Cognitive Program Graduate Students

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Leigh Alexander

  • Advisor: Akira Miyake
  • Education: BA, University of Alabama (Neuropsychology and Consciousness Studies)
  • MA, University of Colorado at Boulder (Psychology)
  • leigh.alexander@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: Behavioral, neuroscientific, and genetic indices of cognitive control; applying ex-Gaussian analysis to study of task-switching; the role of inner speech in task-switching.

Lee Altamirano

  • Advisor: Akira Miyake
  • Education: BA, University of California, Berkeley (Physics)
  • MA, University of Colorado at Boulder (Psychology)
  • lee.altamirano@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: Lee’s current research explores individual differences in goal neglect, a phenomenon where task demands are clearly understood, yet temporarily ignored. In contrast to previous characterizations of goal neglect as a unitary construct, this research aims to identify dissociable cognitive mechanisms underlying distinct types of goal neglect.

Lindsay Anderson

  • Advisor: Alice Healy
  • Education: BA, Colorado State University (Psychology)
  • MA, University of Colorado Boulder (Psychology)
  • lindsay.anderson@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: My research to date has focused on skill acquisition (particularly motor skills) and the learning of tasks relevant to applied settings. Overall, my interests include complex processes such as skill acquisition, human performance, training, and attention, as well as the application of these processes to real world situations and problems. Much of my research is also centered around identifying and investigating the cognitive components of the iclicker system that contribute to its effectiveness (or ineffectiveness), in order to inform effective use in real educational settings.

Jane Barker

  • Advisor: Yuko Munakata
  • Education: BA, Rice University
  • MPA, Indiana University-Bloomington
  • jane.barker@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: Development of cognitive control mechanisms; symbolism/pretend play; the influence of SES on individual differences in executive function.

Micaela Christopher

  • Advisor: Richard Olson
  • Education: BA, Claremont McKenna College (Psychology and History)
  • micaela.christopher@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: Overall I am interested in studying language in children. In particular, I want to explore the underlying causes of reading and learning disabilities in children with the goal of developing possible interventions.

Daniel Corral

  • Advisor: Matt Jones
  • Education: California State University Northridge (Psychology & Philosophy)
  • MA, California State University Northridge (General Experimental Psychology)
  • daniel.corral@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: I am generally interested in the study of complex cognition. More specifically, my research has focused on decision making and problem solving. Currently, my work is geared towards studying the effects of categorical learning on schema acquisition, knowledge representation, and analogical transfer.

Alejandro de la Vega

  • Advisor: Marie Banich
  • Education: B.A., Pomona College (Linguistics and Cognitive Science)
  • alejandro.delavega@Colorado.EDU
  • Web:

Research Interests: I am interested in the interaction between emotion and cognition. In particular, the mechanisms by which attention and memory are modulated by emotional stimuli and how executive processes control automatic emotional reactions.

Daniel Gustavson

  • Advisor: Akira Miyake
  • Education:
  • daniel.gustavson@colorado.edu
  • Web: none

Research Interests: Individual differences in executive function ability. My current research investigates individual differences in the updating of working memory in anxious and depressed individuals, executive control components of displaying racial bias, and the relationship between music and cognition.

Shaw Ketels

Research Interests: I’m interested in implicit learning in laboratory situations, but more importantly pedagogical implications of past, current, and future laboratory findings from all areas of cognitive psychology. Things don’t always scale up.

Nick Ketz

Research Interests: I'm generally interested in the interaction of prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus during memory encoding and retrieval. My goals include further computational and empirical investigations into the these two systems during my graduate studies.

Keith Lohse

  • Advisor: Alice Healy
  • Education: BS, Idaho State University (Psychology)
  • MA, University of Colorado (Psychology)
  • keith.lohse@colorado.edu
  • Web: http://psych.colorado.edu/~lohsek

Research Interests: My research interests are in motor learning, control, and human performance. Focusing especially (but not exclusively) on the transfer of motor skills, neuromuscular coordination, and the psychomotor factors that underlie athletic performance.

John Lurquin

  • Advisor: Akira Miyake
  • Education: BS, Western Illinois Univerisity (Psychology)
  • Education: MS, Western Illinois Univerisity (Experimental Psychology)
  • john.lurquin@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: My research interests lie in self-control. Currently, I am investigating the relationship between executive functioning and more behavioral measures of self-control (e.g., persistence). I am also very interested in how one's self-concept influences the tendency to demonstrate self-control.

Blu McCormick

  • Advisor: Alice Healy
  • Education: BA, University of Colorado, Boulder (Psychology)
  • blu.mccormick@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: My current research focuses on a navigational paradigm, which mimics air traffic control communications. Errors in implementing navigational commands can lead to serious consequences. The goal is to manipulate training conditions and ascertain the underlying mechanisms affecting working memory for verbal, visual, and spatial modalities.

Laura Michaelson

Research Interests: I'm interested in how humans and other intelligent systems learn to guide their own behavior. Humans are uniquely sophisticated in their ability to adapt knowledge and behavior to changing environmental circumstances. To understand the neural and representational mechanisms supporting these skills, I study the development of cognitive flexibility and cognitive control across childhood.

Brian Mingus

  • Advisor: Randy O'Reilly
  • Education: BA, University of Colorado at Boulder (Psychology)
  • brian.mingus@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: Understanding how the brain gives rise to the mind is the fastest route to creating generally intelligent, self-aware robots. Towards this aim my research is centered on creating connectionist models of the dopaminergic mechanisms underlying self-directed learning in addition to the development of metaphorical reasoning in the dorsal stream.

Jessica Mollick

  • Advisor: Randy O'Reilly
  • Education: BA, University of California, Berkeley (Cognitive Science)
  • jessica.mollick@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: I'm interested in the brain mechanisms involved in learning, decision making, and executive function, and the role that neuromodulatory systems such as dopamine play in these tasks. In particular, I am interested in models of the interactions between prefrontal cortex and subcortical areas like the basal ganglia and amygdala, and testing the predictions of these models empirically with methods such as fMRI.

Matt Mollison

  • Advisor: Tim Curran
  • Education: BA, Brandeis University (Psychology)
  • MA, University of Colorado at Boulder (Psychology)
  • matthew.mollison@colorado.edu
  • Web: http://psych.colorado.edu/~mollison

Research Interests: My interests are in learning and memory, particularly in revealing and understanding correlations of EEG (using ERPs and oscillations) with the cognitive processes involved in recognition memory, and in modeling those processes.

Leif Oines

  • Advisor: Al Kim
  • Education: B.A., University of California, Santa Cruz (Linguistics)
  • leif.oines@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: My current interests mostly involve language processing, in particular ambiguity resolution (both lexical and syntactic), the effects of working memory span on sentence processing as well as issues involving the syntax-semantics interface. I am particularly interested in developing experiments using EEG/ERP to investigate at what point people employ contextual and semantic information to help drive the combinatorial mechanisms of syntactic processing.

Andrew E. Reineberg

Research Interests: I am interested in the interplay between mind wandering and executive function. Specifically, I am interested in furthering our understanding of the neural processes mediating the occurrence and awareness of mind wandering.

Miranda Rieter

  • Advisor: Akira Miyake
  • Education: BS, University of Oregon (Psychology)
  • miranda.rieter@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: I am interested in exploring mechanisms of executive control. My current research investigates the role of inner speech in executive control functions, and I am also interested in exploring how the role of inner speech may change as we age.

Scott Schafer

  • Advisor: Tor Wager
  • Education: BS, Arizona State University, Physics and Psychology
  • MPhil, New York University (Neuroscience)
  • scott.schafer@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: Neural mechanisms of pain and pain relief, learning systems, and decision making

Shane Schwikert

  • Advisor: Tim Curran
  • Education: BS, University of Michigan (Brain, Behavior, and Cognitive Science)
  • shane.schwikert@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: I'm interested in using EEG (ERPs and Time Frequency Analysis) to understand the neural correlates of memory, and to explore applications in decision making and related heuristics.

Clare Sims

  • Advisor: Eliana Colunga
  • Education: BA, BS, University of California, Davis (Psychology and Human Development)
  • MA, University of Colorado at Boulder (Psychology)
  • clare.holtpatrick@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: My research focuses on the development of categorization and factors such as type of information, language, and task. More specifically, I am interested in the roles of perceptual and conceptual information, category structure, and object labels in learning and categorization.

Hannah Snyder

  • Advisor: Yuko Munakata
  • Education: BA, Oberlin College (Psychology and Neuroscience)
  • MA, University of Colorado at Boulder (Psychology)
  • snyderhr@colorado.edu
  • Web: http://psych.colorado.edu/~cdc/

Research Interests: My research focuses on cognitive control mechanisms involved selecting among, and flexibly switching between, tasks and representations, and how this processes are affected by individual differences (e.g. in anxiety). Specifically, I study cognitive control during language production using developmental, adult behavioral, neural network modeling and fMRI methods.

Choong-Wan (Wani) Woo

Research Interests: 1) The psychological and neural mechanisms underlying pain, anxiety, and depression; 2) the processing and regulation of pain and emotion (e.g., cognitive and social control) and their individual differences; 3) psychological and biological (or endophenotypic) markers of vulnerability and resilience for emotional distress; and 4) the neurobiological, affective, and cognitive consequences of psychotherapy.

Dean Wyatte

  • Advisor: Randall C. O'Reilly
  • Education: BS, Indiana University (Cognitive Science and Computer Science)
  • dean.wyatte@colorado.EDU
  • Web: http://psych.colorado.edu/~wyatte

Research Interests: I am interested in the neural dynamics that give rise to visual processes like object recognition. To study these processes, I develop biologically realistic models of the brain's visual pathways and test their predictions using a combination of visual psychophysics and EEG.

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