Meet the members of our lab!
Dr. Patricia Bauer
Principal Investigator
patricia.bauer@emory.edu
The primary work of our laboratory is the study of memory and how it develops from infancy onward. Many of our studies focus on developments in episodic and autobiographical memory. By late in the first to early in the second year of life, infants accurately recall specific events over delays of weeks and even months. Many factors that affect memory in older children and adults also influence infants’ memories. These findings demonstrate continuity in recall processes across a wide developmental span. Yet there also are pronounced developmental changes in memory over the first years of life and beyond. By combining behavioral and electrophysiological (ERP) measures, my colleagues and I are working to understand how the functional changes we observe relate to developments in the basis processes of encoding, consolidation, storage, and retrieval of information from memory; and to neuro-developmental changes that take place in the same period of time. The work has yielded novel insights into changes in personal episodic or autobiographical memory that help to explain childhood amnesia—the relative paucity of memories of specific events and experiences that happened early in life. Our findings indicate that the amnesia can be explained by faster rates of forgetting in childhood relative to adulthood, resulting in a smaller corpus of memories that subsequently are available for recollection. Many other of our studies focus on the development of semantic memory—the storehouse of world knowledge that we build up over time through our experiences in formal educational settings and everyday life. We are especially interested in how children and adults combine or integrate separate yet related episodes of new learning and extend beyond it to actually self-generate new factual knowledge. We pursue these questions in the laboratory and in the classroom, using behavioral methods as well as eye-tracking and ERPs to shed light on the cognitive processes involved in this important means of accumulation of knowledge.
Alena Esposito, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
alena.esposito@emory.edu
Alena joined the Bauer lab as a postdoctoral fellow in August 2014. She completed her doctorate in Developmental Psychology at North Carolina State University. Her doctoral dissertation focused on cognitive effects of second-language acquisition, specifically for memory and executive function. Her previous experience as an elementary educator encouraged her interest in cognitive development within the classroom context. Her current research is investigating learning across languages, such as in dual-language education models.
Natalie Merrill, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
natalie.merrill@emory.edu
Natalie has been a postdoctoral fellow in the lab since June 2016. She earned her doctorate in the Cognition and Development program in the Department of Psychology at Emory University. For her doctoral dissertation she investigated intergenerational narratives, the stories of parents’ and grandparents’ memories passed down to their children. She continues to be interested in how individuals make sense of memories from their personal past and how social factors influence the processing of autobiographical memories.
Nicole Varga, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
nvarga@emory.edu
Nicole completed her doctorate in Cognitive and Developmental Psychology at Emory University in March 2016 and began her postdoctoral fellowship shortly thereafter. Through her undergraduate research at Ursinus College which focused on the importance of keeping episodes separate in memory to avoid memory errors, she became increasingly interested in the opposite question concerning how we integrate information in memory to construct a factual knowledge base. Using behavioral measures and electroencephalography (EEG) with children and adults, her Master’s and doctoral research examined the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying self-generation of new factual knowledge through integration of separate yet related episodes of new learning. Her current research continues to investigate the neurocognitive development of knowledge extension through memory integration, with particular emphasis on how brain-wide neuronal activity is coordinated to support this behavior, as well as how variability across individuals relates to academically-relevant achievement.
Jessica Dugan
Doctoral Student
jessica.dugan@emory.edu
Jessica graduated from the Honors College at the College of Charleston in 2014 with a Bachelor of Science in psychology and a focus in behavioral neuroscience. She joined the Bauer lab in the fall of 2014. Broadly speaking, she is interested in the development of semantic memory in both humans and nonhuman primates. She is particularly fascinated by generative processes that allow for extension of knowledge and the role that metacognition plays in these processes. She studies these processes in school-aged children and adults using both behavioral and eye-tracking techniques. As a Mechanisms of Learning NRSA Fellow, she collaborates with Dr. Rob Hampton, and through this collaboration she is extending her work on self-generation and metacognition to rhesus monkeys using computerized cognitive testing.
Jillian Lauer
Doctoral Student
jillian.lauer@emory.edu
Jillian received her Bachelor of Science with honors in psychology from Tulane University. In 2013, she began her graduate studies at Emory University, where she is a George W. Woodruff fellow. Jillian’s research focuses on the psychosocial factors that influence cognitive performance across the lifespan as well as the development of spatial and mathematical reasoning. She is particularly interested in the origins of individual and gender differences in spatial aptitude and their relation to educational outcomes. Her current interests include using behavioral, eye-tracking, and psychophysiological methods, along with meta-analytic techniques, to examine cognitive development in infants, school-aged children, and adults.
Anaïs Stenson
Doctoral Candidate
afstens@emory.edu
Anaïs earned her Bachelor of Art in philosophy from Scripps College. She then completed her Master of Art in philosophy, with a concentration in neurophilosophy, from Georgia State University. Her Master’s thesis used electroencephalography and behavioral measures to evaluate whether engagement with emotionally-versus orthographically-focused tasks modulated the effects of subconsciously presented primes on subsequent stimulus processing. In 2012, Anaïs began work on her doctorate at Emory University, where she is a George W. Woodruff fellow. Her primary research interest is emotion-cognition interactions, particularly in the context of learning and reasoning. She uses neural, psychophysiological, and behavioral measures to explore these issues across multiple levels of description.
Aoxiang Xu
Graduate Student
aoxiang.zu@emory.edu
Aoxiang earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science at Jilin University in China. He then entered the State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning in Beijing Normal University in China. He completed his Master’s thesis on the emotional bias and aging effect on prospective memory, and received his MS degree in Psychology. Aoxiang has been a member of the Bauer lab since 2012. Broadly speaking, he is interested in the development of location memory and emotional memory.
Filiz Sayar, Ph.D.
Visiting Professor
sayar.flz@gmail.com
Filiz joined the Bauer lab as a visiting scholar from Turkey in July 2016. She received a Master of Art in cognitive psychology from Bosphorus University and then proceeded to earn her doctorate in experimental psychology from Hacettepe University. Her Master’s thesis focused on metacognition and her doctoral dissertation examined explicit and implicit memory differences among adolescents, younger adults and older adults. Currently, her research interests include emotional memory, memory development, and intentional forgetting.
Alexis Sanchez
Lab Coordinator
alexis.marie.sanchez@emory.edu
Alexis graduated from Florida State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Criminology and a minor in English. While at Florida State, Alexis was a research assistant for the Anxiety and Related Disorders lab with a specialty in Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Her coursework and mentorships led to her study interests in childhood development and cognition. She joined the Bauer lab as a lab coordinator in June 2016. In the Bauer lab, she studies memory and learning for dual-language development in children.
Ruth Sirkin
Lab Coordinator
ruth.sirkin@emory.edu
Ruth graduated from North Carolina State University as valedictorian in December 2014, with Bachelors of Art in Psychology and Spanish and a minor in Japanese. She worked as a research assistant and project coordinator for the Memory and Narrative Development lab while at NC State as well as a research assistant at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation. She joined the Bauer lab as a lab coordinator in the summer of 2015 and began work on projects using behavioral and eye-tracking methods of data collection. Her research interests include knowledge integration, learning, executive function, autobiographical memory, and the effects of language on cognition and educational outcomes.
Obiageli Nwamu
Scheduler
obiageli.nwamu@emory.edu
Obiageli is currently a senior at Emory majoring in neuroscience and behavioral biology. She is a dedicated student from North Carolina on the pre-medical track and hopes to become an influential allopathic medical doctor in the future. She has enjoyed her time at the Bauer lab as it has provided her with the opportunity to learn more about multiple aspects of memory development and electrophysiological methods of quantifying this development.