Cognitive Psychology

Kit Ying Chan, M.A. (Vivien)

A.B.D.
Email: vivienky@ku.edu
Website: http://www.people.ku.edu/~vivienky/

Research Interests:"Why is foreign-accented speech so difficult to understand?"
Our experience and previous research tell us that speakers with a foreign accent are more difficult to understand, such as more recognition errors and a longer processing time. To reduce these communication costs, I examine the recognition difficulty induced by foreign accents-- whether all words spoken with foreign accents are difficult to understand, or words with certain characteristics, such as words with many similar sounding words, are more difficult to understand than the others.

Mark Chan, M.A.

6th year student
Office: Fraser 528
Email: mchan5@ku.edu
Website: https://sites.google.com/a/ku.edu/vip-lab/

Research Interests: My current research with Dr. Paul Atchley focuses on the potential application of a concurrent task as a means of minimizing performance decrements under monotonous and/or fatiguing environments. Besides investigating overt behavioral changes in driving performance using a driving simulator, I am also employing electrophysiological measures to study driving behavior. I would like to better understand the cognitive processes that allow humans to sustain attention over an extended period of time. Ultimately a better understanding of our attentional systems will enhance safety, and improve human performance in a variety of contexts.

Un-So Diener

7th year student
Office: Fraser 539
Email: lareun@ku.edu

Research Interests: I am interested in figuring out how the way words are spelled and the way word parts combine to make different words affect how we recognize them when we read. For example, English is a very difficult language to spell in terms of sounds (e.g. why is "sign" not spelled "sine?"), but that complicated spelling can also inform us about related words (e.g. "sign" and "signature" are related). I am also interested in whether people think of "butter" when they see the word "butterfly." Investigating these issues will inform us more on how words are organized in our mind.

Linzi Gibson

6th year student
Office: Fraser 536
Email: mslinzi@ku.edu

Research Interests: I'm a second year student working in the Attention and Emotion Lab (AEL) where we are examining the lateralization of attentional processes in semantics, as in semantic priming. Research tools of the AEL are principally that of event-related potentials (ERPs), a brainwave technique, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a brain scanner technique.

Rutherford Goldstein

2nd year student
Office: Fraser 528
Email: rgolds@ku.edu

Research Interests: I am a second year student in the Cognitive Psychology program at the University of Kansas. I work in the Spoken Language Laboratory with Dr. Michael Vitevitch as my adviser. My research interests lie in the area where language and memory meet: the mental lexicon. Questions I attempt to address are: What aspects of a word make it easier (or harder) to process? Why do we make mistakes in verbal communication? What happens when a word is not produced or recognized correctly? Past projects I've been involved in use the tools of the new science of networks to look at issues such as lexicon structure; specifically how structure affects different lexical processes.

Chelsie Hadlock
1^st year student
Email: caisha@ku.edu

Research Interests:

Rebecca Lepping, M.A.

Office: Fraser 528
3rd year student
Email: rchamber@ku.edu

Research Interests:I study how music affects people’s mood and emotions. I am trying to understand how and why people choose to listen to music, and whether music may be helpful in treatment of depression or other mood disorders.

Geoffrey Priester

1st year student
Office: Fraser 536
Email: gpriester@ku.edu

Research Interests: My research interests center around the role of technology in augmenting perceptual processing, especially in terms of visual attention and object recognition. Currently, my focus is on the effects of priming and interrupting spatial navigation processes. I work with Dr. Paul Atchley in the Visual Information Processing (VIP) lab.

Ellen Rozek

5th year student
Email: erozek@ku.edu

Research Interests: Broadly, I am interested in understanding how language is used across the life course in the face of cognitive changes (i.e. declining inhibition), particularly in older adults. I conduct research with Dr. Susan Kemper, in the Language Across the Lifespan Lab. We are currently investigating the how older and young adults process written language when there is distracting like this! information in the text. Distracting information presents a challenge for readers of any age, but older and young adults appear to approach this challenge differently, which we assess using eye-tracking technology.

Jonathan Schuster, M.A.

A.B.D.
Office: Fraser 528
Email: jgsfla@ku.edu

Research Interests: I am interested in individual differences in reading ability, and I am currently investigating how groups with varying reading abilities differ in the basic reading skills. Specifically, I am looking into how incoming freshmen and adults with low literacy differ in their working memory, vocabulary, word reading ability, and listening comprehension, and how these components combine to influence reading comprehension for each group.

RaLynn Schmalzried, M. A

A.B.D
Office: Fraser 528 and 3080 Dole
Email: ralynns@ku.edu

Research Interests: My work in the Language Across the Lab with Dr. Susan Kemper has focused on the effects of doing two things at once on communication in young and older adults. My dissertation is focusing on the structure of inhibition and rumination in young and older adults, and how these processes may impact dual-task performance differently in each age group. In addition to the cogntive psychology program, I am also associated with the Gerontology Center at KU and am completing a graduate certificate in Gerontology.

Shengkai(Sunkey) Sun

3nd year graduate student
Office: Fraser 528
Email: shengkaisun@ku.edu

Research Interests: How do people cope with past stress and trauma? What kinds of coping facilitate psychological adjustment better than others? My research investigates these questions by analyzing adults' and children's memories for traumatic/stressful experiences. One project I'm currently working on is focused on how different characteristics of college students' narratives about past traumatic experiences (especially different meanings made in these narratives) are associated with depression and PTSD symptoms. Another project in progress is exploring how the ways parents guide conversations with their children shape children's memories for and emotional reactions to a laboratory stressor. Physiological measurement techniques I'm using in the latter project are ECG and cortisol analysis.

Keith Young, M.A.

6th year student
Office: Fraser 536
Email: kmy@ku.edu

Research Interests: The three main areas of cognitive psychology of interest to me are cognitive neuroscience, laterality, and attention. More specifically, I am interested in how the two cerebral hemispheres process information within the context of attentional biases and manipulations. I use several techniques such as event-related potentials (ERPs) and divided visual field (DVF) paradigms to study these topics.

Yana Yen

1st year student
Email: yanay@ku.edu

Research Interests: My current research interest is the effect of cognitive processes such as attention, memory, and emotion on formation of authentic self. Right now I am focusing on the role of attention in defensive behavior. As I develop my understanding of defensiveness as a cognitive process based on an interaction of attention, memory, and emotion, I plan to use it as an inverse measure to study authenticity.