Angela Gutchess
Brandeis University, MA·Psychology
Simple memory strategies can help people remember life events. These help healthy adults and people whose memory is weakened by aging, brain injury or neurodegenerative disease.
- Fields
Psychology
Neuroscience
- Topics
episodic memory
memory strategies
mnemonic strategies
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Test whether the self-reference effect, the memory boost from relating information to oneself, differs among non-Hispanic White, second-generation Chinese American and second-generation Mexican American adults.
- Determine how attention to context features of events affects episodic memory in these three U.S. cultural groups, and explore group differences in the content of remembered events.
- Use event-related potentials (ERPs) and Encoding–Retrieval Similarity analysis to separate brain activity tied to using a memory strategy from activity tied to remembering successfully.
- Examine how cultural identity, language identity and stress relate to memory outcomes within the second-generation Chinese American and Mexican American samples.
More about the research
One strategy is relating new information to yourself, called the self-reference effect. Another is paying attention to the context around an event. Culture shapes how people think about the self, known as self-construal, and what they notice. So these strategies may not work equally well for everyone. Little research has examined culture and memory strategies within the United States, and the project aims to fill that gap.
Why it matters
Memory strategies are used to help people cope with memory loss from aging, brain injury and neurodegeneration. Knowing whether they work equally well across American cultural groups, and who struggles to use them, could guide memory interventions tailored for aging adults and people with Alzheimer's disease. It could also show whether current memory theories need to account for culture.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Steven Luck
University of California-Davis, CA·Psychology
Test whether distances between population vectors, activity patterns from a neural network model of the brain's object-recognition pathway, predict how well people detect changes in natural scenes and predict ERP activity during the memory delay.
Judith Morgan
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Psychology
Test whether coaching depressed mothers to encourage their child's positive emotions, using PCIT-ED modules, increases 4- to 6-year-olds' neural reward response, measured with the RewP and LPP event-related potentials, in a 180-family randomized trial.
Gladys Maestre
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, TX·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether familism, strong family ties and support, protects Mexican Americans in the San Antonio Mexican American Family Study from Alzheimer's-like cognitive decline compared with other forms of decline.
The school
Brandeis University: 5 labs on PI Pages, $107M a year on research, 75 research doctorates a year.
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