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.
ROSS MAY, M.A., Applied Experimental Program.
Research Interests: Metacognitve and Social Judgment Formation.
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN, M.S., Applied Experimental Program.
Research Interests: Social Cognition, Implicit Association, Judgments of Trust.
VIKTORIA TIDIKYTE-DAY, M.S., Applied Experimental Program.
Interests: Group Problem-Solving & Decision Making.
Undergraduate Researchers:
Spring 2010: Jessica Erickson
Interested in joining the Lab as a Graduate or Undergraduate student? Please refer to my Research Interests Page.
CURRENT PROJECTS:
Creativity and Group Problem-Solving
Graduate Researcher: Viktoria Tidikyte-Day
The purpose of this study is to examine how working within a group versus working alone affects creative problem-solving and what role gender plays in influencing problem-solving performance. Previous studies contradictory results as to whether working in a group improves or impedes creative problem solving performance and whether gender has an effect on the group performance. The contradictory results of the previous may be dueto the gender by group interaction.
Trust & Hindsight Bias
Graduate Researcher: Martin Smith-Rodden
A decision to trust or not to trust can be examined within a broader category of cognition called decisions under uncertainty. The purpose of this study is to investigate trust decisions through the lens of the hindsight bias effect. The hindsight bias effect (sometimes known as the "I knew it all along effect") is a consequence that often follows judgments under uncertainty, and will be defined and outlined through various competing theories that seek to explain it. Since trust is also considered a judgment under uncertainty, an examination will be made of trust decisions through the lens of hindsight bias research, in participant's evaluations of trust outcomes. It is hypothesized that recollections of trust judgments are subject to hindsight bias effects under certain conditions, especially those during the metacognitive experience following a mildly surprising outcome.
Working Memory and Deductive Reasoning
Co-Investigator: Clinton S. Comer, M.S.
Reasoning is broadly defined as the ability and propensity to infer new beliefs or ideas from presently available information or facts. Deductive reasoning, as opposed to inductive reasoning, is a type of reasoning thatensures thetruth of the inferred conclusion. This makes it a very important and powerful type of reasoning. Over 100 years of research has shown that people exhibit systematic errors and biases when attempting to deductively reason. We are testing the predictions of different cognitive performance theories by investigating the interaction between individual differences in Working Memory Capacity and strategy use in predicting people's reasoning performance.
Laboratory Alumni:
Graduate Researchers:
Rebekka Gordon, Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology in 2008
Clinton Comer, M.S. in Experimental Psychology in 2008
Ann Edwards, M.S. in Experimental Psychology in 2009
Brad Whittet, M.S. in Experimental Psychology in 2009
Undergraduate Researchers:
Scott Miles, Shari Osborne, Linda Walubengo, Grace Chiou, Erick Morgan, Sara Peoples, JoAnne Boyce, Grace Choiu, Jennifer Morey, Ashley Phillips, Heather Scruggs, David Finch, Jennifer Morey (McMaster), Jennifer Talyor, Amanda Flecter, Gozaim Ogwu
