Office Location
Rutgers University, Psychology Department
101 Warren Street, Newark, NJ 07102
Smith Hall Room 340
Office Hours
Broadly, I am interested in understanding how we encode, represent, and retrieve past events from visual working and long-term memory. Using a combination of behavioral assessments and computational approaches, my work examines the cognitive processes that underlie memory and the mechanisms that contribute to performance.
More specifically, I seek to address questions such as:
1.) how do we reconstruct past events from memory while minimizing cognitive effort and error?
2.) how do we leverage our existing knowledge and expectations about the world to help fill in our fuzzy memories?
3.) what does the process of integrating real-world knowledge and memory look like across cultural groups, developmental groups, and as a function of expertise?
4.) and finally, how does the context of study information govern what we recall about the past?
Publications
Persaud, K., Macias, C., Hemmer, P, & Bonawitz, E. (2021). Evaluating recall error in preschoolers: Category expectations influence episodic memory for color. Cognitive Psychology, 124, 101357.
Persaud, K., Bass, I., Colantonio, J., Macias, C., & Bonawitz, E. (2019). Opportunities and challenges integrating resource-rational analysis with developmental perspectives. Invited Commentary to Lieder and Griffiths, Brain and Behavioral Sciences.
Persaud, K., Macias, C., Hemmer, P., & Bonawitz, E. (2019). Age-Related Differences in the Influence of Category Expectations on Episodic Memory in Early Childhood. In A.K. Goel, C.M. Seifert, & C. Freksa (Eds.) Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Montreal, QB: Cognitive Science Society.
Persaud, K. Hemmer, P., Kidd, C., & Piantadosi (2017). Seeing Colors: Cultural and Environmental Influences on Episodic Memory. I-Perception, 8, 1-6.
Persaud, K. & Hemmer, P. (2016). The dynamics of fidelity over the time course of long-term memory. Cognitive Psychology, 88, 1-21.
Hemmer, P. & Persaud, K. (2014). Interactions between Categorical Knowledge and Episodic Memory across Domains. Frontiers in Psychology 5:584.
Persaud, K. & Hemmer, P. (2014). The influence of knowledge and expectations for color on episodic memory. In P. Bello, M. Guarini, M. McShane, & B. Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Quebec City, CA: Cognitive Science Society.