2022-2023
Welcome to our newest graduate student, Lane Adams!
2021-2022
A big congratulations to our newest graduate, Dr. Krista Miller!
Congratulations to Kara Morgan-Short, PhD who was invited to give a talk entitled "Registered Reports as an Open Research Practice" at the Open Science in Applied Linguistics Symposium! You can view the talk here!
New summer publications!
Frankenstein, A. N., Udeogu, O. J., McCurdy, M. P., Sklenar, A. M., & Leshikar, E. D. (2022). Exploring the relationship between retrieval practice, self-efficacy, and memory. Memory & Cognition.
Morgan-Short, K., Hamrick, P., & Ullman, M. T. (2022). Declarative and procedural memory as predictors of second language development. In S. Li, P. Hiver, & M. Papi (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition and individual differences (pp. 67-81). Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781003270546
Strickland, T., Wiley, J., & Ohlsson, S. (in Press). Hints and the aha-accuracy effect in insight problem solving. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
Congratulations to everyone who will be presenting at the Society of Text & Discourse conference this summer and a special round of applause for Lamorej Roberts who is the 2022 recipient of the Undergraduate Research Award!
Guerrero, T. A., & Wiley, J. - Identifying the sources of difficulty in reasoning beyond the text
Hildenbrand, L., Guerrero., T. A., & Wiley, J. - Working memory capacity as predictor of single and multiple text comprehension
Roberts, L., Hildenbrand, L., Guerrero, T. A., & Wiley, J. - Testing the effects if refutations and summaries on understanding
Wiley, J., Guerrero, T.A., Hildenbrand, L., & Griffin, T. D. - Exploring the boundaries: When explanation activities do not improve comprehension
New paper alerts!
Udeogu, O. J., Frankenstein, A. N., Sklenar, A. M., Urban Levy, P., & Leshikar, E. D. (2022). Predicting and remembering the behaviors of social targets: How prediction accuracy affects subsequent memory. BMC Psychology, 10, 96.
Kadwe, P. P., Sklenar, A. M., Frankenstein, A. N., Urban Levy, P., & Leshikar, E. D. (In Press). The influence of memory on approach/avoidance decisions: Investigating the role of episodic memory in social decision making. Cognition.
Burden, C., Leach, R. C., Sklenar, A. M., Urban Levy, P., & Frankenstein, A. N., & Leshikar, E. D. (In Press). Examining the influence of brain stimulation to the medial prefrontal cortex on the self-reference effect in memory. Brain and Behavior.
Patel, S. P., McCurdy, M. P., Frankenstein, A. N., Sklenar, A. M., Urban Levy, P., Szpunar, K. K., & Leshikar, E. D. (In Press). The reciprocal relationship between episodic memory and future thinking: How the outcome of predictions are subsequently memory. Brain and Behavior.
Congratulations to Lena Hildenbrand who was awarded the 2022 Michael J. Piorkowski Award for achievement in cognitive psychology.
Congratulations to everyone who will be presenting at the 94th Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association!
Michael Cervantes, Differential Effects of Exercise Intensity on Mood State and Executive Functioning
Noor Elagha, Detecting and Correcting Errors to Improve Learning Outcomes
Andrea Frankenstein, The Impact of Feedback on Self-efficacy and Memory Performance
Tricia Guerrero, The effect of test-expectancies on reasoning beyond the text
Lena Hildenbrand, Mental Counters: An Online Tool for Assessing Working Memory Capacity
Taylor Strickland, Testing the Independence of Chunk Decomposition and Constraint Relaxation
Jen Eng, The effect of musical expertise on implicit learning
Please join us in congratulating Jenny Wiley, PhD on being named the Midwestern Psychological Association's (MPA) Inaugural Faculty Mentorship Award winner. The pandemic has only reinforced the vital role that mentoring plays in all our lives. Jenny will be honored as the recipient of the Inaugural MPA Mentorship Award in recognition of her exceptional mentorship at so many different levels over the years and her contributions in innumerable ways to the mission of MPA. For the past 21 years, she has supported her students in presenting at MPA. This has included mentorship of over 40 graduate and undergraduate students, and over 60 MPA submissions.
Check out these new papers!
Mielicki, M. K., & Wiley, J. (in press). Exploring the necessary conditions for observing interleaved practice benefits in math learning. Learning and Instruction.
Hildenbrand, L. & Sanchez, C.A. (in press). Metacognitive accuracy across cognitive and physical task domains. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
A big congratulations to Jenny Wiley, PhD who just received a National Science Foundation Grant entitled Small Group Activities that Support Learning. The 3 year project will explore the effectiveness of different activity structures for learning foundational concepts in gateway STEM courses. The studies attempt to answer a practical question that many teachers have asked – What size groups are best for learning? Is it better for each student to work individually? Are small groups more effective? Which size groups are most effective and why? And, are online collaborative activities as effective as (or more effective than) in-person? The project will investigate which instructional contexts provide the most support for student success in gateway STEM courses, and especially for those students who are less prepared for college-level work, to promote and encourage persistence in later STEM courses and careers.
New paper alerts!
Guerrero, T. A., Griffin, T. D., & Wiley, J. (in press). I think I was wrong: The effect of making experimental predictions when learning about theories from psychology textbook excerpts. Metacognition & Learning.
Hildenbrand, L., & Wiley, J. (2021). Can closed-ended practice tests promote understanding from text? In T. Fitch, C. Lamm, H. Leder, & K. Teßmar-Raible (Eds.), Comparative Cognition: Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 327-333.
Sanchez, C. A., Hildenbrand, L., & Powell, C. (2021). Readers’ text skimming behavior changes with variation in working memory capacity. In T. Fitch, C. Lamm, H. Leder, & K. Teßmar-Raible (Eds.), Comparative Cognition: Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2344 - 2348.
Congratulations to everyone who will be presenting at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society!
Josh Buffington, Validating Measures of Procedural Memory Assessments Used in Second Language Acquisition Research
Tricia Guerrero, Supporting Comprehension by Improving Access to the Textbase
Lena Hildenbrand, Testing Effects on Comprehension are the Same for True/False and Multiple-Choice Formats: ‘False’
Andrea Frankenstein, Investigating the Relationship Between Feedback, Self-Efficacy, and Memory
Allison Sklenar, The influence of accurate person memory on subsequent social decisions
Taylor Strickland, Manipulating Chunk Decomposition in Matchstick Arithmetic Problems
Welcome to our two new Cognitive Students! Michael Cervantes & Maryna Ridchenko
2020-2021
Congratulations to our graduates & newest PhDs! Dr. Andriana Christofalos, Dr. Felix Pambuccian, & Dr. Sushmita Shrikanth
This year's Provost's Graduate Research Award goes to Noor Elagha! Her project is entitled "Detecting and correcting errors to improve learning outcomes for linear functions."
A big congratulations goes out to Felix Pambuccian and Joshua Buffington! Felix was awarded the 2021 Upshaw Award for Excellence in Teaching. Joshua was awarded the 2021 Michael J. Piorkowski Award for achievement in cognitive psychology.
New paper alerts!
Buffington, J., Demos, A. P.., & Morgan-Short, K. (in press). The reliability and validity of procedural memory assessments used in second language acquisition research. Studies in Second Language Acquisition.
Christofalos, A. L., Raney, G. E., Daniel, F., & Demos, A. P. (2020). Titles support the development of coherent situation models. Journal of Research in Reading, 43, 417-433.
Frankenstein, A. N., McCurdy, M. P., Sklenar, A. M., Pandya, R., Szpunar, K. K., & Leshikar, E. D. (2020). Future thinking about social targets: The influence of prediction outcome on memory. Cognition, 204, 104390.
Gane, B. D., Israel, M., Elagha, N., Yan, W., Luo, F., & Pellegrino, J. W. (2021). Design and validation of learning trajectory-based assessments for computational thinking in upper elementary grades. Computer Science Education, 1-28.
Giannakopoulos, K. L., McCurdy, M. P., Sklenar, A. M., Frankenstein, A. N., Urban Levy, P., & Leshikar, E. D. (2021). Less constrained practice tests enhance the testing effect for item memory, but not context memory, The American Journal of Psychology, 134 (3), 321-332.
Guerrero, T. A., & Wiley, J. (in press). Expecting to teach affects learning during study of expository texts. Journal of Educational Psychology.
McCurdy, M. P., Frankenstein, A. N., Sklenar, A. M., Urban Levy, P., & Leshikar E. D. (2021). Examining the relationship between generation constraint and memory. Memory & Cognition, 49 (4), 675-691.
McCurdy, M. P., Viechtbauer, W., Sklenar, A. M., Frankenstein, A. N., & Leshikar, E. D. (2020). Theories of the generation effect and the impact of generation constraint: A meta-analytic review. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 27 (6), 1139–1165.
Sklenar, A. M., McCurdy, M. P., Frankenstein, A. N., Motyl, M., & Leshikar, E. D. (in press). Person memory mechanism underlying approach and avoidance judgments of social targets. Social Cognition.
Villaseñor, J. J., Sklenar, A. M., Frankenstein, A. N., & Leshikar, E. D. (2021). Value-directed memory effects on item and context memory. Memory & Cognition, 1-19.
Congratulations to Jim Pellegrino, PhD, who was appointed co-leader of Illinois Learning Standards in Science.
Conference awards!
Adriana Christofalos was awarded the 2020 Psychonomic Society Graduate Conference Award!
Cesar Riano Rincon was awarded the 2020 Psychonomic Society Yates Student Conference Award!
Welcome to our newest Cognitive Student! Lena Hildenbrand
2019-2020
A big congratulations to our newest graduates, Dr. Matt McCurdy & Dr. Candice Burkett!
Congratulations to our 2020 department award winners:
Tricia Guerrero - Piorkowski Award for achievement in cognitive psychology
Matt McCurdy - Eron Award for outstanding scholarly achievement
Welcome to our new Cognitive Student! Taylor Strickland
2018-2019
We are so excited to celebrate our newest graduates and PhDs! Dr. Tim George & Dr. Marta Mielicki
Congratulations to our award winners!!
Alyssa Blair, Data Blitz, UIC Cross Program Conference
Marta Mielicki, Piorkowski Award for achievement in cognitive psychology
Congratulations to Susan Goldman, PhD who received a McDonnell Foundation Grant!
Welcome to our newest group of Cognitive Students! Noor Elagha, Kathleen Hudson, Pauline Levy, & Yuchen Li
2017-2018
Congratulations to Tricia Guerrero who was awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship!
Congratulations to Tim George for be awarded the APA dissertation award to support his research on analogical problem solving!
Welcome to our three new Cognitive Students! Tricia Guerrero, Vannia Puig, & Cesar Riano Rincon
2016-2017
Congratulations to Susan Goldman, PhD! She is the recipient of the 2017 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award.
A big welcome to our newest Cognitive Students! Joshua Buffington, Andrea Frankenstein, & Allison Sklenar