cognition lab - psychology - bates college

My research explores how people notice, ignore, and make sense of the constant stream of information around them. I ask questions like: Why do sudden signals sometimes sharpen our focus and other times make us more distractible? How does the mind decide which sights or sounds break through into awareness while others remain unnoticed? And how do memory, culture, and emotional content shape what we perceive? By designing experiments that test how attention, perception, and memory interact in real time, my studies reveal the hidden processes that allow us to read words, recognize objects, or spot changes in a busy scene. This work not only deepens our understanding of the mind but also sheds light on practical challenges people face, like staying focused amid distractions and competing demands on attention.