[CPCN Seminar] Individual Differences in Learning v Achievement: What Self-Regulation Predicts and What’s Next

What makes some students more effective learners and better academic performers than others? Is the answer identical with respect to learning and academic achievement, or do the contributing factors differ? I examined two kinds of self-regulation – cognitive regulation and behavior regulation – as predictors of individual differences in middle-school students’ learning and academic achievement.

Flexible Working Memory for Adaptive Perception and Action

Goal-directed cognition and behavior require the ability to keep information temporarily in mind. Humans ubiquitously rely on this ‘working memory’ to hold onto multiple types of goals at different levels of urgency. While we try to achieve these moment-to-moment goals, we also face distractions and other fluctuating demands in our environment. As a result, sometimes either our working memory or our immediate behavior can suffer.

[NAB Seminar] The Association Cortex Spatial Transformation Network

Spatial transformation is a critical neural computation in which the locations of stimuli in the external world, experienced via disparate sensory processes, are registered across distinct coordinate systems. During navigation, information about the configuration of external features is initially acquired via sensory modalities in egocentric coordinates, but is then transformed into a map-like internal model of locations, landmarks, and goals relative to the external world (i.e.