Work in the self-regulation lab is centered around multiple themes. At the heart of each theme is an interest in understanding how people bias their thoughts, feelings, and actions towards a particular goal.
If you would like to participate in our research, please check out available studies.
Cognitive Control, Affect, and Neural Performance Monitoring
One major line of research in the lab investigates the neural monitoring processes that underlie flexible goal-directed actions. How do people detect mistakes and goal conflicting events and use this information to alter ongoing performance? In contrast to many classic views that emotion and cognition are separable, our work suggests that the negative valence of conflict and mistakes is represented in neural performance monitoring, and perhaps acts as a motivational input to self-control.
Conflicts also arise during decision making, even in situations where there is no objective right or wrong answer. How do people process conflicts between subjective preferences? And how does the nervous system-both brain and body-respond to these value conflicts? In this research we have explored the similarities and differences between the neural systems that track conflicts between objective and subjective sources of decision conflict.
Validity and Reliability in Self-Regulation Research
In this line of research we explore the very nature of the tools used to test self-regulation. Many measures of self-regulation exist, ranging from reaction time tests of executive function to introspective self-reports. In one new line of research we explore convergence and diversity among the tools used to explore self-control. In other reliability research we have also explored the stability of neurophysiological signals related to conflict during self-regulation. Finally, in some exciting new research we are investigating which measures of self-regulation best predict goal progress out in the real world.
Open Science, Reproducibility, and Meta-Science
The lab is also committed to increasing open science practices, in addition to assessing and improving replicability and reproducibility in psychological science. Internally, this means that we pre-register our studies, aim to achieve a minimum of 80% apriori statistical power in all studies, and share data and materials. For more information please visit Dr. Saunders' page on the Open Science Framework (osf.io/rwmes). In addition to these internal goals we are also conducting bias-corrected meta-analyses and participating in multi-lab replication projects to assess the broader robustness and replicability of research in self-regulation.
