Author ORCID Identifier

0000-0003-1007-4698

Date of Award

12-31-2025

Document Type

Campus Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Developmental and Brain Sciences

First Advisor

Zsuzsa Kaldy

Second Advisor

Erik Blaser

Third Advisor

Tiffany Donaldson

Abstract

Cognition is shaped by variations in environmental context: from the microscale sequencing of to-be-learned information, to the macroscale of long-term formal educational training. Across three studies, I assess the effect of these factors on performance in cognitive tasks. First, the fidelity of visual memory is sensitive to the temporal order and context in which to-be-remembered visual information is encoded. Such manipulations can hinder or promote learning: for example, in proactive interference, earlier-learned information impairs the ability to recall currently-relevant information. In interleaving, learning is facilitated by enabling efficient comparisons between exemplars of to-be-learned categories. I explore how these information structures affect memory by (1) measuring behavioral and pupillary dynamics associated with proactive interference and (2) replicating the interleaving effect (Kornell & Bjork, 2008) while eliminating response bias. Finally, in a meta-analysis, I investigate the magnitude of the schooling effect on children’s executive functions. Entry into formal schooling has been empirically linked to improvements on a variety of academic and cognitive measures, but the magnitude of the schooling effect on children’s executive functions is not clear. In a meta-analysis (12 studies, N ≈ 1,611), I find that schooling has a small, but robust, effect on children’s executive functions (g = 0.24, 95 % CI [0.13, 0.36]). Taken together, these findings illustrate that cognition is deeply affected by the organization of information in the environment - from moment-to-moment sequencing of information affecting memory to the large-scale organization of the learning environment shaping cognitive functions per se.

Comments

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