with Yuhong Jiang. For the basic version of the task, subjects had to memorize the locations of 6-12 squares presented briefly on the computer screen. After a delay, they had to produce the location of the missing squares when all but one reappeared. Throughout the experiment, half of the displays were repeated once every 12 trials, while half of the displays were randomly generated each time. In a non-associate learning condition, different squares were probed at each occurrence of a repeated display, and performance did not improve. In the associative learning condition, the same square was probed each time, and performance was enhanced. At the end of the experiment, we tested long term memory for the repeated displays, and all were recognizable, even in the non-associative learning condition.
       Currently, we are finishing up an fMRI investigation of this phenomenon. So far, the most consistent finding is intraparietal sulcus (IPS) activation in the delay period of repeated/learned displays as compared to newly generated ones. Right now we are investigating brain and behavioral correlations to explore individual differences in performance.

Presentations and Papers
  • Olson, I.R., Jiang, Y. & Sledge, K. (2004-in press). Visual working memory: A mechanism to circumvent the capacity bottleneck. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

  • Olson, I.R., Sledge, K., & Higgins, S. (in preparation) Is visual working memory limited by the number of memory slots or by attention? An fMRI investigation.

  • Olson, I.R., Jiang, Y., Sledge, K. (2004). Visual short-term memory capacity is increased by training.
    Vision Science Society, Sarasota, FL.
  • Olson, I.R., Jiang, Y., Sledge, K. (2004). Visual short-term memory capacity is increased by training. Cognitive Neuroscience Society, San Francisco, CA.

    • Memory Insertion
           Another major project of ours investigates the question of how much information is remembered when we are not trying to remember. In each experiment, subjets are instructed to remember a set of items that are outlined or underlined, and to ignore any other items. After a delay, a single item appears on the screen, and subjects must indicate if this was one of the target items from the previous display. Through both sequential and simultaneous presentation of stimuli, we have replicated the effect of lure (to-be-ignored) objects harming performance on this task, because they are weakly encoded and consequently mistaken as target (to-be-remembered) objects at retreival. We have also repeated this effect with different delay intervals and with shapes, faces, and letters.
           Currently, we are expanding this project in order to look into individual differences. We are interested in whether memory capacity in traditional working memory tasks, attentional window, and DEX score are related to overall performance, and whether they are related to the ability to inhibit lure items.

    Papers and Presentation:
  • Olson, I.R., Sledge, K. (2004-submitted). Visual working memory: Selective attention provides only a leaky filter for entry into visual working memory.
  • Olson, I.R., Sledge, K., & Cooperman. (in preparation) Individual differences in visual working memory and distractor processing.
  • Sledge, K., Olson, I. R. (2005-submitted) Controlling the Contents of Visual Short Term Memory. Vision Science Society, Sarasota, FL.


    • Amnesics

           An ongoing project of ours is to test amnesic patients with damage to the medial temporal lobe on their visual memory for a variety of different tasks, including color memory, face memory, spatial memory, and other tasks.
  • Olson, I.R., Sledge, K., Stark, M., Chatterjee, A. (in preparation) Visual working memory is dependent on the medial temporal lobe.


    • Motor Learning

           In a collaborative project with Geoffrey Aguirre, we are using perfusion imaging to investigating slow learning of a motor task. Because of its sensitivity to slow neural changes over time, perfusion imaging is a good choice of method when studying learning tasks.

    Presentation and Paper:
  • Sledge, K., Olson, I.R., Rao, H., Wang, J., Detre, J., Aguirre, G.K. (2005). Motor learning: perfusion fMRI shows learning-related changes over 20-minute blocks of training. Cognitive Neuroscience Society, New York, NY.
  • Olson, I.R., Rao, H., Sledge, K., Detre, J., Aguirre, G.K. Motor learning: perfusion fMRI shows learning-related changes over 20-minute blocks of training.


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    Attention and Memory
            My primary cognitive psychology research interest is the study of Attention and Memory. In particular, I am interested in the limitations of our attention and human information processing in general. These interests originally stemmed from a course I took taught by Saul Sternberg. In graduate school, I wish to pursue these questions, hopefully using converging methods (behavioral plus any combination of fMRI, ERP, TMS, and computational modeling.)

           Last year, I took a year-long class taught by Amishi Jha and Matt Botvinick that was essentially a journal club on attention and working memory. We read and presented articles each week, or chapters from Converging Operations in the Study of Visual Selective Attention, Edited by Arthur F. Kramer, Michael G. H. Coles, and Gordon D. Logan.

    Links:
    Amishi Jha's lab
    Matt Botvinick's lab
    Saul Sternberg
    Psychological Refractory Period


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    Music Cognition
            Music Cognition is something I have always been interested in ever since I discovered both psychology and music. Music Cognition is the study of how we perceive and understand music, including how we process pitches, rhythms and harmonies, and also why we have emotional responses to certain kinds of music. As a drummer and a tap dancer, I am most interested in how we process rhythms. In the spring of 2004, I took the Psychology of Music, a course taught in the music department by Eugene Narmour.

    Links:
    Eugene Narmour
    Music Cognition Resource Center at Ohio State University. Links to essentially every bit of music cognition research in the world.
    Music, Mind, Machine group at the University of Nijmegen.
    Society of Music Perception and Cognition.

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    Cognitive Science
            As an undergraduate, I was a Cognitive Science major. Most of the time when I told this to people, they usually responded with, "What is that?" On this page, I hope to explain what exactly Cognitive Science is. My explanation is in no way thorough, and may even contain inaccuracies about the disciplines I am less familiar with. I hope it is useful to you.

           Cognitive Science is an interdisciplinary study of the mind, intelligence, and computation. It draws on research in many fields, including psychology, computer science, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, math, anthropology, biology, and more. Because of this, cognitive scientists study a range of different topics and may be stationed in any number of departments in an academic setting. In addition to academia, many cognitive scientists work in industry.

           Psychology's contribution is pretty obvious. After all, it already is the study of the mind! Cognitive psychologists focus on how we think and how we process information. So, they study things like sensation and perception (vision, audition, touch, etc), memory, language, learning, movement, and problem solving. They use humans as subjects and test their behaviors on cognitive tasks to try to unlock the processes in their minds. Neuroscientists add an important ingredient to this investigation, by looking at brain itself.

           Computer scientists often make models of intelligence and cognition by using computers. These people study Artificial Intelligence, and work towards making machines that can act and learn like humans. If you've ever talked to a computer online, (try ALICE, or SmarterChild on AIM) that is an example of computer science's contribution to cognitive science. Contrary to popular belief, these scientists aren't constantly trying to build robots that act like humans. Rather, they make computer programs that attempt to model an aspect of cognition. They also try to make adaptive programs capable of learning. It's not all about robots that are going to take over the world!

           Language is possibly the most complex ability that humans have, and no other species shares it (at least not nearly to the same extent). Thus, linguistics plays a large role in cognitive science. It also relates to computer science. Linguists can offer insights into creating better and more efficient programming languages.

           Philosophers propose the theories that are unattainable by the empirical scientists due to their methods. So, philosophers can ask questions like, "what is consciousness?" and "is it possible to create a thinking machine using inorganic materials?" Both of these questions and many others are currently unanswerable using science. Philosophy also contributes the study of logic to cognitive science.

    To understand more about Cognitive Science and to explore the research in the field, take a look at the following links:
    Institute for Research in Cognitive Science at Penn.
    Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley, complete with a more thorough history and description of Cognitive Science.
    Cognitive Science Society

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