Faculty

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Carr Thomas Carr
Professor
Ph.D. Cognitive Developmental Psychology, Peabody College of Education and Human Development 1975
Masters Science Education, Graduate School of Education, University of Chicago 1971
Bachelors Physics, Lake Forest College 1970
Primary Program: Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
289C Psychology
(517) 355-0197
carrt@msu.edu


Research Statement
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My research focuses on perceptual recognition, attention, and the executive control of complex skills, including how skills are learned, how they are performed in their mature, well-practiced states, and whether they are susceptible to choking under pressure and other kinds of cognitive and motivational stressors, and if so, why. In collaboration with students and colleagues both here and at other universities, I study the cognitive processes that comprise skilled performances, as well as their neural implementation, combining cognitive evidence from reaction-time techniques with neural evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging. I've investigated a wide range of real-world and laboratory tasks, but I'm particularly interested in culturally engineered language skills -- reading and writing -- and more recently, in mathematical computation and mathematical thinking. In addition to these basic-science investigations, I am interested in the instructional implications of research on skill acquisition, and I collaborate with an aphasiologist on the behavioral, cognitive, and neural impact of aphasia rehabilitation programs. My teaching activities include introductory psychology and courses on cognitive processes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. From 1993 through 1998 I served as Editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. From 2005 through 2007 I was on leave from Michigan State, serving as the Frank W. Mayborn Professor of Cognitive Studies at Vanderbilt University. Currently I'm the Outgoing Editor of Perception & Psychophysics, and I'm one of the Associate Editors of Cognitive Psychology.


Related Research Websites
  
Cognitive Imaging Research Center (CIRC) Due to the joint efforts of the Departments of Psychology and Radiology, and support from the University, the Cognitive Imaging Research Center (CIRC) was created to expand human imaging science research and to promote the use of modern imaging methods in basic science and clinical investigations of the brain at Michigan State University.


Research Publications    
 Title
2009Francis, A. P., Schmidt, G. L., Carr, T. H., & Clegg, B. A. (2009). Incidental learning of abstract rules for non-dominant word orders. Psychological Research, 73, 60-74.
2008Huang, J., Francis, A. P., & Carr, T. H. (2008). A method for measuring the onset time and duration of articulation and for detecting, assessing, and correcting articulation-induced signal changes during an event-related word reading fMRI study. Brain & Language, 104, 10-23.
2008Kelly, J.W., McNamara, T.P., Bodenheimer, B., Carr, T.H. & Rieser, J.J. (2008). The shape of human navigation: How environmental geometry is used in maintenance of spatial orientation. Cognition, 109, 281-286.
2008Hoerger, M., Quirk, S. W., Lucas, R. E., & Carr, T. H. (2008). Immune neglect in affective forecasting. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 91-94.
2008Beilock, S. L., Bertenthal, B. I., Hoerger, M., & Carr, T. H. (2008). When does haste make waste? Expertise, speed versus accuracy, and the tools of the trade. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 14, 340-353.