Thomas H. Carr

Professor of Psychology

Cognitive Interest Group, Cognitive Science Program, and Cognitive Imaging Research Center

Department of Psychology

Michigan State University

East Lansing, MI 48824-1116

carrt@msu.edu, 517-355-0197

Research Interests

Perceptual recognition, attention, language, memory, and motor control in skilled performance, including reading and writing, mathematical computation and mathematical problem solving, and complex sensorimotor skills (such as golf putting or soccer dribbling). Impact of instructional arrangements and developmental changes on skill acquisition and performance. Performance of skills under pressure and stress. Representation and deployment of knowledge in semantic memory. Neural bases of these processes, including neuroimaging studies using fMRI. Behavioral, cognitive, and neural impact of aphasia rehabilitation.

Overall Goals

My research aims to understand the attention demands, knowledge base, and information-coordination requirements of human skilled performance. I have investigated a wide range of tasks, some naturally occurring and others invented for the laboratory. Each was chosen either because it is inherently interesting, socially important, or because its properties make it a good model system for asking particular questions about cognitive architecture, cognitive processing, improvement with practice, or vulnerability to stressors (including multiple task demands, pressure to perform well, and brain damage).

Over the years, my laboratory has increasingly tried to take account of underlying neurobiology – the structure and function of the nervous system. Originally I was trained in cognitive psychology, cognitive development, and educational psychology. I began adding cognitive neuroscience about 15 years ago, including both basic studies of brain function during task performance and the use of measures of brain function as part of evaluating the impact of instruction and intervention. As a result, my work at this point combines techniques across these areas. One methodology draws on the basic experimental tool of cognitive psychology: the “reaction time method”, or “mental chronometry”, which uses the speed and accuracy of task performance to infer mental computations. The second methodology draws on tools from cognitive neuroscience, mainly functional magnetic resonance imaging, which are used to describe the neural substrate of the computations being inferred from mental chronometry. The third methodology draws on one of the basic tools of developmental psychology, educational psychology, sports psychology, and aphasiology: instructional intervention. Combining these methods is powerful. The combination produces a better picture of how cognition works, what helps or hurts it, and how it can be engineered, instructed, or rehabilitated than any of the methods applied by themselves.

Within this framework, my choice of projects at any given time is heavily determined by the particular interests of my students and other scientists with whom I collaborate. I deeply believe that science is a fundamentally collaborative enterprise. We are all in this together. As Ben Franklin said, "We must all hang together, or surely we will all hang separately."

Current Projects

(1) A variety of studies of selective attention, motor control, multitasking, and task switching (in a variety of collaborations with my graduate student Laurie Carr, Joel Nigg, and Erik Altmann at Michigan State University, Sian Beilock at the University of Chicago, Bennett Bertenthal at Indiana University, Rob Gray at Arizona State University, and Kate Arrington at Lehigh University).

(2) Studies of skill acquisition and performance under pressure and stress (in collaboration with Sian Beilock at the University of Chicago).

(3) Studies of the cognitive and neural foundations of mathematical competence, examining how mathematical concepts and performances vary across individuals, change with instruction, and respond to pressure and stress (in collaboration with Bethany Rittle-Johnson and Percival Matthews at Vanderbilt University). Collaborations are being developed with Kelly Mix at Michigan State University, Kevin Miller at the University of Michigan, and Bruce McCandliss at the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology.

(4) Studies of agency – the phenomenal sense of being in control – during performance of tasks involving goal-directed interactions with objects, tools, and sometimes other people (in collaboration with my graduate student John Dewey at Michigan State University and Adriane Seiffert at Vanderbilt University).

(5) Studies of spatial perception, spatial learning, and spatial navigation in virtual versus real environments, and the potential of virtual environments as training venues for skill acquisition (in collaboration with Bobbie Bodenheimer, John Reiser, and Tim McNamara at Vanderbilt University).

(6) Neuroimaging studies of reading silently versus aloud (in collaboration with Jie Huang and Andrea Ploucher Francis at Michigan State University) and cognitive and neuroimaging studies of learning from reading (some in collaboration with Bruce McCandliss at the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, and some in collaboration with my graduate student Nicole Moon).

(7) Studies of semantic memory and its organization, comparing approaches that focus on components of denotative meaning such as taxonomic category membership, dictionary definition, and contextual associations to approaches like the "semantic differential" that focus on connotative meaning and subjective analysis (in collaboration with Maggie Xiong at Vanderbilt University).