Research Interests
“Our mental life, like a bird’s life, seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.” — William James, On Some Omissions of Introspective Psychology (1884)
Over the decades, much of our work on cognitive mechanisms has been directed by James’ notion of perchings and flights. For example, within attention, we know a considerable deal about how our minds stay perched and focused on an individual, a task, or a goal, and we are discovering what it means to have our minds fly away onto other external objectives or into our internal mental landscape. However, there has been considerably less focus given to what our patterns of alternation represent.
My research program focuses on the understudied ebbs and flows and fluctuations in cognitive processes over time to better understand the temporal dynamics of human cognition. By bridging complex computational approaches with behavioural, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging methods, I have created three lines of research that uncover temporal fluctuations in (1) social attention, (2) internal attention, and (3) embedded attention.
Temporal Dynamics in Social Attention
When attention is engaged on our external environment, people and faces are perhaps the most important sources of information that we encounter in our inherently social world. Prior work has found that attention to social vs. non-social information is highly stable and robustly prioritized over time; however, it is unclear whether temporal dynamics in social attention are dependent on the value we ascribe to people and faces.
In my work, I have examined the factors that impact social attention on a moment-to-moment basis (i) across behavioural data, (ii) within eye tracking metrics, (iii) in electrophysiological states, and (iv) across real-life interactions. To date, I have uncovered that temporal stability in social attention is highly impacted by featural and functional information, which both play a large role in determining the degree to which these effects occurs as an initial or long-term process.
Collaborators: Dr. Elina Birmingham, Dr. Alan Kingstone, Dr. Jelena Ristic, Dr. Daniel Smilek
Temporal Dynamics in Internal Attention
When attention is not fully engaged on our external environment, attentional processes fluctuate and turn towards internal states through mind wandering and mental simulation. These states account for 30-50% of our waking lives and they have a large impact on behaviour, both negative (e.g., detriments to learning and mood) and positive (e.g., benefits to creativity and decision-making). However, we do not have a clear understanding of how temporal dynamics in internal attention contribute to these different impacts.
In my work, I have quantified temporal fluctuations between attentive and mind wandering states (i) within individuals, (ii) across tasks and traits, and (iii) within neural mechanisms to uncover the effect of these temporal patterns on real life outcomes. To date, I have found that each individual has stable and predictable temporal patterns of internal attention that can be linked to distinct negative and positive outcomes in behaviour.
Collaborators: Samantha Ayers-Glassey, Dr. Sylvain Baillet, Lauri Gurguryan, Dr. Jelena Ristic, Dr. Paul Seli, Dr. Signy Sheldon, Dr. Daniel Smilek, Dr. Jeffrey Wammes
Temporal Dynamics in Embedded Attention
When attention is studied across environmental settings, there is a strong collaboration across external perception, internal goals, emotional states, and memory stores that impact both initial and long-term attentional effects. Therefore, it is critical to craft powerful tools that can uncover temporal dynamics across these multidimensional processes.
In my work, I have developed a temporal experience sampling smartphone application (TESSA), a video teleconferencing platform (VICTOR), and a message communication platform (MECO) to craft novel investigations on how temporal dynamics of attention vary within (i) natural environments, (ii) the real world, and (iii) the digital world. To date, I have uncovered that attentional fluctuations dynamically evolve based on the experiential and effortful nature of our environment.
Collaborators: Dr. Monica Castelhano, Allison Drody, Yu Qing Liu, Dr. Daniel Smilek, Alyssa Smith