How does the developing brain give rise to cognitive change?

This is the overarching question that guides our work in the lab. Read on to learn more about our different lines of research.

Benefits & Drawbacks of Knowledge

How do existing memories impact our ability to learn new things, for better or for worse?

Neural Bases of Memory & Reasoning

What brain regions help us recall and apply our knowledge?

Neural & Cognitive Developmental Trajectories

What kinds of changes in memory formation and retrieval happen over development?

Benefits & Drawbacks of Knowledge

​The interplay between learning and memory has long been of interest to cognitive psychologists. Extant theories highlight that our knowledge is built across multiple experiences, with memories for individual events becoming generalized over time to form the basis of all knowledge. One mechanistic account of this phenomenon suggests that our prior knowledge is retrieved during new learning, thereby impacting the way in which the new memory trace is formed. Conversely, the existing knowledge is also updated to incorporate the new information, underscoring the fact that—contrary to textbook theories of episodic memory—even strong, old memories are susceptible to change.

Our research has shown that this process can, under some circumstances, benefit behavior: novel decisions may be supported by a specialized memory formation process that integrates across related events as they occur (Zeithamova, Schlichting & Preston, 2012; Schlichting & Preston, 2015). By recalling past events during new experiences, knowledge is formed that integrates the newly learned information into prior memories (Schlichting et al., 2015). The resulting integrated memories are thought to support our ability to make decisions in new situations. However, we also know that bringing to mind related knowledge can sometimes interfere with new learning. This line of research investigates that conditions under which having multiple similar experiences can alternately benefit or impair our ability to remember each.

Neural Bases of Memory & Reasoning

​Episodic memory is known to be supported by the medial temporal lobes (MTL, including the hippocampus) and prefrontal cortex (PFC), with damage to either brain region resulting in memory impairments. We have linked processing in hippocampus and PFC to the dynamic integration of new content into existing memories (Schlichting & Preston, 2014; Schlichting & Preston, 2015; Schlichting et al., 2015). We have also shown that spontaneous memory processes engaged in these regions during periods of passive rest predict later memory, suggesting that generalization across related memories may persist even after intentional learning has ceased. This line of work builds upon our previous findings to answer questions like, What are the representations encoded by different brain regions, and how do we select the "correct" kind of representation during reasoning?

Neural & Cognitive Developmental Trajectories

Behavioral research suggests that there are fundamental differences in the way children and adults acquire new knowledge. While adults benefit from opportunities to link related memories, children do not, suggesting that they may be unable to use their prior knowledge to boost learning. However, this means that children may also be less susceptible to interference, allowing them to better maintain memories for a given specific event among many similar episodes. Behavioral signatures such as these would suggest that there are important differences in the underlying neural mechanisms across age groups, with maturation of MTL and PFC giving rise to memory integration in adulthood. This line of work relates developmental changes in knowledge representation to differences in the ability to recall and reason about our experiences. We are interested in answering questions like:

• How do hippocampal and prefrontal subregions develop, both structurally and functionally?
• How does knowledge representation or storage change across development?
• How do the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex support memory over development?
• What are the situational and neural factors that promote memory and reasoning?