In the Spatial Thinking lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara, we are interested in spatial thinking very generally, from how people mentally represent the locations of objects in space and the location of the self in the environment to how people use spatial representations to think about non-spatial entities. We use a variety of methods in our research, including analysis of individual differences, eye tracking, fMRI and use of virtual environment technology as well as more traditional experimental methods in cognitive psychology.

Prospective Graduate Students: I am interested in accepting one or two new students in 2011. Please email me if you have any questions about our research (hegarty@psych.ucsb.edu). If you are interested, I encourage you to apply to the program in Cognition, Perception and Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology.

Lab News: Mary Hegarty received a new 3-year grant from NSF (REESE program) to study effects of molecular models on representation translation in chemistry. Mary Hegarty became the chair of the governing board of the Cognitive Science society in August 2010. Andrew Stull (postdoc) received a National Academy of Education Spencer Fellowship for 2010-2011.

Selected Recent Publications:

• Paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences. What determines our navigation abilities?
• Paper in The Psychology of Learning and Motivation. Components of spatial intelligence.
• Paper in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition. Thinking about the weather: how display salience and knowledge affect performance in a graphic inference task

Links:

• Rate your spatial abilities
• Spatial@UCSB
• Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC)

Upcoming conferences:

• AERA, New Orleans, April 2011
• Cognitive Science, Boston, July 2011