Suparna Rajaram | |
---|---|
Born | Bellary, India |
Occupation | SUNY Distinguished Professor of Psychology |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Bangalore University, Purdue University, Rice University |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Stony Brook University |
Suparna Rajaram, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Stony Brook University,is an Indian-born cognitive psychologist and expert on memory and amnesia. [1] Rajaram served as Chair of the Governing Board of the Psychonomic Society (2008) and as president of the Association for Psychological Science (2017–2018). [2] Along with Judith Kroll and Randi Martin,Rajaram co-founded the organization Women in Cognitive Science in 2001,with the aim of improving the visibility of contributions of women to cognitive science. [3] In 2019,she was an inaugural recipient of Psychonomic Society's Clifford T. Morgan Distinguished Leadership Award for significant contributions and sustained leadership in the discipline of cognitive psychology. [4]
Rajaram is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,the Psychonomic Society, [5] the American Association for the Advancement of Science,the American Psychological Association,the Eastern Psychological Association, [6] and the Association for Psychological Science. She is also a member of the Society of Experimental Psychologists,a prestigious honor society dedicated to psychology. [7] In 2022,Rajaram was named a Guggenheim Fellow.
Suparna Rajaram was born in Bellary,India. [8] She received a B.A. in psychology,Economics,and English Literature (1984) and a M.A. in psychology (1986) from Mt. Carmel College of Bangalore University. She moved to the United States to pursue a M.S. in Cognitive Psychology at Purdue University,and completed her degree in 1988 under the supervision of James H. Neely. [9] Rajaram continued her education at Rice University,where she obtained her PhD in Cognitive Psychology in 1991 under the supervision of Henry L. Roediger,III. [10] While at Rice,Rajaram collaborated with Roediger on research comparing assessments of implicit memory. [11] From 1991 to 1993,Rajaram was a post-doctoral research fellow at Temple University School of Medicine,where she conducted research on amnesia with H. Branch Coslett. [12]
Rajaram joined the Faculty of Psychology at Stony Brook University in 1993 and was promoted to Full Professor in 2003. She served as the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the College of Arts and Sciences at Stony Brook University (2012–2015). Rajaram received a FIRST Award from the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH). In addition to NIMH,her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation,the Russell Sage Foundation,and Google. Rajaram served as Associate Editor of Psychological Science (2007–2008),Psychological Bulletin (2003–2005),and Memory &Cognition (1998–2001). [13]
Rajaram's research program encompasses studies of human amnesia and intact memory to address the cognitive and neural bases of memory functions,such as the distinction between explicit memory and implicit memory. [14] [15] Her lab has examined differences in the effects of repeated testing and repeated studying on learning,and how repetition impacts learning of new information in amnesia. In one of her studies,her team examined how repetition of information confers advantages in knowing versus remembering information in individuals with amnesia. [16] They found that repetition helped people with amnesia gain a sense of familiarity with material (i.e.,knowing),whereas for individuals with normal memory,repetition enhanced both familiarity and recollection (i.e.,knowing and remembering).[ citation needed ]
Rajaram has conducted numerous studies focusing on how social factors influence learning and memory. Her lab aims to understand the social transmission of memory in groups of people and in social networks,the emergence of collective memory,and how collaborative learning may help or hinder memory. [17] Her research indicates that collaboration with peers often weakens the memory performance of individuals;at the same time getting help from one's peers may help to eliminate memory errors. [18] [19] Rajaram's 2014 paper on social transmission of memory,co-authored with H.Y. Choi,H.M. Blumen,and A.R. Congleton,was named "Best Paper of the Year" by European Society of Cognitive Psychology. [20] This study examined a phenomenon known as collaborative inhibition,wherein individuals contribute less to recalling information when they are part of a group than when they are recalling information on their own. This study explored how changing the membership of groups influenced individual and collective memory. [21] Rajaram and her colleagues have also studied how emotion enhances memory. They found that emotional memories are not immune to error,yet emotional memories are less likely to be distorted by social influences than nonemotional memories. [22]
The spacing effect demonstrates that learning is more effective when study sessions are spaced out. This effect shows that more information is encoded into long-term memory by spaced study sessions,also known as spaced repetition or spaced presentation,than by massed presentation ("cramming").
The testing effect suggests long-term memory is increased when part of the learning period is devoted to retrieving information from memory. It is different from the more general practice effect,defined in the APA Dictionary of Psychology as "any change or improvement that results from practice or repetition of task items or activities."
Collective memory refers to the shared pool of memories,knowledge and information of a social group that is significantly associated with the group's identity. The English phrase "collective memory" and the equivalent French phrase "la mémoire collective" appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century. The philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs analyzed and advanced the concept of the collective memory in the book Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (1925).
The Psychonomic Society is an international scientific society of over 4,500 scientists in the field of experimental psychology. The mission of the Psychonomic Society is to foster the science of cognition through the advancement and communication of basic research in experimental psychology and allied sciences. It is open to international researchers,and almost 40% of members are based outside of North America. Although open to all areas of experimental and cognitive psychology,its members typically study areas such as learning,memory,attention,motivation,perception,categorization,decision making,and psycholinguistics. Its name is taken from the word psychonomics,meaning "the science of the laws of the mind".
In psychology,memory inhibition is the ability not to remember irrelevant information. The scientific concept of memory inhibition should not be confused with everyday uses of the word "inhibition". Scientifically speaking,memory inhibition is a type of cognitive inhibition,which is the stopping or overriding of a mental process,in whole or in part,with or without intention.
Robert Allen Bjork is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California,Los Angeles. His research focuses on human learning and memory and on the implications of the science of learning for instruction and training. He is the creator of the directed forgetting paradigm. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Judith F. Kroll is a Distinguished Professor of Language Science at University of California,Irvine. She specializes in psycholinguistics,focusing on second language acquisition and bilingual language processing. With Randi Martin and Suparna Rajaram,Kroll co-founded the organization Women in Cognitive Science in 2001. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS),the American Psychological Association (APA),the Psychonomic Society,the Society of Experimental Psychologists,and the Association for Psychological Science (APS).
Henry L. "Roddy" Roediger III is an American psychology researcher in the area of human learning and memory. He rose to prominence for his work on the psychological aspects of false memories.
Nora S. Newcombe is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology and the James H. Glackin Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Temple University. She is a Canadian-American researcher in cognitive development,cognitive psychology and cognitive science,and expert on the development of spatial thinking and reasoning and episodic memory. She was the principal investigator of the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (2006-2018),one of six Science of Learning Centers funded by the National Science Foundation.
Katherine Nelson was an American developmental psychologist,and professor.
The Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm is a procedure in cognitive psychology used to study false memory in humans. The procedure was pioneered by James Deese in 1959,but it was not until Henry L. Roediger III and Kathleen McDermott extended the line of research in 1995 that the paradigm became popular. The procedure typically involves the oral presentation of a list of related words and then requires the subject to remember as many words from the list as possible. Typical results show that subjects recall a related but absent word,known as a 'lure',with the same frequency as other presented words. When asked about their experience after the test,about half of all participants report that they are sure that they remember hearing the lure,indicating a false memory –a memory for an event that never occurred.
Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) is a memory phenomenon where remembering causes forgetting of other information in memory. The phenomenon was first demonstrated in 1994,although the concept of RIF has been previously discussed in the context of retrieval inhibition.
Imagination inflation is a type of memory distortion that occurs when imagining an event that never happened increases confidence in the memory of the event.
Mark A. McDaniel is an American psychology researcher in the area of human learning and memory. He is one of the most influential researchers in prospective memory,but also well known for other basic research in memory and learning,cognitive aging,as well as applying cognitive psychology to education. McDaniel has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles,book chapters,and edited books. His research in memory and cognition has received over two million dollars in grant support from NIH and NASA.
Kathleen McDermott is Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. She is known for her research on how human memory is encoded and retrieved,with a specific interest in how false memories develop. In collaboration with Henry L. (Roddy) Roediger III,she developed the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm used to study the phenomenon of memory illusions. McDermott received the 2004-2005 F.J. McGuigan Young Investigator Prize for research on memory from the American Psychological Foundation and the American Psychological Association's Science Directorate. She was recognized by the Association for Psychological Science as a Rising Star in 2007. McDermott is a Fellow of the Psychonomic Society and was honored with a 2019 Psychonomic Society Mid-Career Award.
Randi Martin is the Elma Schneider Professor of Psychology at Rice University and Director of the T. L. L. Temple Foundation Neuroplasticity Research Laboratory. With Suparna Rajaram and Judith Kroll,Martin co-founded Women in Cognitive Science in 2001,an organization supported in part through the National Science Foundation's ADVANCE Leadership program. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Society of Experimental Psychologists (SEP).
Lynn Hasher is a cognitive scientist known for research on attention,working memory,and inhibitory control. Hasher is Professor Emerita in the Psychology Department at the University of Toronto and Senior Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care.
Qi Wang is a Chinese-born American psychologist and Professor of Human Development at Cornell University. She is best known for her study of memory and culture. Wang is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Psychonomic Society. She is also a member of the American Psychological Association,the Society for Research in Child Development,the Cognitive Development Society,the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development,and the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. She serves on many editorial boards and is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. She directs the Culture &Cognition Lab at Cornell. Wang holds a lifetime endowed chair in human development at Cornell.
Katherine A. Rawson is an American cognitive psychologist known for her educational research on how to optimize learning,promote effective study strategies,and enhance metacognition. She is Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Kent State University. She is co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Cognition and Education, which surveys research on teaching and study strategies that increase learning.
Ayanna Kim Thomas is an American scientist,author,and cognitive researcher and the Dean of Research for the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University since 2021. Her research focuses on the intersection of memory and aging,particularly as those fields relate to brain and cognitive science. She is a founding member of SPARK Society,editor-in-chief of the journal Memory &Cognition,and a fellow of the Psychonomic Society and the American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship Program.