Search

Previous research has investigated the BESS and found that scores were highly varied across experimenters. This research reveals a number of potential flaws within the BESS. Beyond the problems of subjective scoring, the BESS only detects dysfunction so that most healthy people and even people affected by mild concussions score perfectly well on the test. In the present experiment, we look to assess the BESS test and compare subjective assessment of balance ability. By identifying potential flaws in the BESS, we may reveal the need for other methods that could be used to identify individuals who have actually sustained a concussion.

Humans and animals identify, pursue and achieve rewards and learn from rewarded experiences through a reward system The mesolimbic reward system is responsible for a number of psychological mechanisms including hedonic response to reward and incentive salience or colloquially liking and wanting Eye-blink rate is a reliable proxy for dopaminergic functioning (Taylor et al., 1999) Altered dysfunction has been detected in a number of clinical populations, including schizophrenia (Chen, Lam, Chen, & Nguyen, 1996), and Parkinson’s disease (Deuschl & Goddemeier, 1998) Individuals with concussions display a number of behavioral and functional brain changes suggestive of dopaminergic dysfunction Here we investigate the use of a low-cost eyetracker to evaluate eyeblink rate as a proxy for dopamine functioning

However, new low-cost tracking is now making eye tracking more accessible and mobile. Previous research (Dalmaijer, 2015) indicated that both the EyeTribe and the EyeLink ($40,000 high quality eye tracker) had similar spatial precision and accuracy, region of interest and pupilometry analysis abilities. In the present experiment we tested the low-cost tracker (EyeTribe) in both a standard and “mobile” (i.e. standing/holding tablet) conditions in hopes to validate its potential use outside the lab (e.g., sideline assessment of athletes).

Cohen, A.*, Kurczek J., & Duff, M. C. (2012, July). I’d tell you a story if I could: The role of hippocampal declarative memory in narrative construction. Poster presentation at the University of Iowa Summer Undergraduate Research Conference, Iowa City, IA. The hippocampus has long been considered critical for declarative memory as hippocampal damage produces anterograde amnesia (i.e., an inability to form new memories). • Anterograde amnesia compromises the ability to create, update and juxtapose mental representations that can be used in service of declarative memory. Patients with amnesia, however, have been considered to have intact remote memory and an otherwise unremarkable neuropsychological profile (i.e., their sole deficit is forming new declarative memories). • However, new research suggests that the functioning of the hippocampus may extend beyond its contributions to memory to affect language (Duff & Brown- Schmidt, 2012). For example, the ability to create and tell stories requires the ability to bring together multiple representations. • When telling an autobiographical account or spontaneously creating a story individuals with amnesia may omit “episodic-like” details, such as time, place, and emotional states specific to the event and include more extraneous (i.e., semantic) details. • This research investigates narrative abilities in individuals with amnesia.

Kurczek, J., Gupta, R., & Duff, M. (2012, April). Damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex disrupts nonconscious facial mimicry. Poster presentation at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS), Chicago, IL. • When exposed to emotional facial expressions, people nonconsciously mimic the expression (Dimberg & Petterson, 2000; Dimberg et al., 2000). • Muscle groups associated with the production of a given expression become more active when viewing that expression compared to other facial expressions (i.e., greater activity of zygomaticus major when viewing happy expressions compared to angry; greater activity of corrugator supercilli when viewing angry expressions compared to happy) (Dimberg & Petterson, 2000; Dimberg et al., 2000). • This nonconscious facial mimicry may contribute to the ability to recognize, understand, and empathize with anothers’ emotions and may contribute to the pervasive impairments in social and emotional functioning in individuals with ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) damage (e.g., Anderson et al., 2006). • We hypothesized that vmPFC damage would impair nonconscious facial mimicry and used facial EMG to record muscle activity as vmPFC and matched healthy participants viewed emotional facial expressions.

Edouard, S., & Kurczek, J. (2016, April). An investigation of the interaction between autobiographical memory and narrative practices. Poster Presentation at the 31st Annual LVAIC Undergraduate Psychology Conference. Bethlehem, PA. • Autobiographical memories are at the interface of memory and narrative capacities, however in the memory literature there is a debate surrounding how much these capacities contribute to autobiographical and general narrative practices • Our goal is to investigate memory and narrative in a healthy population and investigate individual differences across elicitation type (past vs future memories) and narrative production form (oral vs typed) • By understanding how the content of narratives can be affected by elicitation type and production we can make better comparisons across datasets in the memory literature. • Lastly, by exploring individual differences in narrative practices, we can further explore differences in memory and language variables as a result of differences in autobiographical narration

Kurczek, J., & Duff, M.C. (2010, May). Cohesion, coherence and declarative memory: Discourse patterns in patients with hippocampal amnesia. Poster presentation at the Clinical Aphasiology Conference (CAC), Charleston, SC. (Abstract) Aphasiology, 24 (7-8). Defined as surface indicators of relations within and between sentences (Halliday & Hasan, 1976), cohesive ties are a linguistic device that gives our communication continuity, allowing us to make connections across utterances, speakers, and topics. Given that we routinely return to and elaborate on conversations across long stretches of interaction (days and longer), cohesive ties also link our communicative histories across time. • Investigations of discourse cohesion, and coherence, have been fruitful in indentifying discourse level impairments in individuals with various cognitive-communication impairments (e.g., TBI, dementia). • Deficits in working memory (e.g, Dijkstra et al., 2004; Youse & Coelho, 2005), executive function (e.g., Glosser & Deser, 1990), and broad cognitive dysfunction (e.g., Davis & Coelho, 2004) have all been associated with impairments in cohesion and coherence in patients with TBI and dementia. • We believe there are compelling reasons to investigate the contribution of declarative memory to cohesion and coherence. Taking advantage of a rare patient group with selective and severe declarative memory impairments, the current study is an attempt to isolate the contribution of declarative memory to cohesion and coherence in discourse.

Kurczek, J., Duff, M.C., Hengst, J.A. & Prior, P. (2010, November). Segmentation tools for analyzing spoken discourse samples: Pitfalls and promises. Paper presentation at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), Philidelphia, PA.T-Units, semantic/meaning tools, interactional discourse measures, best practices

Kurczek, J., & Duff, M.C. (2010, October). Declarative memory and discursive cohesion in hippocampal amnesia. Poster presentation at the Iowa Speech Hearing Association (ISHA), Iowa City, IA.Originally defined as surface indicators of relations within and between sentences (Halliday & Hasan, 1976), cohesive ties are a linguistic device that gives our communication continuity, allowing us to make connections across utterances, speakers, and topics. Given that we routinely return to and elaborate on conversations across long stretches of interaction (days, weeks, and longer), cohesive ties also link our communicative histories across time. •Investigations of discourse cohesion, and coherence, have been particularly fruitful in indentifying discourse level impairments in individuals with various cognitive-communication impairments (e.g., TBI, dementia). •While deficits in working memory (e.g, Dijkstra et al., 2004; Youse & Coelho, 2005), executive function (e.g., Glosser & Deser, 1990), and broad cognitive dysfunction (e.g., Davis & Coelho, 2004) have all been associated with impairments in cohesion and coherence, the diffuse nature of the pathology and the constellation of observed cognitive deficits associated with TBI and dementia have made identification of a specific underlying cognitive impairment to explain these disruptions difficult. •We believe there are compelling reasons to investigate the contribution of declarative memory to cohesion and coherence. Taking advantage of a rare patient group with selective and severe declarative memory impairments, the current study is an attempt to isolate the contribution of declarative memory to cohesion and coherence in discourse.

Ahamed, H., & Kurczek, J. (2016, April). Mind-ception: Investigating the relationship between theory of mind and decision making. Poster Presentation at the 31st Annual LVAIC Undergraduate Psychology Conference. Bethlehem, PA. • Much of our decision making (DM) requires either direct or indirect considerations of others’ thoughts (McCubbins, et al., 2012). • Theory of Mind (ToM – the capacity to infer the thoughts/intentions of others) is an ability intrinsic to game theory (which underlies much of economic research concerning DM – von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1944) as attributing preferences to others sets up strategic game play (Kimbrough et al., 2014) • DM also shares cognitive and neural components with the ToM as proposed by Shamay-Tsoory et al. (2009, 2010) • However, the research is mixed regarding the relationship between ToM and DM. A number of studies have found no relationship between the two abilities (Torralva et al., 2007; Torralva et al., 2013; Xi et al., 2011) • Here we explore the relationship between ToM and Decision Making across ToM and decision tasks and within a novel application of a matrix decision task

While it is widely accepted that the hippocampus plays a crucial role in both the formation and retrieval of memories and future thinking, recent research suggests that it may also contribute to language construction and supplemental narrative capacities. In looking at amnesic with narrative construction deficits and future thinking impairments, a fundamental question evolved regarding the source of the deficiencies. The question arose regarding whether these implications were a solely a result of impaired memory or if it was due to a broader impairment of cognitive functioning beyond memory Previous research in amnesic populations had used a variety of stimuli and methods, making it difficult to compare across studies. Our goal is to investigate individual variability in narrative responses across different levels of visual stimuli (rich versus poor) and narrative prompts (description versus story), in order to demonstrate the importance of stimuli and prompt selection. By understanding individual differences in narrative practices, we can begin to explore variations in memory variables as a result of differences in language production.

T-Units, semantic/meaning tools, interactional discourse measures, best practices

Kurczek, J. & Duff, M. C. (2012, May). The neural substrates of creative thinking. Paper presentation at the Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language Conference (CSDL), Vancouver, BC, Canada.A neuropsychological investigation of creative thinking

Harland, A.*, & Kurczek, J. (2013, April). Morality, parenting and politics: How to talk about it. Poster presentation at the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Student Research Conference, Cedar Falls, IA.• Metaphors are rich, powerful devices that can be used to easily convey complicated messages. • Their use in political discourse serves as a way to potentially influence a person’s agreeability with or understanding of complex subjects. • However, while previous work has implicated that the use of metaphor by both dominant political parties in the US, the metaphorical roots used by each party can be traced back to two very distinct, conceptualizations of morality. • This begs the questions whether one system of metaphorical political discourse is more effective than the other and whether that is modulated by a person’s own party. • Moral views are major factors that influence political opinions. Every political stance can be explained by one's moral position on the inner value of human beings and their role in society.

Beranek, C.*, Halfmann, K., Kurczek, J., & Hedgcock, W. (2014, March). Use of heart rate and heart rate variability in decision making research. Poster presentation at the Tippie Research Fair, Iowa City, IA. • The autonomic nervous system controls non- conscious func.ons like breathing, heart beat, and diges.on. • It can be divided into the sympathe.c nervous system (SNS) which excites and the parasympathe.c nervous system (PNS) which calms. (4) • Combined, the SNS and PNS control heart rate variability, the change of .me between successive heart beats. (1) • Using an ECG (electrocardiogram) we can non- invasively observe PNS ac.vity (HR and HRV).

Kurczek, J. & Gordon, J.K. (2009, October). Lexical decision in aging: Stimulus variables and response time components. Poster presentation at the Aging and Speech Communication Conference, Bloomington, IN. Word retrieval is susceptible to break down with age and brain damage (especially aphasia) Different types of variables affect word retrieval: 1. Lexical (e.g. frequency, phonological neighborhood density) (Figure 4) 2. Sub-lexical (e.g. phonotactics, length) (Figure 4) 3. Subject (e.g. age, education, sensory functioning) 4. Task factors (e.g. mode of retrieval, composition of the stimulus set) Neighborhood density refers to the number of similar sounding words activated at the same time as the target: • Past research has indicated a competitive effect of neighborhood density for tasks that promote processing at the lexical level and a facilitative effect for tasks that promote processing at the sub-lexical level (Goldinger et al., 1990; Vitevitch & Luce, 1998; Vitevitch et al., 1999) Theories of cognitive aging may explain behavioral changes observed: • Sensory Deficit • Decrease of Inhibition • Slowing of processing speed Speed and accuracy with which words or decisions about words can be made can inform us about the form and function of the mental lexicon (Figure 1) Psychological processes behind the mental lexicon and two-choice decisions can be further elucidated with the diffusion model

Hengst, J.A., Duff, M.C., Kurczek, J., & Prior, P. (2011, November). Metaphor as an interactional discourse resource for individuals with Aphasia and their communication partners. Paper presentation at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), San Diego, CA.Research and clinical literature document that individuals with aphasia often display good understanding of metaphor and figurative language but difficulty producing or explaining metaphorical expressions (e.g., Winner & Gardner, 1977). For example, when subjects were asked to match spoken metaphors with one of four pictures (metaphor, literal, noun, adjective), Winner and Gardner (1977) found that control subjects selected the metaphor picture 73% of the time, more often than subjects with aphasia (anterior LH lesions, 67%; posterior LH lesions, 46%) or other cognitive deficits (mild dementia, 45%; RH lesions, 40%). However, subjects with aphasia had significantly more difficulty using language to explain the metaphor than did RHD subjects. In an interview study examining how patients, family members and SLPs used metaphor to characterize rehabilitation, Ferguson et al. (2010) found that participants with mild aphasia all used metaphors, but fewer novel metaphors than their family members and SLPs. The research to date is limited to analyzing understanding of metaphoric expressions either under controlled tasks, or in the case of Ferguson et al., as representations that index attitudes. In our research examining situated discourse practices of individuals with brain damage, we have analyzed key interactional discourse resources (IDRs), including reported speech (Hengst, et al, 2005), verbal play (Hengst, 2006), and conversational narratives (Hengst, 2010). Broadly, IDRs are recognizable discourse patterns that interlocutors use to contextualize or framing talk and action. Grounded in sociocultural theories of communication, IDRs involve multimodal (verbal and nonverbal) resources, are emergent and creative, and foreground the interactive management of multiple contextual frames. By shifting focus from linguistic resources alone, the study of IDRs has allowed us to systematically document how individuals with aphasia and their communication partners are often able to successfully and creatively contextualize their talk to support communicative efforts. In recent decades, cognitive scientists (e.g. Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) and semioticians (e.g., Jakobson, 1960) have challenged rhetorical theory, arguing that a basic set of figurative operations structures thinking and communication. For example, Lakoff (1987) argues that cognitive categorizations routinely depart from a literal mirroring of the world through comparative processes of metaphor (identity relations), metonymy (association or contiguity), and imagery (iconic resemblance). Although these theories posit different basic operations, they agree on the fundamental power and pervasiveness of such figurative comparisons, and have led us to consider them as likely candidates for IDRs. Because terminologies for these figures remain in some flux, we hence forth follow Lakoff in using metaphor or metaphorical expression as a shorthand for any such operations.

Kurczek, J., Kwan, D., & Rosenbaum, R.S. (2015, May). Ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions impair both intertemporal and probabilistic decision-making. Poster Presentation at the 11th Annual Southern Ontario Behavioral Decision Research Conference. Toronto, Canada.Neuroimaging studies suggest that a common neural mechanism exists for deciding among delayed and probabilistic rewards, yet these processes respond differently to experimental manipulations and only weakly correlate in healthy adults. Previously, individuals with ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) damage have been described as "myopic for the future" based on forgoing larger future rewards in favor of smaller immediate rewards on gambling and delay tests. However, it is unclear if impaired decision-making is due to a failure to regard outcomes that are displaced in time or in the valuation of outcomes, independent of time.Perhaps, unlike delay discounting, probability discounting may allow one to separate impulsive from risk-taking behaviour.

Brown-Schmidt, S., Kurczek, J., & Duff, M.C. (2014, March). Hippocampal contributions to discourse processing: Findings from amnesia.Poster presentation at the 26th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Columbia, SC.What is the contribution of the hippocampal dependent declarative memory system to on-line processing of reference in discourse? WELL ESTABLISHED are the contributions of hippocampus to the formation of new enduring (long-term) memories (Ranganath, 2010; Squire, 1992), and its contributions to relational binding and representational flexibility (Eichenbaum & Cohen, 2001). EMERGING RESEARCH shows that hippocampus additionally contributes to on-line processing, even across minimal delays. Evidence from hippocampal imaging in healthy participants, and behavioral evidence from patients with bilateral hippocampal damage show: - Activation of hippocampus in healthy participants for relational learning over short delays (Hannula & Ranganath, 2008), and during retrieval of items from working memory (Öztekin, McElree, Staresina, & Davachi, 2008). - Degradation of relational representations in patients with bilateral hippocampal lesions over short delays (Hannula, Tranel, & Cohen, 2006) and in the processing of simple stimuli over short delays (Warren, et al. 2010). THE PRESENT RESEARCH examines contributions of hippocampus to discourse: - Our initial findings (Kurczek, Brown-Schmidt, & Duff, 2013) revealed profound deficits in ability of hippocampal amnesic participants to recruit discourse information from one sentence to resolve a pronoun in the subsequent sentence: Mickey is playing the violin for Donald as the sun is shining overhead. He is wearing a yellow bracelet... - Modeled after previous research with healthy participants (Arnold, et al., 2000), we found that unlike healthy matched comparison participants, patients with hippocampal amnesia did not show a significant preference to interpret the pronoun as referring to the 1st- mentioned referent. - HereweaskwhetherthediscourserepresentationisENTIRELYLOSTinamnesia, or whether it is present, but WEAKENED.

Duff, M.C., & Kurczek, J. (2012, October). Referential processing places high demands on hippocampal declarative memory. Poster presentation at the Society for the Neurobiology of Language Conference, San Sebastian, Spain.• In a preliminary study of referential processing in patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and severe and selective declarative memory impairment we reported disruptions; these patients produced fewer cohesive ties, the adequacy of their ties were more often judged to be incomplete, and ratings of their local coherence were consistently lower than comparison participants (Kurczek & Duff, 2011) • Here we extend this line of work by performing a more extensive examination of discourse cohesion and coherence in patients with hippocampal amnesia across a variety of narrative tasks

Kurczek, J., Ajuha, S.**, Wechsler, E.**, Cohen, N.J., Tranel, D., & Duff, M.C. (2014, April). Differential contributions of the medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus to self-projection and self-referential processing. Poster presentation at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Boston, MA.Recent evidence from neuropsychological and fMRI studies suggests a connection between memory for the past and thinking about the future. Its thought that we use our past experiences as the basis for our future plans and decisions. Here we examine if the hippocampus and medial frontal cortex make distinct contributions to self-projection and self-referential processing

Kurczek, J., Brown-Schmidt, S., & Duff, M.C. (2013, April). Hippocampal damage disrupts referential processing. Poster presentation at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference, San Francisco, CA.• Establishing and maintaining reference is a central component of language processing, as much of what we talk about involves referring to entities • Referential processing requires maintaining a representation of the unfolding discourse history and potential referents, and integration of information about referential form with rich representations of referential context (Tanenhaus et al., 1995; Brennan & Clark, 1996) • We have propose that the rapid relational binding and representational flexibility of the hippocampal declarative memory system affords the informational binding and integration necessary for referential processing (Duff & Brown-Schmidt, 2012) • Partial support for this claim comes from Kurczek and Duff (2012); amnesic patients produced fewer cohesive ties, the adequacy of their ties were more often judged to be incomplete, and ratings of their local coherence were consistently lower than comparison participants, and from Duff et al., 2011; use of definite references disrupted in amnesia • Combing eyetracking and neuropsychological methods, Current study extends this line of work to examine the role of the hippocampus in on-line referential processing • Specifically, does the contribution of the hippocampus extend to brief discourse histories and to items in discourse focus?

Harland, A.*, & Kurczek, J. (2012, November). Metaphoric language in political discourse: Does it make a difference? Poster presentation at the Tri-States Undergraduate Psychology Conference, Platteville, WI.• Metaphors are rich, powerful devices that can be used to easily convey complicated messages. • Their use in political discourse serves as a way to potentially influence a person’s agreeability with or understanding of complex subjects. • However, while previous work has implicated that the use of metaphor by both dominant political parties in the US, the metaphorical roots used by each party can be traced back to two very distinct, conceptualizations of morality. • This begs the questions whether one system of metaphorical political discourse is more effective than the other and whether that is modulated by a person’s own party. • Moral views are major factors that influence political opinions. Every political stance can be explained by one's moral position on the inner value of human beings and their role in society.

Kurczek, J., & Duff, M.C. (2016, April). Stability and consistency of narrative production across time in hippocampal amnesia Poster presentation at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Meeting. New York, New York. The critical role of the hippocampus and related medial temporal lobe regions in the formation of new enduring memories (i.e., long-term memory) and in their subsequent retrieval is well established. • Hippocampal dependent declarative (relational) memory has two hallmark features; relational (or associative) memory binding and the flexible expression of memory (Eichenbaum & Cohen, 2001). • An important aspect of memory is its ability to be flexibly and constructively recalled in novel contexts. Here we measure episodic and semantic memories in two contexts, one in which the same narratives were told and retold over the course of a month and a second in which the same narratives were told from different perspectives. • Few studies have investigated the role of damage to the hippocampus in telling memories/narratives over time. Evidence from individuals with depression (Semkovska et al., 2012) suggests that individuals with hippocampal damage will be less consistent when retrieving memories and retelling narratives. • We rarely just tell the same story in the same way. Different contextual demands (e.g., people, setting, purpose) drives telling different versions of memories. Findings here may address how damage to the hippocampus affects integrating both past (i.e., having told the stories previously) and current demands (i.e. updating the story to tell a new perspective) when attempting to re-construct both personal (episodic) and semantic narratives.

Tan, E.*, & Kurczek, J. (2013, April). Stuck in the present: The use of the historical present in constructed narratives of patients with bilateral hippocampal damage. Oral presentation at the Coe College Student Research Symposium, Cedar Rapids, IA.- "Reliving memories" - Mental Time travel - Looks at use of present tense in past recollection - Indicates emotional change and switch between Internal and External thoughts - Brain structure and memory - Amnesia vs. Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (Park et al., 2012)

Kurczek, J., Duff, M.C., Jensen, U., Adolphs, R., Cohen, N. J., & Tranel, D. (2010, November). Hippocampal amnesia impairs the generation of mental representations across all time periods. Poster presentation at the Society for Neuroscience Conference, San Diego, CA. Recent work has suggested hippocampus may be involved in imagining or thinking about the future (e.g., Addis & Schacter, 2008; Buckner & Carroll, 2007; Hassabis et al., 2007;Okuda et al., 2003; Szpunar et al., 2007; also Tulving, 1985). • Given the significant methodological differences across studies (e.g., specificity of patient characterization; past vs. imagination; elicitation and data analysis procedures and methods) the role of hippocampus in generating mental representations to be used in service of thinking across real and imagined events, across time periods is unclear. • We take a direct and comprehensive approach by probing across time periods (e.g., past, present, future) and across real and imagined events, using well established methods (e.g., Levine et al., 2002; 2005) in a large group of well characterized amnesic and brain damaged-comparison participants. • Relational memory theory (Cohen & Eichenbaum, 1993; Eichenbaum & Cohen, 2001) predicts hippocampus is critical for generation, maintenance, and use of all mental representations irrespective of time period and for real or imagined events.

Kurczek, J. & Ohnesorge, C. (2010, August). Evaluating the Impact of Spatial Frequencies on the Perception of Gender. Poster presentation at the Annual Summer Interdisciplinary Conference (ASIC), Bend, OR. Face perception is fundamentally important for judging the characteristics of individuals, such as identification of their gender, age, ethnicity or expression (Webster, Kaping, Mizokami, & Duhamel, 2004). It has been hypothesized that gender perception takes place in higher level visual processing areas. Little, DeBruine, & Jones (2005) suggest that distinct neural populations may code for subcategories of faces for which expertise-derived configural processing is equivalent (i.e. male and female faces). They suggest that visual after-effects are thought to reflect changes in the responses of neural mechanisms underlying face processing and cannot be attributed to retinal (i.e. lower level) adaptations, as the after-effects are robust to difference in the retinal location and size of faces at exposure and post-exposure testing (Little, DeBruine, & Jones, 2005). In a study by Webster et al. (2004) categorical perception of faces was examined based on gender, ethnicity and expression. Observers made forced choice responses to categorize images along the continuum, for example responding to whether a face from a gender morph appeared “female” or “male.” The boundary for gender represents an androgynous image intermediate to the female and male exemplars and could be set consistently by observers. However, after adapting to a male face, the previously ambiguous image appeared distinctly feminine. Conversely, adaptation to the female face induced the opposite changes. This effect is similar to results found in visual after-effect studies. In a different investigation by Cellarino, Borghetti, and Sartucci (2004), the effect of pixilation on gender identification was conducted. As the photos became more pixilated the male faces were identified correctly more frequently than the female faces. This can be inferred to mean that male faces are composed of more lower frequencies since the pixilation wipes out the higher frequencies. The combination of these findings may suggest that the perception of gender can be influenced by lower level processes such as spatial frequency processing.

Hill, J.*, Pickett, C.*, Kurczek, J., & Duff, M. C. (2012, July). Is the ability to produce metaphor a sole product of the right hemisphere? Poster presentation at the University of Iowa Summer Undergraduate Research Conference, Iowa City, IA.• Often thought to be restricted to the 1lowery language of literature, metaphor is in fact ubiquitous in daily language (Coulson, 2007). Metaphor used to express emotions and abstract concepts and our everyday understanding and communication of thoughts (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). • Neuropsychological studies of language have historically focused on contributions of the left hemisphere to language but more recently the contributions of right hemisphere have been documented. • Damage to the right hemisphere will often cause right hemisphere syndrome whose symptoms include: 1) inattention 2) spatial reasoning problems, and 3) non-linguistic and paralinguistic problems. • Patients with ight hemisphere damage (RHD) also have impairments in the use of 1igurative (Brownell 1984) and divergent semantic processing and 1igurative language (Schmidt, 2007). However, this remains disputed as neuroimaging studies have been inconclusive. • Here we investigate the contribution of the RH to metaphor production using a novel coding procedure and predict that since the RH contributes to the use of 1igurative language, patients with RHD will produce less instances of 1igurative language.

Brown-Schmidt, S., Kurczek, J., & Duff, M.C. (2013, March). Contributions of declarative memory to on-line reference resolution: Findings from amnesia. Paper presentation at 26th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Columbia, SC. Examine the reach of the hippocampal-declarative memory system in on-line language processing  Does the hippocampal system extend to brief discourses and items in discourse focus?

Pickett, C.*, Kurczek, J. & Duff, M.C. (2012, November). Colorful descriptions and loud movement: Does hippocampal damage impair the use of metaphor? Poster presentation at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students, San Jose, CA.In contrast to traditional neuropsychological studies of metaphor, this study looks at the use of novel metaphor. • This study also looks at metaphor production in a unique population. In doing so, we are broadening the network of cognitive and neural systems that contribute to metaphor in specific and language in general. • All participants appear to be able to use figurative comparisons in near equivalent style. The number of episodes, expressions and tokens were very similar as well as figurative comparison type and resources used • It appears that although amnesic participants in the matcher condition were part of a near equivalent number and style of figurative comparisons, they did not comprehend the comparisons as their card placement accuracy was far different from comparisons pairs • Future directions will investigate the number of embedded expressions, the number of token repetitions and number of figurative themes used to get at the question of density. • This study may prompt the further investigation of metaphor in these participants, as it appears that our understanding of “metaphor” is not as unitary as previously thought. The ability to use “metaphor” may be described by three abilities 1) the ability to make comparisons or see things as other things 2) use conventional metaphoric expressions and 3) generate, blend and juxtapose novel representations from distinct representation

Duff, M. C. & Kurczek, J. (2011, November), Effects of hippocampal amnesia on discourse following tramatic brain injury. Poster presentation at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), San Diego, CA.We reported the case of AK, who despite a profound anterograde amnesia had a remarkable functional outcome in terms of academic, vocational, and interpersonal success (Duff et al, 2008a). She demonstrated a keen sense of self-awareness and insight into her deficits. Particularly striking was AK’s ability to conceal her memory impairment in everyday settings including in her social interactions. In a separate line of work, we have been investigating the contribution of declarative memory to meeting the real-world demands that communication places on language-and-memory-in-use by studying the discourse practices of a group of individuals with hippocampal amnesia. In previous studies we have reported a number of discourse level impairments in patients with amnesia (Duff et al., 2007; 2008b; 2009; 2011; Kurczek & Duff, 2011). Here we examine the discourse of AK and three demographically matched comparison participants across microlinguistic, macrolinguisitc, and interactional measures. Of particular interest was whether her discourse abilities differs significantly from those individuals with amnesia we have previously studied and if her discourse contributes to her unique profile and successful outcome.

Kurczek, J. (2013, April). Narratives and lessons from traumatic brain injury. Oral presentation at the Jakobson Conference, Iowa City, IA.Explores the problems of TBI funding and understanding. Proposes a new way to study TBI.

Croft, K. E., Ahuja, S.**, Wechsler, E. V.**, Fishel, B. R., Kurczek, J., Duff, M. C., & Tranel, D. (2012, October). Forging a partnership between high school and university: Teaching neuroscience to young women scientists (FFF50). Poster presentation at the Society for Neuroscience Conference, New Orleans, LA.Researchers at the University of Iowa and The Hockaday School, an all girls K-12 independent school in Dallas, Texas, formed a partnership to expose high school students to rigorous research methods in order to bolster support for high-achieving females joining the STEM disciplines, as well as prime them for more challenging science university curricula. This partnership is a unique opportunity for girls to experience science first-hand by fully immersing themselves in a neuroscience research laboratory and acquiring graduate-level knowledge and skills in neuroscience, a highly-multidisciplinary STEM field.

The lexical decision task is one of the most widely used tasks in psychology (Ratcliff, McKoon, & Gomez, 2004). Through the years, it has generally been used to investigate memory and lexical access (psycholinguistics). The lexical decision task is one way to study the organization and properties of the mental lexicon, how words are stored in the brain. The general assumption underlying the lexical decision task is that the speed and accuracy of responding to word stimuli indicate the efficiency with which word representations are activated or retrieved from lexical memory (Wangermakers, Zeelenberg, Steyvers, Shiffrin, Raaijmakers, 2004). By manipulating the variables by which words themselves differ or the ways in which they are presented, we can begin to shed light on these cognitive processes by analyzing and interpreting how these manipulations affect a subject’s reaction time and accuracy in classifying a string of letters as a word or not a word. Based on the data that is collected, models can be used to represent how these manipulations affect the cognitive processes and certain theoretical inferences can be made, specifically related to the metal representation of words in the mind and how words are categorized and stored in the mind (i.e. the mental lexicon). The factors that influence lexical access include word frequency, recency, and the presence of semantically related words and are all addressed in both types of models (search and network). By controlling and changing the variables of words or how they are presented, we can examine how these changes affect the timing of responses, which allows us to theorize about how these changes affect the processing in the mental lexicon. In three studies we manipulate the properties of words themselves, as well as manipulating conditions under which words are seen (priming) while subjects are performing a lexical decision task. We then fit the data from these investigations to the EZ Diffusion Model (Wagenmakers, van der Maas, & Grassman, 2007). By fitting the EZ diffusion to the results of the lexical decision task, do we gain insight to the cognitive processes of facilitation? The EZ diffusion may lend psychological plausibility of describing a response to manipulations of the lexical decision task.

Duff, M.C., & Kurczek, J. (2013, April). Hippocampal amnesia disrupts episodic memory and narrative construction. Poster presentation at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference, San Francisco, CA. • Hallmark processing features of the hippocampus include its relational binding and representational flexibility (Eichenbaum & Cohen, 2001). Recent findings demonstrate that these same processes are engaged on-line in service of supporting behavior in the moment (Hannula & Ranganath, 2008 Barense et al., 2007; Warren et al., 2011). • This functionality of the hippocampus has been linked to cognitive abilities beyond its traditional role in long-term declarative (relational) memory including language. Duff and Brown-Schmidt (2012) have proposed that the functionality of the hippocampus positions it as a key contributor to language use and processing. Indeed, patients with hippocampal damage have a variety of deficits in the flexible and creative use of language and in the on-line processing of language (Duff & Brown-Schmidt, 2012). • An on-going debate is the whether deficits in the production of narrative elements, across either personal stories or picture descriptions/narratives, represent solely an impairment in memory (Race et al., 2011; 2013) or a more basic impairment in cognitive functioning outside of memory (Gasser et al., 2011; Zeman et al., 2012). • Here, we examine narrative in patients with hippocampal amnesia and analyze their narrative productions using methods from both the memory and language literatures. Based on our proposal about the role of hippocampus in language use, including narratives, we predict that hippocampal damage and relational memory impairment will disrupt narrative production across a variety of memory and language measures.

Kurczek, J., Bacopulos, A., St.-Jacques, P.L., Svoboda, E., Rosenbaum, R.S., & Levine, B. (2015, March). Aging and episodic memory: Changes in memory and narrative ability? Poster presentation at the 25 Annual Rotman Conference. Toronto, Canada. Previous research has shown that the ability to recall information is affected both by aging and the structure of narratives. • In the case of autobiographical memory, the episodic (event-specific, contextually rich) content has been found to change across the lifespan, but it is unclear if the style and structure of narrative also changes with age.