Kara Federmeier

Last updated
Kara Federmeier
Alma materUniversity of California, San Diego
Scientific career
Thesis Sense and structure : electrophysiological investigations of semantic memory organization and use  (1999)

Kara D. Federmeier is a professor in the Department of Psychology, Department of Kinesiology, and the Program in Neuroscience at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as well as faculty at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, where she leads the Illinois Language and Literacy Initiative. [1] She is known for her work using human electrophysiology to understand the neural basis of cognition, with a focus on language and memory in both younger and older adults.

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Education and career

She graduated as valedictorian from Danville High School in 1990 [2] before attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[ citation needed ] She received her PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego in 2000 [3] where she conducted her research under the mentorship of Marta Kutas. [4] In 2002, she became a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois.[ citation needed ] In 2013 she was named the Emanuel Donchin Professorial Scholar in Psychology. [3]

From 2016 to 2019, she was president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research. [5]

Research

Federmeier’s research is focused on understanding how the brain builds and stores representations of meaning, [6] with a particular focus on language comprehension and memory. Her early work used the event-related potential technique to examine language comprehension. [7] She has shown that the right and left sides of the brain can representing knowledge in similar ways. [8] Her more recent work has shown that when individuals encounter a meaningful stimulus, like a word or picture, they seem to near-immediately link it to large swaths of information in long-term memory in a graded fashion ("connecting"). [9]

Awards and honors

In 2006, the Society for Psychophysiology presented her with an award for distinguished early career contributions to psychophysiology. [3] In 2012, she was named a University Scholar by the University of Illinois. [10]

Selected publications

References

  1. ↑ "Kara D Federmeier | Department of Psychology | Illinois". psychology.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2025-10-24.
  2. ↑ "Kara Federmeier". Chicago Tribune. 1990-05-06. p. 521. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
  3. 1 2 3 "Kara Federmeier". Default. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
  4. ↑ Van Petten, Cyma; Federmeier, Kara D.; Holcomb, Phillip J. (2010). "For distinguished contributions to psychophysiology: Marta Kutas". Psychophysiology. 47 (3): 403–409. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2009.00930.x. ISSN   1469-8986.
  5. ↑ "Past Officers - Society for Psychophysiological Research". sprweb.org. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
  6. ↑ Deaton, Jeremy (2019-11-10). "Brain science offers insight into what you see in the clouds". South Florida Sun Sentinel. pp. A8. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
  7. ↑ Federmeier, K.D. and Kutas, M. (1999a). A rose by any other name: Long-term memory structure and sentence processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 41, 469-495.
  8. ↑ Federmeier, K. D., Mai, H., and Kutas, M. (2005). Both sides get the point: Bihemispheric sensitivity to sentential constraint. Memory and Cognition, 33, 871-886.
  9. ↑ Federmeier, K. D. (2022). Connecting and considering: Electrophysiology provides insights into comprehension. Psychophysiology, 59(1), e13940.
  10. ↑ "Past University Scholars - EVPAA". www.vpaa.uillinois.edu. Retrieved 23 March 2022.
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