Publications

Why can kids seemingly learn so much without even trying? By comparing how children and adults learn in the lab, we discover a reason why this could be. We find that children and adults pay attention to and process information in very different ways. Children pay attention to their environments in a more holistic and open-minded fashion, thus taking in more information from the worlds around them, kind of like a sponge. On the other hand, adults selectively attend to only one source of information and ignore and filter out everything else. While this can be beneficial for the task-at-hand, it does mean adults are processing and learning less from the environment. Together, this suggests that children learn so much because they are processing more information than adults.

Some information links our experiences together while other information sets them apart. This poses a challenge for our memory systems, …

Memory reactivation during sleep is thought to facilitate memory consolidation. Most sleep reactivation research has examined how …

Inferring relationships that go beyond our direct experience is essential for understanding our environment. This capacity requires …

Essential oil products are increasingly used in indoor environments and have been found to negatively contribute to indoor air quality. …

Poor indoor air quality indicated by elevated indoor CO2 concentrations has been linked with impaired cognitive function, yet current …