CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS
Understanding the Relationship between Language and Mathematical Reasoning
If you were shown the two problems, “5+3 =?,” and “John has five apples. Mary gave John three apples. How many apples does John now have?”, would you be able to solve them with the same ease? For young children in elementary school, the answer might be no. This research will examine why the linguistic aspects of word problems give children difficulty from both a behavioral and cognitive neural point of view. This study will use Event Related Potential (ERP) technique to dive into this question.
The Cognitive Basis of Vocabulary Acquisition from Sentence Contexts
We learn many word meanings by encountering them in written or verbal contexts. What happens to traces of those past encounters as word meanings are learned? This study uses behavioral methods to evaluate this process of abstraction for newly studied words. While this study is currently looking at a population of adult readers, we plan to expand this to younger learners. We also plan to combine this with cognitive-physiological markers of learning, such as EEG.
The Relationship between Engagement and Cognitive Control from a Cognitive Neural Standpoint
Many students struggle with top-down control of executive function, also known as cognitive control, and this affects aspects of academic achievement, particularly language comprehension. This study explores the relationship between engagement with a story and level of cognitive control, and their effects on auditory language comprehension. The study will use EEG to explore brain activity during language tasks to answer the question of whether individual cognitive control profiles and the interaction with behavioral and cognitive engagement can predict language comprehension.
The Relationship between Attentional Control and Emotional Valence on Memory
Attention is utilized in many cognitive functions, including emotion regulation, working memory, and other executive functions. This study aims to investigate the interaction between attention and emotion regulation as it pertains to working memory tasks. Everyone has different levels of attention, and this study aims to investigate how different levels of attentional control impact an individual’s ability to utilize their executive functions under different emotional loads. This project utilizes EEG and behavioral methods to examine brain activity for people with varying attentional control.
RESEARCH TECHNIQUES
Event-Related Potential (ERP)
Event Related Potential (ERP) measures electrical activity in the brain following presentation of a stimulus or during completion of a certain task. ERP is a form of electroencephalography (EEG) and is measured through the use of a special cap containing electrodes that can sense electrical activity through the skull. When the brain is active in response to a stimulus, the electric activity produced by it changes and the cap with its electrodes can sense this. Though not good for localizing the area of brain activity, ERP’s instead allow us to determine the time course of activity in the brain following a stimuli which can help us determine how certain stimuli and tasks are processed in the brain.
Functional Magnetic Resource Imaging (fMRI)
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is an imaging technique that uses magnetic fields to observe brain activity. When a person engages in a task, such as reading, the brain areas involved in performing that task increase their activity. Increased activity requires an increase in blood flow to the area of activity. The fMRI monitors this increase in blood flow in order to observe active areas in the brain. The fMRI does this by sending out a signal to the brain that causes all the cells in the brain to enter the same magnetic state at the same time. As the cells return to their normal magnetic state, sensors in the fMRI determine how long it takes for each cell to get back to its resting magnetic state. Different tissues, such as brain versus blood, take different amounts of time to return their cells to the resting magnetic state, allowing us to determine different areas and different tissues within the brain. In this way we can see how much blood is flowing to each part of the brain and can watch for changes after a task is completed.
Magnetoencephalography (MEG)
Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is an imaging technique that monitors brain activity through the use of magnetic fields. The MEG utilizes the fact that a mass of neurons firing at the same time will give off a weak magnetic field. Thus when the brain is completing a given task, the areas involved in completing that task will have increased neuronal activity and thus give off a magnetic field that can be detected by the MEG. The MEG detects this magnetic field through special, highly sensitive devices called SQUIDs. In this way, we can use the MEG to determine what occurs in the brain while completing a given task.
Behavioral
Behavioral techniques may include various processes to determine how someone will react to different tasks. In most cases, it will include use of computers and having subjects respond to a task by pressing certain buttons. We also run skill assessment and achievement tests like the Woodcock-Johnson test, the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE), and the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP).