Josh Fiechter

Publications       CV

I am a cognitive psychologist working as a researcher at Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Wright-Patterson AFB. I previously worked as a cognitive data scientist at Kairos Research in Dayton, Ohio, and before that I supported work at AFRL as a cognitive data scientist at Ball Aerospace & Technologies, also in Dayton. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I worked with Aaron Benjamin. I subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Nate Kornell at Williams College.

My research program can broadly be broken down into two areas.  First, I'm interested in enhancing human training outcomes, both through (a) computer-based learning techniques that help people of all abilities to successfully study and retain information (Fiechter & Benjamin, 2018; 2019) and (b) enhancing learners' metacognitive monitoring and control, or how people assess and modify their current levels of knowledge to meet their learning goals (Fiechter & Benjamin, 2017; Fiechter et al., 2016; Fiechter & Kornell, 2021a;  Tullis et al., 2018).  Second, I'm interested in applications of Bayesian multilevel models, including signal-detection models (Widmer et al., 2023), drift diffusion models (Hilton et al., 2021), models of human choice and ratings (Fiechter et al., 2022; Fiechter & Kornell, 2021a; Widmer et al., 2023), and nonlinear functions (Fiechter et al., 2021; Fiechter & Kornell, 2021b). I am furthermore interested in best practices with multilevel models for hypothesis testing (Fiechter, 2024).