Associate Professor Amy Overman and Elon students Alison Richard '16 and Michelle Stocker '16 presented research at the annual North Carolina Cognition Group conference.
The projects are the students’ Elon College Fellows and Honors Fellows projects, respectively, and are part of Overman’s ongoing cognitive neuroscience research investigating memory in younger and older adults. Overman serves as the faculty research mentor for both Richard and Stocker.
For the projects, the effect of self-generation of information on memory for context and organization of information on memory for words were investigated. Overman and her co-authors built on prior work by researchers at UNC Chapel Hill by 1) showing that self-generated information that requires auditory processing can increase memory for context information this also has auditory characteristics and 2) demonstrating that older adults make different use of the organization of information than younger adults do.
The North Carolina Cognition conference is a scientific meeting that fosters collaboration and cooperation among research groups throughout North Carolina and its neighboring states. Attending researchers are involved in research on human cognition and allied disciplines. The first conference was held in 1972. Last year the conference was hosted at Elon and was co-sponsored by Elon College, the College of Arts & Sciences, and the Psychology Department, and was organized by Amy Overman.