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Katherine S. Moore
Associate Professor, Psychology
Boyer Hall 128 (215) 517-2429 by appointment
About Me
Katherine Moore is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology. She joined the faculty in 2015. At Arcadia, Dr. Moore teaches Behavioral Neuroscience, Psychology of Music, Sensation & Perception, Cross-Cultural Psychology, and Senior Seminar. As head of the Attention, Memory, and Cognition laboratory, Dr. Moore's research projects explore the limits of attention (and whether we can overcome them), the relationship among attention, perception and memory, and how expertise affects these processes. Most of her work is in the visual domain, but she also studies music cognition and synesthesia.
Dr. Moore earned her B.A. in Cognitive Science in 2003 at nearby University of Pennsylvania, and her Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Michigan in 2010. Prior to coming to Arcadia, Dr. Moore served on the faculty at Elmhurst College in Chicago, and was a postdoctoral associate at Yale University.
Areas Of Focus
cognitive psychology, attention, perception, memory, music cognition, synesthesia
Education History
University of Michigan 2010
Ph.D., Psychology
University of Pennsylvania 2003
Bachelor of Arts, Major in Cognitive Science
Minor in Music Theory
Publications
Using rapid serial visual presentation to measure set-specific capture, a consequence of distraction while multitasking
Practice reduces set-specific capture costs only superficially
Response to a comment on “Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science”
Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science
A bottleneck model of set-specific capture
The effect of attention on repetition suppression and multivoxel pattern similarity
An open, large-scale, collaborative effort to estimate the reproducibility of psychological science
Set-specific capture can be reduced by pre-emptively occupying a limited-capacity focus of attention
Involuntary transfer of a top-down attentional set into the focus of attention: Evidence from a contingent attentional capture paradigm
Made you look! Consciously perceived, irrelevant instructional cues can hijack the attentional network
Psychological and neural mechanisms of short-term memory
The contents of visual memory are only partially under volitional control
The effects of musical training on verbal memory
Neuroscientific evidence about the distinction between short- and long-term memory
The mind and brain of short-term memory
Visual working memory is impaired when the medial temporal lobe is damaged
Using perfusion fMRI to measure continuous changes in neural activity with learning
Working memory for conjunctions relies on the medial temporal lobe
Associative learning improves visual working memory performance
Research Summary
I generally study the intersection among attention, perception, and memory. In one line of work I've been investigating the limits of visual attention under conditions of multitasking and distracting. In my lab, we have found that people are capable of looking for more than one item at a time, but that distraction throws us off track, and the costs are far greater during multitasking than when looking for a single item. We've looked into how training and strategy play a role, as well as how the attentional system manages different stimulus types in multitasking situations. We've also found that the number of concurrently maintained goals has an effect on the magnitude of distraction costs. Also in studying visual search, my students have explored questions such as multisensory contributions to search as well as the effect of perceived lighting.
In other lines of work, my students and I have studied topics such as the relationship between musical training and fluid cognition, synesthesia, visual memory, and musical illusions. Finally, my interest in open science has led me to contribute to the large-scale reproducibility project, a 200+ scientist collaboration to systematically replicate numerous studies in the field, with the hope of inspiring improved scientific and ethical practices in our field as well as others in science.
In my laboratory we use both behavioral and eye-tracking methods. Undergraduates collaborate on all aspects of projects.