Our major emphasis is on the study of attention, perception, and language. The research is conducted by studying patients with selective deficits following brain damage and using functional neuroimaging in normal subjects.
Northwestern University researchers in the Cognition and Language Lab are currently conducting research on the effects of analogy and similarity on learning.
The Comprehension, Motivation, and Cognition Lab (CMAC). The CMAC Lab, headed by Jennifer Cromley, Ph.D. and Research Coordinator Theodore Wills, Ph.D., includes three sponsored research projects. The 21st Century Center for Cognition and Science Instruction is a national Center that is conducting a randomized controlled trial of middle school science curriculum modifications. Teaching Effective Use of Diagrammatic Reasoning in Biology is an experimental study comparing four methods of teaching high school biology students to reason with diagrams. A multimethod approach to understanding dropout from STEM gateway courses is a longitudinal, multimethod study of undergraduate dropout from chemistry and biology majors.
All mobile organisms must represent the space around them if they are to successfully move and act in the world. In our lab, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioral testing to uncover the mechanisms that support spatial representation in humans. We are particularly interested in representations that are critical for navigation, such as representations of places (particular locations in the world) and scenes (i.e. the set of visual inputs observed when in a particular place).
It is commonly asked whether language is learned or innate. In my research, I recast the question so that it is amenable to investigation. I ask which aspects of language development are more (or less) sensitive to linguistic and environmental input. Specifically, I have been engaged in a research program to identify the properties of language whose development can withstand wide variations in learning conditions - the "resilient" properties of language.
Another facet of my work explores the spontaneous gestures that hearing adults and children produce as they speak.
Broadly speaking, work in our lab investigates the cognitive and neural substrates governing the learning and performance of complex cognitive skills (e.g., math problem solving) and complex sensorimotor skills (e.g., golf putting). We are interested in understanding the attention and memory processes that support task execution, as well as how high-pressure or high-stakes situations impact performance. Together, our work demonstrates how task type and skill level differences in the attentional demands of performance can be used to understand the nature of successful skill execution and why, at times, it fails to occur.
How do children develop? At the Northwestern University Infant Cognition Laboratory, we study how children learn to perceive and reason about the world around them. Our studies have shown that babies know much more than people once thought. We study topics like how infants remember objects, how children learn new words, how babies and children understand numbers, and more.
Dr. Levine's research examines how variations in home and school input affect the cognitive development of children, including language, spatial and mathematical skills. She also examines plasticity of language and cognitive skills following early brain injury.
The Project on Children's Thinking studies the development of children's thought and language. We study how children come to know about the world, with a focus on how their growing insight into linguistic and conceptual structures influences their patterns of learning and reasoning.
One major focus of our research is how children come to learn about spatial relations and how this understanding affects their reasoning. We also study how language can help children think relationally at a younger age than they might otherwise.
The Qualitative Reasoning Group conducts research on: Qualitative representations and reasoning, Sketch understanding, Analogical reasoning and learning, Learning by reading, and How our progress in AI and cognitive science can be used to create new kinds of systems for education, performance support, and interactive entertainment.
Our research includes both efforts to create new kinds of cognitive systems, and to model human cognition.
Members of the Reading Comprehension Laboratory at Northwestern University examine the ways in which prior knowledge, unfolding discourse, and learner strategies interactively influence reading experiences. This has involved examination of the cognitive mechanisms that underlie learning from text, as well as the products that remain in memory after reading is completed. Recent extensions of this work have targeted (a) the remediation of struggling readers’ difficulties, (b) the development of computational simulations of reading activity, and (c) the application of discourse models towards understanding broader sets of experiences, including map comprehension and procedural learning with multimedia presentations.
Spatial thinking is both a key intellectual issue in cognitive science and a critically important aspect of problem solving in science, engineering and mathematics. Spatial intelligence allows us to encode and transform information about objects and their location, and thus to find our way in the world and perform technical activities such as tool making. Beyond its direct applications in navigation and spatial manipulation, it also provides the foundation for a wide range of reasoning and communication skills, as varied as the design of buildings, the solution of mathematics problems, and the use of spatial metaphor in everyday language. The overarching goal of the RISC Lab is to understand spatial learning and cognition and how they can be fostered by effective technology and education.
Join us in discovering how children from 5 months to 6 years learn about the world they live in. Our labs conduct cutting-edge research on spatial develoment, memory, language development, reading and the role of play in learning.
The overarching goal of our research is to investigate how people perceive and understand the world around them. Perception and conceptualization undergo a number of changes as children grow and develop. By approaching our investigation from a developmental perspective, we hope to acquire a richer understanding of these processes and of cognition in general. Further, in studying cognitive development we recognize that our work has important implications for education. Thus, we also strive to understand what makes certain educational programs and tools effective in the light of cognitive theories and processes.
Dr. Shipley's research interests include object, motion, and event perception, as well as spatial cognition, interactions between perception and spatial knowledge, and perceptual learning. Current research projects include: Biological Motion, Illusory Contours and Apparent Motion.
Our research focuses on the tools that we use to select visual information, and how these tools are applied. How much of selection is automatic, and how much is under our control? Can we select more than one thing at a time? How do we maintain selection of an object when it moves?
We also study processes that support and interact with visual selection. These processes include visual memory, which helps us store what we have selected in the past, object tracking, which helps us maintain selection of moving objects, and number perception, which relies on selection mechanisms to construct the units underlying the counting process.
The Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center would like to invite interested researchers currently conducting spatial cognition and learning research to join this open network. If you would like to be involved, please contact Dr. Sian Beilock, Associate Professor of Psychology at The University of Chicago to request an invitation:
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SILC NEWS/UPDATES
Today is March 12, 2010
NEW RELEASE: CogSketch v1.19 (3/10/2010) (download here)
Read our latest updates and incoming news below or for SILC in the press go to our Press Room (click on PRESS ROOM icon above).
3/4/2010 Please, welcome our new Spatial Network Members: Hilary Barth, Sue Becker, Nathan Greenauer, Toru Ishikawa, Shaun P. Vecera, Tom verguts and Christoph Weidemann.
3/1/2010 Our March Showcase is on-line: The Role of Parent Gesture In Children's Spatial Language Development [Erica Cartmill, Shannon M. Pruden Dick, Susan C. Levine, Susan Goldin-Meadow].
2/18/2010 Please, welcome our new Spatial Network Member: Kevin Mulqueeny.
2/12/2010 Job opening for a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center, University of Chicago.
2/12/2010 New publication by our SILC Members: Jee, B. D., Uttal, D. H., Gentner, D., Manduca, C., Shipley, T., Sageman, B., Ormand, C. J., & Tikoff, B. (2010). Analogical thinking in geoscience education.
2/10/2010 Note: Full paper submission deadline [in Calls section on Meetings page] for Spatial Cognition 2010 has been changed to: February 21, 2010.
2/9/2010 Please, welcome our new Spatial Network Members: Ed Golob and Kelly McCormick.
2/5/2010 Please, note that we will soon be implementing a database for the Bibliography page. Due to this we are only up-dating the database.
2/5/2010 Please, welcome our new Spatial Network Member: Michael Brown.
2/1/2010 Our February Showcase is on-line: Playful Learning: Exploring the Role of Dialogic Inquiry and Exploration in Children's Developing Shape Concepts [Kelly R. Fisher, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, and Nora Newcombe].
1/27/2010 Read the current Press on SILC-generated research: Female teachers' math anxiety affects girls' math achievement by Sian L. Beilock, Elizabeth A. Gunderson, Gerardo Ramirez and Susan C. Levine.
1/7/2010 Please, welcome our new Spatial Network Member: Roy Ruddle.
1/6/2010 The January SILC Showcase is now on-line: Facilitation of spatial skills necessary in performing geologic transformations [Ilyse Resnick, Temple University; Thomas Shipley, Temple University; Cathryn Manduca, Carleton College; and Nora Newcombe, Temple University].
12/21/2009 Links were fixed under the sketch inquiry, Help Us Gather Sketches, on our homepage. Please, note that if you ever encounter a link that does not work, please send it to the attention of Jenn Stedillie, webmaster for this site:
12/21/2009 Please, welcome our new Spatial Network Members: Elena Andonova, Kirsten Butcher, Liz Chrastil, Lisa Douglas & Ian Fogarty.
12/02/2009 The December SILC Showcase is now on-line: Spatial categories across languages [Naveen Khetarpal, University of Chicago; Asifa Majid, Max-Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen; Terry Regier, University of California, Berkeley].
Bruce Ankenman
Sian Beilock
Anjan Chatterjee
Jason Chein
Jennifer Cromley
Russell Epstein
Kenneth Forbus
Steven Franconeri
Dedre Gentner (Co-PI)
Susan Goldin-Meadow (Co-PI)
Louis Gomez
Larry Hedges (Co-PI)
Sue Hespos
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Janellen Huttenlocher
Susan Levine (Co-PI)
Cathy Manduca
Peter Marshall 
Nora Newcombe (PI)
Howard Nusbaum
David Rapp 
Terry Regier 
Brad Sageman
Bruce Sherin
Thomas Shipley
Basil Tikoff
David H. Uttal
Daniel C. Edelson, Vice President for Education at the National Geographic Society
