University of Waterloo

My longstanding research interests are in the broad domain of cognition, with particular focus on attention, learning, memory, and intelligence.

My research was initially in the area of verbal learning and memory, with emphasis on how people learn and remember words. This broadened to include memory for more complicated materials, such as pictures, but the emphasis remained on long-term memory structure and process.

Subsequently, I became interested in individual differences in cognition, with particular focus on how people differ in their linguistic and spatial skills and strategies. Some of this work revolved around basic processes used in reading.

In the early 1980s, I also began to do research in the area of attention. Primarily, this work has concerned the development of automaticity through learning/practice, particularly using the Stroop colour-word interference measure as a model task.

Example of the Stroop task

Biography and Pictures of J. R. Stroop

Read a PDF article about Stroop interference and the brain

Link to another demonstration of the Stroop task
(click on the demo button at the top)

Throughout this time, I have continued to do research in the domain of long-term memory processes. Most recently, my memory research has focused on the role of consciousness in memory and on the distinction between indirect tests of memory (implicit measures that do not require conscious awareness) and direct tests of memory (explicit measures that do require conscious awareness). I also have a longstanding interest in intentional forgetting.

In the future, I see myself continuing to work in all of these areas. One direction of future research is in the domain of cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology, studying the relation between observable cognitive behaviour and its underpinnings in the nervous system.