Title: A multilevel perspective on motivation-cognition interactions 

Presenter: Kimberly Chiew, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Denver

Abstract: Motivational influences can critically shape task performance across a variety of cognitive domains. Often, motivation-related changes in cognition can be understood as occurring in the service of adaptive human behavior. However, the factors that shape the effects of motivation on performance outcomes across cognitive domains is still being characterized. In the present talk, I discuss research examining factors accounting for variability in motivation-cognition outcomes, including valence, prediction, and individual differences, across domains including cognitive control, emotion regulation, memory encoding, and information seeking. I combine laboratory and naturalistic approaches to examine motivated cognition at multiple levels of analysis, from fundamental neurobiological mechanisms to higher-level patterns of human behavior in real-world contexts (such as the 2016 and 2020 American presidential elections). By investigating motivation and cognition from this multilevel perspective, we can explore the extent to which laboratory-based predictions generalize to naturalistic contexts, as well as develop new hypotheses to bring back to the lab. 

Bio: Dr. Kimberly S. Chiew is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and director of the Motivation, Affect, & Cognition Lab at the University of Denver. Dr. Chiew received an undergraduate degree in Neuroscience from the University of Toronto, an MA and PhD in cognitive psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University before beginning her present position at the University of Denver in Fall 2017. Dr. Chiew is interested in how human motivation and affect — what we want and how we feel — shape the way we allocate attention, control task performance, and learn new information; ultimately, supporting adaptive behavior.