Sara Festini
University of Tampa, FL·Psychology
Some things you hear are worth holding onto, like a doctor's instructions, while others can be let go. Working memory is the small amount of information you can actively hold in mind right now, and it has strict limits.
- Fields
Psychology
Neuroscience
- Topics
working memory
executive control
value-directed remembering
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Test whether words assigned high value after they were studied are recalled faster and more accurately from working memory than low- or negative-value words, using brief computer-based word memory tasks.
- Measure whether high-value items held in working memory are more susceptible to proactive interference, intrusions from recently seen familiar items, as an index of how strongly value-prioritized representations persist.
- Distinguish competing mechanisms of value-directed remembering in working memory by comparing a differential rehearsal account against an active control account.
- Determine how individual limits in working memory capacity constrain the ability to prioritize high-value information among items already in mind.
More about the research
Deciding which of those items to protect is a job for executive control, the set of mental processes that plan and regulate thought much as a manager oversees staff. Most prior work has studied how attention prioritizes information as it comes in. Less is known about prioritizing items that are already being held in mind.
Why it matters
Understanding how people protect important information already held in mind could inform classroom study strategies and treatments for psychological disorders in which unwanted material persists, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. The work also clarifies basic mechanisms of executive control and the limits of working memory. Undergraduate researchers gain experimental training and preparation for graduate school.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Alan Castel
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Psychology
Test whether older adults can learn, with practice, to selectively remember high-value information under stress or rushing, compared with younger adults, including when motivated by responsibility or fear of forgetting.
Julie Golomb
Ohio State University, OH·Psychology
Test whether spatial distractions also disrupt nonspatial filters that control what enters visual working memory, using behavioral experiments, neuromodulation and computational analyses.
Marcia A Barnes
Vanderbilt University, TN·Education Research
Test whether adding coordinated computerized working memory training to standard direct skills math instruction improves word-problem solving, arithmetic, and working memory beyond math instruction alone, in a randomized trial with first graders who have math delays and low working memory.
The school
University of Tampa: 1 labs on PI Pages.
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