Postdoctoral Research Position
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP POSITIONS, Roger Ratcliff and Gail McKoon
We are looking for postdoctoral fellows to work on one or more projects in collaborative research. A secondary aim is for the postdoc to develop new and/or different lines of research from his/her graduate work in order to acquire a wider range of skills than he/she would otherwise have.
We expect a postdoc to stay in our lab 2-3 years, subject to review after one year. Postdocs in our lab do almost no administrative work, computer support, student supervision, etc. They work more than 95% of their time on new collaborative projects.
The kinds of projects include experimental and modeling work in memory, implicit memory, and reaction time. There are several loosely related possible lines of research including examining models of the stochastic accumulation class (e.g., diffusion models and variants of them), examining the interface between memory models and reaction time, and developing models for implicit memory tasks. Other possible directions to follow include applications to lexical decision, reaction time in implicit memory tasks, confidence judgment procedures, multiple choice RT modeling, and so on.
A second line of work involves examining the effects of aging and, for example, Alzheimer's disease, on reaction time and on memory using memory and reaction time models to interpret the effects. So far, we have examined the effects of aging on simple perceptual, lexical decision, signal detection, and memory tasks. This involves reaction time modeling. We are examining individual differences as well as differences between young and old adults. We are beginning to collect data from populations of Alzheimer's and mild cognitive impairment patients to provide the data base for future modeling.
A third project involves trying to forge relationships between single cell recording data in monkeys and rats and reaction time models. We have performed data analysis of single cell recording data obtained in a standard two-choice reaction time paradigm and used standard sequential sampling reaction time models to fit behavioral data. We use the parameters of the diffusion decision process obtained from the behavioral data to represent firing rates, with the aim of jointly modeling both sets of data. The data we have has allowed development of successful models and allows comparison between neurons recorded simultaneously. In several new collaborations, we are collecting data from simultaneous recording in several different brain areas involved in decision making and control of decision making. The goal is to build neurally plausible models that are consistent with psychological behavioral data.
The fourth line of research is a programmatic psycholinguistics project designed to elucidate the lexical representations of words and how their meanings project to the surface syntactic structures of sentences. Experiments are designed to investigate the implications of lexical representations for processing time for individual words and for sentences.
A fifth project examines language and text processing in older adults. Using a wide array of psycholinguistics variables, the aim is to understand whether there is a decrement for older adults in such processes as organizing the ideas in a text, understanding reference, and inferring appropriate information. Older adults will be tested both "on line" as they read and "off line" with memory and decision making tasks.
Most of our postdoctoral fellows have obtained academic positions in research universities, and they generally produce 3-4 papers in major journals out of the collaboration.
Please contact Roger Ratcliff at ratcliff[dot]22[at]osu[dot]edu for further information. To read journal articles about the research and to see some demonstrations, see http://star.psy.ohio-state.edu/coglab/
To apply, send a vita and letters of recommendation to Roger Ratcliff.
