Carly Chak

Graduate Student

Advisor

Research Area

Cognition, Perception, and Cognitive Neuroscience

Biography

Carly Chak earned her B.S. in Psychology from the University of North Florida. Following her undergraduate studies, Carly earned her M.A. in Psychology from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg under the supervision of Dr. Jennifer O’Brien. Her master’s thesis explored how value learning influences visual attention. Carly worked as a senior research coordinator with Tufts University and the US Army in a collaborative cognitive science lab prior to beginning her doctoral training at UCSB in Dr. Barry Giesbrecht’s attention lab in 2020.

Research

My research is primarily focused on how attentional priority interacts with working memory. Specifically, I am interested in exploring how different components of attentional capture 1) compete with each other and 2) modulate the contents of working memory over time. I use both purely behavioral methods as well as EEG to explore my research questions.