Opportunity Details

Details about the opportunity you selected and the mentor are shown below. It is your responsibility to contact the mentor to discuss collaborating with them this summer. If your mentor invites you to submit an application, you can access that from the front page of this site. Upon completion of the application, it will be sent to the mentor for approval before being passed on to the Summer Scholar Selection Committee, which will make the decisions.

Faculty Information

Ayanna Thomas

ayanna.thomas@tufts.edu

Assistant Professor

P: (617) 627-4559

Address:

Psychology Dept
490 Boston Ave

Medford, MA 02138

Affiliated Institutions:

Arts and Sciences

Associated Departments:

Psychology

Opportunity:

Automatic and Controlled Processes in Elderly Decision Making

Summary:

Older adults typically show deficits in cognitive function as compared to younger adults. One hypothesis is that older adults have access to fewer cognitive resources as compared to younger adults. This reduction in cognitive resources forces older adults to over-rely on automatic processes that require fewer resources. The present project investigates the impact of the over-reliance on automatic processes in decision making. Emotional salience, framing, and stategic instructions will be manipulated to determine whether older adults can engaged in more resource consuming controlled processes when making decisions.

Contact Via:

E-mail

What is the timeframe for this research opportunity?

14 months

Prerequisities for students?

Psy 28, Psy 122 or Psy 144

Responsibilities for students?

Development of stimuli, data collection from older and younger adults, data analysis

Area(s) of Research:

Cognitive Psychology