Statement of Interests

Human beings often show surprisingly large fluctuations in how readily and accurately they can “retrieve” what they know. Such fluctuations influence how flexibly we can use knowledge to inform our judgments, decisions, and actions. My research focuses on factors that affect how we gain access to, or awareness of, what we know and remember, and the accuracy and confidence associated with such access. Research is conducted with young adults, older adults, and neuropsychological populations with memory deficits (e.g., individuals with global amnesia) to explore cognitive and neuropsychological factors that affect the accuracy and ease with which we retrieve and use previously acquired information.  Other work uses neuroimaging techniques (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to examine the neuroanatomical correlates of memory encoding and retrieval in healthy young adults in relation to such factors as recent exposure to a word or object (priming), or the type of judgment that was required during the initial versus subsequent encounter with a stimulus. 

Specificity of Representations

One current focus of research concerns the specificity of the representations that support memory and judgment.  We can remember events with differing levels of detail, recalling information in a highly specific and detailed manner, or in a more general, meaning-based, conceptual, or “gist-like” manner.  Under what conditions do we rely on each of these types of information?  Do individuals with memory deficits such as healthy older adults or global amnesics rely more on one or the other of these types of information, or are both forms equally impaired?

Most recently, I have been exploring how the specificity with which we consider information itself sets a context for our later judgments and decisions.  Both particularity and abstraction are essential to human thought but adaptive movement between them is powerfully constrained by cognitive processes. 

Confidence in Judgments

Another, more recent, focus is on the level of confidence associated with decisions that we make in various domains, such as perceptual and memory judgments, and complex classifications.  What types of information support feelings of confidence?  What are the neuroanatomical correlates of the assessment of, and experience of, feelings of confidence?  How is the ability to appropriately align confidence with actual performance in cognitive and more complex judgments affected by various situational and task demands?  Does the alignment of one's confidence level with one's actual performance get better––or worse––as we get older? 

Selected Publications

Koutstaal, W. (2003).  Older adults encode––but do not always use––perceptual details:  Intentional versus unintentional effects of detail on memory judgments.  Psychological Science, 14, 189–193.

Koutstaal, W., Reddy, C., Jackson, E. M., Prince, S., Cendan, D. L., & Schacter, D. L. (2003).  False recognition of abstract versus common objects in older and younger adults:  Testing the semantic categorization account.  Journal of Experimental Psychology:  Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 499–510.

Simons, J. S., Koutstaal, W., Prince, S., Wagner, A. D., & Schacter, D. L. (2003).  Neural mechanisms of visual object priming:  Evidence for perceptual and semantic distinctions in fusiform cortex.  NeuroImage, 19, 613–626.

Koutstaal, W., Verfaellie, M., & Schacter, D. L. (2001).  Recognizing identical versus similar categorically related common objects:  Further evidence for degraded gist-representations in amnesia.  Neuropsychology, 15, 268–289.

Koutstaal, W., Wagner, A. D., Rotte, M., Maril, A., Buckner, R. L., & Schacter, D. L. (2001).  Perceptual specificity in visual object priming:  Functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence for a laterality difference in fusiform cortex. Neuropsychologia, 39, 184–199.

Koutstaal, W. (2001).  The edges of words.  Semiotica, 137, 57–97. 

Koutstaal, W. (1995).  Situating ethics and memory.  American Philosophical Quarterly, 32, 253–262.