HUMAN COGNITION LABORATORY
PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT
OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY

LABORATORY LOCATION:

Mills Godwin Jr. Life Sciences Building Room 324 & 336
Psychology Department
Old Dominion University

CURRENT LAB MEMBERS:

IVAN K. ASH, Ph.D., Principal Investigator.
Research Interests: Problem Solving, Reasoning, Insight, Comprehension, Representation Formation, Judgment and Decision Making, Hindsight Bias, and Individual Differences.

REBEKKA ALTHOUSE, M.S.,  ABD Industrial/Organizational Doctoral Student.
Research Interests:  diversity, personnel selection and development, assessment centers, performance appraisal.

CLINTON COMER, Second Year Masters Student.
Research Interests: Individual Differences, Reasoning, Judgment Formation, and Problem Solving in non-clinical and clinical populations.

ANN EDWARDS, First Year Applied Experimental Doctoral Student.
Research Interests: Medical Reasoning, Decision Making, & Expertise.

LUKE LIN, Second Year Human Factors Doctoral Student.
Research Interests: Effects of Environmental Sressors on Decision Making and Problem Solving Processes, Transfer of Training, Design of Training Interventions.

MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN, Second Year Masters Student.
Research Interests: Social Cognition, Implicit Association, Judgments of Trust.

VIKTORIA TIDIKYTE-DAY, First Year Masters Student.
Interests: Group Problem-Solving & Decision Making.

Undergraduate Researchers:
Fall 2007: JoAnne Boyce, David Finch, Jennifer Morey (McMaster), Heather Scruggs, Jennifer Talyor
Spring 2007: David Finch, Amanda Flecter, Jennifer McMaster, Jennifer Talyor
Spring 2006: Gozaim Ogwu

CURRENT PROJECTS:

Cognitive Impediments To Learning In A Dynamically Complex Environment
Co-Investigator: Russel Haines, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, IT & Decision Sciences ODU
Funding: 2007: Summer Experience Enhancing Collaborative Research (SEECR) Grant from Old Dominion University, $17,000.

This project investigates whether cognitive decision-making biases can be used to explain the "bull-whip" phenomenon (Lee, H. L., Padmanabhan, V., & Whang, S. 1997),which is often observed in supply chain interactions. Furthermore, we plan investigate the effects of supply chain interface information interventions designed to combat these cognitive biases to see if they will attenuate "bull-whip" ordering fluctuations.

The Role of Surprise, Expectation, and Sense-Making in the Hindsight Effect.
Graduate Researcher: Clinton Comer

There is an old saying that hindsight is 20/20. The idea behind the phrase is that it is easy to be knowledgeable after events have happened. The Hindsight Effect describes the observation that once people are aware of the outcome to a situation, they have the tendency to falsely believe that they would have predicted the outcome. Our lab is currently conducting a series of studies designed to test the predictions of the different Cognitive Reconstruction explanations of this effect.

Investigating the cause of the AIDS Implicit Association Test effect: stigma against the victims vs. negative attitudes toward disease.
Co-Investigator: Valerian J. Derlega, Ph.D., Psychology Department ODU
Graduate Researcher: Martin Smith-Rodden

The Implicit Association Test (IAT)is a commonly used tool in the investigation of implicit attitudes, biases, and prejudice (see Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). In a recent study researchers used this test to investigate people's implicit bias against those diagnosed with HIV or AIDS (Neumann et al., 2004). These researchers found that the IAT effect exhibited by participants correlated with other implicit AIDS avoidance measures. The authors suggested that the IAT may be used to measure individuals' prejudice toward individuals infected with HIV. We are currently conducting preliminary studies to investigate whether the AIDS IAT effect is due to prejudice or simply due to the general negative attitudes associated with any deadly disease.

Time pressure effects in the acquisition and implementation of decision strategies in a probabilistic cued decision environment.
Graduate Researcher: Luke Lin

This study uses a simple probabilistic cued decision task (Goodie& Crooks, 2004) to investigate the effects of time pressure and cue similarity on the development and implementation of compensatory and non-compensatory (heuristic) decision strategies. We hope that these simple laboratory investigations will help us developparadigms to test training interventions for real-world probabilistic cued decision tasks like luggage screening or bomb detection.

Interested in joining the Lab as a Graduate or Undergraduate student? Please refer to my Research Interests Page.

COLLABORATING & COGNITIVE PSYCHRELATED LABORATORIES at ODU:

Dr. Carryll Baldwin: Driving Research Center & CAND Lab
Dr. James Bliss: Alarm Research Laboratory