Learning & Memory/Cognitive

Abstract: Every day, we encounter moving objects, while walking amongst other people, driving in traffic or even watching sporting events. To appropriately respond in these dynamic environments, we use a cognitive ability to simultaneously maintain representations of specific objects as they change location; an ability called object tracking. My research has manipulated and measured the movements of the eyes and body during object tracking to determine how representations of object locations relate to representations of the body positions. Results suggest that people discretely update a spatial representation of target locations with a process sensitive to the position of gaze and the self.  The work describes an example of how perception, attention and memory interact with body representations to combine information over space and time to make sense of our dynamic world.