I received my PhD in cognitive psychology from Indiana University in 1995 and then began a faculty position at Vanderbilt. I am currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology. I am also Director of Graduate Studies in the department.

Our lab is interested in perceptual categorization, perceptual decision making, memory, and expertise. Our work has combined behavioral experiments, computational modeling, neurophysiology, neuropsychology, and neuroimaging.

Our research is currently funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the James S. McDonnell Foundation. Our laboratory is a part of the Perceptual Expertise Network which is now part of the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center, an NSF funded Science of Learning Center.

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I am broadly interested in the cognitive mechanisms involved in visual object recognition and categorization and how these processes are modulated by experience and expertise. My recent work with my advisors Isabel Gauthier of the OPL and Tom Palmeri of the CatLab has used faces, a category for which we are all experts, to explore where expertise effects, such as holistic processing, are localized. We are currently examining the degree to which holistic effects occur at perceptual vs. decisional stages of processing. In future research, I plan to investigate how other experience with other modalities influences visual perceptual expertise and investigate how perceptual learning can be optimized to enhance the development of perceptual expertise.

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I am interested in the cognitive mechanisms involved in visual object recognition and categorization. My recent work has focused on investigating the time course of categorization at different levels of abstraction (e.g., when do know we are looking at a “dog” versus a “Golden Retriever”). We are currently examining how different computational models of categorization can account for this time course data.

I have also been working in collaboration with Jenn Richler on the role of perceptual and decisional influences of holistic processing in face perception.

My future research plans include investigating the interactions of object and scene processing and investigating the deployment of attention during categorization and how training and experience can lead to more efficient extraction of diagnostic information.

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Braden develops computational cognitive neuroscience models of categorization, attention, and perceptual decision making that account for behavior and single unit neural activity.

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I received my PhD from Dartmouth College in 1992 under the mentorship of Howard Hughes. I am currently a postdoctoral fellow with Jeff Schall, Tom Palmeri, and Gordon Logan. We recently published a paper in Psychological Review that describes a stochastic model of saccade countermanding that accounts for details of both behavior and neurophysiology. My current work uses behavioral experiments and modeling to examine trial-by-trial adjustments in behavior in the countermanding task, the effects of eye and hand responses in countermanding, and the relationships between working memory, attention, and eye movements. My postdoctoral fellowship is currently supported by an individual NRSA from the NIH.

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I received my PhD from the University of Arizona under the mentorship of Cyma Van Petten. I am interested in the neural basis of semantic memory and categorization. For my dissertation, I employed event related potentials to investigate perceptual classification.

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I am a Native to Nashville and love it here. I have been at Vanderbilt since 1999, working as a residency coordinator for the Department of Oral Surgery and manager of the Voice Center for the Department of Otolaryngology. I became the coordinator of the Perceptual Expertise Network in 2003. I am working part time on a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a business minor. I am a married mother of three and enjoy camping, water sports, traveling, and Titan’s football.

As a graduate student, Marci did research on the neural basis of perceptual categorization. After earning her PhD from Vanderbilt she moved to Johns Hopkins University to work in the laboratory of Craig Stark as a postdoctoral fellow for several years. Marci is currently working in San Francisco.

Tim worked in the lab as an undergraduate and as a research assistant. He recently completed his PhD at Harvard University in the lab of Yuhong Jiang doing research on attention and decision making. He is now a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.

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Alan studied visual expertise in letter perception and subordinate-level object perception under the supervision of Isabel Gauthier and Tom Palmeri. His research training combined psychophysics, fMRI, ERP, and computational modeling. His primary interest has been on recovering the general principles in perceptual learning and in the organization of our visual object perception system.

Alan is now on the faculty at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

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Lance received his PhD from Boston University under the mentorship of Steve Grossberg. While a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt, he developed and tested stochastic neural models that aimed to account for behavior and neurophysiology of awake behaving monkeys under the guidance of Tom Palmeri and Jeff Schall. Lance will be taking a research scientist position at Boston University.

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