Forschungsgruppen

Cognition and Emotion

The research group Cognition and Emotion is supervised by Dirk Wentura. It aims to understand the basic cognitive process underlying intentional behavior and emotional regulation, that is, the adaption of humans to their complex environment. This includes research on basic affective processes, attentional regulation, and processes of memory retrieval. Research is paradigm-oriented (e.g., affective priming, semantic priming, negative priming, Stroop) using behavioral measures (reaction times and accuracy).

Research topics include issues of cognitive psychology (e.g., activation and inhibition in information processing, attentional capture by valenced stimuli) as well as themes which are traditionally located in the fields of social psychology (e.g., indirect measures of attitudes) and personality psychology (e.g., self-concept, interindividual differences in basic affective processes).


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Brain and Cognition

The research group Brain & Cognition is aiming in developing a neurocognitive memory model. The group is managed by Prof. Dr. Hubert Zimmer.

In the neurocognitive memory model two lines of research should meet: the long tradition of behavioral memory research and the rapidly growing field of neuropsychological research on remembering. The aim is to develop a model of human memory that is compatibel with results gathered in brain research. We therefore run experiments using traditional memory paradigms but we also apply recent neuropsychological methods. We use electrophysiological methods, e.g. recordings of EEG and event-related potentials (ERP), and functional magnetic resonance imaging in order to examine correlates of memory and its underlying neural structures. Additionally, we use eye tracking techniques to monitor encoding behavior and pupillometry to measure processing effort.

Our main research interests are:

  • long-term memory for nonverbal material, e.g., pictures and actions
  • age-related changes of memory especially the association deficit (binding)
  • memory for subject performed tasks, i.e. memory for real actions which are self-performed
  • visual working memory
  • the influence of cognitive training on memory of elderly people


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