Current Projects
Implicit Learning of Perceptual and Motor Skills
We are studying properties of skill learning, such as whether interleaved practice of implicitly learned sequence facilitates transfer to new sequences, and whether people can implicitly learn Bayesian priors that guide performance in perceptual decision-making.
The Effect of Early-Life Stress on Instrumental Learning
In this project, we are examining the hypothesis that people who experienced early-life stress show an increased level of habitual responding in instrumental learning tasks compared to people who did not experience early-life stress. This project is motivated by the idea that a tendency towards habitual behavior may contribute to health risks observed in people who had experienced early-life stress.
Mechanisms of Value-Directed Remembering
Given the vast amount of information encountered each day, it is important to be able to selectively encode information that is important or valuable. We are testing a dual framework in which subjects differentially use deeper semantic encoding for high-value items, and in which high-value items are automatically strengthened in memory through dopaminergic error prediction.