You are cordially invited to the Seminar organized by the Psychology Department.
Date & Time: April 16, 2025; Wednesday at 12:30
Place: A-130
The presentation language will be English.
Presenter: Prof. Beatrice Kuhlmann, Ph.D. (Mannheim University)
Title: Who said that again? Long-Term Maintenance and Forgetting Processes of Source Memory
Abstract: Source memory refers to remembering the context or origin of information, such as who told you certain information or where you last saw your keys. Most studies to date tested source memory only one time relatively soon after encoding – thus not much is known about longer-term maintenance and forgetting processes of source memory. Based on the neuropsychological forgetting theory by Hardt et al. (2013), I will derive behavioral predictions for forgetting processes in source memory as opposed to item memory. I will then present a series of experiments testing these predictions for both short-term (~10 minutes; presumably interference-based) and long-term (~24 hours) forgetting. In addition, I will also present on how sleep benefits source memory maintenance, including both experimental wake-sleep designs and a correlational study with sleep parameters tracked via FitBit© devices. Some of the presented experiments include comparisons between younger (18-30 years) and older adults (60 years and older) who typically show a large source memory deficit but source forgetting and the sleep-benefit to source memory maintenance appear spared from aging according to our data.
Bio: Beatrice G. Kuhlmann is Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Aging at the University of Mannheim in Germany. She completed her Ph.D. (awarded in 2013) in Cognitive Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro under the supervision of Dayna R. Touron. She then returned to her home country Germany for postdoctoral training in Ute J. Bayen’s lab at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf. In 2015, she was appointed Assistant Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Aging. In 2021, she was tenured to Full Professor. In her research, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and published in around 40 peer-reviewed journal articles and three chapters, she combines behavioral experimental manipulations with cognitive modeling to study the interplay of episodic memory, semantic memory, and metacognition across adult age. She has been awarded a Dissertation Research Award from the American Psychological Association (APA) and an “Early Career Award” from the Psychonomic Society. She currently serves as Associate Editor for Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (CR:PI) and is on the editorial board of Psychology and Aging; Memory and Cognition; Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition; The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Psychological Sciences; and Metamemory and Learning.