Melissa Kibbe

Director: Developing Minds Lab

The world is rich with visual information, but our brains process and store only a small fraction of the information available. How do we decide which information we should keep track of, and how do we store and use this information efficiently? My research focuses on how infants, children, and adults represent information about objects (e.g. perceptual features, animacy, group statistics, numerosity, verbal labels). I also look at the kinds of computations we can do with these representations, and the ways in which we use these representations to guide behavior. Finally, I study how cognitive systems (such as working memory, attention, social cognition, and decision-making) interact during complex tasks. My research relies on both behavioral methods and computational modeling of cognitive processes.