Aging, Culture and Cognition Laboratory

To mark the beginning of fall, the lab recently visited Honey Pot Hill Orchards! We had a great time picking apples (& pears), and seeing all kinds of farm animals at the petting zoo. We’re looking forward to other fun lab outings this semester.

Congrats to honors student, Qihao Xie, for being named a 2024 Donnah Canavan Honorary Undergraduate Scholar by the New England Psychological Association! This award recognizes individuals with outstanding undergraduate records in psychology and encourages promising students to pursue careers in the discipline. Qihao will also be presenting his poster titled, “Effects of Acculturation on Self and Other- Enhancement through Measures of Memory, N400, & Late Positive Potential”. Great job!

Welcome to our new PhD students, Sagarika Devarayapuram Ramakrishnan and James Qian! We’re looking forward to a great year in the lab.

Our lab manager, Giannis Valoumas, will be joining Binghamton University as a PhD student in Dr. Michael Dulas’s Cognition, Aging, and Memory Performance (CAMP) Lab. Congrats & thank you for your hard work!

Congrats to our postdoctoral research fellow, Dr. Isu Cho, on accepting a faculty position at Sungkyunkwan University! We wish you the best of luck on your new endeavors!

Congratulations to Dr. Krystal Leger on successfully defending her PhD dissertation, The Influences of Culture on Mnemonic Processes: A Comparison of Easterners and Westerners! Krystal will join Boston Scientific as a Senior Medical Writer.

Congratulations to Dr. Wanbing Zhang on successfully defending her PhD dissertation! Wanbing's PhD studies had been investigating the effect of imagining loss of items on the memory performance of healthy older adults.

With summer coming to an end and the Fall semester about to start, we want to congratulate our undergraduate research assistants who diligently conducted summer research and presented posters of their projects at SciFest 2022. Congratulations to Chaomei Wang, Huilin Li, Taryn German (Hampton University), Rynn Parrack and Yannan Zhu on presenting your summer work!

As in-person conferences are resuming, many of ACC's lab members have had the chance to present their work in front of fellow researchers.

Isu Cho (postdoctoral fellow) and Wanbing Zhang (fifth-year PhD student) presented their research findings at the Cognitive Aging Conference in Atlanta, while Krystal Leger (fourth-year PhD student) presented a poster at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in San Fransisco.

Dr. Gutchess has been elected as 2023 Chair of the Psychonomic Society Governing Board. The Psychonomic Society is a community of over 5,600 cognitive and experimental psychologists from more than 60 countries around the world. Read more on the society's announcement here.

Congratulations to our postdoctoral fellow Isu Cho on receiving the GSA Behavioral and Social Sciences Section Student Registration Award!

Congratulations to PhD student Ashley Gilliam! Over the summer, she received the Diversity Scholarship for the 2021 ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research at the University of Michigan. Through the ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research) program, she received certification for Multilevel Models: Introduction and Application, Time Series Analysis I: Introduction, and Categorical Data Analysis.

Congratulations to graduating honors students Sarah Turk Karan and Wanchen Zhao! In addition, Wanchen received the department's Elliott Aronson award. Post-graduation, Sarah will be a research assistant at University of Denver and Wanchen will be a PhD student at Yale University.

Lab members attended the virtual International Cognitive Neuroscience Society conference co-organized by Dr. Gutchess, Dr. Goh, and Dr. Losin. Tong Lin, and Wanbing Zhang presented a thought-provoking poster and lightning talk, respectively.

Congratulations to Dr. John Ksander, PhD, on successfully defending his dissertation!

Congratulations to Jessie Chien and Ashley Gilliam for graduating with their master's! Congratulations to Zenith Rai, Yinan Liang and Sophie Needles for graduating with their bachelor's!

Lab members attended the Psychonomics Society annual meeting in Montreal, Canada. Dr. Gutchess gave a fascinating talk at the inaugural Culture and Cognition Pre-conference titled "Perceptual and Mnemonic Differences Across Cultures."

The National Institute on Aging has awarded Drs. Gutchess and Goh a grant to investigate the effects of aging on memory and decision making across cultures, using behavioral testing and fMRI data.

Dr. Gutchess was invited to speak at an expert meeting on Leveraging Rarely Investigated Populations for Research on Behavioral and Social Processes in an Aging Context. Dr. Gutchess spoke on a panel about cross-cultural differences in memory.

John Ksander's paper "Cultural Specialization of Visual Cortex" was accepted to Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Congratulations, John!

Congratulations to Zenith Rai for receiving summer funding from the Provost's Undergraduate Research Fund to study cross-cultural differences in impressions and trustworthiness!

Congratulations to Dr. Laura Paige, PhD, for successfully defending her dissertation! Congratulations to Yuchen Song, Selen Amado, Grace Hoefs and Dana Zeng on graduating!

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