Research Projects

Is this the real life? Reality Monitoring

The main focus of my PhD is on Reality Monitoring, the ability to separate memory of real events occurring in the external world from thoughts and imaginations confined to one’s internal world. For example (a continuous sore-point): Did I actually lock the door on my way out, or just intend to? In my research I use NLProc tools to look for a “signal” in texts describing remembered or imagined events, to tease the two apart, and to explore which specific linguistic features are expressed differently in descriptions of these unique experiences. See more about this research here.

Memory justifications and interpersonal metamemory

These projects explore individuals memory justifications using linguistic analysis. A large proportion of our information is learned from others. Sometimes the information provided by others has far reaching consequences (such as in court), but how can we be sure what they’re saying is correct? We often have cues to justify to ourselves (and others) when events did indeed play out the way we remember them. I examine such questions as: How valid are these justifications? How good are humans at evaluating witnesses memories based on their justifications? Can Human evaluation be combined with Machine Learning models to improve the evaluation accuracy?

Data-oriented Clinical Research

I’ve also dabbled in clinical psychological research, using NLProc and Data from Digital Mental Health apps.