Research Interests
I research learning, memory, and abstraction.
I use experimental and computational methods.
I research learning, memory, and abstraction.
I use experimental and computational methods.
I'm interested in the basic cognitive science of how we learn, remember, and abstract. You probably think of learning as the ability to memorize specific examples, but this is only a small part of learning. Abstraction is when we apply our previous learning to a new situation. For example, a birdwatcher doesn't just memorize specific birds -- they learn how to see a new bird in the wild and figure out what kind of bird it is. Abstraction is, arguably, the most important outcome of learning. But learning to abstract is a little bit more difficult than just memorizing examples. This brings me to the big-picture question in my research: How can we optimize a learner's ability to abstract? I try to answer this question through the lens of category learning, where people learn to sort item into groups and then get challenged to sort never-before-seen items. I use a combination of ecologically valid research paradigms, quantitative methods, and computational modeling.
When you try learning something new, you might think about your progress. How well have I learned? How would I do if I was tested on this right now? This is called metacognitive monitoring, and it's an important part of how we learn. In many cases, your memory is improved if someone asks you to monitor your learning. We wanted to know how, if at all, monitoring would affect abstraction. Our 2024 paper examined this question using a smartphone-based learning task. Our 2026 paper used a more classic computer-based learning task. It seems like monitoring your learning can sometimes boost or sometimes inhibit your ability to abstract. Future research will continue to examine why and how this happens.
Spreading your learning out into lots of short, spaced-out learning sessions is usually better for your memory than trying to learn a lot all at once. This is called the spacing effect. I wanted to know if spacing also affected abstraction, not just memory. It seemed like spacing learning out over time helped people to remember things they studied, but didn't affect their ability to abstract their learning. This study was conducted entirely on people's smartphones. Read our paper to learn more!