We are pleased to have Dr Jeffrey Zemla from Syracuse University as invited speaker at CICPSI Seminars & Mind-Brain Lectures on Memory. The talk will be held on November 14 at 10:00 in Anf II of FPUL. Come along!
Bio | Dr. Jeffrey Zemla is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Syracuse University, with research interests in reasoning and semantic memory, particularly in the context of aging. His work involves computational modeling of behavioral data to improve our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms involved in memory retrieval and the structure of mental representations.
Abstract | Exploring group differences in semantic representation and retrieval
The human mind is capable of storing and retrieving a vast amount of semantic knowledge efficiently. However, the semantic store and retrieval processes are also vulnerable to impairment in complex and varied ways. The semantic fluency task (e.g., listing animals) is a common method used to assess semantic memory impairments, but simple scoring measures such as counting the number of responses are insufficient to explain the heterogeneity among groups or provide more precise explanations of an impairment. In this talk, I will discuss several computational techniques that can be applied to semantic fluency data to better understand both healthy and impaired semantic retrieval. In one project, we use fluency data to estimate semantic networks and find evidence for representational differences between cognitively healthy older adults and individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. In another project, I discuss evidence for optimal semantic search and adaptive behavior in healthy aging.
