Kara Federmeier

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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. 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 [1] 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. [2] 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. [2]

From 2016 to 2019, she was president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research. [3]

Research

Federmeier’s research is focused on understanding how the brain builds and stores representations of meaning, [4] with a particular focus on language comprehension and memory. Her early work used the event-related potential technique to examine language comprehension. [5] She has shown that the right and left sides of the brain can representing knowledge in similar ways. [6] 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"). [7]

Awards and honors

In 2006, the Society for Psychophysiology presented her with an award for distinguished early career contributions to psychophysiology. [2] In 2012, she was named a University Scholar by the University of Illinois. [8]

Selected publications

References

  1. "Kara Federmeier". Chicago Tribune. 1990-05-06. p. 521. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
  2. 1 2 3 "Kara Federmeier". Default. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
  3. "Past Officers - Society for Psychophysiological Research". sprweb.org. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. Federmeier, K. D. (2022). Connecting and considering: Electrophysiology provides insights into comprehension. Psychophysiology, 59(1), e13940.
  8. "Past University Scholars - EVPAA". www.vpaa.uillinois.edu. Retrieved 23 March 2022.