Thomas H. Carr

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.