People 

Charles Brainerd, Director

cb299 [at] cornell.edu (Dr. Brainerd) holds B.S., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in experimental and developmental psychology. He has published over 200 research articles and chapters, and he has also published over 20 books. His research covers areas such as human memory and decision-making, statistics and mathematical modeling, cognitive neuroscience, learning, intelligence, cognitive development, learning disability and child abuse. Dr. Brainerd's current research program centers on the relation between memory and higher reasoning abilities in children and adults, and it also focuses on false-memory phenomena. Together with another Cornell Professor, Valerie Reyna, he is the co-developer of fuzzy-trace theory, a model of the relation between memory and higher reasoning that has been widely applied within medicine and law.

Education

• Ph.D. Michigan State University - Psychology
• M.A. Michigan State University - Psychology
• B.S. Michigan State University - Psychology

Valerie Reyna, Collaborator

vr53 [at] cornell.edu (Dr. Reyna) is Professor of Human Development and Psychology at Cornell University, and a Co-director of the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research. Dr. Reyna holds a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Rockefeller University. Her research encompasses human judgment and decision making, numeracy and quantitative reasoning, risk and uncertainty, medical decision making, social judgment, and false memory. She is a developer of fuzzy-trace theory, a model of the relation between mental representations and decision making that has been widely applied in law, medicine, and public health. Her recent work has focused on aging, neurocognitive impairment, and genetic risk factors (e.g., in Alzheimers disease); rationality and risky decision making, particularly risk taking in adolescence; and neuroimaging models of framing and decision making. She has also extended fuzzy-trace theory to risk perception, numeracy, and dual processes in medical decision making by both physicians and patients. Dr. Reyna also teaches an undergraduate and a graduate seminar on Risk and Rational Decision Making and is the director of the Laboratory for Rational Decision Making.

Education

• Ph.D. Rockefeller University - Experimental Psychology
• B.A. Clark University - Psychology