Cognitive Neuroscience
Graduate Students
Jaqueline Massa
lab telephone: (212) 650-5711
email: jc.massa1@att.net
Research Interests:
My research interests are aimed at understanding the role that basic attentional processes play in the ability to comprehend and remember events, understand language, solve problems, direct behavior, and control actions. Currently, I am focusing on a viewpoint that suggests an automatic inhibitory/suppression mechanism may play a central role in the ability to selectively attend to or ignore information, this ability in turn influences memory and comprehension. More specifically, the automatic inhibitory/suppression mechanism may have several functions, which are all directed at the contents of working memory. Automatic inhibition controls the access of information that enters working memory; it deletes or suppresses once active information from working memory and it restrains certain prepotent information from seizing control of working memory so that other, less probable, information can be considered. The automatic inhibitory mechanism also allows for the development of more controlled, effortful attention processes and it may function differently depending on sensory modality.