Kara Federmeier

Kara Federmeier
Alma materUniversity of California, San Diego
Scientific career
ThesisSense and structure : electrophysiological investigations of semantic memory organization and use (1999)

Kara D. Federmeier is a professor in the Department of Psychology, Department of Kinesiology, and the Program in Neuroscience at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is known for her work using human electrophysiology to understand the neural basis of cognition, with a focus on language and memory in both younger and older adults.

Education and career

She graduated as valedictorian from Danville High School in 1990[1] before attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[citation needed] She received her PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego in 2000.[2] In 2002, she became a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois.[citation needed] In 2013 she was named the Emanuel Donchin Professorial Scholar in Psychology.[2]

From 2016 to 2019, she was president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research.[3]

Research

Federmeier’s research is focused on understanding how the brain builds and stores representations of meaning,[4] with a particular focus on language comprehension and memory. Her early work used the event-related potential technique to examine language comprehension.[5] She has shown that the right and left sides of the brain can representing knowledge in similar ways.[6] Her more recent work has shown that when individuals encounter a meaningful stimulus, like a word or picture, they seem to near-immediately link it to large swaths of information in long-term memory in a graded fashion ("connecting").[7]

Awards and honors

In 2006, the Society for Psychophysiology presented her with an award for distinguished early career contributions to psychophysiology.[2] In 2012, she was named a University Scholar by the University of Illinois.[8]

Selected publications

  • Federmeier, K.D. and Kutas, M. (1999). A rose by any other name: Long-term memory structure and sentence processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 41, 469-495.
  • Kutas, M. and Federmeier, K. D. (2000). Electrophysiology reveals semantic memory use in language comprehension. Trends in Cognitive Science, 4, 463-470.
  • Federmeier, K. D. (2007). Thinking ahead: The role and roots of prediction in language comprehension. Psychophysiology, 44, 491-505.
  • Fabiani, Monica; Gratton, Gabriele; Federmeier, Kara D. (2007), "Event-Related Brain Potentials: Methods, Theory, and Applications", Handbook of Psychophysiology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 85–119, doi:10.1017/cbo9780511546396.004, retrieved 2024-01-02
  • Kutas, Marta; Federmeier, Kara D. (2011-01-10). "Thirty Years and Counting: Finding Meaning in the N400 Component of the Event-Related Brain Potential (ERP)". Annual Review of Psychology. 62 (1): 621–647. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.131123. ISSN 0066-4308. PMC 4052444. PMID 20809790.

References

  1. ^ "Kara Federmeier". Chicago Tribune. 1990-05-06. p. 521. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
  2. ^ a b c "Kara Federmeier". Default. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
  3. ^ "Past Officers - Society for Psychophysiological Research". sprweb.org. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
  4. ^ Deaton, Jeremy (2019-11-10). "Brain science offers insight into what you see in the clouds". South Florida Sun Sentinel. pp. A8. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
  5. ^ Federmeier, K.D. and Kutas, M. (1999a). A rose by any other name: Long-term memory structure and sentence processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 41, 469-495.
  6. ^ Federmeier, K. D., Mai, H., and Kutas, M. (2005). Both sides get the point: Bihemispheric sensitivity to sentential constraint. Memory and Cognition, 33, 871-886.
  7. ^ Federmeier, K. D. (2022). Connecting and considering: Electrophysiology provides insights into comprehension. Psychophysiology, 59(1), e13940.
  8. ^ "Past University Scholars - EVPAA". www.vpaa.uillinois.edu. Retrieved 23 March 2022.