My research is concerned with visual statistical learning of emotional information, which means how humans learn to perceive statistical regularities of emotional stimuli in their environment. My current studies deal with the way negative valence influences learning temporal patterns, how statistical learning modulates attention biases toward threatening items, and age differences in statistical learning of emotional stimuli.
This project focuses on the role of fear in hierarchical processing of fear-relevant information, and suggests that fear facilitates identification of an animal’s global configuration and interferes with identification of its local features. For example, fear of snakes is associated with faster identification of a snake in the grass, but with slower identification of the snake's type based on its body pattern.
Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000774.
Postpartum Depression and Postpartum Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder are psychiatric conditions that can result in severe problems. About 10-15% of pregnant women will develop these disorders after delivery.
We developed a battery of sensitive cognitive tasks to examine whether cognitive biases during pregnancy can predict future development of postpartum depression and PTSD.
This knowledge may shed light on the mechanisms underlying adaptive vs. maladaptive biased processing patterns during pregnancy and ultimately lead to the development of individually tailored preventive treatment. For more information about the research click here.