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Hanna Zagefka
Royal Holloway University of London, UK What does your research focus on? My research focuses on intergroup relations, particularly acculturation and other phenomena affecting ethnic minorities. More recently, I have started to investigate predictors of charitable donations, a line of work I am currently very excited about. I approach this topic from an intergroup perspective — how do group memberships increase or reduce prosociality towards those in need? What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you?
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Gregory R. Samanez-Larkin
Vanderbilt University, USA What does your research focus on? In general I am interested in how cognition and motivation develop and change over adulthood and into old age. Most of my recent work has specifically examined age-related change in learning and decision making — particularly related to finances. The larger goal of all of this work is to contribute to a more comprehensive model of human aging that integrates evidence and theory from psychology, neuroscience, and economics. What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you? The specific focus on aging is largely the result of hearing several talks by Laura Carstensen in 2002.
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Jason Chan
Iowa State University, USA www.jasonckchan.com What does your research focus on? My research focuses on memory illusions and memory interventions. Recently I started to merge these two interests together; the goal is to use memory enhancement techniques such as retrieval practice to reduce erroneous memories. Of course, we have known for a long time that memory can be malleable, so one question that interests me is “what can we do about it?” Memory intervention techniques (such as retrieval practice) can be used to reduce erroneous memories, and they can also be applied to enhance students’ learning in general, but even these interventions can have its limits.
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Karl Szpunar
Harvard University, USA http://karlszpunar.com What does your research focus on? My research interests focus primarily upon, but are not limited to, understanding the cognitive and neural relations that underlie our capacity to remember personal past experiences and imagine personal future experiences. What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you? That we are able, in a moment’s notice, to mentally transport ourselves to events past (real or imaginary) and future (plausible or implausible) has always greatly fascinated me. Of course, having an interest in something as a graduate student can only get you so far. Luckily, my graduate advisor, Dr.
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Daniel M. Oppenheimer
http://web.princeton.edu/sites/opplab/ What does your research focus on? I dance around a lot of different research areas, but most of them are somehow connected to metacognition, judgment and decision making. How does what we think we know, (and how we think we think) influence the way we make decisions? What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you? I wish I had better metacognition about what draws me to these sorts of projects. Really, I just do whatever projects grab my attention. At any given moment, there rarely seems to be any connection between the different projects I’m working on. But when I look back in hindsight there do seem to be common themes.
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Julie Bugg
Washington University, USA What does your research focus on? The primary focus of my research is cognitive control, and age-related changes in control. I am interested in the mechanisms humans use to resolve interference, the interplay of expectancy-driven and stimulus-driven control, the degree to which these mechanisms are impaired versus spared with age, and remediation of age-related cognitive control decline. What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you? I became interested in cognitive control and the intersection of aging and control during graduate school while reading Hasher and Zacks’ classic work.
