Emily Weichart

Biography

My research investigates the interplay between perception, memory, and decision-making with the broader goal of understanding how these processes collectively shape knowledge and guide human actions. In my lab, we pursue this goal using a dynamic approach that bridges theoretical development, data collection, and model-based cognitive assessment. Our experiments seek to capture the nuances of behavior and neurophysiology, encompassing the tradeoff between speed and accuracy, information sampling via eye-tracking, and within-trial processing signatures measured by EEG. These multifaceted streams of data form the foundation of our theories about how cognitive processes unfold through time and culminate in observed behavioral dynamics. We express these theories through mathematical and computational models, which provide tools for making precise predictions, and generating quantified cognitive phenotypes of individuals. A newer line of research in my lab focuses on how elements of cognition, articulated through data-derived parameter values, are impacted by known deficits in attention, memory storage, and retrieval.