About

The Memory and Neuroscience Lab, directed by Charles Brainerd, conducts mainstream, theory-driven experimentation with adult populations, college-aged populations and developmental investigations with child, healthy elderly, and impaired populations.  At Cornell, our research group includes post-doctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students who receive high-level training in both the behavioral and neuroscience sides of contemporary research on human memory, decision-making and cognition. Beyond Cornell, we collaborate with researchers and laboratories from other universities, including universities in other countries such as Brazil, Canada, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Welcome!

Translational research

Join the Memory and Neuroscience Lab

To find us:

The Memory and Neuroscience Lab
Department of Psychology
Martha Van Rensselaer (MVR) Hall
Room G331
Phone: (607) 254-1163
Fax: (607) 255-9856

To join us:

Students interested in joining the Memory and Neuroscience lab may submit an application or email Dr. Brainerd (cb299 [at] cornell.edu (cb299atcornell.edu)) or the laboratory leader, Victoria Guan (lec229 [at] cornell.edu (vwg6[at]cornell[dot]edu)), for more information. Upon acceptance, students participate by enrolling in HD4260 Translational Research in Memory and Neuroscience or HD4010 Empirical Research, and receive training that will prepare them to conduct independent research on these topics as part of laboratory research teams and for honors and graduate theses.

Current projects

There are two kinds of memory errors: forgetting errors and false memory errors. Forgetting errors are when a person cannot remember an event while false memory errors are when a person falsely remembers something. In the case of a false memory error, the true memory state is rejected. Recently, it has been proposed that there is a third kind of false memory error, called overdistribution, where you have both memory traces consistent with the false memory and you also have memory traces consistent with the true memory, and which memory you accept is dependent on what you are asked. Overdistribution has been found to make up a good proportion of “false memory” responses and several studies in the lab are focused on utilizing distractor words to investigate the difference between semantic and phonological false memory errors, immediate memory processes, and the relationship between various question probes.

Eyewitness misidentifications were involved in 70% of the DNA exonerated wrongful convictions in the United States (Innocence Project, 2018). It has been found that misidentifications are often paired with high witness confidence and as a result the predictive value of confidence ratings on eyewitness accuracy has been called into question. Previous research has found, however, that confidence ratings can be highly predictive of accuracy in certain conditions. The aim of the current study is to try to better understand what makes confidence predictive of accuracy in some conditions, but not in others.

Both the emotional contents embedded in the study materials and the reward values accompanying the study materials have been shown to influence memory performance.  Recently, another variable that has long been overlooked, emotional ambiguity, has been proposed to have a potential effect on cognitive performance (e.g., Brainerd, 2018; Mattek, Wolford, & Whalen, 2017).  In this study, we factorially manipulate reward values, emotional contents and emotional ambiguity in the study words during encoding.  We also implemented the dual-retrieval models to pinpoint the verbatim and gist retrieval processes that are responsible for the effects of emotion and reward.

Accumulating evidence has suggested that phonological and semantic DRM lists can both elicit high levels of false memory. Moreover, the mixture of the two — hybrid lists — can elicited over-additive false memory compared to pure semantic or pure phonological lists (Watson, Balota, & Roediger, 2003). However, it is unclear whether the list composition, namely the proportion of phonological and semantic associates on the DRM lists, will make a difference in terms of false memory. In this study, we manipulated different list compositions during encoding, and used both immediate and delayed recognition tests during retrieval. The conjoint recognition test was implemented so we can identify the retrieval processes affecting memory performance for the list words.